Podcasts about josh you

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 10, 2022 17:01

The skill set for building an effective team is WAY different than the skills needed for marketing and sales. For one, you have to learn how to become a true LEADER. So the two key questions to ask yourself are 1. Who do you have to become to lead a great team? And 2. What are the critical strategies you need to implement to get your team onboard to follow your vision? Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up, everyone? This is Russell, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today's episode, we're going to be talking about building a team. How do you do it? What are the pitfalls? What are the pros, the cons? And some of the things that I learned along the way. Hopefully this'll help you as you're building out your team to be able to do whatever it is you're trying to do in your life. Whatever your mission, whatever your goal, whatever the business you're trying to build. I hope that this episode will help you as you're thinking through it, to help you to build the team that's going to get you to the finish line. So with that said, I'm going to cue up the theme song. We come back, you have a chance to listen in on a cool interview, talking about how to build your team. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast, I'm here today with Josh Forti and we've been having fun today. The last two episodes- Josh Forti: We have. Russell: We recorded went longer, but- Josh: It's been fun. Russell: I think they've been fun. So today will be a little bit shorter episode, but it's something that, again, Josh brings things that I don't ever really typically talk about. So it's been fun to talk about some of the stuff like I think about, but I've never really verbally shared. So do you want to set up what we were talking about today? Josh: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so very specifically here, I want to focus for you specifically. The question is, well, leadership and team building, what are some of the biggest shifts around building a team and becoming a leader? Because as someone who built a team myself that failed miserably, it wasn't that we hated each other, but it's just like, it was chaos. When you're trying to manage like six or seven different people and they're all like contracting everywhere. And now I'm like kind of going back and rebuilding. And I'm building it right and I have full-time people that we're bringing in and going. And it's like, man, the skillset of making money, the skillset of being a marketer is way so totally different- Russell: Yeah. Josh: Than building a team. And even being like the attractive character and building a following, like building a following is a completely different skillset than it is of growing a team and being a leader and things like that. And so I guess like two part is number one, who did you have to become? And like, secondly, what are like some of the hacks, tips, or I know you like secrets. So what are some of the secrets that you use to build a team and really like sell them on the vision and like really make sure that they were thriving in that role? Russell: Cool. So I want to just second what you said, building a team is way different than all the other things. And I've struggled over the years. I have an amazing team, as you guys know, if you've seen everything. And I wouldn't say most of it's because of my own doing, I'll talk about some of the stuff I've learned along the way. But it's a different skillset. And I think making money is an easier skill, I think creating a movement of people that are following you is different. I always tell people, like I'm such a good leader and communicator to like my tribe and I'm not as good to my internal team. It's interesting. And so a couple things that I'll share again, I don't have this perfect. And if you ask people on my team, like Russell's not perfect at this because I'm not. But I'll share some of the things I've learned because I'm always trying to figure this out and trying to get better at it. One of the biggest lessons I had and I did a podcast on this probably two or three years ago. Was this realization that I had to make a transition. Because I was always like the All Star. Like if you look at basketball, like I was the All Star, like I was really good. I could write copy, I could build a funnel, I could drive traffic, I could sell from stage, I could do all the different things. And so I was like, Michael Jordan out there and I'd be on stage, I'd be doing, I'd be dunking and slamming and three points. And like just amazing and people would tell me how great I was and I loved it. And then I start building a team. And so I started building a team, but the problem is that as I was building a team, I still thought I was Michael Jordan. So I'd build the team and I'd be in there, all of a sudden, I'd have the person writing copy and they'd be going up with the ball, about to do the layup. And I'm like, "Ah, I could actually do it better." So I grab the ball from my own teammate and rip it out of their hands and I'd go dunk it like, "Ah." And I would get everyone cheering for me again. Or someone would be coming down ... I'm trying to get these analogies working. But basically what's happening is that I was the All Star and- Josh: That one worked. That analogy worked. Russell: That one did work? Okay, good. Josh: Yeah. Russell: And I was trying to bring in other All Stars. But the problem is I'd bring these All Stars in and then as they were trying to perform, I'd be like, "I can do it better." And I would take the ball from them because I want to be the All Star. And I had this realization, like for me to actually build a team, I cannot continue to be the All Star. And this is hard- Josh: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Russell: For achievers like us, especially for someone like me. Like I was the achiever, I had done all the roles because I had built the company by myself initially. It was me doing all the roles, so I learned all the roles, I got good at all the roles. And so as I started trying to like bring on these different All Stars, it was tough. It's kind of like if you watch the All Star game or like the dream team. Like all of a sudden you got like the best players on a team and usually they're not the best playing with each other because they're all the All Stars, they all want a ball hog and it gets really, really difficult. And so I had to make this realization, like if I'm going to be successful growing a team and getting click funnels from hundred million to a billion dollars, like I can't continue to be the All Star. I have to retire and I have to become the coach. That's a hard transition. Because now you're coming back and like you're successful, not now by your skillset, but you're successful by like cultivating other people's skillsets. And that's a different skillset to have, by the way. Like it's way harder. For me, it's always been easier for me to go and like to do the thing. Like I'm finding it now with I'm coaching my kids wrestling. And I'm watching my kids, I'm watching the team and like, man, I was such a good athlete. I'd go out there, I'd kill myself, I'd work so hard and I was an amazing athlete. But it's way harder for me to coach other athletes because I can't give them desire, I can't give them these different things. And so that was difficult. And so that's the first thing to realize is that if you're going to start growing a team, you have to be willing to like take your Jersey off and say, "I'm no longer the All Star, I am now the coach. And I've got new people." And that's been the hardest thing for me and I still struggle with that, I still like jump back in. I'm like, "Ah." But that's the key, if you want to get a good group people around you. Because otherwise if you're the one that's taking the ball from him, from the other people on the team, the All Stars are going to leave you. Like they're not going to stick around, they want to be the All Star too, they want the recognition, they want to be doing the thing. So that's the first big shift that you got to have. Any questions on that before I go to kind of- Josh: No, no. Super good. Yeah, you're good. Russell: Okay. So the second thing is you have to be good at hiring All Stars. I remember when we first started building ClickFunnels, Todd read an article or something and he was talking about ... in the article was like, there's A players, B players, C player, there's different levels. But what people don't understand, it's not like A players, like 100% and B players like 50%. Like the article said the difference between an A player and a B player is like 2200% difference. So it's like a B player, you can have like one A player going to give you the output of like 50 or 100 or how many B players. And so what most of us try to do, is try to come in and say, "Okay, I don't want to spend as much money getting the right person. So I'm going to find somebody who's cheaper. Maybe they're not going to be an A player, but they'll be a B player, but I can afford them." And that's like this mindset that most people have. I see it all the time, I see it in Facebook groups, in ClickFunnels Facebook group, like, how do I get a cheap funnel builder? Like, that's the problem, you're looking for a B player. Or you find an A player, you get 2200 times better thing. And so it's been interesting because we launched ClickFunnels the first time, like I had a couple A players, which is why it grew. We had a couple All Stars, we had some like Todd Dickerson. You guys know our team, like we had A players who were able to go and intergrow. But then from there, we had to hire whoever we could afford. Right now we're building ClickFunnels 2.0 and we're in a unique spot where it's like, we don't have to just hire who we can afford. Like let's hire the best. And so we're going out there trying to figure out who are the A players in each regard. And it's crazy because I look at the team that's building ClickFunnels 2.0, it's a small team. What they're accomplishing is amazing, but they're all A players. When we started like looking at rolling out Click Funnels 2.0 and our marketing team, we started trying to bring in A players and they're expensive. And so a lot of times the questions like, well, I don't have any money. How do I recruit the A players? Well, I recruited Todd and I was broke. A players aren't necessarily looking for money today. The A players are people who are looking for money in the future. They're the ones who are like, "I want to be part of a team. I want to build something cool, something I believe in. And I want to be able to get paid insane amounts of money over here. And I'm willing to give up that for this over here." The right people will be willing to do that. So as I come back, if I was to like be building my team over from scratch right now. There's number one, again, taking off the All Star, say I'm going to be the coach. And number two is like, if I'm going to be the coach and I'm out there building the team, like I'm going to try to build the dream team. And to do that, I've got to sell them on the vision of why this is cool and like where it's going to go, and what's the opportunity for them. Because just like you're trying to sell your customers on the opportunity of like funnels are the opportunity or whatever. It's like, you're selling your dreams team, like this is the opportunity. Like if you join the team, you're going to get paid nothing right now or very little right now. But this is how we're going to structure things so that it'll be worth it for you over here. And the right people will hear that because that's what they're looking for. Someday when I retire from this whole, whatever I'm doing. If I was ever getting a job again, it's not going to be based on money, I could care less about money. Someone's going to sell me someday on the vision. In fact, I just saw Sean Wayland just hired the dude who started Tapout- Josh: Yeah, I saw that. Russell: And like how powerful is that? The Tapout dude does not need Sean's money. He sold his company for insane amounts of money. But I'm sure Sean's like, "Hey dude, here's the opportunity. You help me do this thing and flip it like, this is what's possible for you." And now he's got literally like there's no better person that Sean could have hired to run that company- Josh: Yeah, I know. Russell: Than this dude. Josh: When I saw that one, I was like, "Oh my Gosh." Russell: It's brilliant. So for all of us, we got to start linking more strategically. Not like, who can I afford for this role? It's like, who is the person that's going to be getting a million bucks a year in five years from now in this role? And how do I sell them on the opportunity? How do I create an opportunity where they can grow and they can monetize? Where they can make this kind of money. And that's how you recruit the right people into your world, who are going to help you to actually have success. And so those are the things ... because you get a good A player, you don't have to be really good at managing, you don't have to be really good at micro- Josh: Yeah. Russell: All those kind things. Like you get the right people in place, they're going to do the things and it makes you look like the All Star, the coach of the year that you are. Because you built the right team. Building the team- Josh: Yeah. Russell: Is more valuable than all the other pieces, I believe. Josh: Yeah. Like getting the right people is more important. The systems, the process, like those are all important. But like if you have B players on the team, it's like you're going to get a mediocre result. Russell: Yeah. And then- Josh: Yeah. Russell: And B player, you're going to be one in charge if you know the process. We brought Todd and I didn't have to like sit down with Todd and like, "Okay, how are we going to manage the projects? How are we going to do this?" Like Todd came in, he's like, "All right, I got it." And he just ran and he was able to run and like, all right, he's done. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Like we just brought in this guy named Kevin Richards, who we brought him in into like be the CMO of ClickFunnels. And Kevin had worked for a whole bunch of really big companies doing this. And it's crazy because like he came in and we gave him the reins, he started running. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is way better than I was running." Like there's structures, organization. Because he's done it before, over and over and over again. He's going to come in and plug in and just do it. And I'm watching it right now, I'm like- Josh: Yeah. Russell: "Man, like he's an A player who I could hire." In fact, I have over the last decade, a whole bunch of B players to do this role and no one's been able to hit it. And it's been me being involved so much. Where now it's like literally the first two weeks I was like all nervous because I want to make sure that everything's perfect. And finally like gave him the reins and I stepped back and it's like, "Whoa, this is so much better than when I was running it." Josh: Yeah. Russell: And it's easier and less stressed on me and he's loving it and it's just powerful. So those are the key. Josh: Okay. Couple rapid fire questions here, so that we make time. Number one, have you ever run into challenges or how have you dealt with communication differences inside of a team? Because one of the things that I've noticed is like, I just thought everybody would communicate like I was if we're all part of a team. I'm like the most expressive person, like when I talk. Like I use emojis and exclamation points and like if I'm texting, if I'm going like my voice or whatever. And like someone on my team is like, "Okay." I'm like, "Ah, are you mad? Do you understand? Like what do you mean, okay?" Do you have systems in place? Or do you typically go and just try to like find people to do that? Or is that something you just learn? Because I'm sure like, Melanie, I mean she was with you for how long? Right before Shelia, I'm sure she had a very unique communication style and I'm sure your next assistant is probably not the same as her. Russell: Yeah. Josh: Right. So like how have you learned like how to deal with that? Russell: Yeah. A couple things. One is like personality profiling is huge. In fact, we're working on a whole project right now and that'll probably be a book and a membership side, bunch of stuff, all based on personality profiling. Because that's how you understand like what motivates people? How do they speak? How do they not speak? How do they understand? Because again, Melanie and Jenny are very different people. But I'm able to work with both of them because I understood their personality types, I understood like, what are the things that would light Melanie up? What are the things that'd get Jenny excited to work? And vice versa. Like, if you look at Melanie was a very high S, so very faithful. And so like she would like die for you to be able to get something done. Jenny on their hand has very low S, almost no S. And so for her, it's like, man, if she gets bored, she's gone. So I got to make sure that she's got 8,000 projects and she's juggling them all. The more things she's having, the more successful she's going to be. Similar to me. And so I give her tons of projects and she thrives that she's able to juggle all these things. Whereas if I treat her like I taught Melanie, she would've been here for a week and a half, like, I'm out, like this is horrible. So understanding those kind of things. Like DISC profile's big, Meyers Briggs is big. Those are my two favorites. I'm trying to learn to master all the other ones, but those ones help a ton when you're hiring and all also when you're managing people. Josh: Yeah. Russell: The other thing is, this is one that helped me. Actually, Julie Story actually was one that taught it to me initially. And I don't remember all the things, but there's these different hats. There's like a black hat and a green hat and a red hat and yellow hat and all these things like that. So I'm a very green hat person, so are you. Put on the green hat and it's like creative ideas and we're flowing. I'm like, we get so excited about sharing stuff. And there's people who have like a black hats, they're the ones who always like ... they look at what could go wrong. What about this? And what about this? Josh: They take away all the fun. Oh my God. Russell: Yeah. Josh: They ruin it. Russell: And then like the white hats. So there's all these different hats. The ones I really remember is like green and black because I'm green hat. And like, Jamie Smith's a good example of a black hat. I love Jamie, one of my favorite humans in the world. But when we would do meetings together, I literally wanted jump over the table and strangle him. Because I'm like, "I did, I did, I did." And he's like, "Well, you think about this? You think about this? Think about this?" And like you're sucking the life out of me. Josh: Yeah. Russell: My wife's a very black hat person, as well. I'm like, "We should take the kids and like fly around the world and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Like just brainstorming things that are probably never going to happen. She's like, "What about this, this, this?" And so we started learning like based on this ... this is something that Julie brought that was really powerful. It was like, "Hey, we're in now in a green hat phase. Well, Russell's going to green hat, we're talking about ideas. No one's allowed to black hat this at all. Let's just share ideas." So then everyone's just sharing ideas and like, we have a chance to be excited and creative and get these things out there. And after it's like all the creative steps out, it's like, "Okay, now let's put a black hat on, now it's black hat this." And now we can all look at it objectively you're like, "Okay, we're going to black hat this and go through the black hat things." And then we put on a different colored hat and go through those things. Josh: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Russell: And we go through different hats, but they're separately, they're not all happening at the same time. Because if it happens at the same time, it destroys my creativity and excitement and energy. I want to like strangle the person. But like, man, I need those people. I need Jamie to look at this and be like, "Here's 40 ways why this isn't going to work." Like, oh crap, I didn't think about that, that or that. We stack the different hats as opposed to doing them all at the same time and making us all want to kill each other. And that has been- Josh: That's so helpful. Russell: Huge for us. Like for me, it's huge. I always tell people like when I start brainstorming, like, "Okay, green hat time, no negative, no what ifs. Let's go." And then we just do that. And you see like the black hat people are like twitching and they're like, don't worry, you're going to get your shot, but not yet. Until everything's out and it's like, "Okay, black hat's on. What do you guys got?" And then they can go do their thing. Josh: You need some anxiety medication over there. Russell: Yeah. We can do a whole, like two day training on that, too. Because it's such a powerful thing. But conceptually, it's breaking those things in that way. Josh: All right, Russell. Well, in your other life, we'll just have an entire podcast where all we do is just do deep dives all day long. But in this life, we have to stick with constraints of where we're at. So anyway, thank you for sharing that. Super, super helpful. I appreciate it. Russell: No worries. Thank you, Josh. Appreciate you guys. Hopefully you enjoyed this episode. As you guys are building your teams, remember the principles we talked about. You've got to become the coach, you've got to attract A players, you got to put them in the right spots, figure out ways to make it profitable for them in the long term, figure out personality types, you can serve them the right way. Black hat, green hat, red hats. We should do an episode on just on all hat ... I have to go back to remember all the other colored hats. But anyway- Josh: All right, our next- Russell: There you go. Josh: Go around, I'll be like you have homework for this. Russell: Russell, prepare for this and we'll go. Josh: Prepare for this one. That'd be awesome. Russell: That'd be awesome. Thanks everyone for listening. Thank you, Josh. And we'll see you guys on the next episode.

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Money Mindset Secrets…

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 5, 2022 37:50

Did you know this may be holding you back from success in your business? Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to Marketing Secrets podcast. One of the questions I get asked a lot about, and I don't spend a lot of time talking about it, is actually money and mindset around money, and how that works, and things that can help you to make more money, things that hold you back from making money. They have nothing to do with your skill set, it just has everything to do with the conversations, the beliefs, the things inside of your mind. This interview with Josh Forti, it was really fun and hopefully you enjoy it. Hopefully it'll help you if you do have money blocks, to help you get unstuck. If you don't think you have money blocks, you probably do. And this hopefully, interview, will make you very aware of those things, and help you to find those things and knock them out in your life. That said, we'll keep the theme song, and when we come back, listen in on this interview with me and Josh Forti. What's up everybody? Welcome back The Marketing Secrets podcast. I'm here today again with Josh Forti, and we're having so much fun today. We just recorded one episode and now we're going deep into episode number two, which we're going to be talking about mindset as it relates to things that are very specific to you guys as entrepreneurs. I'll Josh talk more about this as he's going to be queuing up the question, but hope you guys enjoy this episode as well. Josh Forti: All right, man. First off, we got to talk about your shirt. I feel like there's got to be a story behind this. Guys, for those of you that are listening on audio, let me just explain real quick. It is a skull and crossbones, but it's not just a skull and crossbones. It's got bunny ears on the skull. It's got little waves off to the side. What does it say on the sleeve? Russell: It says, "Psycho bunny." Josh: Psycho bunny. Russell: This is actually a really cool brand called Psycho Bunny, and I bought a couple of their things. I'm like, "This is a cool brand." And then I was shopping with Bart Miller in Vegas, and they have a Psycho Bunny shop. I went in there- Josh: Oh dang! Russell: And they had shirts and jackets and suit jackets that have the Psycho Bunny inside. It's just a fun, cool brand, and I really like it. Psycho Bunny. Josh: Okay. There's no grand, huge story behind how you got it. You just liked it. Russell: I should buy the company because it'd be really cool. Anyway, nope. Nothing. Josh: Guys, when you're a funnel hacker and when you decide to take over the world and create empires, you can randomly decide on a podcast that you're just going to ... "I should buy the company." That's not a normal thing that most people get to say, but it's super dope. Russell: This could be a fun episode in the future because as we acquired two big companies last year and I'm learning about this and having more fun with it, there are some cool ... For most of us, we look at a company, like, "There's no way I could buy that company," but then like Tai Lopez who just bought RadioShack and he bought Pier 1 Imports and all these companies… Josh: Dress Barn. Yeah. Russell: Now, I bought a couple companies and I'm like, oh, my gosh, there's actually a really cool strategy where it doesn't technically cost you any money if you do it correctly. We bought Dan Kennedy's company for a steal. We've launched the first thing. Now we made our money back. And now moving forward, everything I do with Dan Kennedy's company is pure, unadulterated profit to the bottom line. And that's exciting because ... All of a sudden it's like, you can actually buy companies when you understand the core principles of what we do. Anyway, that's a topic for another day, but it's kind of a fun one. Josh: So much fun stuff. Topic for another day. We'll do many episodes. Now is not the time. We're going to dive into what I think goes really well with our last episode. Last episode we talked about goal setting and setting things up, and that last bit of it was around identity and beliefs and values and rules and things like that. I want to talk about mindset here, and specifically the mindset ... There's a couple core key areas, because what's interesting is a lot of times we think mindset is we have to train our minds to think a certain way, or we have to overcome false beliefs about bad things. Like, "I'll never be successful" or "I'll never be this." But it goes both ways, because often times we can have fear of success. We can have fear that, oh, my gosh, what happens if I actually achieve that goal? There's so many different things around that, that we could dive into, but I want to kick off with this one specifically around mindset around money. I do want to talk about not just money, failure, doing the impossible, things like that, but I want to start with money because I feel like money is one of these things that we all have some form of weird relationship with it. Very few people grew up in a home where their parents and everybody around them had a healthy relationship with money, because most people ... I would say 90 plus percent of the people that I've met do not have a healthy relationship with money. They don't understand it. They don't understand what it represents, how it works, any of the things with it. For you, I want you to take us back because one of things, and I've kind of told you this at the beginning, a lot of people in the ClickFunnels world, like Russell. I was talking to Brad Gibb the other day. Shout out to Brad. He's awesome. He's like, "Russell has come and he's taken these handcuffs off of us, to where now we just can print money." It's ridiculous. It's kind of a cheat code. When we talk about it to all of our friends, we go around and we're like, "Yeah, we just kind of make money on the Internet." They're like, "How do you do that?" We're like, "We don't know. We just do what Russell says and it just works." Russell: It's a magic trick! Josh: It just shows up. It's amazing. We've kind of unshackled the making of money, if we follow what it is, but keeping money. But our thoughts around money, our beliefs around money, how we perceive and value money, how we think money is going to change us. All of these different other things around money, those things are now new problems that a lot of us are running into, or have not yet applied the things that you've told us to do because of those beliefs. I think both of those are true. I've seen so many people ... I made not a ton, ton of money, but certainly 10 times more money than I'd ever made in my life when I first got started, and blew it all because of my poor, very unhealthy, almost toxic relationship with money. Take us back, what are the money shifts or the beliefs around money, specifically in mindset, that you had to go through. I'm just going to kind of leave that open ended and see where you take it. Russell: The first thing I think that would be useful for everyone is for everyone to actually, honestly sit down and look at their relationship with money and understand it ... It's funny because if you would ask Russell 15 years ago Russell if this was actually a real thing, I'd be like, "No, this is stupid. Just make money. It's easy." But I had a friend who I worked with, man, probably 12, 13 years ago on a project and he was someone who is super charismatic, super dynamic, super talented person. When he was younger, he used his talents and his gifts and he made a whole bunch of money really, really fast. Crazy, crazy money. Money that doesn't make any sense. When he got that money, he started doing stupid things with it. He got into drugs and alcohol and all the problems that are associated with when you make too much money too fast as a kid, and almost destroyed his life. He almost died. He almost lost his family and his marriage. All these things happened. He lost all the money, which was probably a blessing. And then he refixed his life. And then he got back to the spot where he's like, "I want to make money again." I watched him for probably 10 years of his life, where he would do all the right things, he would get close to making a bunch of money and then he would literally subconsciously destroy everything he had built, and it kept happening. At first I was so confused by it. I'm like, "You were so close. How do you keep messing this up? I don't understand it." Then he told me a story. He didn't know this subconsciously but we had a conversation one night where he told me a story. I was like, "Oh, my gosh. Subconsciously, you are linking the destruction of your family, your health and all these things to making money, because that's what happened the very first time. Now every time you get close to it, your whole subconscious mind is like, no, and starts making you do stupid things to destroy yourself from actually having success." I've seen ... Now, it's been a decade of me watching this. And as much as I love this person, I keep seeing him. He's so talented, so many gifts, and keeps not having any success because of this thing that happened in his youth. His is an extreme example, but this is happening to all of us. You think about when you were growing up, what are the things that your parents said about money? What are the things that you heard at church about money? What are the things you heard in different spots? There are so many things that have been ingrained in our head that we don't even know consciously. And also, we start having success in whatever. We start making money or we start getting close to making money, and all these warning signals are popping off in your head, like, don't get money because of this because you'll become a bad person and you're going to fall away from God. You're going to be doing this. You're going to be the bad person. You look at TV. Myron Golden is the first one that ever pointed this out to me. You look at every movie, every superhero movie, for the most part, the bad guy is the rich billionaire who is this horrible person. This is ingrained in our heads that money is going to make us evil. Those things are real, and even if you don't think that they're affecting you, they probably are. Josh: And then you don't consciously believe it. Subconsciously they control you. Russell: Yeah, it's affecting you. I've seen this in my own journey. When I first started making money, I thought everyone was going to be excited. I was like, "This is so cool." I was so excited to teach everybody else. I started making money. I start teaching people and try to show my friends and my family and what happened. The response I got was not what I thought it was going to be. It was not like, "This is amazing-" Josh: At all. Russell: "Let's try it." Instead it was weird, especially for my wife. My wife struggled with it even more so than me because I've had success in parts of my life in the past where ... In wrestling, I was a state champ, I was an all-American. I hit these different things, but there was this weird side of success you aren't expecting where the people around you who you think are going to be celebrating with you, they don't. In fact, I remember my mom when I bought my dream house ... My house is ... You've been to my house. Josh: Your house is insane. It's so awesome. Russell: It's like the coolest thing in the world. When I was growing up, I wanted an insane house. I remember I was finally at a spot where I could buy this house. In the reality, I didn't pay it off immediately. I could've just paid cash for it. I didn't. But within two years I think I paid it off, which was a big deal for me. But I remember when I was buying my house, I remember a comment my mom said. She was like, "You don't want to buy a house like this because then you're going to be one of those rich people up on the hill." I was like, "What does that mean, mom?" She was like, "They're the ones that are always looking down at everybody else." I'm like, "What?" All of a sudden I was scared to tell my mom about my success because my mom viewed the rich people as this thing over here. And then other people. It was this weird thing where all of a sudden it makes you want to shrink down, it makes you want to hide because you're like, "I don't want people judging me because of this thing." For all of you guys, for all of us, there's these things that may happen, where comments are made, when people we love and respect were to all of a sudden to ... The side of success that you think is going to happen doesn't. Especially in money. I think money is a big one because it's such a thing. Josh: Yeah. I also think that because of the stories that we're told by everybody else, like you're saying, subconsciously it's ingrained in our society, what money is and how it works, nobody understands it. Taylor Welch ... You know Taylor, right? Taylor Welch? Russell: Yep. Josh: He's the one ... He and I have become ... I don't want to say good friends, but certainly friends over the past little bit. He was actually the very first person I ever interviewed on my podcast. Russell: Very cool. Josh: He got me into money. He was like, "Study money. Because once you understand how it works, it'll completely change your perspective of it." I always joke around with my mom. I'm like, "Money's not real. It's all fake." In America specifically, the U.S. dollar is not real. It's all fake and it's all made up. She always pushes back. She's like, "It's not fake because I can guy groceries with it." I'm like, "That right there, that shows that I have a different relationship ..." And side note, I freaking love my mom. My mom and I have an amazing relationship. But my mom and I have a completely different fundamental relationship with money. That was a very interesting learning lesson for me. When you change your relationship with money, when you change how it works, when you understand it differently and when you change your relationship with it, it also becomes not hard to get or keep, because now you're not needy of it. Your relationship changes with it. I always think about ... Take it back to dating. I'm not even going to say the book because I don't want people to go ... It's not a great book, but I was reading a clip out of this book one time and the guy in it goes, "Money and ..." Let's say, relationship. Money and girls are kind of the same thing. Those are not the words he used, but money and girls are the same way. If you're desperate and needy of it, you'll never have it. But if you don't care, it'll come abundantly. That was a very interesting shift for me as well. Anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt you but that was very interesting. Russell: It's key. As I studied Tony Robbins, the biggest thing I learned ... One of the biggest things. I shouldn't say the biggest, but is just becoming aware of things. I think the first step for of any us is being aware of how this is actually affecting you. For a lot of us, at whatever level you're at, the reason you're not at the next level is because there's some belief around it that's keeping you from there. It's interesting, I remember when I had the goal, when I hit a million dollars in a year, I didn't hit it three years in a row. Every year I was within $50,000. Like, $75,000. How am I not hitting this? It was like, I had these weird beliefs around that thing. As soon as I broke it, I was like, this is easy. Going from million to 10 million was next. Getting to two, three, five, eight million was easy, but then 10 million was this gap where I was stuck. It's beliefs. What's easy? What's hard? A couple things ... Again, this is one of those topics. I've never taught this before so I don't have the, here's the Russell three step framework. Things have happened in my life that I became aware of this for myself. One of them was, I had a coach ... I've had her a couple times throughout my life. She's awesome. One of my favorite coaches of all time. Her name is Tara Williams. Tara ... It was interesting because I always thought ... Again, especially people who are religious, there's always this belief of is money going to make me evil? You hear these things on the side. I definitely had this subconscious fear around that. If I get too much money, I'm going to forget God. I'm going to forget my family. All these things couple happen. Because they do. They happen to so many people. We see it. I had that fear behind it. I remember, especially when I bought my house, I was like, I bought this house and it's crazy. Anyway, Tara was at our house, actually, doing a coaching session with my wife and I. It was an interesting thing. But she said a couple things in that meeting that had a big impact on me. One of the things was ... She asked my wife this specifically. "Do you think this is bad that he bought this house?" My wife is like, "Yeah." She has so much guilt associated with it, because she's like ... It was interesting because Tara brought back, "Because you guys have money, talk about things you've done. Last year you gave a million dollars to OUR. Last year you did this. Last year you did this. How many people have you helped? How many entrepreneurs have you empowered? How many jobs have you created?" We started going through this whole thing, and it was like, all these things you're doing has been creating wealth for you. You have this wealth. You can just give it away and you guys do give a lot away, but is it bad for you now to enjoy some of it, to buy a house? Still she was like, "I don't know. Is it bad or not?" She's like, "Now you have this house, what have you guys done with this house?" I was like, "We have our kids here and we have our family here. We bring people here. We're able to serve people at a different level because we have these things." All of a sudden it was like, oh, my gosh, this isn't a bad thing. I remember hearing Richard Branson, somebody asked him ... Who was it? It was another one of those moments for me that opened my mind. But someone asked Branson, "Do you feel guilty that you're not down at the soup kitchen helping feed these people?" Branson's response was so powerful. He said, "The people of the soup kitchen who are feeding people, that's amazing. We're so grateful for them. They're giving their time and their effort. It's powerful. I'm not going to go to the soup kitchen and feed people soup, but I can give the soup kitchen $50,000, and that's going to feed 10,000 people. It's different service but it's still service, and this is able to help even more people." I started thinking about that. Man, these tools that we create, like wealth and the things that we have can be so much more impactful if we use it correctly. It's not a bad thing. It's just understanding these are tools that we have. Anyway ... Josh: It's interesting you say that and phrase it that way because that was one of the things, actually, Brad Gibb, he's a very good friend of mine as well, and we talk a lot. And he's taught me probably more about money as far as investing how it works and how to use it and things like that, probably more than anybody else. Very, very smart. One of the things that he said is money is not all the same. He's like, "You can have a million dollars over here and a million dollars over here and one of them be used for good and to multiply and to be productive, and one of them be used just to indulge and be gluttonous and to be greedy. Is money good or bad? It's not good, it's not bad. It is. It is a tool for exchange. How you go and use it will determine whether or not it's good or bad for you in your own life." When he put it that way, I was like, if I have my money and I'm investing and I'm multiplying it and it's creating freedom and then I'm using that to be able to go out and give back, all of a sudden money is now good. It makes me be able to do my job better. But if I'm just going and I make a million dollars and I go to Vegas and I put 100 grand on black, cool. Maybe once in your lifetime. But that is not a good thing anymore. Now it's taking away from your gift. It can either be an amplifier or it can be something that takes away. That was a really, really big shift for me. It was like, how am I using it? Russell: It's powerful. Again, it just comes down to there's so many subconscious things that are weird about it. Next thing I want to talk about for entrepreneurs too ... And this is a trap with money that I got caught into for almost 15 years. When I stared my business, I remember I started making some money. I figured out what my wife and I needed to live. I think at the time it was $8,000 a month that was giving us the most amazing lifestyle ever. We set it up where our paycheck was eight grand a month and that's what was coming from the company. And everything else in the company I kept reinvesting back into the company. For a while that's important. That's where we're going to grow, where we're going to expand it. I look at my business for the next decade at least, maybe longer, I never pulled anything else out. It only kept getting reinvested, reinvested. And eventually ... Some of you guys heard my story. 10, 12 years ago we had this big crash where everything got shut down and we lost everything. And the thing that sucked is when it all was said and done, I had nothing. We never pulled money out. We never invested. We never did anything. It was all being reinvested back into the business. I got my guarantee, we had our certainty, eight grand a month coming in consistently every single time, but then nothing happened. I remember when we launched after that happened and everything crashed and we were rebuilding back up, during that time we had no money so everything is being reinvested back into the business because we had no business at that point. We started figuring this out. That's where I met Todd. We launched Click Funnels. When we launched Click Funnels, I instantly went back to my same pattern. Like, cool, all the money goes back into Click Funnels. That's how we're going to do this thing. Todd was like, "Dude, just so you understand, I did not build this thing to just have a good paycheck and let this thing keep growing. This is not worth it for me unless we pull money out." I remember I was like ... I had so much fear and I was like, "No. We can't do this." This is one of Todd and I's first and probably only real things where he was just like, "It's not worth it to me unless this is producing money that's being put over here for my family, for my church, for my faith, all the things I want to be doing." Again, we fought back and forth for a couple of months. The very first time we had some profit. I was like, "What do I do with this profit? Put it back in the business." Todd was like, "No, we need to pull it out of the business," and we fought back and forth. Finally, we figured out a way to make us both happy where we figured ... At the time, we need three months of money in reserve. Worst case scenario, that's there. But then after that's over, all of the money, 100% of the money needs to be pulled out and given to the owners. Otherwise we're going to be like you were, Russell, 15 years in and you've got nothing to show for it. All the stress, all the effort, all the energy, and nothing to show for it. That's how we set things up. I remember it was so scary for me. In fact, when we started pulling out and distributing out the profits every single month, I kept mine in there for two years. I didn't touch a penny of it because I'm like ... It's in my separate account. It's over there. What was crazy, though, is that all of a sudden this thing that I was doing started actually producing wealth for me, which took the stress down. I started seeing this thing happening, and all of a sudden it started giving me options where I had no options ahead of time. I think for a lot of entrepreneurs it's like, we have this thing ... It's funny because I see even big people like Gary Vee talk about this, like, "I don't care about money. I dump all my money back in. I'm just building this brand." I'm like, I thought that was the thing for a while too, but it's not. If the business is not producing wealth for the owners, what's the point of it? Eventually you got a job and that's it. It needs to be doing something or else it's not serving you, and therefore, it's not a gift. Josh: Was that the thing, though, helping you overcome that? Was it just doing it? Is that what helped you overcome it? Russell: Yeah, Todd forced me. If it wasn't for Todd, I would still be pulling out eight grand a month and that would be where I would be living. 100%. Todd forced me to do it and it stressed me out. I was so scared. For two years I didn't touch the money and all of a sudden it was like, oh, my gosh, there's this money here. Now I have the ability to ... This thing I had created, this value I was trying to put into the world was paying us back, and now we could ... Now we had all sorts of options. Especially when you're really pushing and you're working hard and you're grinding on something, if aren't seeing some tangible value back from it, it's not serving you. It's just taking from you. Again, this was my personal money, one of my personal issues I struggled with. This may or may not be that, but I would say for all of you guys, looking at this as you are creating a business and creating wealth, you need to be pulling things out. What you do with it is up to you. Like you talked about, use it for good, evil. You can give it to charity. You can do whatever. But if the business is just paying for itself, the business will continue to eat up all your money. It will. You leave money it, it's going to continue to eat it up and it'll disappear as fast as it can possibly happen. But if you start pulling it out and it's over here and it's different, man, it becomes more efficient. It becomes more effective. Everything becomes better because of that. Josh: It's funny, because my thing ... I had that same struggle except I wasn't even paying myself. I was literally just, what are my bills for the month, the bare minimum, and then that was it. And then I met my now wife and I started thinking about finances and she wanted stuff. I was like, but also the business. It was kind of like this thing. Katie came along and was like, "Josh ..." The very first ... She didn't give me a lot of tactical things. It was very mindset-focused. I remember one of the biggest tactical things that she gave me out of the very few that she did, she was like, "You need to pay yourself a paycheck, and that paycheck needs to not only be enough to cover all of your expenses, but it needs to in excess." When I started to put away multiple thousand dollars a month into savings or into being able to invest outside of the company, it changed my whole entire perspective. Weirdly enough, magically, the business made more money. It was like, made it every month. It was like, we're entrepreneurs. We figure out problems. Our brain programs for it. And then I started looking at it as myself as an expense. I was like, I'm a line item on the books. Just like I pay a contractor, that's me. All of a sudden, the business made enough money to cover that. But before that, it didn't. It was crazy. Russell: It's interesting because when you start seeing the results ... I've talked about this before. If you look at my Disc profile, there's the D-I-S-C, and then there's your values. My number one value is ROI. If I can't see the ROI of a situation, it makes it harder for me to do it. I was in business for a decade and a half and the ROI I was getting was good. I was like, "I'm helping people and having success, and it's fun to see the success stories." That was the ROI I was getting, and it was good. It kept me going. But man, I look at the last seven years of Click Funnel, it was like the pressure and the stress and all of the type of things. If it wasn't for the ROI, it took this pressure, but here's the ROI of it, I wouldn't have been able to do it. As soon as I started seeing the ROI and the ROI gets bigger and bigger and bigger, all of a sudden it's like, this becomes fun again and you get excited. How do I make the ROI ... For me, it's all about the ROI, the return on investment, any situation is the key. If you don't have the ROI, it gets hard. It's hard to be creative. It's hard to come up with the next idea, the next thing, and the stress and the pressure that comes. What's the return on investment for the effort you're putting into it? But if you see the ROI and you start amplifying it, then it becomes a more fun game. That's where you start growing from a million to a 10 to 100 and beyond because it's like, I see this game. I'm playing it. I'm getting the return on investment. But I never saw that before because the only return on investment I was getting was this one thing, and those things they feel good, but it's hard to keep score with the feel goods. You got to have a scoreboard to see, like, oh, my gosh, I'm winning. Can I win even more? What's it going to look like? And now it gives you options and opportunities… Josh: You mean you're telling me that all the stress and pressure isn't worth $8,000 a month? Russell: You know, I could get ... I was like ... Nowadays with all of the inflation, I can work at McDonald's for eight grand a month, I think. It's crazy. Josh: Man. Russell: But back then- Josh: That's crazy. Russell: That was the ... Anyway, it's crazy. Josh: You can buy Bitcoin and keep up with inflation. Bitcoin, the savior of money. One more. I kind of want to dive ... I wasn't going to make this a money episode, because that's kind of where it's been. When did you make the shift ... One of the big problems with entrepreneurs, talking maybe a little bit more established entrepreneur, is once they're making money ... I was talking with Brad about this and he was talking about in the inner circle. He was in there ... Or in Category Kings, right? The guy's like, "What's the main problem that you solve?" Brad was like, "So interesting. We thought we could answer that question." Then he asked us it and we try to do it, and it was like, dang, what is the main problem that we solve? What he said is one of the things that they came down to was entrepreneurs know that if they have money, it should be doing more. But they don't know what to do with it. This is something that you probably are an amplified example of this, because you're really, really good at making money. You don't even need to think about what your money should be doing because you can just go make more of it. Once again, that because you've unshackled us. It's like, "All right, want a new car? Go build a funnel. You want a palace? Go build a funnel. Want to take a vacation? Launch a funnel. Just do a funnel and you print money." For you, when did that shift happen for you when you actually started paying attention to, I can't just leave my money in an account right now? I can't just buy cars and houses because those don't make me ... You have houses, you've got the cars, you've got everything you've ever wanted and you still have money left over, so when did you make that shift of, my money needs to be doing more, and how did you solve that problem? Russell: Interesting. This is one that's been more recently solved for me, actually, which is fascinating. For a long I was just hoarding it. Just hoarding it, keeping it here. Then Brad and Ryan ... You have to invest it. I'm like, "I don't want to do that." They forced me to do ... I give them a bunch of money every year and they do whatever they do with it, and that's awesome. I'm like, "Okay, cool. Something is happening." But then the money kept adding up. I remember one day I was like, "I'm in a weird spot where I could buy almost anything I want. What do I want? I'm going to go and spend some money." I remember going to eBay and I was like, "I'm going to buy anything I want." I was searching for stuff, and I spent four hours on eBay when all of a sudden I spent three grand. I was like, "That's it. I got everything I wanted." I was like, "Oh, crap, now what do I do with it?" It was interesting, because for me, it was like ... Again, this is something ... It's been a recent development. I can't remember if it was this podcast or the one I talked about it, I was like, I didn't know what to do with this. Yeah, I could invest in real estate, but that wasn't inspiring to me. I have money in crypto, but that's not inspiring. What's the things that's going to inspire me to want to do more? Again, it's ROI for me. What's going to give me the ROI of now I got to create more money so I can do this thing? So I have a lot of things. Again, we give money to charity. All those things are good and they get me excited. But I was like, what would be the thing that, for me, would amplify? When we bought Dan Kennedy's company, it was the first time I felt it. I bought his thing. We reorganized it, cleaned it up, and I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I'm able to take these things that were so precious to me and I can bring them back to the world, and I can monetize them. I can actually make money off of this thing." I got really excited. I told you I started buying old books. I started investing in Napoleon Hill books and Charles Haanel and Orison Swett Marden and Samuel Smiles and all these people, the founding fathers of personal development and business and all these kinds of things. I've literally spent a small fortune ... I've spent a lot of money in the last couple months on these old, old books, because now it's like, I'm not investing in real estate that's over here. I'm investing in these things I don't care about. Now it's like I'm investing in something that I can take and that I can turn this into more money, and I can turn it into help. I can serve my entrepreneurs. I can do more things with it. For me, that's what's been stimulating for me. That was the investment of ... It was like, I can dump it back into things, but it was like something that's meaningful to me. For some people, crypto is meaningful. For some people it's NFT. Finding the thing that's not just like, I'm investing to invest, but what's the thing that you're passionate about it where it becomes more than just ... For me, that's what I'm geeking out on. You know this, next door I'm building a 20,000 square foot library to house all these books, to build an event center, to build all these kind of things because this is what I feel like my life's mission is. I'm curating all these ideas and I'm bringing them back to people in the simple new form to help these ideas and these concepts live on. For me, that's double fulfilling because it'll make me money, but it's also something that can serve the people I've been called to serve as well. Again, buying Kennedy's company, I'm serving these people, but I'm also making money, which gives me the ability to serve more people. It's kind of fun. Josh: What was the shift, though? For a while you didn't do that, right? Russell: For a while I just sat there. I didn't know what it was. Josh: Who or what got you to the point where you're like, "Okay, I've got to go figure this out"? Yes, this is what you ended up doing with it, but I think a lot of people, there's got to be that thing that's like, "This is when I realized I got to figure out ..." Or some people just let it sit their whole life, I guess. You know what I'm saying? Russell: I heard stories about ... I don't know how true ... But like Scottie Pippen or Mike Tyson, he made half a billion dollars and he's broke. I was like, I don't want to be that dude who made a half a billion dollars and is broke right now. I need to figure out ... I always joke with Brad and Ryan when we were writing their webinar page initially, I was like ... On 30 Rock, there's that scene where Liz Lemon is talking to Alec Baldwin and he's like, "I need that thing that rich people do where they turn money into more money." He's like, "Investing?" He's like, "Yeah. I want to do that." For me, it was like, I've got money here. I need to figure out how to turn money into more money, that's not just me doing the whole thing. How do we amplify what we're doing? How do we have that exponential growth? That was kind of the thing that got me into it. Again, initially it was doing the things that weren't exciting. I'd invested money in real estate and I hated that, so I had Brad and Ryan, I invested money with them. That was cool. It was passive. It wasn't passionate. I was trying to figure out what's the thing that I'm going to be passionate about, where now it becomes part of a game. Now I can see the ROI on this thing. I invested $40,000 this weekend on old books, how do I turn that into $400,000 or four million or 40 million? Can I do that? Now begins ... Now it's fun. Some people, real estate is that game. I got friends who own 100 houses, or 200 houses, and that's the game that they love. I look at Tai Lopez and he's buying these businesses. That's the game that he loves. What's the game you're going to love, the investing game you're going to love? There's a million ways to invest, but when you find one that you love, then it becomes ... Now it becomes a fun part of the game. I think it's understanding first off you need to do it, otherwise you're going to ... You mentioned this ... I can't remember if it was before we started recording, but people who have won Two Comma Club and they got nothing, or Two Comma Club X and they're broke. Entrepreneurs are good at generating money, but there's this other part that you got to learn how to invest it correctly. Otherwise, you're going to pull a Tyson or a Pippen and be broke in a couple of years from now. Yeah, I got 3 Two Comma Club awards on the wall, but I'm trying to figure out how to feed my family this weekend, and that's now where you want to be… Josh: That's so crazy that's a reality for people. It really, really is. I think that's one of the things that I am very, very thankful to have learned relatively early on, is ... Russell: They're two different skill sets. Making money- Josh: They are. Russell: And keeping money are not the same thing. Josh: Yeah. Russell: They are completely different skill sets. In fact, typically, the people who are good at making money are the worst at managing it. Josh: Keeping it. Russell: It's like yin and yang. Understanding that if you're good at making it, you find people around you, like Brad and Ryan, I was like, "Here's money. Do that thing you do because I don't want to mess it up." Josh: Yeah. Russell: In fact, it's funny, before I invested money with Brad and Ryan, I invested it in two different deals. I was like, "This is the greatest thing in the world." Both of them, literally both of them turned out to Ponzi schemes. I got to write off multiple of millions of dollars last year because I gave money to ideas that were so good that me as the entrepreneur was like, "This is genius. This is the greatest thing in the world." Ponzi scheme. I got sold on the thing. It's funny, one of my friends just sold his business for eight figures and he messages me. He was like, "All right. I want to ask your opinion. Where should I put this money?" I was like, "Dude, do not ask me. If I think it's a good idea, it's going to be a Ponzi scheme. Find someone who, that's their life, is that, like Brad and Ryan. Go give your money to them," or find something like I'm doing now with the books and stuff, where it's like now. This is something that fits into my skill set. I think it was ... What's the old dude who invests all the money? Warren Buffett, that said only invest in things you understand. It's like, I understand how to turn old information into money. I'm investing in information and intellectual property because I can turn that into more money, and so that becomes something I can invest in, because I understand the game. I don't understand- Josh: So interesting. Russell: This, but I do understand this, therefore, I will invest in the thing I understand because I can turn this into more money. Josh: That makes sense. Side note on Warren Buffett, you know 80% of his wealth or something like that came off of nine trades? Russell: Really? Josh: Nine investments that he made, it produced 80% of his wealth or something like that. Isn't that insane? Russell: That is fascinating. Josh: That's why when ... I read the quote from him, it was in the context of this quote. It was like, Warren Buffett is like, everyone thinks they have to make a bunch of good decisions. He was like, "I try to make three good decisions a year." I was like, "Oh, my gosh. What the heck?" And then I found out that 80% of his wealth came from ... It was eight or nine trades or something, or investments, and I was like, "All right. I guess that makes sense, then, if you only need to make ..." Anyway, last question, rapid fire question on money. Is there anything that you could do, if you could go back and change something about what you've done or your handling with money, is there anything that you would change, and if so, what's the biggest thing that would be? Russell: Good question. I think I would've started ... Number one, I would've started pulling money out of my business faster. Number two, I would've had a plan for what I would do with that money. I wish I would've said, "I'm going to pull out ... After three months of thing, pull out all the profit, I'm going to put 25% in real estate, 25% in crypto, 25% in something else, and just have that happening in the background, I'd be a much wealthier man today." It took me a long, long time before I did that. Todd forced me to start putting money into crypto, which was one of the greatest gifts ever for me. Brad and Ryan are now forcing me to put money over here. It's like taking that and putting it in spots where again, it's not going to be 100%. I'm going to fall for two Ponzi schemes a year probably, but if I can get one of them to win and three of them to fail, or whatever that is, that's the big thing. I always thought that I will start pulling money out when blah. When I hit Two Comma Club, when I hit a million. The problem is that win never comes. You got to structure from day number one. When money comes in, boom. Profits come out. This happens here. I pay myself first. From the money I pay myself, 10% is going to go for me to go do stupid things, 25% is going to go into real estate or Bitcoin or stocks or whatever. And dividing that stuff up so it's happening at a small level, because when that happens, I wasted a decade and a half before any kind of investments happening. Can you imagine if I had 15 years of the stuff I was doing, turning into something? I missed out on so much of that, that I wish I would've done. Josh: You just got to make sure that you have a small percentage there, which is dedicated to losing bets and Bitcoin to Josh. If you have that, then we're good. For the rest of your life, you're going to be losing bets, so that's how that's going to work. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode with money. I'll let you sign it off, but this was awesome. We get to hear Russell Brunson talk about money, which is something that, you make a ton of it, but you don't really talk about it, which is awesome. Thanks for sharing a little bit more. Russell: Thank you. I apologize I don't have a framework for this yet, but this gets me thinking, man, if I could figure out something for entrepreneurs, this is the next thing to do, so then I'll talk more about it as I figure things out. But it's fascinating. I remember I bought a Dan Kennedy course on wealth creation, and it was fascinating because I'd heard Dan talk about building businesses and all that sort of stuff, but it was the first time he ever talked about wealth. Again, same thing. Fascinating. I'm like, oh, my gosh. I never thought about that side of the coin because most entrepreneurs don't talk about it, or don't think about it. I think it's important for us to think and talk and do more with it because again, 15 years of never investing anything, man, it would've been nice. I'd be in a different spot right now than I am today, for sure. Thank you, Josh, for hanging out and talking about money. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode. If you did, let us know if you want more about money and wealth and these kind of things. Let us know and we'll go deeper on topics. Just take a screen shot of this on your phone, post it, and tag me and write your #1 question you want to hear, and maybe we'll talk about it on the next podcast. Thanks again. Thank you, Josh, and I will see you guys soon.

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BECOMING The Person Who Can Achieve Your Goals...

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 1, 2022 36:25

It's new years, and I know you have a lot of goals. Listen to this episode to find out how to become the person you need to be to actually achieve what you want! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today's episode, you guys have a chance to listening on a really fun actually interview that Josh Forti and I did today about goal setting and what that looks like. I know that we're... At the time we're recording this, it's almost the new year. And so he asked me the questions about how I set goals. How do I make sure I hit my goals and reach them? And what does that look like? And I was excited because it's actually a topic that I'm writing it sensibly about in my new book. And so anyway, a lot of things are top of mind, and we had some fun with it. It went longer than we thought. And so I had to go fast through some things. Someday maybe I'll do a three or five day or two week, two month long event teaching these topics. But hopefully it gives you a head start to kind of figure out what is you want in life? What kind of goals you want to set for this year, and then how you actually make sure you achieve those. Stuff that's fascinating to me and hopefully you guys will find some cool stuff in as well. And at the end of it, there's assignments, so make sure you do it. And if you do that, in fact, I'd block out two or three hours during this new year's break as you're figuring out what you want to with your life over the next 12 months and go through this audio and then actually do the assignment at the end. And if you that, your chances of hitting that goal will dramatically go up. All right, with that said, we're going to cue up the theme song. And when we get back, you have a chance to listen in on an interview with me and Josh Forti. What's up, everybody. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I'm here once again with Josh Forti, and at the time we're recording this it's a little after Christmas. We're getting ready for the new year and world domination. I think today we're going to be talking about how to focus and goal setting, all that kind stuff. Is that right? Is that the- Josh Forti: Yeah. Today's episodes a good one. I'm so excited for this because I mean, we get to listen to Russell Brunson tell us how he picks his goals, how he's going to plan the world. It's going to be great. Russell: I'm excited too because some of you guys know I'm actually working off and on, just depends on, but I have another book in the works that I'm working on and it's my first personal development book. But for me, personal development's definitely around picking a target and running towards it with definiteness of purpose and trying to accomplish the thing. And so as I've been not... I wrote 200 pages of the book, and I told you this when you were out in Boise. Josh: I know. I'm waiting for my copy, Russell. Russell: And then I said, I hated it. So I got... I didn't hate the book. It's actually good stuff. I'm putting it in the new behind the scenes newsletter. I'm putting the chapters in there. So it's being reused, but I wasn't happy with how it turned out as a book book. And so I'm starting over from scratch and rethinking it all. And so that's the phase I'm in right now. But a lot of it is tied around what we're talking about today, so it should be good. I'm excited for this. Josh: Heck yeah. Awesome. Well, let's kick it off and get started with that note. So whenever we sit down for podcast, I go and it's interesting because now that we are doing so many, normally when I do long-form interviews or because we record in batches, right. Normally when I sit down, I'm just like record go. But you can only do that so many times with somebody before you have to start planning topics ahead a time, right? So I'm on the plane yesterday or a couple days ago, whenever we flew back home, and we got to upgrade to first class for like $47. It was great. I'm there on my computer, just have room. And so I was thinking, walking through the topics that we wanted to cover over the next couple episodes and one that kept coming up and my mind kept coming back to is goal setting. Right? We're sitting here. We're coming to the end of this year. The last two years have really just been crazy, right? Like 2020 was super, super uncertain. 2021 was a little bit more certain, but we all know we're not back to reality yet. Right? With everything. And so I was like, all right, how do you set goals? Not only in the midst of just chaos, but just in general, right? Because there's so many different ways you can think about goals and set goals and do targets and all the different things. And so as we wrap up this year, as we bring this year to an end, and as we look ahead to 2022, what are the areas specifically that you look at as far as setting goals, and how do you set goals effectively that you're going to stick to? Because I think that's a big thing for a lot of people is they can write down, like I want to make $1 million this year, or I want to lose weight. You know what I'm saying? But how do we actually do that? Right? Do you break it down? How does that work? Russell: Yeah. So I'd say, again, this is like, we could write a whole 25 book topic on this. So I'll just go over some of the highlights of things I think about. One of them actually I got from Scharf and that was interesting. He spoke at Funnel Hacking Live Orlando, and we did a little session on stage, and it was interesting because he was talking about it from a team building standpoint, but I took this principle back, and I started implementing it with my family and then in my own personal life. And he talked about how a lot of people set a goal like I want to make a million dollars. And he said if you structure it and if you look at it like a football game or a football team, it's different, right? He said, if you sit and look at the goals, there's always the main goal of anyone who's a football player. They want to be in the Hall of Fame. That's their legacy, their legend. There's the Hall of Fame goal. Right? And so that's the first thing is what's the Hall of Fame goal? And then you break it down from there and say okay, now what's the Super Bowl? What do you have to do to win the Super Bowl in football, what the Super Bowl for you, what it is. And then from there you break down to like, okay, what are the things you've got to do to win this game, this quarter, this half and things like that. Right? So it's breaking things down like that. And so I did this with my family like two or three years ago. It was really cool. We said for our family, what's our Hall of Fame goal for our family? What is the big thing where we're like, I made it into the Hall of Fame. I'm a legend. This is amazing. So we set a goal for the family. And I've been thinking about that with ClickFunnels and with me and my mission. What's my Hall of Fame goal? So that's the first thing to think through because it's not something like I'm going to get this year, I'm going to get it. But it's like, I've got to be doing a lot of things to eventually when I retire, I did this thing and I'm in the Hall of Fame, right? What is that for you? Because if you don't know what that is, it's hard to reverse engineer everything backwards. A lot of times entrepreneurs are good at just running, ready, fire, aim, but we're not thinking, and I'm as bad as anyone else. Right? Again, I want to make a million dollars. Then 10, then 100. You keep looking at these things as opposed to what's the end goal of where you're trying to get to. So that's first thing, Hall of Fame goal. And then what's your version in the Super Bowl? And the Super Bowl is more like, in my mind, the next 12 months, like what are you going to do, right? Josh: Yeah. Russell: And so that's the bigger one I think a lot of people are thinking about when you're trying to January 1st setting your New Year's goal. This is your Super Bowl goal. Next 12 months, this is the thing I want to accomplish. And it's not 12 things. Football teams aren't like, okay, I'm going to win the Super Bowl, and I'm going to win this. I'm going to win this. No, there's just one goal. There's one thing that you're focusing on. And then underneath there, there's all the things you've got to do to be able to accomplish that. And that's where these sub-goals come in. Right? And so that's the first phase. Any questions about it before I move on to the next? Josh: Yeah, well, no, just a comment on that. I was reading. I don't have the book next to me. The book Essentialism. Have you ever read that book? Russell: Yes. Back in the day, I did. Josh: Okay. Super, super good. Right? And one of the things that he talks about there is he's like, it's always funny to me when companies say that their company has a lot of priorities. He's like, you can't have a lot of priorities. You can have a priority and then everything else comes secondary. Right? So whenever I walk into a company they're like, our priority is customer service and this, and then list all the other ones. He's like, then you don't have any priorities. Right? And so he is like, when you sit down, what's the number one thing? What is the thing that if that thing happens, it is a success? Right? The whole year, that's what the thing was. And so sitting down, I noticed that for me and my company, for us, our number one priority for next year is not, yes, we have a revenue goal and yes, we have quarter goals and all the different things. But for us, the number one goal is we want to build the very best product in the space for what we do. Right? That is the goal. For 12 months, that is our goal. And so now everything else comes secondary. And so when you're talking about that is like, what is the goal? I love football, right? So football is how I do all my analogies? Right? The Super Bowl is the 12 month goal. Right? And what's interesting about that is the Super Bowl is a collective team goal. The Hall of Fame is an individual goal. Right? Which is super interesting because then you can have your own individual, but then as a team, and as I'm starting to grow a team more, things like that, having that really clear goal, I think, was really cool. So no, just some comments, but no questions on that. '. Russell: I love that. Very cool. So then, and you could tell who I'm studying right now by some of my phrases. I've been going deep into Napoleon Hill and Charles Haanel and all the old time people right now. That's where my mind's been with. And it's interesting because as I study all them, especially Napoleon Hill, what he talks about all the time is you've got to pick a goal, and then you have to move forward with definiteness of purpose. And he uses that phrase, and took me forever. Finally I couldn't even like say the word right because it's such a weird word, but definiteness of purpose. And when I think about that definiteness of purpose is like, this is what I'm doing, the Super Bowl. I'm going forward. There's the goal. I'm not just dabbling and hopefully I'll figure out my way. I've got my sights on the goal, and I'm moving forward with definiteness of purpose. It means everything is going towards that thing. Right? And so, that's the biggest thing. And I was reading a Charles Haanel book last night, and he's the guy that wrote Master Key System and a bunch of other really cool old books. And what he talked a lot about is just desire. A Lot of people are like, oh, I want to go. I want to hit Two Comic Club, but then their desire isn't big enough to actually get them moving forward with definiteness of purpose. Right? And he shared this story, and I've heard this story a thousand times over the years. I'm sure everyone's heard it. I think my math teacher used to tell, he said it was Euclid that told this story. In this book it was someone different. I don't know what that story is, but basically the dude comes up to the gurus like, "I want to learn how to do whatever. I want to learn how to make money online. I want to learn how to whatever the thing is." Right? And so the guru's like, "Well meet me tomorrow morning at the beach, and I'll show you how to do that." So the next morning, meets the dude at the beach. The guru walks him out in the water, and they get deeper and deeper and deeper. And he gets the point where the water's up to the kid's head or whatever. And he grabs head and shoves it under the water, and he holds him there, and the guy's fighting and failing. And the point is where he is about to die. And then he pulls the guy out of the water and the guy's like, "What are you doing?" And he's like, "When you want the thing you want as bad as you wanted air, you're going to get it." And that's this desire thing. So we have the goal. We have to move forward with definiteness of purpose. That becomes the focal point of every thing we're doing. And then the last piece is that desire. Because most people that I find who don't have success, it's because they don't have desire. Right? For me, when I was wrestling, and I wanted to be state champ, I had so much desire. I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was day and night. I'd sit in class, and all I could think about was different wrestling moves and what I could do to increase my strength and my cardio better and how to get the moves better because my desire was so strong for that thing. And for me, business was the same one. When I got into business, I just wanted to figure this out and to make money and to grow a company. I had so much desire that it happened. Right? I think most people just don't have desire. Like, oh, let's just set a goal, and hopefully I make that. If that's what you're going into it, you're not going to be successful. What's the Yoda quote? Josh: Do or do not. There is no try. Russell: Yeah. If you ask him what's your goal? And they're like, "Oh, I'm going to try to whatever." It's like, you're not going to make it. Why not? Because you said I'm going to try to do it. Josh: Right. Russell: You have to be definiteness of purpose. I'm going to be a state champ. I'm going to hit it a Two Comma Club. I'm going to make a million dollars. I'm make 10, I'm going to make a hundred. I'm going to get to a billion dollars. I'm going to get to 200,000 customers. This is what I am doing. And my desire's high. I'm moving forward with definiteness of purpose, and that's where it begins with. Josh: Yeah, and I think part of the thing that goes with that is Tony Robbins. Gosh, every time you bring Tony Robbins in, it's never bad. Right? You could do that every single year, and it would never get old. Right? . Russell: Yeah. Josh: But he says this a million times. He's like, you have to be so specific with what you want. Right? He's like people come to me all the time and I've heard him say this a million times, but just, we got second row right behind you because Parker Woodward came over. Shout out, Parker. He's like staring into your soul. And he's like, you want a million? And he is like, you want more money? Fine. Here's a dollar. You have more money move. Get out of my way. Right? Or get out of here. I'm like, dang. Right? If you're not so specific with what you want, you'll get it. Russell: Yeah. Josh: Right? But it's not going to be what you actually want because you're not specific with it. And so with definiteness of purpose, I feel like one of the keys to that is to be very specific with what that purpose is. Russell: Yep. Yep. Josh: You know what I'm saying? Russell: Oh, I want to get better. I want to get, yeah. It's got to be something tangible. You can touch it. And you know when you got it. You know when you went to the Super Bowl if you got to the Super Bowl or not. You can be like where's your goal last year? Oh, did you hit it? Oh, I don't know. Therein lies the problem. Right? That specific goal, move forward with definiteness of purpose because your desire's not high enough. You don't know if you hit it or not? That's a problem. Josh: Yeah. One more thing on that. I think it also helps you if you can get really... Setting clear goals is like a muscle, I feel like. It's a skillset that's learned. And I was listening to Alex Becker, which I know you know Alex. And dude's like just a mega-genius man. His mind. If I can ever get him on the podcast, I'll let you know because- Russell: You'd get a 30-second podcast with him. Josh: Right. Right. It'd be a profanity-laced thing full of truth. And you'd be like, wow, I have to process. Anyway, I was listening to him. I was watching his training on YouTube Ads and going through. And he is like, what people need to understand is that all of marketing is the exact same thing when it comes to running ads. Right? And actually I still have it written up on my board. He goes, every single person wants the exact same thing. They want a result. They want a consistent system to get there, and they want it fast. That's it. Right? He's like, if you just are able to specifically call out the result, provide the specific system to get there, and do it faster than anybody else, you will win every single time. Right? I feel like a lot of goal setting is that. Right? It's what is the result that you're actually trying to go after and get to? If you're not specific on that result, try marketing something where there's no specific outcome. It's so hard. Right? And so the more clear you can get on that specific outcome, the more clear that you can get on the outcome that you're providing for your customer. I feel like that's a learned skill that transfers in other areas besides just goal setting. You know what I mean? Russell: Oh, for sure. That's awesome. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Becker's smart, man. I did one call with him one time, and it was literally like three minutes long. He's like, "Kid, it's all I got," and it was done. I was like, that was amazing. Anyway, so. Josh: Yeah. Yeah. Becker, he's a freak of nature. That's for sure. Russell: Yeah. Okay, I got four more things to talk about related to it. Josh: Okay. Russell: I got this from Tom Bilyeu because Tom's one of those people who is again, just brilliant. And he said something in three or four podcasts, just kind of like as a blah, blah, blah. Just went off on it. And I remember one day, so I finally, I messaged him on text message. I sent an audio message. I was like, okay, you said this. I want to make sure I understand this right. And he wrote back to me, and he messages back. He's like kind of, but you kind of got it all wrong. I'm like, what? So I scheduled a call with him because I was like, I'm writing this book and this thing you just shared was so powerful. I need to map it out. So I spent an hour with him on the phone and mapped it out. I drew it out. I was like, is this what you're talking about? He's like, "Oh yeah. That's what I'm talking about." So it's going to be in the new book because it's core foundational. I'm going to go through with you guys because a lot of times, and I didn't know this, there were things that I did unconsciously related to these things, but now that I consciously know this, I'm going deep in it. In fact, I'm planning our Two Comma Club X Managed Circle members are going to Mexico in March, and I'm thinking I'm going to do a three-day event in Mexico just going deep on this alone because this is the key to everything you want in life. So there's the pre-frame you guys ready for me to jump? Josh: I'm ready. I'm hooked. Russell: Okay. So what Tom said was interesting. He said a lot of times we set a goal, but what we don't realize is that for us to get the goal, we can't be who we are today. Because if we were, we'd already have the thing, right? We have to actually evolve and change and become something different if we're going to achieve the thing we do. So then how do you become something different? And that's where you're in this weird limbo thing. Right? And so there are four core things that really tie into this. And so I'll talk briefly on each one as much as we can in the time we have. So the first one is after you know this is the goal, very specific, definiteness of purpose. I desire to go there. The first thing we have to do is have an identity shift. Right? Our identity has to be different than what we are right now. If we don't shift it, then we struggle. So I started looking back at the things I've had success in life. For me, the very first one was a wrestler. And I remember I got into wrestling. I liked it. And I was good at it, but I wasn't great. I don't have time probably to tell the specific story, but I remember a specific story where something happened where that day I was like, I'm a wrestler. This is me. This is who I am. I'm a wrestler. And as a wrestler, I'm going to do what wrestlers do. Right? And Tom, when I was talking to him, I mentioned that. And he's like, now imagine this. Instead of saying I was a wrestler, what if you said I'm a world class wrestler or I'm a state champion wrestler. He's like just by changing the identity that you're putting on yourself, changes how you view everything. Right? And for me, I viewed myself as a champion wrestler, and I view myself like I'm someone who's a state champion. Therefore, I started looking at what do the state champions do? How are they doing it? What do they believe? What do they think? What do they do? What do they value? And I started matching my beliefs, values, and rules based on that. But the first thing is that you have to realize what's the identity you want to put on yourself? And I think most people don't do it consciously. I didn't do it consciously. But when you become aware of it, it changes things. At Funnel Hacking Live, Anthony Trucks talked about identity, and it was such a powerful thing. If we figure out how to put these identities on ourselves, it makes everything else become easier. So the first thing is understanding, okay, what's the identity I've got to put on my shoulders if I'm going to become the person who's going to be able to reach that goal? And we've got to think through that and strategize and figure that out because if you don't, if you pick the wrong identity, like, oh, I'm an athlete, that's good. But I'm not become a world class wrestler if my identity's an athlete. If my identity is I'm a world class wrestler, I'm going to become a world class wrestler. Right? You've got to... When I got into business, it was the same thing. I was dabbling and dabbling and dabbling until I figured out I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And then after that, it wasn't just an entrepreneur. It's shifting, and it's changed throughout time, but the identity is the key because everything struck. You start doing things differently when you have a different identity. One of the identities I've I've recently, and I did a podcast about this, that I've put on myself is that I'm not just an entrepreneur or I'm not like... I'm a curator. And just by me saying that, I've literally bought, I would say conservatively, probably 3000 books in the last three months that I'm buying that I'm going through them, curating old books, trying to figure out all these kind of things because I have the identity. I put the identity upon myself, and all of a sudden, it shifts my behavior because of that. Josh: Yeah. Russell: So identity's the first thing. And again, we could talk for a day on identity, but understanding what is the identity that you're going to have to have to be able to become the person who's going to go get that thing. Josh: Okay. Can I touch on that just really briefly? Russell: Yeah. Josh: Okay. Only because, I don't know, I've spent like a hundred thousand dollars in coaching on this exact topic. So it was so crazy, when I was working with Katie and lots of other people. Have you ever read the book Psycho-Cybernetics? Russell: Yes. Josh: Dude, that book changed. That was the first personal development book I ever read. Russell: I'm trying to find the rights to that book right now, just so you know. Josh: Dude. Dude, ah. Russell: It's so good. Josh: Why do you get to do all cool stuff, Russell? Russell: Curating, that's my identity. It's what I do. Josh: Yeah. But I read that book and it, I mean, it completely changed my whole perspective on life. Right? And for the premise of the book, for those of you don't know, there's a guy. He was a plastic surgeon. He rebuilds people's faces and stuff. And he realized that when he would make even the smallest tweaks in people's faces that it would change their entire life. Everything about their life and their change based on how they saw themselves basically in the mirror. Right? And so this whole premise of the identity, part of it is when you have an identity shift, you actually believe it now. And there's so many people that are like, they want something, but the reason they don't do it is because they don't believe it's possible. They see themself as the person that's able to do that. Right? And so one of the things I thought about doing with the podcast sometime down the road is openly Dream 100ing people. How cool would it be to have on the board of, "Hey guys, we're all Dream 100ing Elon Musk right now." Right? How cool would that? But if you have the identity I'm going to Dream 100 Elon Musk, then all of a sudden, it just becomes, oh, for the next three, five, 10 years, it doesn't matter if you haven't gotten there yet. That's just who you are. It's just what you're trying to do. It's just what you're doing. And by default, your brain starts thinking differently. So anyway, I love that. I don't want to take anymore out of that, but that one concept changed my whole entire life of understanding that if you shift your identity, by default, you'll get to where you want to go. Russell: Yeah. It's huge. And again, I look at the things I've been successful in my life in, and again, looking backwards, I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize that I had an identity shift tangible. And in fact, I remember the day that it happened, and it changed everything for me. It was the day I became a wrestler. It was the day I became an entrepreneur. It was the day... It shifts things. And so, ah, anyway, so that's number one. So identity. Now under identity, if you look at my graphic, identity is at the top, and there's three pillars that go underneath identity. And they're all super powerful, and they all have different purposes and things. So if you look at one of the legs under identity is beliefs. What do you believe? And beliefs are cool. Because beliefs, I feel like beliefs can change. I have to figure what are the beliefs I need to have to be able to achieve this thing, right? If I believe that making money's difficult, I am not ever going to make money. If I believe making money's easy, it's going to be really easy for me to make money. Right? If I believe that I'm a good athlete, I'm going to be able to be a good athlete. If I believe that eating healthy is going to make me have more success, I'm probably going to eat more healthy. And so in the second phase, figure out what are these beliefs that you need to have? And some of them you already have inherently, a lot of them you don't yet. And so that's why when you have this identity, it's like, well man, if I want to be a world class wrestler, what do world class wrestlers believe? If I want to be an entrepreneur, what do world class entrepreneurs believe? Right? What are those beliefs? That is sitting down physically, I've been doing this recently. This is part of my New Year's thing I'm doing now is I'm listing out here are all the things I either believe or I need to believe to be able to hit this goal. Right? And so I start writing out these beliefs. Now the thing about beliefs that's hard is just by you writing down I believe this thing, does not necessarily mean you're going to believe that thing. Josh: Yeah. Russell: And this is where like most of personal development is affecting this tier, this leg of this thing. If I knew to believe I need to be successful, like I'm going to go read a bunch of Tony Robbins books because he's going to help me instill this belief in me until I actually believe it. Or I'm going to listen to a bunch of podcasts or whatever that thing might be. Right? Or if I believe that eating healthy is going to make me more successful. You may say I know I need that belief, but I don't really believe right now. That's why I keep going back to cookies and candies and ice cream or whatever. Right? So you need to instill that belief, so this is where a personal development comes. If I believe this belief is going to help me get the thing I need to do, I need to go listen to everybody that's talking about health or fitness or whatever that is until that belief becomes so ingrained in my psyche that now I actually believe it. Because when I believe it, now it becomes really easy to do. When I believed in wrestling that if I got on top of anybody in this country that I could turn them, then guess what? As soon as I got on top of anybody in this country, I could turn them, right? Because I believed it at such a deep level. I always tell people my core job at ClickFunnels is be the belief cheerleader. If I can get you guys to believe in yourselves, that's it because it's not that difficult. All these things are not hard. The hardest thing is getting you to believe it's actually going to work. Right? And believe if I buy ads, it's going to work, believing that I'm going to lose money on the front end, but it's going to be successful. I believe that if I put myself out there, it's not going to be scary. I believe, so it's like, I've got to get you to believe those things, but if you can do it, then it becomes easy. So I look at who's already achieved what I want? What are the things that they believe? And then I've got to start focusing on getting those beliefs wired into my brain so that I actually believe them. Okay? Josh: Yeah. Russell: And I always tell people this, the biggest problem we have as humans is we always want to try to conform the world to what we believe, and that's not the right strategy. Especially, I see this in religion all the time where people are trying to convince like, this is what God should believe. It's like, no, no, no. If you really want to be successful in religion, you've got to figure out what does God believe? And then you shift your beliefs to that. You don't try to bend God's will to yours. That's insane. Why would you even think that's okay. We need to believe that he believes, it's not trying to get him to believe what I believe. Right? And that's the extreme example is religion in God, but it's true in anything. Right? If I was going to be basketball player, I would go figure out what Michael Jordan believes, and I would do everything I can to believe what he believes. I would not be trying to conform Michael Jordan's belief patterns to mine. Okay? Because he's done it, and I haven't yet. Right? And so that's the next step is figuring out what are the beliefs I have to have to be successful? And then I've got to go and start plugging the stuff into my ears and my head and be reading and listening and everything until these beliefs become so real that they become real. Because that's the hardest thing. The beliefs are the one, the other two I'm going to share are much more simpler, I think. Beliefs are the ones that are, they come and they go. And this is where it takes the mental mind power to make those things actually stick. Does that make sense? Josh: Yeah. Yeah. No for sure. No, I have so many thoughts on that. But for the sake of time, oh my gosh. Belief, I think that's the hardest thing. Like you said, it's one of the hardest things though. But I love the religion example because it's like, what was that? There's that one quote on it that says we will question everything except for the things we truly believe. Russell: Yeah. Josh: Right? And religion is a perfect example of this. I believe that Jesus came down to die on the cross for my sins. I believe that. Russell: Yeah. Josh: I've never even questioned it, and I've questioned pretty much everything in my belief. But I'm like, if I believe Christianity to be true, I by default believe that. Right? I believe that that happened. And so when I talk to people that don't have that world view, you're not even having the same conversation. It's not even worth debating on some particular topic about right or wrong or this because they don't believe this and I do. And it's a fundamental different thing about you. So yeah, anyway. Russell: Yeah. Josh: Talk a million years on it. Russell: That's true because, so when I'm on mission for my church, I, not to get religion, but I had that same thing. I was out there knocking on doors, telling people about God and about Jesus. And all of a sudden I realized, oh my gosh, most people don't believe in this. Josh: Right. Russell: And it was freaky for me. All the way back to do I actually believe in Christ? Do I actually believe there's a God? And I had to question those things and figure it out and get the belief. And then it was strengthening everything I was doing moving forward. But same thing in anything we're doing in life. So beliefs are beliefs. Josh: We'll do the Mormon episode because I have questions for you on that. I've got to finish the podcast first. We're not done all the way done yet. But that'll come once I know everything you believe, Russell, then I'm going to come question you on it. Russell: Yeah. I'm excited. One thing it'd be cool if you guys want, if you type in to Google type in Tom Bilyeu Impact Theory beliefs. He actually has a list that he makes all people who join his member site go through these belief patterns. And they're fascinating. And it's seeing Tom mapping out for his community here's the beliefs that we have as a community if we're going to have the impact. And so it's worth it to go look at his beliefs. It's as related to his members and his membership platform. But it's something you guys can use this as well if you are serving group of entrepreneurs or a group of whoever you're serving, when they come in, helping them to identify and strength. Like these are a the beliefs you have to have to be successful in our world. And Tom did it such a cool way. I've not yet done that in my world, but I'm planning on that because again, if people are joining my coaching program, they want to become more like me, therefore, what do I believe that got me here? I need to be able to identify those things and give them to people and then help drill those things into their mind because that's what's going to be successful as they believe those things. And so belief is just, anyway. We can go again, this is another three day event just on beliefs. Josh: All right, all right. Russell: Okay. I'll go through the other two. The other two are not simpler, but they're easier. Okay, so we have identity at the top, right? Identity shift, boom. Beliefs, and again, map these things out, you guys literally between now and New Year's or whatever you're listening to this, sit out and write out here's all the beliefs I have to believe to be able to be successful in this thing that I'm trying to figure out. And for me, it's funny as I've been doing this, I've been listening to a lot of Tony Robbins's stuff or reading Napoleon Hill. Tony will tell, like when he speaks, he's like, you've got to believe this, and he shares a belief. And I started putting those things in. Like I want to keep building up my belief. These are all things I believe in because if I can believe those things in myself, again, my likelihood of success. So this is an ever-going thing. It's not just like, here's my beliefs, and it's done. It's like if you're hearing speakers or podcasts or books or whatever, like, oh this is the belief I need to have. I see why this is such a powerful thing to start adding these things into your version of your beliefs. Okay? The next one. So you have your beliefs. The next one I'm going to go to is values. And values and beliefs are very similar, but values, I feel like, are more so... Beliefs are things that I've got to be working on to get myself the belief things to move forward. Values are what I actually value. For me, I value hard work. Okay? In fact, I have so many friends who their beliefs are different. One of my really good friends, John Jonas, who owns OnlineJobs.ph, super successful company, great entrepreneur. But he values being able to work as little as humanly possible and still make money. And he does. And he's been very successful. I value working my face off because my whole value system growing up was wrestling. We worked hard. We had at work everybody. So I value hard work, and I love it, and I enjoy it, and I'm never going to... My values are not John's, and that's okay. They're going to be different, but I need to know what my values are because if I'm going to go into something, if this is not aligned with my values, I'm not going to have success with it. So I need to know what my values actually are. And so what are the things you value? I value hard work. I value giving. I value creation. I value... Top of my head, I don't have my list here, but what are the things you actually value? Okay? And then as you're looking- Josh: We know hard work has to be close to the top of that list because that's the one that came out first when you can't remember anything else. Russell: And for sure, for me, it is. It's such a core value. But if me and John were both going after the same goal, which is let's grow our company by whatever, he's going to struggle because his value's not going to be hard work, and vice versa, for he's like I want to take four to five days of vacation every single month, that goal is never going to work for me because I don't value those things like he does. And so it's going to be constant odds with ourselves. Right? So listing out here's all the values you have and understanding those things and again, you can shift your values and values change. But values are harder to change, I believe. Beliefs, I can change, not faster, but those things are multiple whereas values, based on my life experience, these are things I value, and those things are there. They're not going to shift or disappear or leave. These are my values. Josh: Yeah, very rarely. Russell: Yeah. Josh: Yeah. Russell: But if I list those things then I can look at as I'm trying to become this person, do these fit in my values? If not, it's like, how do I structure this in a way where it still fits and it's still congruent with my values because otherwise you're going to be odds to yourself. And I know so many people who are like, they have one value but they have a goal and they're those things are at odds with each other. And that's why they never succeed because they're just, I want this goal, but I don't value this. Therefore, you can't hit it. Josh: Yep. Russell: So beliefs, values, and the last ones are your rules. Okay? And your rules are like, you set up these, it's almost like guideposts to get the thing. Right? So when I was wrestling, I had a lot of rules. My rules were I do not cut corners. I have a story behind that, but I do not cut corners. I don't drink carbonation. One of my other rules was I'll never go more than 24 hours without doing some kind of cardio because I had a belief that after 24 hours, if I haven't worked out that my cardio would drop down, and I didn't want to lose anything. So I had a rule saying I cannot work out. So I could take Sunday off, but I can't take Saturday and Sunday. Right? I had a rule of no more than 24 hours of no cardio. I had rules of what time I woke up in the morning, what time I went to bed. I had all these rules, and rules bleed into routines. Right? So you set these rules, and from there you create a routine. So looking back, here's the goal I have, I'm moving forward with definiteness of purpose. Here's all the rules I have to create to give me boundaries to make sure that I move forward and I hit those things. And so for me, my rules right now are like, okay, I have to make sure I write for two hours every morning before I come in. Because if I don't do that, none of my writing gets done. I have a rule about this and rule about this, and I have these different rules I create for myself to give me boundaries, to be able to actually hit my goal. And then the rules again, here's the rules. The rules are translating into routines. Right? So here's my rules. I tie these into my morning routines, my afternoon routines, my night routines. And now I've got the things I need to guide me to the goal. Whew. So there's a lot of stuff in there. Josh: That's really, really good though. I feel like if someone were to just go and apply that right there, that sounds simple, but it's not. Russell: Yeah. Josh: Right? If you were to actually go sit down like that, you could map out that for a while, and I see why you want to do a three day event on it or something like. That'd be awesome to go through each one of those because you're literally rewriting. So how I think of the mind is I think of the mind as a computer system, and then the story, the master story, ha-ha. The master story of your mind. Right? But the master story is the computer program that you program it. Right? So there's the Windows operating system inside of a computer, right? Or the Mac. And so the master story is like the operating system. And by going through and identifying and writing down those three things, it's like you're rewriting your operating system almost that by, or if you've never done it, you're writing your operating system because your subconscious mind by default then just carries that 80% of the way. Right? And that's the coolest thing is if you can just switch your subconscious mind, 80% of the work is done. It'll do it for you. Right? You've only got to battle that last 20%. So that's super cool. Russell: Yeah. So if we were to recap this really quick, for those who are like, I want to do this exercise with my kids or my family or by myself, I sit down and say, "Okay, what's the Hall of Fame goal?" Where do you want to go someday? Right? So you've got that, right? Then from there, say, "What's the Super Bowl goal?" That's what I'm going to accomplish the next 12 months. Here's my Super Bowl goal. And I have that, and say, "Okay, now to do this, I've got to have desire, and I've got to have definiteness of purpose." Meaning I have to really, really want the thing or it's not going to happen. Why do I want it? How do I amplify that desire in my head? And where am I going, right? Now we come back and say, "Okay, what's the identity I need to take on to be able to achieve this thing?" Right? And be specific with the identity. I'm a wrestler versus I'm a world class wrestler versus I'm an Olympic level wrestler. Right? So here's the identity to have. So write that down. And identity is just one thing. This is the one thing I am. Then now what are all the beliefs I have that I need to have to be able to be successful in this thing? Okay, I've got to believe this. I've got to believe this. I've got to believe this. This is what I already do believe, but a lot of it's new beliefs I need to create to be able to be successful. Right? And then who are the things I value and making sure I'm not out of alignment here. I value this. I value this. Here are the things I value. And then here's the rules I need to create for myself to make sure I actually move forward and hit that thing. And I'm going to take these roles, and I'm going to convert them into routine to make sure that I'm in the guardrails to my success. And so that's the pieces and ah, it's so much fun. Again, this will be a book someday if I ever get it done. But these are the pieces that are- Josh: Yeah, Russell, we need it. Come on, man. Not like your life's busy. Get it done. Russell: I'm working my fastest. It's going to be amazing. So anyway, I hope that helps you guys. As you're sitting down this year, this is literally what I'm doing. We're recording this December 28th. I've been mapping these things out. And my goal is January 1st, I'm waking up, and I'm just going to sit down and I'm going to flush these things and spend hours just putting it... Again, I've been percolating on them and taking notes on stuff, and I'm going to map it out, have it printed out. And this is the next 12 months of my life. This is the goal. This is where we're going and moving forward with definiteness of purposes. I'm going to just amplify my desire. Here's the identity I've got to take on to make it successful. Here's my beliefs, my rules, my values. And let's go and start running. So hopefully that helps. Josh: One more super rapid fire question then we can wrap it up. Russell: Okay. Josh: Do you have a coach that helps you with this, or do you do it all yourself? Russell: Oh, very good question. So during my life, I always go on and off with different coaches that have helped different parts. Right now. I do not have a coach. How do you say this right without being creepy. I don't have a coach who's living right now. Right now I am looking at authors as my coach. And for me right now, Napoleon Hill is the person I'm focusing on, who I'm literally going through so much of his stuff right out and having him accountable to me. I will in the near future rehire a coach to help me, but I'm still trying to, I don't know if that makes sense or not, but I'm trying to- Josh: Yeah, no, no, for sure. Russell: Yeah. Josh: That's awesome. That's good. Russell: Anyway. Josh: All right. Thanks Russell. That was awesome. Russell: Hope you guys enjoy it. If you enjoyed this episode with me and Josh, please let us know. Take a screenshot of the podcast on your app, tag me in it. Let us know your favorite thing, biggest takeaway. And with that said, I hope you guys enjoy the new year, planning it out. And I want you to all hit your Super Bowl goals over the next 12 months. So let's do it. If you do that, you'll change the world in your own little way, and it'll be awesome. So thanks, Josh. Thanks everybody, and we'll see you guys on the next episode.

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Biohacks, Energy, and Weirdness with Josh Forti, Part 3

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2021 25:38

Russell and Josh reveal the 2 biggest biohack, supplements, diets, brain food, focus & marketing. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody? This is Russell, welcome back to Marketing Secrets podcast. Today's episode we are going to get into a little bit of some biohacks and some things, diet, energy, supplements, what we do to be able to have our brains stronger so we can be better entrepreneurs. This was a really fun conversation, I think you're going to love it. You're going to see some of the weirdness happening in my brain, what I do, why I do it. And hopefully it gives you guys a place to start when you start looking at how do you change your health to be able to have more success in business. So hopefully you enjoy this conversation. Also, at the end of it, Josh pitches his new podcast, which is coming out here in a couple weeks, couple months. And I think I'm episode number one, so I'm sitting down with him for a two hour conversation here in the near future. Make sure you get on the waiting list for his podcast it is JoshForti.com/coming soon. And again, he'll do a little pitch for it at the end. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this conversation about biohacking, supplements, health, and how it relates to you as an entrepreneur. Welcome back everyone to the Marketing Secrets podcast. We're about to move into the third topic, I don't know what it is, but I'm pumped to find out. So what's the third topic? Let's go. Josh Forti: All right, Russell, so here's the ding. You're this dude who you've got this super, super successful company, but anybody that has followed you that knows you a little bit, right? All the newbies out there might not. But you're a wrestler and you to be successful in all areas of life, which is really cool, it's one of the reasons I follow you is because you're not just... I'm going to throw rocks to Grant Cardone here, Grant we love you, but also all you care about is money. So get a life. All right? But anyway, so you have more of this complete picture, this more complete thing that you're trying to go through and do. And so for me, one of the things that I've been focusing on a lot, and it's always interesting because whatever I focus on, I share on social media. And then when I share it on social media, people start giving me ideas back, and half the time it's really great ideas, and then half the time people just hate me for no reason. They're like, you're so dumb. I'm like, oh my gosh. Okay. But anyway, for me, right now, one of the things I've been really focused on is health and fitness. Right? And I remember, I don't know, it was a year ago or whenever it was that you were freaking out about bone broth. Right? And you were like bone broth is going to be the greatest thing. Oh my God. Or whatever it is, it's going to be so cool. And it's going to help me cure cancer and not get it or whatever. And I'm like, you're so weird, dude. I don't even understand. Because I wasn't in it, right? I didn't understand it. And then I got married and my wife is a yoga instructor and so she's super, super fit. And now I'm at this point in my life where I'm like, man, my brain feels foggy a lot of days and I want it to be clear. And I'm like, oh crap, there's Russell over there talking about bone broth that one time, he was talking about brain health and all these different things. I'm like, I got to go figure this all out now. And so I hired the Shockley's. Do you know the Shockley's by the way? Kelly and Jay Shockley? They've been in Steve's MasterMind and stuff for a while. They're students of mine now, they're awesome. They live here and they do total body mastery. And it's basically, they come in, they take 15 different blood samples and hair analysis, urinalysis, all this stuff. And they go and test every single different level of your body, and they basically tell you if you're going to die or not. It's pretty great. And so I went and did that and I geeked out and came back and I'm like, there's so much here. And so I'm curious, and I think a lot of people that are, they reach a certain phase in their journey of entrepreneurship and marketing where they're like, okay, I've made some money now. So now I'm not worried about if I'm going to be able to pay the bills or pay off the credit card. And now I've got some money in the bank. And so now they start thinking about more important things. And one of the biggest things that comes up is their health, right? It's, how do I take care of my brain? How do I take care of my body? How am I going to make sure there's longevity? How do I make better decisions? Anybody that's ever studied personal development knows your brain is like this, it takes 80% of the energy in your body every day. It's like something stupid. Right? So I guess let's start with, how do you go and figure out what you're going to focus on? And what's your routine for health? What are the areas that you focus on and how did you figure out that those were the areas you should be focused on? Russell: Yeah. Great questions. It's funny because I think everyone goes through cycles where, remember I used to make fun of the people who were like me. I'll call them hippies. Like, "Oh they're such hippies." And now I'm like, "Dude, I love the hippies, they got all the good stuff. I love these people." You know? But yeah, I think the biggest thing is... It was tough for me because I was a wrestler my whole life, so I always consider myself an athlete. I thought I was in good shape. I thought... And I was. I thought I understood nutrition, I did not. I wish I could go back and compete knowing now what I know now. And so it was weird, I got done with wrestling and then my wife got pregnant with twins, literally during my last wrestling term, she was on fertility. But I wrestled in my last tournament and we found out a week later we're pregnant of twins. And then we were excited, and I wasn't wrestling or competing or working out. She was eating for three. I was eating for three or four as well. And I gained I think about, my senior year I wrestled 165. When I came back to go wrestle the next year after I graduated with the new team, I was so big, they made me wrestle the heavy weights. So I'd gained probably conservatively 60 to probably almost 80 pounds while my wife was pregnant. Josh: Oh my gosh. Russell: And then one day she had twins and lost 60 pounds overnight and I had 80 pounds on Russell. But it's weird because you don't see it. I didn't see it. I remember going back to wrestle at Boise State, and I walked through the door and Ben Cherrington, who's actually Gaethje's wrestling coach, I walked in and Cherrington is like, "Dude, your face is so fat." I'm like, "What?" He's like, "What happened to you?" I'm like, "I don't know what you're talking about." I couldn't see it. You know? And it was just weird. And anyway, so for the next seven or eight years I was in business and I didn't think about it. I was like, I had so much energy here and focus there, I didn't think about it. And eight years into my business is the very first time I remember feeling, I think I was on stage or something. And I used to wear a tie, and the tie wouldn't fit around my neck anymore. It was all this stuff and I was just like, oh, I just felt crappy. And finally I was like, okay, I have to figure this out. So I hired a trainer, got on a plan, and in seven or eight months I went from, I don't know, whatever, 26, 28% body fat down to 12% body fat. And that was cool and I felt better by myself. But the thing that I noticed the most was that I could get more done during the day. And that's when I was like, oh my God, health actually matters, not just... Like for me, if you look at my disc profile, my number one value is economics. So if I don't see the ROI of something, I won't do it, which is why I sucked at school. That's why I suck at a lot of things is because if I don't see an ROI, I would rather die than do the thing. And all of a sudden I saw the ROI of health, I was like, okay. I was like, by shifting my health, I was able to get two to three times more stuff done every single day. ROI of that is I'm getting three years worth of work done every year, which means I'm going to crush everybody else. Therefore, I'm going to go deep on this. And so that was the thing that sold me on it was just, I saw the ROI and then I became obsessed. And so I'll take you through my journey because there's different levels of things I've learned. And again, I could probably someday will write a 5,000 page book on this because it excites me. But there's the things that are the big lever, like the big levers had the biggest impact. So I'll talk about those. Josh: Yeah. Russell: The first one I understood- Josh: Can I just say a quick side note? Russell: Yeah. Josh: I love how you're coughing as we're talking about health. LOL. That's funny. Russell: I know the one time I've been sick in a decade and it's right now. Yeah it's weird, I have a stuffy noses and a... Anyway, I'm in a season of my life where there's not much sleep because my kids are wrestling. And so I leave every day at 2:30 to go to wrestling practice, and then they're cutting weight at night, and then there's tournaments, and I still got to do all the stuff I got to do. So I'm up every morning earlier than normal. Josh: It's like you're busy Russell. Geez. Russell: Yeah. It's a lot, so my health is suffering a little bit right now, which is why I am spending more time on health stuff right now because I'm losing sleep so I got to make up for it in other places. By the way, sleep though is the number one performance drug you can do. In fact, it's interesting if you study all the biohackers, the two or three biggest things is sleeping more and more sunlight, like going outside with your shirt off, getting natural vitamin D, those help more than almost any biohack you can dream, any supplement, anything. It's sleep and sunlight are the two biggest biohacks. And so, anyway, we should all spend more time outside and we should sleep more. But those are hard sometimes where, nowadays we're not sleeping and we're in an office, so those are the things. So okay, I'll step back. So the first big thing I noticed when I started the health journey back now, it's been probably 14, 15 years ago now... Maybe not that long, maybe 10 years. Anyway, whatever it was, is I went through different diets. Right? So I did a bodybuilding high protein diet, which had lower carbs. I also went through the ketogenic diet because I spent a lot of time with Pruvit when the keto movement was starting, helping them launch that. So I was trying to understand, and I went to through that. But the biggest thing I started learning is how carbs affected my brain. If I eat carbs, it made me tired, faster. You know after post Thanksgiving dinner, you eat and then all of a sudden you can't keep your eyes open. People say, it's the tryptophan in Turkey, I don't believe that, it's the mashed potatoes. Josh: I don't believe that either. I just found out this Thanksgiving that apparently Turkey makes you sleepy. I'm like, that is not the case. It is just food in general. I eat any amount of food that much, I'm sleepy. Russell: Yeah, well it's not just food, it's the carbs. The carbs make your brain tired, at least for me. And so I started realizing that, I was like, I don't want to not eat carbs because the carbs have a very important role. I did the whole keto thing for a long time where I just only ate fats, and that I don't think is right either. So your body needs all the things, but I time my day based on those things now because I know that when I introduce carbs, I'm going to be tired. So I don't introduce carbs early in the day. I don't typically eat breakfast, when I'm eating lunch it's usually high fats and high proteins. And then when I do carbs it's at night, when I do actually want my body to start falling asleep. And so if you notice, like if you look at my eating cycles, I'm still eating the same things most people are eating, but I'm eating them in different orders. Right? Like my lunch, if I'm ordering lunch today off Uber Eats, it's going to be a poke bowl and it's going to come with no bass. So no rice, no nothing, but I'm going to have fish, I'm going to have five different fish in there. Right? Because the fish has high protein plus high fat content, which affects your brain. So I'm going to eat that fish, that's going to be my brain food. But I'm not eating carbs because I don't want carbs yet. I need carbs in my diet, I need it in my body, but I don't want it until I want my body to naturally fall asleep anyway. Right? So dinner time, usually I'll be lower on carbs and as it gets closer to bedtime, then I'll go and have my rice or whatever my carbs are going to be. And because I'm like, okay, I want my brain to shut down anyway. It's like, that's when I'll introduce those things into my diet. And so for me, it's like the timing of food has been really, really big because I would normally, back in the day I eat breakfast, I have cereal for breakfast or something and I'm wrecked for the day. Or I would skip breakfast, I eat lunch and then lunch I'd go order something and it'd be a sandwich. Right? And I eat the sandwich and all the bread and I'd lose the last half of the day. So I'm very, very sensitive on how I'm timing, where I'm introducing the carbs in the day so that I can keep my focus as much as possible during the windows where I need my brain sharp and fast and ready. So that's the first phase of it for me, that's been the big thing, because that brain fog is the worst. You're like- Josh: Is the worst. Russell: I need to be... And you can cover it with caffeine. And so you kind of have it, but it's not the same. You don't have the same sharpness when you have the brain fog and caffeine. It's like going into a bathroom where it stinks and they spray Poo Pourri. It's like, now it smells like Poo Pourri flavored poop. You know what I mean? They're both there. Josh: Right, right. Russell: It's like, it's not actually clean in here. You know what I mean? Josh: Yeah. Do you use Nootropics or anything at all? Joe Rogan has that Alpha... Or I don't know if it's his, but he does that Alpha BRAIN or whatever. I use that and that... I mean, I don't use it all the time, but whenever I need to be focused, because I usually take Adderall and- Russell: The hardcore stuff. Josh: Don't take Adderall people. It's the best ever, but it is straight up... Alex Sharfin did something on it one time. And once I learned what was in Adderall, I was like, "Oh, all right. So if I take that long term, I'm basically on crystal meth basically." I mean, not, but it's like the same thing. So Adderall's great, but it's not a long term sustainable thing. So I did Alpha BRAIN and stuff, which is much healthier. Do you use anything like that? Russell: Yeah. So there's a range in this stuff, because a lot my friends are the hardcore biohackers, and there's a range. And there's, for me there's a cutoff line of where I feel comfortable. And most of my friends go way beyond that cutoff line, where I don't feel comfortable. So it's tough, you get in the Nootropic world, I feel like you got to have your, this is as far as I'll go, because if you're not careful, I have friends who pushed it all the way to the spot where there's stuff that I think they're crazy for because man, you mess up your brain you are screwed. You know what I mean? And it's not worth sometimes the increasing of, oh I'm going to get more focus here. But there's a potential of damage. So yeah. So Alpha BRAIN's great, Alpha BRAIN's definitely on the left hand side of, I can take this stuff, I feel comfortable. I love ketones, I'm still a big ketones' believer. I'm trying to think off the top of my head. There's different ones that are good. Right? For me, when you start getting into the racetams, there's a whole family of race, that's where I start freaking out. For me, my cutoff line is right before that and I don't go there because the racetams stuff and then after that, then there's the more hardcore stuff and there's microdosing on things, then there's like- Josh: Psychedelics. Yeah. Russell: Crazier and crazier, and I do not cross that line because my brain, I'd rather have... People that want the last 10% from these crazy things is not worth the potential death. Josh: But is that also a religious thing for you? Or is that? Russell: For sure. Josh: Yeah, okay. Russell: 100% religious. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Definitely religious belief, but even more so, for me it's... I don't know. I've had so many friends who... And I don't want to get political on all the different drugs and things like that. I could, if people want to, but- Josh: You can come on my show, we'll talk about it there. Russell: But honestly, I have so many friends who smoke weed because it makes them more creative. I've had friends who the brain shuts off because of it. So the potential, I might be more creative, but I could lose my brain, is not worth any amount of, that's a risk I will not ever take. Alcohol is the same thing. People are like, oh, I do this because it relaxes me. But I've seen the opposite side of that. It's like, I don't know. Yeah, I have my line, I think everyone should have a line. But there are some really good Nootropics out- Josh: I want to talk to you about that more. We'll do it on my show, because I'm super curious to know your thoughts on that too, because I smoke weed sometimes too. Russell: That's why you want to bring me on that. You're from Colorado, I know. I'm not against it- Josh: Yeah, it's legal here people. Russell: I wouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole, no matter what of positive benefits might be on one side. So there's that. Josh: We can talk about that more at another time. But anyway, back to the- Russell: So the Nootropics stuff, so that's good. But supplementation as a whole, I used to just go and randomly buy every supplement that had a good sales pitch, because I'm a good sales guy and I love getting sold. I remember Anthony DiClementi came to my house one time and he saw my supplements and he was like, "You're taking everything, which is good." But also he's like, "There's crossover because a lot of supplements, they want a marketing pitch, they'll put 12 things in it." And all of a sudden I'm taking 30 pills and all 30 of them have this crossover, and all of a sudden I'm taking unhealthy levels of whatever this ingredient, because there's a little bit in 40 different things. Right? And so I started getting more strategic. In fact, Braven, who spoke at Funnel Hacking Live, his dad has been doing these really cool things. I'm trying to figure out, he's coming out next week actually to do some more work with me. But I'm trying to figure out how to help turn that into a business that I can introduce to entrepreneurs, but basically comes and tests your blood. And basically your blood testing is like, Hey, instead of just randomly taking stuff because you think so, it's like, here's where your markers are at, and then they create custom supplements based on that. They get all these- Josh: That's literally what the Shockley's did for me. That's 100%. I have this whole long list, like this long of every single different level of every nutrient in my body. It's crazy. Russell: Those are really powerful because then you're not just guessing and you can get in trouble when you're guessing. I've seen people who've had issues because they've shotgun approached it, which I've done for years in the past. And so I'm a big believer in that now, where you're taking stuff, and so to make sure you're optimized is a big thing. And one of the fascinating things, I've heard people talk a lot about gut health in the past, but I didn't understand gut health until I did this because he was showing me that the amount of fats and proteins I'm taking aren't being digested enough based on my blood levels. And he's like, the biggest thing that I need to do is start focusing more on my gut. And so I didn't really know what that meant, so this has been a big, huge thing for me now that has had a huge impact, is understanding gut health and how to do things like that. So a couple things. Number one, I have this on my desk here in my house, this is... What are these things called? These are the digestive enzymes. Right? These are actually Braven's, if you go to GainesinBulk.com you can buy them, but these are the digestive enzymes. So before I eat anything now, I pound a handful of digestive enzymes, just consistently, because it helps you digest your food. If you've got lactose intolerance, if you've got, which I do, I'm lactose intolerant on some things, it helps your body digest those things so you don't have the same issues. You have less gash, you have less bloating, less annoyance when you eat. So I pound these before every single meal. That's my first tier is digestive enzymes, I'm sold on those. I carry a little pouch to me when I travel, every I go, and before I eat anything, I pound enzymes, and that's been a big gut health thing. Number two is, every society outside of America, they eat fermented food with every meal, but Americans don't. So in Germany they eat Sauerkraut, in China it's kimchi, there's different things like that. And so that was a big thing, he's like, "Your proteins aren't being digested because you don't have anything fermented in your stomach at any given time." And so now I buy a jar of Sauerkraut and every night at dinner, when I'm eating my bigger meal, I eat Sauerkraut with the meal because it's getting those things in there. And I used to hate Sauerkraut, there's some really good ones actually nowadays that are insanely good. So I eat Sauerkraut a lot. Kombucha, I used to make fun of that. And some kombucha scared me, because they're really high alcohol content, but- Josh: Oh really? I didn't know that. Russell: Yeah. So for me it's like, but there's some kombucha, the kombucha, however you say it, they'll actually pull the alcohol content out of it. There's some that taste like, I don't have it right here, but there's these ones, there's a whole company. There's a company that made kombucha's that taste like Coke and Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew. And it literally tastes exactly like Coke and Dr. Pepper, and Mountain Dew, and it's kombucha. Josh: No way. Russell: Insanely good. So those are- Josh: Okay, you got to send me a link to that. I got to try that. Russell: Yeah, they're awesome. And then this is my new obsession, it's called Alive, GTs puts it out, and it's a mushroom Root Beer and it's got reishi, chaga, and turkey tail. I drink two of these a day, they deliver to my house from Whole Foods. I am obsessed, these are my favorite thing in the world. And it's all gut health stuff. So it's figuring those things out. The first tier of gut health is digestive enzymes, the second is fermented food while you're eating, then third is adding in kombucha's and things like that, it just helps your body break down stuff, digest it, and it gets... Because I don't know about you, but for years I'd eat stuff and I'd just get digested and bloated and then you don't feel good. You don't want to do things. Josh: Yeah. Russell: And now I don't have those problems like I used to. And that's been a huge... Anyway, so those are some of the tiers of things. Like for me, it's timing my food, taking supplements, like Nootropics and things to a certain level to help increase your mind. Josh: Right. Russell: And then the gut stuff is, your gut and your mind. There's studies I've read, I don't know how, I don't understand it all, but they say when you're an embryo your brain and your gut are connected, and then they separate and there's this brain gut thing. And so when your gut's not doing well, it affects your brain and vice versa. So it's like those two organs are the ones to really focus on the most. Josh: Yeah. My mom was big, so my sister, when she was, oh gosh, I think it was five years old, had epilepsy. Like seizures every eight minutes, like full out seizures, completely. And we took her to the number one child epilepsy doctor in the whole world that was over in the Cleveland Clinic. And they like looked at my parents and were like, "We have no idea what's wrong with your daughter. She's just going to have seizures for the rest of her life." And my mom went on this whole thing and cured her through diet. And that's when she discovered the whole gut thing and everything like that. And so ever since then, my mom's... I always tell my mom, I'm like, "Mom I love you to absolute death, obviously when you die it's going to be the worst thing ever." And I'm like, "One of the biggest things I'm going to miss when you're gone is whenever I have a problem, whenever I'm sick, whenever I don't feel well, whatever, I just call my mom." And I'm like, "Mom, what do I do?" And she knows, and it's always the natural thing. I haven't been to the doctor in probably 10 years because anything that's wrong, I just call her so- Russell: Natural is good. Josh: Yeah. She's all about that. Russell: Natural stuff is fascinating. Like again, I used to make fun of people and say they're hippies, but man, I got a Natural Path here in town I go to. Before Funnel Hacking Live I was like, I can't get COVID. And so he came in and hooked me up to IVs and things and all these. It's crazy. They do muscle testing, what things your body needs. I don't know. Again, all this stuff I used to think was like crazy, woo-woo, weird stuff. And the more I get into it, the more I'm just like, man, this stuff's amazing. I think everyone should find a Natural Path, find something that's good. As a first line of defense it's preventative, but also when you do get sick, looking at those options, because they don't wreak havoc on your body like some of the... And there's a time and a place for all those things, right? There's time to play- Josh: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Russell: You need traditional medicine, but man, there's this non-traditional side that's based off of thousands of years of people doing this stuff that is amazing. And it's looked down upon here in America unfortunately, I think it's gaining more and more popularity. But man, it's fascinating and important to, I think for all of us to understand and to be willing to look at. Josh: Yeah, for sure. Well, I appreciate you sharing more about that. I'm sure that you could talk about that for a long time. Last question on that and then we can wrap it up here. What are the things that you just absolutely stay away from in your diet? I mean, obviously for you, there's some faith elements in there too, so feel free to talk about that. We already talked about hard drugs and things like that, but diet related. Do you drink soda? Or are there certain things that you absolutely stay away from and you just don't do for health reasons? Russell: Yeah. So really decide, as a Mormon, it's alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea, those are just chopped off. And then anything worse than that obviously like- Josh: And tea? Russell: Yeah. I think- Josh: I didn't know tea was- Russell: We can have green teas, but not like the... Or something. I don't know. I don't even know. Josh: I don't like tea, but that's super interesting. I didn't realize tea. I knew alcohol, tobacco and coffee. Russell: Yeah. Then on the other side, then it's like, as I was trying to master and understand really diet and stuff, when all is said done calories... And again, I'm friends with all the health influencers, so I see the wars online, calories versus that and all that stuff. But calories do matter, but the type of calories matter as well, right? You can lose weight on a Twinkie diet, if you're eating 1500 calories a day of Twinkie, but you're got to feel like crap. Right? So I'm very conscious of that, so I do not drink soda, for a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is if I'm going to waste calories on something, I am not going to drink a soda, I'm going to eat ice cream. Right? I'm all for- Josh: Right. Russell: It, but I would never waste it on something like that because I feel like you're just drinking pure. So I'm not perfect, I'll go off on binges and eat stuff I want, but I would never drink pop, like I just don't. I would rather spend my calories somewhere else. Josh: It's soda Russell, it's soda. Russell: Soda. Yeah. In Utah, we called it Pop. But yeah, I think in the rest of the world it's soda. Anyway, so I don't do those kind of things. Josh: It is soda, Pop's not a thing. Russell: I'm also thinking, I'll go somewhere and there's a dessert, so I'm like, oh. And I'll try something and I'll take the first bite, and I judge, is this worth the calories? And if it's, yes, then I'll go pound the rest of it. If it's not I'll throw it away. Right? Like for example, cookie dough. If my wife brings home a tub of cookie dough or something, I eat it. And its worth the calories, I don't care what it is, that's so good I will eat that and I'll deal with the consequences later. Right? But then I'll eat something like a Pop Tart, and it's like, oh, this is not worth the calories. The soda or whatever, not worth the calories. Have you had those Mochi ice creams before? Josh: Mm-mm (negative). Russell: Oh my gosh, they're Chinese things. Anyway, they're the most amazing, I'll eat 4,000 calories of that because it's worth it. It's worth any extra effort I have to have because it's that good. And so for me, it's just like, I judge everything, is this worth the calories? If not, I just throw it away and I won't eat it. I won't put in my mouth. You know what I mean? Josh: Yeah. You ruined me with Crumbl Cookie. Russell: Oh yeah, those are worth the calories. Josh: Dude. Freaking, you're the one that I saw it on your Instagram story, you opened it up and you're like, "These are the most amazing things ever." I was like, what are those? And I looked it up and there's one five minutes from my house. And so now we go there all the time and I'm like, they're so good. Right? Russell: They're worth the calories. Josh: And people don't get it until you have one. And you're just like, oh. So we try to limit our consumption of that. But you're the one that got me on that and now we're... I hate you and I love you at the same time for them because they're so good. Russell: Yeah. I'll judge that. So let's say I need to eat something, it's like is it Crumbl Cookies or Subway? I would not eat it subway because it's not worth the calories for this nasty bread and all these things. You know? But I will definitely sacrifice it for a Crumbl Cookie. So anyway, that's my Litmus test. I don't think most biohackers would live by that model but for me, it's like, I eat pretty much the same thing 99% of the time. But when I'm going to mess up, I want to mess up with the best stuff and not stuff like, oh, I ate that thing and now I feel like, that wasn't even good, why did I do that? I want to make sure I'm doubling down and if I'm going to mess up, then I'm going deep on something that's worth it. Josh: Yep. Yep. All right. Well thank you for sharing Russell, I appreciate it. This was, I think it was a good batch of three episodes for us. Knock it out. Russell: That awesome. Hope you guys enjoyed this. If you like conversations like this, that aren't necessarily marketing related, but based on all the other weird stuff going on in my head, and Josh's head, let us know and we'll do more of these. And thanks man for doing this, I appreciate it. And we'll see you guys on the next episode of the Marketing Secrets podcast.

Geeking Out on Story with Josh Forti, Part 2

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2021 37:28

In this second installment of this special interview, Russell and Josh go super deep on ‘the master story' and the attractive character…and what happens when you have tons of followers and NO ONE buys! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. So, today's episode is probably from most of my conversations with Josh, might have been one of my favorites. It was really, really fun. We started talking about expert secrets and storytelling and how they work, and attractive character profiles, which one you should be using, and how they work, and can you change them? And then also he started going into his concept of the master story, which is something I talk about in Perfect Webinar, but he goes really, really deep in it. And anyway, we geeked out. This was a really fun episode. I hope you enjoy it. With that said, let me cue up the theme song. When we get back, you'll have a chance to listen to this exciting conversation with me and Josh talking about story and attractive character, and a bunch of other really cool things. JoshForti: I got to ask this. Are you not on Twitter? Like I see you on Twitter a lot, and I see you posting stuff on Twitter. But is it not you that's engaging on Twitter? Russell: No, I don't know how to tweet. Josh: You don't know how to tweet? Russell, I tweeted you a lot. Or not a lot, but I tweeted you quite a bit. Russell: Oh, hey. Josh: And then sometimes you like my tweets. Dang it. Russell: I do like all your tweets. They're awesome. Josh: Yeah. Oh, man. Russell: I personally, I enjoy Instagram, probably my favorite. And then Facebook's probably number two. But that's the two social platforms I spend my personal time on the most. So, if it's from either of those two platforms, it's usually me. If it's other places... Josh: Do you have it like broken up? Like are you like, "Instagram, I do this type of content and stuff on. And Facebook, I do this type of content on." Or is it kind of like a mixture of both? Or... Russell: Um. Josh: For you personally. I know your team posts stuff, but... Russell: The only place I really post/do stuff typically is Instagram, like stories. That's where I kind of, like me personally, do stuff. And then Facebook and my personal page, probably once, every once in a while, I drop stuff there. And everything else, that's my team. Josh: Yeah, that's rare though, not often. Russell: Yeah. Josh: You're not like me who's like, "What? It's been 48 hours without some form of controversy? What can I say? Oh my God." All right. Well, actually, I kind of want to talk about that though. Not so much controversy, but creating content specifically around storytelling, because I think this is probably one of the biggest... Let me give backstory, a little context around this. I came into the world completely backwards of what most people do, right? So I was the guy that came into the world, and most people have no following and no followers, and they can't get leads to happen. Right? And they don't get anybody to show up to their webinar. And then they're super depressed because nobody showed up and nobody bought. I had the exact opposite problem. I had everybody show up and nobody bought. And let me tell you, that's way more depressing. You know why? Because when everybody shows up and nobody buys, you're like, "Crap. Now I really am screwed because I have no idea what's going on." Right? Russell: It was me, and not the… whatever, yeah. Josh: Right. It's not because nobody's hearing it. It's because I actually suck. And I remember the first time I ever did a webinar, we actually... I don't know if you remember this or not. I actually sent you a Snapchat. This is right when you first got Snapchat. This is way, way back in the day. I've told this story before. And I went and I was like, "Russell, what's up, man? I'm trying to build this webinar. How much would you charge me to build out a webinar for me or whatever?" Right? And you sent me a little video, a Snapchat video back. You're in the Jeep, and you were like, "Man, I don't really do that. I don't really do that anymore." So I like snapped you back, and then you snapped me back, and you're like, "It'd probably be like $250,000 or something like that. But I don't really do that." I'm like, "Man, I really wish I would've hired you for 250 grand." But anyway, so I go and we do this huge webinar, and everyone told us... We were like, "We're going to have all these people sign up." And everyone's like, "No. No, you're not. Nobody gets people to their webinar that easy. You maybe have a hundred registrants." We had 2000 people register, and we had a thousand people... We maxed out the room with a thousand people on live. At the pitch, there was like 982 people in the room. I go through, I do my pitch. No one buys, not a single person. And then we hung up, and like an hour goes by, and one person had bought. And most miserable, depressing... Russell: That's the worst because then you're like, "Crap. I thought there was no sound or something. Maybe they didn't hear me." Josh: Right, right, right. But I sat there and it was a bad webinar. We had like dozens, probably hundreds of emails and comments of like, "Can I have my money back for a free webinar? This totally sucks. Worst experience ever." It was awful, right? And what was interesting is that really scarred me for a while, from doing presentations and from doing anything where I pitched live. And so I basically went and I just did sales from that point on. I did lots of presentations. I did lots of content. But I did not actually go and pitch because really, it was like PTSD almost. Right? It was like, "I don't want to go back there." And what was interesting is I went and I would do sales, and I got good at sales, but sales is hard, man. Sales is just a different game. It's just like pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing. Right? And then my brother died, and out of just sheer not knowing what to do, I just started sharing my story because at that point you're like, "What do you do? My whole life is messed up at this point. I'm so confused." And so I just start sharing what I was going through, and I start sharing things of like the emotions and what I'm learning and what I'm going through. And I remember people just started buying, and it was like the weirdest thing, because I wasn't selling anything. Right? But I would go through and I'd be like, "I'm super grateful and thankful to have an audience right now because I'm able to go through and have a business that allows me to go and like be mobile and go to my brother's funeral or whatever." And then people started buying my programs. And I was like, "What in the world?" And then I would share other things, and then people would start buying. And I'm like, "I'm not actually selling these things. I'm just talking about my life." And what was interesting is I went back eventually later that year, and I went back to all these different people, and I was like, "Why did you buy this product?" And they're like, "Well, because you told such and such a story." Oh, that's interesting. So then I went over here and I was like, "Why did you buy that product?" And they're like, "Well, you guys told such and such story." And it was a completely different story. And it was like they were buying because they would hear a story, and they would associate that story with a product that I was selling, and they would go buy it. And so I had all these different products and all these different stories, and I was like, "Okay, well, I got to figure out what's the one story that I want people to figure out?" Right? So I could sell the one product. And so that's what I've really been focused on recently. But that lesson taught me that storytelling was everything, because I had heard that from you a million times. Right? Russell: Yeah. You didn't believe it. Josh: Story, story, story, story. Right? And I'm like, "I'm telling stories, Russell. What more do you want me to do?" But I wasn't. I was telling facts and I was going out there and trying to sound smart. And when I just let go of it all and was like, "This is the story, like the real, the raw, the genuine. I'm not trying to sell you anything. This is legitimately what's going on in my life." I made more money and more sales than I had before. And so I would love for you to talk about... Like I know in Expert Seekers you go through like storytelling and all the different, the core four stories, and the change of false beliefs. But what's the key? And maybe that's it, like going back through that. And that's fine. But like what's the key to telling a good story? Because I think not only do people... And there's a follow-up question to this, which I'm not going to tell you what it is yet. But what are the elements that make a good story? What actually makes a story work? And how do you tell one effectively? Russell: Yeah. First off, it's fascinating because I went through a very similar journey when I got in this world too. I remember going to my very first event. I saw people selling from stage, and seeing the numbers and doing the math, I was just like, "This is crazy. There's no way this actually works." And then I remember getting invited to speak at a seminar, and it was different because webinars are painful, but man, standing on stage and doing a pitch, and then it bombing was even worse. Because it's just like all these people, nobody moved, and it was just like... In fact, I remember I was like, "I'll never, after the first one, I'll never do this again." That was the worst experience ever. And that's when I joined the Dan Kennedy world, and they had this public speaking course. It was like 40 CDs. I remember the pack was like this thick of CDs. And I bought it because I was like, "I want to figure this thing out." I started listening to him. And I don't remember the course at all, other than this feeling of just like it's not teaching. Teaching is not what gets people to buy when you're on stage. It's telling these stories that connect with people. And it shifted my mindset, and so it shifted to the point where I went and tried again. And the next time I tried, I tried to weed these things in, and I got like six sales, a thousand bucks apiece. And I was like, "Oh, okay." Like I got the reward of like this actually worked. And then I was like, "Okay, do it again and do it again." And then you start getting obsessed with it. And then for me, most of my education for the next five years... Because there wasn't a lot of people that had courses on public speaking or things like that. There were a couple, but there wasn't a lot. I just went... And from a timeline, it was before the big 2000 whatever, the big crash in 2008 or whatever. And so there were events happening every single weekend. So I'd go to an event every weekend, and I would sit there and I would just watch the people speak. And I would watch what they were doing and then see how people would buy at the end. And people, the ones that had the big table rushes and stuff, I was like, "Okay, what did they just do? What'd they do to me? How did they do it? What did they say?" And I was like trying to dissect what they were doing. And then I would model that for my presentations. I'd be like, "Oh, I like how they did that part, how they told the story or how they got emotional." Sort of like just studying. McCall Jones calls it charisma hacking. I didn't know that's what it was at the time. But I was just watching how they did stuff and how it made me feel. And it wasn't just like selling from stage. I started watching religion people as well. Like some of the best presenters in the world are preachers and pastors and things like that. And I was watching just people speak and how they got me to feel and move, and how they told stories in a way that was exciting. And then so that's like this study I started going on. Then I met Michael Hague. I started learning about story structure. I was like, "This isn't just made up. There's actual structures and there's things in place. And this guy's way easier," because now I'm not just guessing. There's actually a pathway. Anyway, so that's kind of my history with it too, but it's fascinating. But I think that if I was to break it down into something for people to understand that's not complex but simple... Because you can go to the Expert Secrets book and it can get really complex. But the simplest form is that if somebody's coming to you, it's because they're looking for something different, right? They want change. They want more. There's some result. And I always think about this like on a mountain because Dan Kennedy used to talk about this. He's like, "You need to become the guru on the mountain. And people are going to come to the base of the mountain, and the closer they get to you up the mountain, the more they're going to pay." Right? So, the base of the mountain, they're paying a hundred bucks a month for a newsletter. And then they want to get closer, they pay 500 bucks a month, then a thousand bucks a month. And for whatever, for 50 grand, they can sit at your feet and talk to you." And he used to always talk about that guru on the mountain thing. And back when I was first studying this, the way people sold was different. It was much more like that. It was more of a status play like, "This is how successful and why you should come up here. And if you want to be like me, you got to come to me, pay me more money." And I never really resonated with that, partially because I'm awkward and I always felt awkward like positioning myself. So I never liked that, and so I started learning about story structure. It was cool because I realized that the positioning of you on the mountain, it's essential, right? But it's not like you sell from the top of the mountain, yelling down to the people. It's like people see you on the top of the mountain, and they're down here like, "I want to be up there." You're like, "Cool." And then it's you coming down off the mountain, running down to where they're at, and being like, "Okay, I know exactly where you're at. Let me tell you my story, because I was in your same spot at one time." Right? And that's the power. So, if you look at the way I do my presentations, I usually drop like one slide or one thing like, "Hey, this is the thing you want." Right? Like, "Cool, I've made whatever." Like I'll do my quick posturing just so they know that I've been to the top of the mountain they're trying to get to. But then I don't stay there. But again, if you watch the old-time speakers from the nineties and early 2000s, they would spend the 90-minute presentation talking about them on top of the mountain the whole time. And I just hate it. So I drop real quick, so you know that I know I've been where we're trying to get to, but I got to come back very, very quickly. And the story I'm telling you is the story, my story, of them. Right? I have to put myself in their spot. Like where was I when I went through the same thing? Because all of us, if you got to the top of the mountain, somewhere you had to start hiking. And you went through that journey to be the guru on the top. Right? And so it's like coming back and remembering where are they at or where were you at, telling your story. And if you tell it the way that they connect, they're like, "Oh my gosh, they are me. I was Russell. Russell went through this. He understands." And there's empathy. Then they trust you. Then they want to go on that journey with you. That's like when you came out and you started telling your story, it wasn't you posturing a position of how great you were. But it's like, "Hey, I've done this thing you're trying to figure out. But let me tell you my story and how I'm struggling, how I'm still struggling, the struggles I went through, and the pain and the fear." And all of sudden they're like, "Oh, I feel that too. I feel the pain. I feel the fear. I understand those things. This person understands me. I can trust them to take me on this journey because he's not going to be the person who's just positioning how great they are. It's someone who I have empathy with. They understand me." And that's the key. Because if they feel like you understand them, then they're going to go on that journey with you. And you do that by telling the story, like your version of their story. Because they're living it right now, and you've lived it the past. You've got to tell that in a way where they connect and now they're going to want to go on that journey with you. And that's kind of the key to it all. Josh: That's super, super interesting. Yeah. Because when I think about story structure, because I've like tried to simplify things down in my own head... Because it's always interesting, because I'll watch everything that you do, and so it's funny whenever I do presentations, people are like, "You're a mini Russell." I'm like, "Well, that makes sense actually. Right?" Like I've watched all this stuff, right? So, but for me, man, going through Expert Secrets, I don't know, it was probably the third or fourth or maybe even fifth time through before I finally actually was like, "Oh yeah, you actually do know what you're talking about." Because every step of the way I'd be like, "But my story doesn't fit in. That doesn't work." Or like, "Mine doesn't have that." Or like, "It's not that systematic." Or, "Russell, it's too much of a science. There's more of an art to it." And then I'd read about it and I'd be like, "This is so scientific." And then I'd watch you do it and I'm like, "That's so artistic." And I'm like, "But they're the same." Right? And so I would try to figure out ways to simplify it down to a way I can understand it. And then once I would understand it, I would plug it into yours, and then it would work. Right? And so for me, it was always like, okay, there's four parts. It's, "How did I get here?" Right? That's backstory. Like, "How did I get to right here right now?" That's like that. And then it's, "Where am I going?" Right? So, the goal, the desire. And then it's, "How am I going to get there?" New vehicle, new opportunity, right? And then it's, "What's it going to look like?" The vision, like what's it going to look like in the process of all that, so we can paint this thing and we get people emotionally attached? And so for me, in my brain... And they don't always happen in that sequential order. Like sometimes you start with the desire, and then you go back, but it has to have all four of those parts. And then I would take that and I would go, and then I would apply it to the Expert Secrets, and then it would start working. Right? I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's what Russell's doing here and here and here." And then you actually have this whole framework out about it, right? And I think one of the things for me is I always go... Because we've done book clubs on Expert Secrets. I teach stories in marketing. I teach stories in personal development. Like stories and storytelling is a big part of what I do now, especially over the last six months and moving forward. One of the questions that continues to come up is... Well, there's two parts. Let me start with the first one. "Hey, Russell, that's all great, but I'm not a leader. I'm not the attractive character that's the leader." Right? "I'm not the person that figured it out and am living my customer's journey." And there's actually a lot more of those people than I thought. I thought most people were leaders because that's what I was when I first got started. So my question is, do you tell this story a different way? Or how is the story different, how is it positioned differently, if you are not the leader? Because I know you're not in your story. You're the reluctant hero, right? And so I tell people, I'm like, "Before you start figuring out your story, you got to figure out what attractive character you're going to be." Right? And we go through the four inside of Expert Secrets. It's like there's the leader, there's the adventurer, there's the reporter, and then there's the reluctant hero. And what's interesting is early on in my journey, I was the hero. Right? I was the one, I was like, "Guys..." I was literally this broke kid, freaking living in a $500-a-month apartment with duct tape windows. And now I'm not, right? And Instagram was the thing, and social media, and here we go. Right? But as I evolved, then the podcast came. And without even realizing it, I became the reporter. Right? And so how does, based on your attractive character, how does that change the story or how you tell it? Russell: Yeah. And it's funny because mine's transformed, not only just throughout time, but in different situations as well. Right? Like sometimes I'm the attractive... You know, when I got started, say when I was an interviewer, so I interviewed people. So I was a reporter for a long time. But then I transitioned to like a reluctant hero. But there's other times, like if I'm on Hockey Live, I'm not the reluctant hero, right? At that time I've got to be the hero. Like I'm coming in and I'm setting authority because I've got a whole group of alphas in the room. And if I don't come there as like the head alpha, they will run me over. If you're like in a situation with Tony Adib, like if I'm that situation, I'm transitioning more back to reporter because I'm leveraging Tony's expertise and things like that. And so I'm going back as a reporter. Same thing with Dan Kennedy right now. You look at... It's fascinating. Like we just bought Dan Kennedy's company, right? We just launched the first Dan Kennedy new offer. By the way, if you're listening, go to NoBSLetter.com and go sign up. But yeah, like... Josh: By the way, make sure you go through my link. Russell: Yeah. But look at like how I've... It's /JoshForti, yeah. Josh: Yeah. Russell: But if you look at like how I'm positioning this offer, it's not me coming as like Russell's the alpha. Right? I'm coming back here as like, "This is my mentor. Boom. And I had this chance to acquire, but I'm going to go through 40 years of his stuff, and I'm bringing it back to you." And I'm pulling these things out, and this is what I learned from Dan and what I learned from Dan here." Right? And it's me coming back in a reporter role with my mentor, and that's how I'm introducing the world to him. So, it shifts, right? It shifts based on the story and the situation. Like what are you using it for? Right? Like I could've come in and be like... Because there's different posturing. Like I could've come in and been the hero and like, "I bought Dan's company. We bringing it back from the dead. Da, da, da." Like put it on me. But that story, first off, didn't feel good. But second off, it's not the story that needs to get people to move. The stories to get people to move is me giving homage to this guy who's changed my life, and now I'm going to be having the chance to bring these things back to you. Like me becoming the reporter back in that phase, in that business and that side, is a more powerful story to use. Right? And so it's all coming down to figuring out what's going to be the best story, right, in this situation and where you're at, and thinking through that. Because right now you're in a reporter role, but other times I still see you, you shift back over where you're running different things. So it's just trying to figure out what's... Again, these are all tools. I was talking to the Two Comma Club X members this week. And part of the group's doing challenges, part are doing webinars, part are doing different things. And they're like, "Which one should I do? Which one's the best?" I'm like, "No, it's not which one's best. These are tools. Like this is a hammer, this is a saw, and different jobs and different tools." And so it's like if I'm coming in here, I want a hammer, but over here I want a saw, and here I want a hammer and a saw, because I'm going to do this thing. Right? And same thing with stories, understanding that. Like your attractive character can shift. Mine's shifted more throughout time, but also situationally it shifts where it's like, okay, this is the role I need to be here, and it's okay to shift back to reporter. I've seen people, in fact... Well, can I drop names? Yeah. Who cares? So like Grant Cardone's a good example. I love Grant. Grant is like the leader, right? And at 10X, after we set all these sales records, Grant was going to shift to the interviewer and he was going to interview me. And it would've been a really fascinating thing for him to pick my brain and ask. And we sat down and we got in the thing, and he sat there for a second, and all of a sudden he was like, he didn't want to. He thought like shifting to the interviewer was a decrease in status. And he literally stopped before he started and said, "Actually I don't want to interview you. I'm going to have somebody else do it." And he got off the little thing, had somebody else come in, and that person interviewed me. And I was like, "Ah, dang it." It would've been so powerful for him. Josh: Come on, Grant. Russell: It would been so powerful for him, for his positioning, for people to connect with him better, if he would've come off like, "I'm Grant Cardone." You know, trade, come down for a second, and done the reporter, and been excited. Because he genuinely was excited. He, backstage, was freaking out. He was like, "I've never seen what you just did. That was amazing." Like it was this cool thing. And it humanized him for a minute. And he could have had that moment where he did it, and he didn't. Whereas me right now with Kennedy, I'm paying all homage to Dan. He's amazing. And it, first off, makes the offer better, makes the story better, but it also makes me more... People connect because now it's like they're the same thing. Like, "Oh my gosh. I have mentors. I can be excited about what they're learning." I don't have to posture all the time where I'm the only person. You know what I mean? Josh: Yeah. Well, it's super interesting that you say that because studying influencers has been something that I've kind of geeked out about. And one of the things you talk about in there, in Expert Secrets or whatever, is the attractive character has flaws. Right? And when the attractive character owns those flaws, it actually makes their supporters love them more. And what's interesting is that I've looked at people like Trump, and we're not trying to get political here in any way, shape or form, but one of the big criticisms of Trump, even from his own people, and I being one of those, is he never admits when he's wrong. He never will step down and even give the idea that somebody else could be right. And because of that, that actually hurts him a lot more in the long run than in the short, than it gains him in the short term. Right? And so it's that same concept. And then I look at someone like a Dave Portnoy, right? And do you follow Dave at all? Dave Portnoy? Okay. So he's the founder of Barstool Sports, and he's the one that did the Barstool Fund and everything like that or whatever. Here's a dude who, I mean, his fan base is not as large as Trump's, but as far as like fans and fans, people love Portnoy. Right? Like, I mean, there's his fans. But he makes fun of himself constantly, right? And he's constantly coming back and being like, "Yeah, I messed up." All of his bets are public because he owns like a gambling or a sports betting company. So you go to his Twitter and it's nothing but all of his wins and then all of his losses. Right? And so you can see both, and people just love it. And anytime people are trying to bash up on him, all of his supporters come and they're like, "Yeah, we know he's an idiot. Right? But he's an amazing idiot. Yeah." Right? And so it's like when you show that other side, people connect to you even better. And it's such a fascinating concept because it's opposite of what our brains think. You know what I mean? Russell: A hundred percent. It's counterintuitive. Like we want to always posture position, thinking that's the... It's just like the guru on the mountain we talked about, right? Like in the eighties, nineties, every expert wanted to be the person, the infallible expert up here at the top. But man, that's not what gets people to connect. It's the coming down and like, "Dude, I struggle too. I remember the pain. I remember the pressure, the fear, the scare, like all those things." And that's what connects people. People crave connection now. Maybe there was a time in history where people just wanted the other thing. But nowadays it's not that way. People connect with vulnerability. But it's hard, it's scary, because it's like... In fact, Natalie Hodson, I think she quoted Brene Brown, but she's the one that told me this. She's like, "When you're vulnerable, you feel small, but people looking at it, it feels makes you feel big to them." So it's a weird thing where you're like, "I feel horrible," but it makes them look at you and like, "Oh my gosh, this person's willing to say things I'm thinking in my head and I don't dare to talk about because of my own fear and anxiety and status, and all those kind of things." And it gives them that thing, and that's what gets people to connect with you. It's really fascinating. Josh: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Okay. Last piece on this, which will take up the rest of the time for sure, is the number one question that I get hands down when it comes to stories... I'm sure you've heard this a million times, but in the odd case that you haven't, Russell, your people want to know this. Okay? The number one question is: How do I know which story to tell? Russell: Ooh, that's good. Josh: Right? It's the hardest thing because people are like... And it's always hilarious because I'll sit down and I'll be like, "Well, what story are you trying to tell?" And they're like, "I don't know." And I'm like, "Well, here's your life story." And I will tell them because I'm like their coach and I've been around them for six weeks or whatever it is. And I'll go, "Here's your story. Boom, boom, boom." And I'll summarize their entire life in 30 seconds. And they're like, "How did you do that?" And I'm like, "Because it..." Well, anyway, I want to know the answer to their question. How do you know what story to tell? Because everybody has these. We're so close, right? And for me, I'm about to turn 28, right? My 28th birthday, we'll do a big birthday bash. Russ is coming on. It's going to be great. We're going to want to do podcasts. It's going to be so cool. Right? But it's like I've got 28 years worth of experiences. How do I know what to tell? Russell: Yeah. It's fascinating. When I wrote the first version of the Expert Secrets, I didn't know that was the question people had. I didn't even know how to answer. It never crossed my mind. And anyway, I wrote the second version of the Expert Secrets and I'd seen it, so I'd updated it. But no one ever commented. And it wasn't until... Actually, you came to it. You came to the most recent FHAT event I did, right? The expert one? Yes, okay. Josh: Yeah, not the e-com one, but yeah. Russell: Yeah. So the first time I shared that publicly was at that event, and I remember it was fascinating because Steven Larson is probably one of the people that have studied me the most. And he raised his hand like, "Oh my gosh." He's like, "I finally understand what story I'm supposed to tell." And that was coming from Steven who like... And I was like, "Interesting." So, this is the problem I think that... And I always tell people, "Tell your backstory. Tell the origin story." So they're like, "Okay. I was born in Provo, Utah, March 8th, 1980. It was a cold night." And they, they go back to there, right? Because they think that's the story, because I tell them, "Tell your origin story." And it wasn't until at that event... Again, I think, I'm pretty sure in the second version, the hardbound version of DotCom Secrets, it's in there. But it was that event where I really said, "The story you're telling is not like your origin story. It's your origin story of how you came upon or created or figured out your framework. It's your interaction with the framework you're sharing." That's the key, right? So, when I'm talking about the perfect webinar, for example, the origin story I'm telling is not my origin story. It's my origin story discovering this framework. So, for example, I went to Armand Morin's event and I saw people speaking on stage. I did the math, and then I spoke on stage, and I looked like an idiot. And I went back home, and then I bought Dan Kennedy's course. I realized it was wrong, and then I went through the thing. And so it's that story, it's how I learned or I earned this framework. Like how did I come up with... What was the things I went through to discover this gem that I'm bringing now from the top of the mountain down to them, saying like, "This is the thing I found out, and this is the story about how I found it. Let me share it with you." And be like, "Ooh, I want that gem. I want that gold nugget." And then they come with you on the journey to go and get that with you. So, that's the most simple way I've figured out how to explain it. I'm curious on your side, because you've explained versions of this as well, would you add to that or change it? Or what are kind of your thoughts on it? Josh: Well, so let me start by telling you the biggest struggle that I had. Like I'm talking for over a year of reading Expert Secrets, I struggled with one specific thing that I could not figure out, and it was the question that I wanted to ask you for the longest time. And then like right before we got an interview, I figured it out. I was like, "Oh my gosh." But it was I didn't understand the difference between the backstory and secret number one. And what I meant mean by that is like, to me, I'm like, "First you discover funnels, and then you teach them the framework for funnels. It's the same thing." But then you would say they're different. And I'm like, "How?" Right? Like I don't understand the difference between those two things. Now, at first I didn't understand it at all. And then kind of my first epiphany or my first breakthrough was, "Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. First the backstory introduces the thing. And then secret number one has the framework for the thing." Right? And so then that was kind of my first realization of like, "Okay, these are separate. It's one, it's the thing. And then the framework for the thing." But then I would look at your webinar and I would go, "Russell, Russell, what's your framework? Like what's the framework to build a funnel?" I'm like, "It's hook, story, offer." That's what I thought, right? I'm like, "In order to build a good funnel, it's hook, story, offer." And then I was like, "Well, maybe that's not the framework. Maybe it's add all the upsells and break the beliefs, and then go through." And I was like... But no matter what it was, it was never... Like the framework for building a successful funnel was never to go and model somebody else's funnel, and then build all the up. I'm like, that's a thing, but that's not the parts of a funnel. Right? And so I got confused because I thought the framework that I was supposed to teach in secret number one was the parts of the thing, not the framework for how to build the thing. Right? And so I think one of the biggest 'aha' moments for me is like each part of the webinar that you're doing is its own separate section, and they build off of one another, but they're also each standalone. Right? And so I thought that the backstory or that the story that I told in the backstory was the story through the entire webinar, and it's not. Right? And so whenever I would hear you say, "Well, tell the backstory about how you learned it and how you earned it," I thought it was like that was the story for the webinar, and then I had to go through and tell each thing. And then I realized that there's a separate story for each thing. Right? There was a separate story for the backstory. And by the time you're done with the backstory... And I think it was you that said it. I go back and forth. I really like how Dan Henry explained some of the things specifically when selling courses, because that was the other problem, was you were selling a software and I was like, "Well, what happens if I'm not selling a software? Oh, crap. Where does it fit in?" Right? But I think it was you that said by the time you're done with the backstory, there's a percentage of your people that are ready to buy. And I'm like, "Whoa. That's the story that I've got to figure out." And so for me, I was like, "What is the story that I have to tell, that if I were not allowed to tell secret one, secret two or secret three, people just took me at my word that what I said was the solution to their problem? What's that story that I have to tell that people would go and buy?" And I became obsessed with that, and that's what I call a master story. Because I'm like, to me... And that's why I was telling you where I was geeking out about it. I'm like, to me, once I figure out that, and I've gone through and taught all these students how to teach stories, if I focus all of my time on the three secrets, we never get anywhere. Like literally. It's ridiculous. We'll spend so much time, and then they'll do the presentation and it won't work. But if I spend 80% of my time on just the backstory and we get that right, they basically figure out the other three secrets like that. And I spend 20% of my time in the other three secrets. Russell: That's fascinating. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Because I spend both of my time doing the three secrets, because that's where people get stuck on my side. But man, the way you frame that's really cool, because I always think about... There's different markets I go after, right? So if I'm going after like a beginner market, my first thing is telling the potato gun story, because it's like, "I had a potato gun, we had an upsell, da, da, da." And for beginner, like... Josh: Which 100%, by the way, 100% of what I've done... The last like six, three months I've been doing sales calls like crazy. Whenever I mention the master story, I go, "Hey guys, do you know Russell?" They're like, "What's the master story?" I'm like, "Do you know who Russell Brunson is?" They're like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Do you know the potato gun story?" 100% of the people say yes, every single time. There's not been a single person... I'm like, "That's his master story when it comes to funnels." Anyway. Russell: That's always interests me because I have a different master story if I'm going over like a more advanced audience, which is the master story of no VCs. Right? So it's like, "We're competing against InfusionSoft and all these things. They had a hundred million dollars in funding. We didn't have any money. We were broke. And so we put this thing together. Da, da, da." And they're like, "Now we get customers for free, and then they buy software." And that master story is what sells it to more of like the corporate, like the business owners who think through the world of like investing. So, that's story that I lead... If I talk about potato guns with them, they're lost, right? So again, it's like, people are like, "But I only have a story." It's like, "No, you have different stories. What are the stories that fit the audience?" Dan Kennedy 101, message to market match. Like how do you connect these things? Right? It's like here's the market I'm talking to. In fact, I think you know this. We bought Doodly.com and we bought like Brad Callen's whole company. And these people, I didn't realize at the time, I thought they were internet marketers using software to make sales videos. But no, they were actually course creators who don't know anything about marketing. And so I went and did my webinar pitch to these people and it bombed, and it was like the worst thing ever. And I was like, "What?" And it was like, "Oh my gosh. I didn't understand the market." And so I had to change. So we rewrote it, changed the story, changed the thing to match the market we're going after. And now it's converted really well. But it was like, it's just understanding that in every situation, like figuring out, "Okay, who am I actually speaking to? So there's the market. And what's the message, the story I think I have that's going to match that to then bring them into our world?" Because I'm selling the same product, no matter what, but there's different stories that's going to hit different markets as you go through. You'll probably hear me quote a lot more Dan Kennedy in your future, as I'm going through all his courses again right now, and having the time of my life with it. So... Josh: Yeah. Well, it's just interesting, just going back to that one concept of like the first core story, the master story, the backstory of it all. I think one of the big problems that I know I ran into this is, once again, I thought the whole webinar was designed to teach and educate. Like that's when I would introduce and teach it, the whole entire process. But it's not. Like secret one, secret two, secret three are designed to educate on the thing that you introduce in the backstory. Right? And for me, with the people I work with on a pretty consistent basis, it's like they don't understand that either. And so when I go in and I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. Forget about teaching them about it. You have to teach them what it is, why it's so important." And I always go back to that story when you were like no one was buying it and then you're like, "Do you understand what I went through then?" I'm like, "That! That's what you're trying to create." It's like forget the framework for it. Forget how it works. Forget why it worked for them. Forget the external objections for a second or whatever. Like what do you have to do that, if you didn't get to do anything like that, how would you convince somebody that this is the most greatest, amazing thing, and then be like, "And just take my word for it that it's going to work for you." Like, what's that story that you would tell? And for me, once I identified that was what it was, and I started working on my students with that, all the rest of the webinars and find new challenges and everything became easy. Whether it was Catherine Jones when we worked with her, whether it was Brad Gibbon, casual tactics, like all of them, it was like, once we figured out that, then all the rest of the things fell into place. Russell: Yeah. It's fascinating because the reason why I bombed when I first started versus why I started studying dance stuff, is that realization of just like, "They haven't bought into the fact that they want to funnel yet or that they want weight loss or whatever the thing is." Like your only goal during the webinar or the challenge or whatever is to convince them that this is the vehicle that's going to be the most likely successful to get up on that mountain and get the result that they've been looking for. Because they've been looking for the result for a long time, right? I think Katlyn said the average woman goes on eight diets a year. Right? So it's like, now that they're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to lose weight." It's not like this, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to make money. Oh my gosh, I'm going to..." Like, they already want the result. They tried three or four other things. You're trying to convince them that your presentation or your challenge or whatever is to convince them that of all the different potential opportunities, that your new opportunity is the one that's most likely to get them success. And if they buy into that, then you can take them on the journey. But you start teaching around the gate. You're trying to take them on this journey, and they're like, "Wait, but there's like 10 other options. I don't think you're the right... I don't even know if you're the right option. I have no idea." So your job and your role is 100% only there to convince them that this is the most likely thing that's going to give them the success they're looking for. And yeah, then you won. Then you can bring them into world. Now you can serve them. Now you can change their life. But until you've sold them on the fact that your vehicle is the one that is most likely to give success, you can't serve them. You can't change their life. You can't do anything. And so that's what we got to become really good at is that transition. So, anyway, so fun. Josh: All right. Well, that'll wrap up the story episode there. I think that was really, really good. I think we got a lot accomplished. Russell: We should go, another time, or next time you're a voice, we should do like a half-day live with everybody on like the master story. That'd be fascinating to go deeper just on that, without the context of having to have all the rest of the webinar things. I'd love to geek out with you deeper on that. So, there's the thought. If you guys want more of that, you got to let me and Josh know, and maybe next time we're around some UFC fight or some fake YouTube boxing fight, we'll plan something fun like that. Because that'd be really cool to go deep on that. Josh: That fake YouTube boxer fight, that's 5 and 0, right? Oh, man. All right. Russell: All right. Thanks, you guys, for listening. If you enjoyed this, please let us know. Tag us on social. Tweet us out. Instagram us. YouTube... I don't know. All the different places. Josh: Don't tweet us. Russell won't tweet at you. He'll just fake like your tweets. Instagram? Instagram. Russell: Tweet at Josh, and then I'll share it. Josh: Yeah. Russell: My team will share it. Anyhow, let us know. We're enjoying doing these, and hopefully you guys love them as well. And the last way, if you want to help grow this podcast, please just tell other people about it. And yeah, that's all I got. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Josh.

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Forti, Funnels, and Football: A World View, Part 1

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2021 28:42

Russell and special guest Josh Forti dive deep into funnels, storytelling, and building your own reality. Find out how to break free of what's expected, how to create your own rules, build your own world, and be OK with being different. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com Magnetic Marketing ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to The Marketing Secrets podcast. Today, I've got two things for you. Number one, I got kind of a cold so if I sound a little funny, that's why. Number two, is you guys loved our last three podcast episodes with Josh Forti, so we thought we should do it again. Today, we jumped on a call and we recorded three more episodes for you, and they've been a lot of fun. The first episode was all about just kind of... It was an interesting conversation, and I think it took us a while to get exactly to the point. But by the end, the end of of it wrapped with some really cool thoughts and ideas and I think some clarifications that'll help you guys a lot. But it was all about I'm in this world of funnels, and how has that affected my world perspective, my world view and, everything else happening around me? And how does that work for you with the thing that you're most passionate and most obsessed with? And so I think you guys will enjoy this conversation. With that said, I'll queue up the theme song. When we come back, you have a chance to listen in on a conversation with me and Josh Forti. What's up, everybody? It's Russell Brunson. Welcome back to The Marketing Secrets podcast. A little while ago, Josh Forti and I did a couple episodes. We've done this three times now technically. This is the fourth, but we did an episode a little while ago, just to see how you guys liked it. And the feedback was amazing. I got tons of good feedback. I think you did as well, right? You saw everyone. Josh Forti: I got tons. I sent you some of them. We convinced somebody to start a podcast over it. Russell: Because of the... Yes. Josh: Because of the podcast. Russell: ... podcast. We are having little podcast babies now because of what happened last time we hung out, and I'm pumped. We're jumping back in. We got three episodes of recording today. I know the title of the topics, but that's about it. I don't know where we're going, the direction, but I'm pumped and excited and just grateful for you, man, doing these. I really enjoyed it last time. I left afterwards pumped and on fire and had a ton of energy, so I'm excited for this. Josh: Heck yeah. That's awesome. Well, are you sick? Russell: Yes. I have a little stuffy nose, so I apologize in advance if I sound... My voice sounds deeper though, so I sound more masculine which is kind of cool. But yeah, definitely got a little bit of a cold. Josh: Oh, man. As long as it's not COVID. Russell: Oh, yeah. No, I did that. We're good. The antibodies are flowing through my body, so I'm pretty good there. Josh: Heck yeah. Russell: Well, what's the plan today? What are we talking about for this episode? Love to get kind of- Josh: Are we doing intros or are we just jumping in? Russell: This is the intro. I'll do intros. Josh: This is it, we're in. We're rocking and rolling. Russell: We're live. Let's go. Josh: All right, all right. Let's dive in. Dude, interestingly enough, as I went back and I started going... By the way, I actually listened to all three of our episodes, even though we did them. I actually went back and listen, because I'm that geeky nerd. I was talking to one of my friends. We were sending VOXs back and forth to each other and he's like, "I just listed to my vox back to you." And I'm like, "I'm glad I'm not the only one that does that." And he's like, "Oh, no, you are the only one. I just did that one time." I'm like, "Crap. Dang it." I go back through it. I listen to VOXs and I listen to podcasts. I'm trying to figure out how I could've made them better. But what's interesting is I wanted to take this one a little bit of a different route today, to kind of kick things off. Because normally, I'd say there's two types of podcasts. There's educational podcasts, which is you're talking on a very specific topic, and you're trying to educate people on that. And then there's entertainment podcasts. Entertainment is much more... Maybe it could be educational still, but it's not designed to educate you on one specific thing, and then break all the beliefs around that thing. And then do the whole perfect webinar thing on a podcast episode. Whatever. But rather, just kind have an open conversation. And I want to open this one up, talking specifically about funnels. And not funnels and how you build them, but I want to know is funnels a worldview for you? And what I mean by that is right now, I'm really, really big into storytelling. That's kind of my thing that I'm geeking out about, is how to tell amazing stories. And I call it the master story. That's the core thing that I'm trying to figure out right now, is the master story for me is what's the one story I got to get people to believe? After they believe that story, they'll do whatever I want them to do. It's the big domino statement of stories. But as I've done that, I've kind of gone out and everything in my life now revolves around stories. I'm like, "Oh, story there, story there. Oh, that's the story? Oh, that's the story." And my whole life now is just everything is stories. Obviously, I'm a huge fan of Expert Secrets and Dotcom Secrets, and you wrote those books and everything like that. You talk about kind of building this world and this identity, and bringing everybody in. And so I'm curious for you, where do funnels play into your life besides just marketing? Is this a worldview? Is this a lens upon which you view the world? Russell: Everything. Yes, for sure it is. It's interesting. I still remember back when I first got in this game, and I was learning marketing, and then I started studying Dan Kennedy's stuff and started... And I remember starting after I got that, some of the initial inputs of this world. What's the Matrix? The red pill or the blue pill. I took the pill and all of a sudden I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I see the world differently." And for me, it was fascinating. I started loving, I became obsessed. In fact, you can ask my wife this. We first got married, we listened to the radio and commercials would come on and she'd want to change. I'm like, "No, no, no. What are they doing? Did they do a good job did, they do a bad job, and how could they have done it better?" I started geeking out on that and I started watching more infomercials. I started watching as you go down the highway and you see the billboards. "Okay. That billboard, did it make me do anything, did it not? Was there a call to action, was there not? If there was, what did... " I'd get my phone out and I call the number and like, "What happened? What was the sales pitch?" And I started seeing behind the curtain of what was happening, and I became obsessed seeing that. And I remember, this is probably a little bit prior to this, but after I started seeing things I started realizing how things made me feel. I remember in high school, I was the wrestler, as you know. and I was into my health and fitness. I didn't understand it back then, but I do remember Bill Phillips had a magazine called Muscle Media. This is probably way before your time. But it was the first muscle building magazine that wasn't... All the other ones were these dudes who were just steroided out. And Muscle Media was the dudes and the ladies in it was who you want to look like. That guys looks amazing. And he had a supplement company called EAS he launched, and so I got into supplements and got into Bill Phillips. I got into his world, where I was reading his magazine articles and buying his supplementsm and it was cool. But I remember I wanted to buy some... I can't remember what the new supplement was. And there was a GNC close to my house.And so I remember jumping my bike, riding down to GNC, being so excited to buy a supplement. And I walked through the door, and as soon as I walked through the door of the GNC, the person came out and was like, "Hey, how can I help you?" And I'm like, “uh…”, and kind of freaked out. I was like, "Oh, I'm just looking." And I got all nervous and then I kind of wandered away, and then it felt like the person was kind of following me and everything. And I remember I came there cause I wanted to buy something, but I felt so uncomfortable, excuse me, that eventually I just snuck out and I left. And I was like, "I didn't get the thing." Because I felt so uncomfortable in the process that even though I came there with my money in hand, ready to buy something, I didn't because I didn't like the process. And I noticed, I don't know if you ever go into a GNC. As soon as you walk in, they always come and they pounce on you. And even to this day when I walk into GNC, it's one of my favorite stores. But I know the initial anxiety of the person pouncing on me asking if I can help them, or what I'm looking for. I'm like, "I don't know what I'm looking for. I want to literally read the back of every label of every bottle here. I'll come to you if I need help, but don't come and pounce on me." And I started realizing that and I started thinking, "If this was my story, how would I have wanted to be approached?" And I started thinking the script. And I started thinking if I came in the door and the person says something like, "Hey, welcome to GNC today. I'm over here. If you need anything, let me know." And it was more of a deflect, I would've felt more comfortable. I would've walked around, then I would've felt comfortable coming back the person. And I just started thinking through that. Anyway, that was before I learned marketing. I remember feeling that way, and as I started studying marketing I was like, "Oh, my gosh. I now know why I felt that way. The script was wrong and the process was wrong." And I started thinking through things more like that. And I'm sure it was annoying for my family. We'd go to a restaurant and I would notice how did the server do things, and what did they say? And it started opening up for me. In fact, my junior year in high school during the summer, I got a serving job and I was serving tables. And I remember, because I would split test different things to see what would give me more tips. If I said this to a person versus this. And I remember in fact, this is a 17 year old kid who's stuck on himself. I'd roll my sleeves. "If my sleeves are rolled up and they see more of my arms, would it be higher?" And literally would split test this thing to try to figure out how to increase them. And it's just weird. That was when I was young, and definitely it's messed me up nowadays, because it's hard for me when I see every ad, everything. I want to go deep into things, and I do sometimes but sometimes it takes me long rabbit holes. I don't know if that answers the question or not. Josh: Okay. Well, I want to kind of dive further down deeper into that, because I want to expand beyond just marketing as well. Because I think any of us as marketers when we have the light bulb turn on, you take the red pill or whatever it is. I remember for me, I had that first experience with money. I grew up in a very small, small, small town. The two towns collectively combined had 750 people in them, and one bank and a gas station. Very, very small world. And then I started learning about money, and I'll never forget the day that it clicked for me. I was actually out in... I had already moved to Nebraska, and I started to realize how money flowed. And I got done reading this book, and I remember I picked up the phone and I called one of my friends who had been teaching me about money. I'm like, "Dude, I get it now. I get everywhere around. I can't not see how money is flowing and where it works." I'm like this, and now I have all these questions about it. And so I totally understand when your lights come on, you start seeing the whole world through that, for that specific thing. But I want to know what about other areas of your life, and how funnels and your viewpoint of funnels has affected that. And what I'm trying to get at and understand, is you talk a lot about in Expert Secrets, we're building this identity, we're building this community, we're building this movement, this calling. And what's interesting for me I've noticed, is that when I first got into this space, I was so new that the preconceived notions of what people should do or should not do did not affect me. Because I didn't know anything. I was like, "I know I'm an idiot." people were like, "You're doing that wrong?" I'm like, "Probably." And there was no ego in the way of it. But then as I grew, I thought there were certain ways that I had to think, or there were certain things that I had to do. And then if I broke free from the mold that everybody else was doing, then somehow that was wrong. And I struggled with that. Thankfully for me, I didn't stay in there. But what helped me get out of it, is I gave myself permission and I literally was like, "I'm doing my own world over here. Everybody else, they can have whatever it is that they want. They can make more money than me, that's fine. I'm building this own little thing." And when I envisioned myself stepping into this world, then I was allowed to make my own rules. And so the rules had to follow everything else, but people would be like, "Josh, it's super weird that you think about everything in marketing." And I'm like, "But that's my world." And so everything about my life, from what I buy, to where I live, to who I hung out with, was all shaped around that. And for a while, that was weird. And whenever I would go to my friends it was like, "You're weird." And I struggled with that. But then once I gave myself kind of permission to be like, "Well, that's just literally how I think. That's my world, and it's okay to be different." That really freed me. And so I'm curious. How has funnels shaped your world outside of only marketing? And what would you tell somebody? Would you tell someone it's okay to like view the world through whatever their new opportunity is, in all aspects of life? Does that make sense? Russell: I think so. It's interesting, because I know you're trying to get outside of marketing, but it's fascinating because in my vision of the world, like everything is marketing. Josh: That's what I'm saying though. That's what I'm saying. Russell: When I meant my wife- Josh: How has that affected relationships? When you are dealing with a problem in your family, do like go like, "What's the funnel for this?" Does that make sense? Russell: How do we craft the story, the pitch, the thing. But it's true, because I think about when I met my wife. When I met her, there were multiple people who... She was the prospect and multiple people all competing for her attention. It was like, "Okay. I've got to create a better offer. I'm not the best looking guy, so I got to... What are the tools I have to increase the value of what I have to be more attractive to her?" And things like that. With my kids right now, it's tough because my kids have got so many distractions and there's things that are way cooler than dad. I'm always trying to think through that lens of, "Okay." Josh: Wait, there's people cooler and Russell Brunson? What? Russell: You could never be a prophet in your hometown, they say. You're never cool to your own kids. But it's tough though, because I'm competing against all of... For my kids, the rappers that are in their ears, and they're listening to all these people who... That part of the world. And they got their friends and they got these... There's so many things we're competing against. It's like, "Okay. Well, how do I take them on this journey to be able to help?" And you talked about universe building, which is true. In fact, I'm working on a project with Dan Kennedy right now, and it's all about that concept of universe building, and things like that. And you look at the big companies that have done it successfully, that's what they did. Walt Disney built this universe. In fact, I've listened to the interviewed me and Dan did on Funnel Hacking Live, and he talked about Walt Disney and Hefner were basically the same business. He's like, "One had bunnies and one had had rabbits or whatever. Or one had mice, one had bunnies." But it's the same business, right? They both had a universe that people came into. And I think about that. We're doing the same thing. You create a universe for your customers. That's a lot of what the Expert Secrets and everything is about, creating this customer universe. But it's true in your office with your team, it's true with your family, it's true with your relationships. You're kind of trying to craft this environment that makes people first off want to be there and to be part of it, and then to persuade people to hopefully get the things you're looking for. All of us are in a persuasion business, even we don't want to admit it. And people are like, "I don't persuade people. I don't manipulate people." But you are. What do you want to eat for dinner tonight? You got to persuade the other person. What movie do you want to go to? Are we going to go out tonight, or are we going to sit home on the couch? You're always in this thing of persuasion. And if you look at any kind of sales environment, is the number one. The biggest, one of the most important things when you're trying to sell somebody something, is the, the environment. The universe that you put them in. It's the reason why if I do a pitch on a virtual event, where somebody is at their own home, in their own environment, and I'm giving them a glimpse in my environment. I can convert and I can sell people. But I do the exact same presentation at Funnel Hacking Live in a room where I control the environment, they're in my universe. My sales were 5-6X, even though it's the exact same presentation, exact same everything because I'm controlling the environment. And so my home, same thing. How do I control this environment, my home? And how do I structure things? And how do we set the same things? You think about in the ClickFunnels ecosystem, we've got these awards. We got the Two Comma Club awards, Two Comma Club X. We have things like that. How do we create these things for people to strive towards inside of our families? Colette and I did that a couple years ago. We were trying to figure out what's our family goals. Do we have a goal? What does that look like? What's something that we can collectively all work towards together? And in the Mormon church, one of the biggest goals is you want to get married in the temple. But to get married in the temple, you have to be living worthily. There's all these things to do. And so as a family, we set a goal. How do you explain it? If my kids get married in the temple, their younger siblings won't be able to go, because they're not old enough to be able to go into the temple to actually witness the marriage. The goal we set as a family, we set a goal of when Nora... Because Nora is the youngest. When Nora gets married, the goal is we'd love her to get married in the temple, and we want all of our family to be there. Which means all of our family has lived in a way where we're worthy to be there together as the family. That became our family goal, and it's this thing we're all shooting towards. And it's fun, because now when I'm having family conversations with my kids, it's like, "Hey, you shouldn't be doing that." It's like, "Hey, these are things that are keeping us away from our family goal." We want to do this thing in 10 years from now, 15 years ago, Nora... But the way you're living, you're not going to be able to do that. And it's less of me trying to tell them what to do, as much as this is the goal we collectively set as a family. This is what we're trying to get to. Same thing in Marketing, we're trying to get the Two Comma Club award, cool. You can go listen to forty other gurus if you want, but this is the path. This is the process. We can get you there, but if you're distracted... It's just kind of a similar thing where, you set the things inside the universe, the goals, the steps. And hopefully, everyone... Not that they will or that they want to. Maybe my kids decide they hate the universe and they want to break out of it, and that can happen, too. People don't think funnels are cool, because they don't like me. I talk too fast or I'm annoying or whatever, and they enter different a different universe, but that's okay. Josh: Yeah. And I think entering a different universe, I think maybe what I'm trying to get at is I grew up, once again, super small town. Super small world, and I just figured there was a way the world worked. Singular. That's how it worked. And as I've grown up, I was striving to figure that out. I'm like, "What's the way the world works?" And I get out there and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. There's five million different ways the world works." And depending upon whose world old that you're in. And so I was watching the football game last night. We had it on. It was the Steelers and the Vikings. I don't know. By the way, I know you don't watch football, but I'm going to make a prediction on here for all my football fans out there. Patriots are going to the Super Bowl versus Tom Brady. It's going to be Tom Brady and the Bucks versus Bill Belichick and the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Anyway, we're watching it last night and they have this documentary that's coming out. Do you know who John Madden is? Russell: Yeah. Just from the video game. Josh: Yeah. They have this whole thing on Madden and his whole life. And it's coming out, this documentary, and they do little clips, and there's all these different little people talking about it. And they're like, "This dude, you couldn't be around him and not love football. Because he just exuded football in every aspect of his life. At the dinner table, around his family, around his friends, at the... Football, football, football, football." And it got me thinking, because I'm preparing for this interview last night. And I'm like, "That guy's whole life was football. That's how it came about. He couldn't imagine a reality where football didn't exist. "Yet there's somebody else out. There's millions, billions of people out in this world who they never heard of or think about or want anything to do with football." And so here's a guy where his whole life revolves around football. All of his analogies, all of his stories, all of his strategies, everything was football all. And then I was like, "Oh, I wonder if that's what it's like living with Russell." Everything is funnels. And it's like funnels, funnels, funnels, funnels, funnels. I feel like sometimes as entrepreneurs, I know I struggled with this for a while, and I struggled with this a lot more when I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. When I was still trying to figure out my voice and kind of everything like that. But I'm like, "I just can't be the X guy, because that would be weird. That's not how reality works. That's not how life works. You don't just get to just focus on all of this." But I feel like it is. And I feel like you don't necessarily have to be a single thing guy, but I feel like you can. In the sense of... And that's why I'm trying to get at with you, is I feel like you've gone into this world and you've found the thing that works. And you've said, "Hey, listen, basically, in life you have to know where it is that you're going and how it is that you're going to get there." That's essentially in life, and that's kind of my core premise of everything. I'm like, "I don't care how you live in life." But I'm like, "If you don't know where you're going and how you're going to get there, your life is going to suck. You're not going to have a very fulfilled life." And so I feel like for you, you've figured out, "Okay. Wherever I want to get, this is the vehicle I'm going to use." And you've built an entire reality and universe around that. Yeah? Russell: Yeah, for sure. And it's interesting though, too, because I actually was on a call last night with Stu McLaren at their prediction college here, and he was asking my predictions for the future. And it's interesting because yes, funnels is the thing. It's my lens. And that's what people come to me. It's the lens they come through. But what I think is fascinating, and I see this with... In fact, I told Stu, I'm like, "There's an evolution. People were experts for a while and then they became influencers." And I think the next phase, it won't stick. People will still call themselves influencers, because it sounds cool and they feel the significance of that. But I think the next phase is people are going to become curators more so. Which is someone comes to me for funnels, but it's interesting because my last inner circle meeting, people pay 50 grand to be in the room. There's 100 people in this room and they're here because they want to learn funnels from Russell. We're talking about funnels and then we open for Q&A. And guess how many funnel questions came through? Zero. The questions were, "Russell, I came to you for funnels, but I trust you. I like you." And they didn't say this, but this is what happened, is they wanted to figure out how I curate. They wanted me to curate other thoughts for them. "I trust you in this, therefore what do you think about religion?" And they want me to take all my years of curation of all the ideas like, "This is what I believe." Or they're like, "How is your family successful?" And so they asked me these other questions. And I was telling Stu last night. I'm like, "Stu, you're the membership guy. People come from your memberships. But after they come in, that's what brings them into the door, but then they're coming because they want your curation of other ideas." Dan Usher. I think Dan on our team. It was fascinating, because his favorite band is Rufus or something like that. I don't really know the band that well. But he's obsessed with them and their music, and so he follows them, he loves them and everything. And he just bought his first house out here in Boise, so he needed to get art on the wall. He's like, "Well, I love Rufus. I trust them. They've curated their favorite art." He went and bought everything that Rufus ever said they like for art and put it on his wall. He's like, "Cool. Because I trust them, therefore I want this." And then he bought the furniture that they have in their house, because he trusts their opinion on this and other things. And so I think it's with Madden, I'm sure the football is what brings people in. And they come in there, they sit at the table for that. But then if they like him and they connect with him, then they want to know, "What else do you know?” I want to go down these other rabbit holes with you, because I trust you and I trust your opinion. I trust because you've already kind of done that." I think for me, that's probably more so, is they come in from one thing, but then if they connect with you then they want to dive deep on all the other pieces, the things that you find fascinating. Josh: Yeah. It's almost like they need the in to step into your universe, and then you get to build the rest of the universe out for them simply because you've built trust in that one area. Russell: Yeah. And what's fascinating. If you rewind back in my history 15 years ago, it was tough because when I was trying to create my universe, I didn't know that's what it was called. But it was funny. If you look at the landscape in our industry back then, it was interesting. Jeff Walker was the launch guy, Frank Kern was the mass control guy, Filsaime was the butterfly marketing person. Everyone had a thing where they were the best. Brad Fallon was SEO, and then you had Perry Marshall was PPC, and everyone had their thing. And I came in, I was good at all of this. I'm like, "I'm the guy who do everything." And I'd go to events like, "Cool, what do you do?" I'm like, "What do you need? I'm good at copywriting, and I can do all the things." And people are like, "Oh, okay." But then they'd go and they'd sign up for Jeff for launch. And I'm like, "I can do launch. I've done tons of launches." Or they'd go to whoever for copywriting, John Carlton for copywriting. I'm like, "God, I've done all these things." But there wasn't a thing. It wasn't until I specialize in. "Okay. Funnels is the thing." And it was a narrow focus where people could attach a thing in their head like, "Oh, Russell is the guy who does funnels." And they do that. But they come into the... That's the doorway that brings them into my world. But inside the funnel world, what is there? You can launch a funnel. There's copywriting, there's traffic driving, there's all these other things. But I had to bring them in through a channel they could connect with, they could label me with. You know what I mean? But after they're in my universe, there's all sorts of stuff I can do with him. Josh: I feel like that right there was the core of what I was trying to get after. I think a lot of people struggle with or are afraid to claim their thing, because they're like, "I can't just claim it." Funnels. Russell could claim funnels because that was a thing, but was it a thing before Russell? Was there a funnel... You are the one that came in and nobody came to you and was like, "Russell, you're the funnel guy. Go." You were the one that had to decide that. You were the one that had to come in and be like… Russell: And it's fascinating, because I was the only one back then talking about it. There was a bunch of people. In fact, I remember Todd and I started building ClickFunnels. And I remember about that time it was T&C, so it was the T&C before we launched ClickFunnels. And we got T&C, we were sitting in the audience, and Todd and I are mapping things out, and we're talking back and forth. And the entire T&C, that event was about funnels. And so Ryan was on stage, Perry was on stage talking about funnels they developed. "This is the funnel framework for all funnels." They sold the $18,000 funnel coaching program and half the room signed up, and all this stuff. And I was like, "Oh, my gosh. That's what we're trying to go, but they just took it from us." And then it was crazy. After that T&C, then everyone was talking about funnels. And it was funny, because the next week everyone became a funnel consultant. All of a sudden, 2,000 little funnel consultants were running around the internet talking about funnels. And I remember Mike Filsaime had done something showing behind the scenes of one of his funnels, and I remember somebody else got mad. I'm like, "We're the funnel person. You shouldn't be talking about this us." And I remember Mike and him were fighting back and forth. I was kind of watching this and I was like, "We have this software coming out called ClickFunnels. And I have this book I'm writing that's almost done called Dotcom Secrets, which is all about funnels." And so I was stepping in this thing where there was a whole bunch of noise around this topic, and I could have been like, "Who am I? I'm not qualified." Whatever. But instead I was like, "You know what? This is what I'm obsessed with. And I'm just going to do my thing, and I don't care about everybody else." And so I just did my thing and came out there, and there were people who... I can't tell the actual stories, but there were people who were upset. "You shouldn't be talking about this, Russel. This is so and so's thing." And then at TNC the next year, there was some weird comments from stage made about stuff. Because in fact, somebody said from stage, "Because of what we talked about last year at T&C, Russell created ClickFunnels because of us." And they gave them credit for this thing. And it was just this craziness. But man, we were the only ones who took it and that were consistent, consistent, consistent, consistent. I'm seven, almost eight years into the consistency, which is how you define the path. That's how you get the... You look at Jeff Walker, who's been talking about product launches for 20 years. Therefore, he's the product launch guy. People try to come dethrone him, but he's been consistently talking about the same thing for so long that you can't. And so the biggest thing is picking the platform, and then you just triple down on it and you keep doing it, and doing it, and doing it. And eventually, you will rise the Victor. But most people don't have the longterm, the patients to keep just drilling in for long enough to make it stick. Josh: Yeah. And I think that a lot of times, at least in my experience, and it could be different for other people. But a lot of times, it's because you're just not confident enough in it. The only thing that's going to be the difference of whether or not it's going to stick or not, is whether or not you're confident enough to follow through. That's not necessarily true for every single product universally. Sometimes the market doesn't fit, and sometimes there really is... If you tried to launch a competitor to iPhone right now, you're probably not going to make it. But generally speaking, especially in our world with funnels and experts and a lot of online influencer marketing and things of that nature. It's basically whoever sticks at it the longest and then creates the clearest, simplest stories, the clearest, simplest frameworks, and the easiest way for people to be able to get results with it, are the ones that are actually going to make it and follow through. Russell: Yeah. That's the game, and it's so much fun. Josh: All right. Well, I'm ready to move onto topic number two here. We're about at time. Russell: All right. Josh: You ready to rock and roll? Russell: We'll wrap it up. Thank you guys for listening. If you enjoyed this, let us know. Otherwise, we'll never do this again, so if you loved it, tag me and Josh on Facebook, Instagram, wherever you guys do stuff. If you tweet, I probably won't see it there, but tweet it up and let us know, and we'll come back and do some more of this stuff.

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Rapid-Fire Q&A With My FunnelHackers!

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 24, 2021 29:37

See if your question got answered live! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everyone. This is Russell. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. I'm back with Josh today. And do I tell them what today's episode is, this is a really fun one? Josh Forti: Yeah. Today guys, we're doing rapid fire. We went to the community. We asked a bunch of different questions and by the way, we have like so many more to go over. So like, hey, just keep coming in, which is awesome. But it's a rapid fire Q and A with Russell to kind of bring out a side of Russell that maybe, maybe we don't get to see as much by asking just a bunch of rapid fire questions. Russell: There's some cool questions there. I think you guys going to enjoy. I think there's something for everybody. So listen, take notes. And next time we ask you for some questions, make sure you submit them maybe you'll get answered live. Josh: And called out. We called out some people. Russell: It's true. Maybe you got called out. You should pay attention. Anyway, thanks Josh. This was a fun episode, with that said, let's queue up the theme song and we'll get right back with some Q and As. Josh: All right. So this one I want to do a little bit different, kind of phase three here as we go through this is I went and ask community bunch of different questions and there's so many different ones. I've got screenshots on screenshots on screenshots of, on Facebook, on Instagram and kind of things like that. And so I thought it would be cool to go through and do a rapid fire style where we hit you with a bunch of different questions. And there's a lot of similarities, like underlying actual questions at what it is. But a lot of it is people they want to understand your thought process. They want to understand how you run certain things or how you do certain things or whatever. And so what I thought would be cool is I have enough questions to where we could literally do one a minute for the next couple hours. So take as much time as you want or need to go through this. But I think if we just went through and did like a rapid fire of like, all right, start here and then go through and do this, I think that'd be super beneficial. And I think it'd be a unique creative thing that we could try and see how people like it, sound good? Russell: That'd be fun. Let's do it. Josh: All right. So the first question is, and I think this kind of... It's interesting, I think this ties into both of our previous topics that we covered and talked about, whether it be podcasting and finding your voice there or funnels and figuring that all out is like... The question got asked probably three or four different times, some variation of like, what do you do when you don't know what you want to do yet, like when you haven't found that voice? And you're like, because I think... For me, it's interesting. I actually found my voice before I found my product, right? And I think a lot of people figure out what they are going to sell before they find their voice. And so for me it was a little bit easier because I had all these followers before I was ever selling anything and I was super broke and then I found dotcom secrets and it was like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing." I literally went from making like $25,000 a year to like $250,000 a year and like one year. It was amazing because I just added it too. But a lot of people, they really struggle with like, "Okay, cool, I get all these things conceptually. I know I need a funnel and I know I need a value ad. I know I need a community and a following and raving fans. And I get all the things, but I don't know mine yet. I don't know the thing. And so when you're doing that, like what's the thing that you do or what advice would you give people to fix that problem of, or what things should they be focused on when they haven't found their voice yet? Russell: I'd say there's two directions on this, and both of them are correct. It's just depends on who you are. Number one, if you are a visionary, if you do the DISC profile, and you're a high I, you want to be the person that's there; the biggest key is not to wait. If I would've waited four click funnels and funnels, I never would've got here. I just started creating stuff that was bad like potato guns, zip brander, or forum fortunes. All these things that didn't work or I made very little money. No one's ever heard of, but I did 150 funnels before I was ever like, "I'm the funnel guy. I'm going to fun... I go on teach..." I started getting into funnels and then we built funnel software, but it was man 14 years and 150 funnels before I figure that out. But if I wouldn't have been in motion, I never would've found that. So if you are a creator and you know that's your calling, just start moving forward and find out what you're passionate about. If I was starting today, I would be into bio hacking, I'd be into nutrition. I'd be into those are the things I'm really geeking out about now in my life. So I'd be running that direction. I don't know what the opportunity's going to be, but I'm going to do something or I'm going to nothing… And then eventually I feel like God, as we start moving in a direction, like conscious I'm moving this direction, trying to figure this out; He will give us little ideas. He'll give us impressions and ideas. And He's trying to see like, "If I give Russell's idea, is he going to be good steward to this idea or not? And if I take it and I implement it, He's like, oh, he's a good steward of little thing, let me give him some more. Let me give him some more." And then 14 years later, He is like, "Okay, now I know he's worthy of this. Let me give him the big idea." But He's checking it. And if you get the idea, you're like, "Oh, I'm scared. I get fearful, whatever." And you don't do it, He's not going to give you the next one. He's like, "Oh, he's not a good steward of ideas." And He gives idea to somebody else. It's why, how many times you are like, "I had an idea for that, but so, and so did this." Because you weren't a good steward of the idea when it showed up. So that's the one thing it's like moving forward. The second thing is that some of you guys, you're not the visionary person and that's okay. There's 450 people who work at ClickFunnels who aren't the visionary person. And if it wasn't for all of them, I'd be screwed. There are people that are my number twos that are my psychics that are helping me support it and they can buy into my vision. In fact, I remember Leon who designs all my slides for me. He's one of the most amazing people in the world. And he was out here in Boise one day and he's a quiet guy, just more reserved and he's got to leave for the airport. And he pulled me aside, he said, "I want to talk to you real quick." And I was like, "Yeah, what's going on?" And he said, he's like, "I've decided that my mission in life is to help you to get your word out to the world." I got chills and I was like, "Oh my gosh. Thank you." It was such a cool thing. And I was like... And I got it. He's got this skillset. He's not going to be on stage doing the things and doing podcasts and stuff, man, without him, I couldn't do what I'm doing. So being a supporting role is huge. So find a vision you do believe in. If you're like... I think Dave Asprey in the bio... and the bulletproof movement is the thing, go get a job from them, go work for them, go work for free, whatever. It's like, go figure out how you can be close to that person and help bolster. It's like, I'm hoping that everyone believes in something. Figure out something you believe in, you're passionate about and go be a supporter of that. Your vision is not to be something you created. It's just something you're supporting and you're helping to move forward. And so that'd be my two advice, depending on which side you fall on. If you're not sure, just start running. Josh: Love it. Russell: See what happens. Josh: Love it. That's awesome. And I think that's really, really cool. My current assistant, I've cycled through a couple of assistants now and I finally have one and she's amazing. And she's just like, "I came into your company thinking that this is what you needed." And I was like, "Yeah, because that's what I told you I needed. But I had no idea what I needed." And she's like, "What you actually needed is this." And I'm like- Russell: "I need you to tell me what I need." Josh: ... right. I was like, "Are you going to leave me now?" She's like, "No, I believe in you. And I believe in your vision. I know what you're trying to accomplish. You didn't realize this is what you needed but I believe in you." And I'm like, "Huh, that is a relief." If you can find that person, that's lucky. Next thing kind of goes along with this another rapid fire one is, as you're going through and you are figuring out all these different things and testing through your things, how do you make it to where you're not confusing your audience and to where they don't feel you're just a mess, that's everything is everywhere? You're trying all these different things. You're throwing things at the wall. Is that just something that people are just going to leave and just be upset just because, or is that like, is there ways to minimize that and communicate to your community that you don't know what you're doing, but that this is the vision. This is what we're going. I'm just trying a bunch of different things. Is there a way to do that well? Russell: Yeah. I think a couple things, number one is understanding that until you really dial that in, it's going to be hard to get a huge following anyway. Like the other day I was searching my name with someone else's name that I did a deal with 20 years ago and it pulled up the Google results and there was like, "Oh, I was so embarrassed." Anyway, it was bad. But guess what? Those people are all gone now. They left. They're are not even aware what happened. They don't know who I am. Most people are like, "Russell I've been following you since the beginning. Ever since you guys launched Funnel Hacking Live." I was like, "Oh, I was in business 15 years before the first Funnel Hacking Live." "I followed you all the way back from Micro Continuity." I was like, "That was a long time ago, I was in business nine years before Micro Continuity." Most people... Just understanding the people are going to be... When you figure out the thing, it's going to be a whole new group of people. And so it's not stressing too much about that, but at the same time, it's like, it's helping people understand like, I'm experimenting. I call it marketing experiments or like I used to call mine dotcom secrets labs before I wrote the book and anything it's like, I'm practicing these principles. So I would like study SEO and talk about like, "Oh." And I'd sell SEO courses for other people because I'm learning from this person to understand SEO. I'm over here and I'm in a laboratory testing these things out. This is what I'm actually doing. And there's a lot of value in that because you're becoming in proxy the person and sometimes you can cut through stuff that's working and not working, you can get direct access to people that they can. So just helping them understand like, my end goal is I want to be... Again, if I was going to bio hacking world right now, my end goal is I want to be healthier. So for example, this is my live mushroom GTS root beer. It's literally my favorite thing. I get twice a day. It's from Whole Foods. It's got Reishi, Chaga, and Turkey Tail. The actual fruiting bodies of the mushrooms in here blended into this root beer. It tastes like root beer my grandma used to make, I love it. I'm obsessed with it. So I could be like, "This thing's amazing. I'm excited about it. And this is why, and this is why I did the study and this is why I'm doing it." I could probably sell a crap ton of these right now. And then I could find out something else like Anthony DiClementi, he's got this thing. And I'm like, "I can be excited. I'm testing it. I bought his newsletter. I bought his membership site." And so it's just like you as the, I'm like a reporter, who's testing these things out in the beginning until you figure out what your thing is and you can really dial it. Maybe I become the mushroom dude who sells mushroom root beer. I don't know, but anyway. Josh: Please stick with funnels. We need you in that lane more. Is it good? All right. Cool. Next question we got here is, do you ever struggle with scarcity and being in scarcity mode even after you've made... Had all the success and as much money as you you've made, do you still struggle with being in scarcity mode or have you evolved past that? Russell: I don't struggle with scarcity. I have a lot of my own issues for sure. And it's funny because every time someone launches the next click funnels killer, it annoys me. But then I'm like, "You know what? First off they're not going to... I'm willing to outwork all of them and so I'm not worried that way." Number two, competition drives me, which is really, really good. And number three, actually, Annie Grace messaged me this a little while ago. She was talking about her business and all these people who were competing and she felt they were leading her people astray. And I was like, "I get that." And I said, "The thing that's most comforting to me is actually a Bible scripture where Jesus Christ said, my sheep will hear my voice and they'll follow me." That's not direct translation, but basically that's just like, my sheep will hear my voice. And I believe that's something that was true for him. But I think it's true for all of us. It's a universal principle. And so what I understand is like, I'm going to go out there. I'm going to be Russell. The best Russell I can be. And a lot of people are not going to follow me. They're going to understand that person better or whatever. Like some other product better, but my sheep are going to hear my voice and they're going to follow me. I'm going to attract the right people and they're going to come to Funnel Hacking Live, and they're going to use my platform. They're going to be exciting. And those are the people I've been called to serve. I am not called to serve the people who are going to go and go somewhere else. Or they don't resonate my message or with me or whatever. And I got to be okay with that because my sheep will hear my voice. And that's my belief that helps me to not be scared of scarcity, because I don't want those people anyway. I want my sheep to follow me and I'm going to help them. I'm going to serve them. Because that's what I've been called to serve. Josh: That's awesome. That's super cool. All right, next one here is actually from Parker Woodward, shout out Parker. Russell: Yeah, Parker. Josh: He says, "How do you know what positions to put members of your team in so they personally thrive?" Russell: Man, I cannot tell you, just you know Parker, this is a constant thing. So if you read the book Good To Great, one thing he talks about is like finding the right people and then putting them on the right seats on the bus. And those are two different activities. And sometimes you nail it. You're like, "Got the right person. They're on the right seat on the bus. And it's awesome." So many times in my company, I find someone who's amazing and we put them in a thing and it's like, "Oh, they don't fit there." And you move around four or five times like, "This person sucks at their job. They're horrible." And it's not actually true. It's horrible. The problem is you have the right person in the wrong seat on the bus. You get them the right seat and then they thrive. And so it's understanding that and really defining it of like, "What are the seats initially?" Because I think that's... You had this with your system. I don't really know what the seat is. I just know I need help. And I'm drowning, what that is, right? Josh: Yeah. Russell: You or someone around you understands like, this is where I'm hurting, this is what I'm struggling and they can define the seat, then it's easy to find the right person, or you find somebody like knows the right person. And then having them like working with them, being okay like, "We may have to try a couple seats so we figure out, I know you're the right cultural fit. I know you're the right person, the right work ethic." But I don't know what the skillset is yet. Maybe they don't know yet either. And as soon as you're able to figure out what their unique ability is, then you put in the right spot and then they can thrive. And so it's a two step process. Josh: Interesting. All right. This one's from Braden. He says, "What are the biggest beliefs fundamentally that you had to shift early on in your life or career that you believe are required to get to $100 million and beyond?" Russell: It's funny you think it's like belief that some marketing principles. So I found out every tier, so me to get to a million dollars, I was trying to get a million dollars in the calendar year. It took me three years in row. I missed it by like 20 grand, three years in a row, I couldn't do it. And it was totally like a mental block. I didn't believe that I could do it for some reason. And after I did the first time it was like, "Oh." Then it was easy. And then 10 million was my next mental block. I missed it first year, second year we got, and then... So it's there's these mental blocks where I don't know if it's we don't believe in ourselves. We don't believe in, that we're worth. I don't know if it's, we don't believe worthy of it or we have the abilities of it, whatever. But the first thing is you got to believe in yourself. And that just comes with a lot of you doing things. Again, it comes back... We talked about earlier, like God gives you an idea. You're going to be a good steward of this idea. And the more often you take an idea and you run with it. Even if you fail, the more times you do that, the more you start trusting yourself. And that's a big part of it. Right now I can walk into a room where there's like, things are on fire and there's pure chaos, I have no idea what I'm going to go into it. I walk in knowing that the right idea's going to show up and I need it because I've done it so many times over and over and over and over and over again. I just know that it's going to happen. And I have belief in myself. That's the first thing. I honestly believe that the second thing, this comes back to the spiritual side of things, is that there's a purpose behind it. I struggled growing ClickFunnels because I thought that it was for Russell and Todd and our friends to make money. I thought that's what the business was, for probably the first three or four years. And it wasn't until I hired this coach who helped me see the connection between things. And she's just... Because I was always like, there's business and there's spiritual things. And God doesn't care right with my business because whatever. And she helped me bridge the gap. Like, "Do you see what's actually happening because this business..." She see people's lives are changed. All these kind of things. And she was the first person who said, "This is literally a calling that God gave you to do this." And as soon as I heard that and I felt it and I believed it, it changed everything for me. I was like, "This isn't just something Russell does as a hobby on the side to keep me busy till I die, this is what I was made for." I was made to do this, to inspire entrepreneurs, to change the world because each entrepreneur can do that. And when I heard that and I believed it, then it changed everything. It gave me permission like, "Okay, well then it's all my donkey Kong. I'm going to publish. I'm going to create, I'm going to write books. I'm going to do software. I'm going to do things." Because it wasn't just like money for money's sake. It was because this is the mission. This is the calling. I need to do it. And so it changed everything for me. So I think for you guys, that'd be the next thing is like, you got to be connected. Is this actually what God wants me doing? And if you believe that, you believe it's not just some side hobby, man it gives you the feel you need to grow row because now it's bigger than just you making money. Making money is so uninspiring. Changing the world because you were called to, at least, for me changed everything. Josh: That's super, super interesting. And so obviously, I've worked with Katie Richardson and tremendous mindset shifting things in there. And one of the things that I've learned just about mindset, what you said there is your brain, by default just runs. And so it will run with whatever program... Like 90% of your life is basically autopilot. You don't even realize that you're making the decision that you're making. So it's like, whatever program is there, that's how your life operates. And how you change that is not by changing this or all these different things, it's by literally reprogramming is changing belief. And so if you could actually just shift the belief, that's actually shifting the program. And so I think, for me, when I first got started in entrepreneurship, it was how do I hustle my way to success? It was freaking. I was at Gary Vaynerchuk working 18 hours a day. Let's go. And so I was like, "That's what I'm going to do." And it was like, Katie came in and was like, "Cool. That's the belief that you have and it's only going to get you so far." And then once you can replace that belief, that it's like, "Oh, you don't have to do that anymore, this is the way to do it." It was a real identity crisis. It was like, "But wait, no, I'm a hustler. I'm up to 4:00 in the morning, every single morning. You can't take that away from me." But then once the belief shifted, then it was like, "Oh, everything else in life shifted." It was like, "Okay, cool. Now I operate this way." And so that's super, super interesting that you say that because I feel like- Russell: If you look at like what I believe my only role is inside of ClickFunnels literally is for me to stand on stage, to write books, do podcasts, everything so I can get our customers to believe this will work for them. That's it. I know it works for them. But if I get them the tool and they don't believe this is going to work for them, it will not work for them. I get them to believe this works. I'm the head belief, cheerleader. That's all I'm actually doing is trying to take my... Whoever has the most certainty, any circumstance, any situation always wins. So when I come into something, I've got to come with more certainty than them and I've got to prove them I believe it can work and it can work for them. And if I can get them to believe it, then it'll happen. But that's the hardest thing is just the mental thing inside people's head. As soon as they believe it, you see it, because it's like, "Oh, they're struggling, struggling." And all of a sudden something happens, and I believe it'll work for them and holy cow, next thing they know they're Two Comma Club. It's weird. Because it makes sense. You're like, "No, it's just a process." Like, "No, it's a process, but your belief is your fuel and how you attack this thing one way or the other, 100% depends on if you believe is going to work." If I believe that if I write a book, a million people are going to buy it, I can go write a book. If I'm like, "I don't think anyone's going to buy it. What if they don't like it? What if..." I'll spend 25 years writing this book, it's never going to get done. The belief is everything. Josh: ... yeah. Garrett White talks about that with Warrior Way. He's like, "We tell people this isn't the only way, this is A way." And I was talking with my students the other day, I was like, "Hey guys, how many different ways are there to grow your business?" And they're like, "I don't know, thousands of them." I'm like, "Sweet, what's the way you grow their business?" And they're like, "Funnels." Like without even thinking about it. And it was like, "See what Russell did there." He convinced me… Russell: And that took me seven years of preaching consistently to get the market and get people to believe that. But it wasn't that… yeah. It's interesting. Josh: All right. The next question here, and this comes up... I mean this probably came up probably more than anything outside of funnels was how do you manage the relationship with your family and the balance between work and family? Because this is something I think a lot of people struggle with. I didn't even realize that this was a thing until I got married and then I got married and I was like, "Oh, I'm experiencing a little bit of this." And I'm like, I can't imagine like then kids and then being around. So how do you balance your work and your family and overwhelm and burn out and like... I mean there's limited amounts and it seems you can do everything Russell, like cause you're everything over there. So how do you balance that with your family and the work life balance of that? Russell: That's a great question. I get asked that a lot, which is interesting. I think a lot of people... Well I think the big problem is most people who are doing what I do, they have... The area of life they're the entrepreneur, they're killing it, and then the rest of their life's a wreck. Or they just don't talk about the rest of life. No one knows. And so anyway, a couple things is number one, Charfen had us do like a time study before. You ever heard of that before? Josh: Yeah. They were the worst. I hate them so much. Russell: So annoying. Yeah I did it for like three minutes, I was like, "I want to die." But you basically sit down and you start every 15 minutes, you're like, write down what you're doing during the day and really quick you realize, "Oh I'm only actually working two hours a day." And I think the average employee, I think is in two hours and eight hour days is actual productive work, the rest is… Josh: Yeah, something like that. It's super low. Russell: So the first thing is just by default, this is comes from me being a wrestler, right? As a wrestler, we have two hour practice. We got the limited time and I wanted to be the best. So I had to cram as much actual stuff in those small windows as humanly possible. And you know when you're an entrepreneur, you're going on a trip and it's like, "My plane leaves at 2:00, but I got an hour and a half to work." In the hour and a half, you'll get more done than an entire day typically. And so I trick my mind that all the time. So if you look at like a typical eight hour day, like I'm coming in from usually from 9:30, till 5:00, it's like my window that I'm here at the office. When I'm here, I'm super present. But what I do in that window of time is what most people do in a week. Because I don't... People always ask me, "Hey Russell, can I take you to lunch?" I'm like, "You have the luxury of lunch. I've not eaten lunch in, I don't know, decade and a half, I'm working. I quit Uber eats. I keep working. It shows up, I'm eating it. And I keep going." I don't waste time for that crap. I'm in the zone and I'm working and I'm not doodling and texting in a million different things. When I'm doing something, I'm doing the thing. I was up this morning from 5:30, till 7:00, I was writing copy for the new offer. And like, that's what I did by myself. Cranked it out. Seven o'clock, boom, I hear Nora talking, hear the kids getting up. And then I break my presence at the thing and I leave and from 7:00 to like 8:30 ish, I'm a dad. And so I take high school kids in school. I come back and I pick up Nora and I play with her a little bit. And then I get her fed and then Collette's getting her dressed and stuff and I go wake up Aiden and then me and Aiden are hanging out. We're talking about the day. And then Collette takes Ellie to school. Aiden's there. I get in the shower. I get dressed. And by nine o'clock I'm ready to go. And I jump in my car. I come here and then boom, I'm in Russell, like I'm entrepreneur mode and from 9:30 ish till 5;00 I'm here. I'm cranking. My days blocked out. I know everything I got to do during the day. I got a to-do list. I got schedule. Everything's blocked out. I knew from 9:00 to 10:30, me and you were here and I'm present. I'm not looking at 1000... We're here doing the thing, it's going to be done. And then at 10:30, I know exactly what I'm doing. As soon as we're done, I'm not sitting around for 30 minutes, like what should I do next. I know what's going to be happening and I'm going, I'm doing the thing. And so my days are like that. So boom, boom, boom, by the time I get to the end of the day, it's like, "Oh, I got a lot of done today. This is amazing." And then I go home. And when I walk through the door from my car in the garage to the door, I send... Before I walk to the door I stop. And I'm like, "Okay, I got to literally stop for a second." I'm like, I'm getting dad mode. I'm getting husband mode. And I get done and I walk through the door and I'm now a dad and husband. I'm not an entrepreneur. And I go, literally go to every one of my kids in the house. My love language is physical touch. I go give each a hug. I go give my wife a hug. And then I'm there. And from that time I'm dad till 9:00 and then from 9:00 to 11:00 I'm husband and 11 o'clock I'm in bed waiting for the next day. And so it's just, I'm really good at chunking time. And I'm not perfect. Some days I'll get depressed or I'll get tired or burned out or whatever, and I don't hit it. But for the most part, I would say I'm pretty consistent in getting a lot of stuff done in the windows that I got. Josh: That's super, super interesting. Being present and being present at work, being present at home, that balance that once again, something Katie talked about a lot is just like, be fully present with where you are and then set boundaries. Having those clear for that Russell: You ask my wife too, I'm not perfect at it, but I try to let things bleed from thing to thing. I try that when I walk through the garage door at night that I'm done with work and I'm home and then, you know what I mean? Josh: Yeah. Russell: And I think that's what most people don't do is like, it all just mushes together where they're doing everything. So everything becomes done inefficiently. I was listening to Dan Kennedy actually yesterday. He's like, "Would you hire a doctor who is going to do surgery on you, and while he's doing surgery, he's watching YouTube video and he's eating something on the side?" He's like, "No, you want presence if you're going to hire someone." Same thing, if you want to build a funnel, you need your designer and everyone who's doing this to have laser focus. You don't want them doing these other things because you need their full attention and presence. Josh: That's awesome. This one's from Paul Vanblum He says, and I'm going to paraphrase this here because... But how do you modify your behavior? Which is, like maybe you've got this thing that you... I don't know, scroll Facebook too much and you just can't seem to quit. I'm sure that's not a problem for you, but how do you go through it actually change or modify behavior? Because it sounds like a lot of your life is routine. Is that true? You figure out the process that works and then you go until it needs to change. And then it's just you pick the next process. So how do you go through and modify behavior that you want to be able to change? Russell: That's a big section of the new book that's coming out someday in the future. So this is a reality is that the shorter versions if we're running close on time is understanding that we do things that meet our needs. And so we had to figure out, how are our needs being met? Talked about this at Funnel Hacking Live a little bit with Tony Robbins, Six Human Needs, right? Like if any... I wish I could geek out on this for like two hours. Maybe this would be the first topic for next time we do this. Josh: Yeah. I was going to say maybe we do that. Russell: That'd be fun. But there's six human needs and there's four needs of the body. And anytime three of the four needs of the body are met, it creates a physical addiction inside you. So if you're scrolling Facebook all day long, it's because it's meeting a need. Like you're getting certainty from it. You're getting significance from it. And you're probably getting love and connection from it. So three of your four needs are being met... And variety, all four of your needs are being met by scrolling Facebook. So it's creating a physical addiction. So for you to break that physical addiction, it's not going to be easy unless you replace it with another physical addiction that you enjoy more. So it's like I have to replacing that. I can't just just willpower it out and got this thing out and be gone. It's like, I'm trying to get my needs met somewhere. And so they're getting met there, I'm good. So I need to get met somewhere else to replace it. It's a lot of people get their needs met by eating. And so they keep eating, eating, and they want to lose weight and they can't lose weight because all their needs are met there. And so until they replace those needs somewhere else, they're going to keep defaulting to that. Again, we can geek on that for a long time, but that's the core root of it. Is it fulfills your need until you get those needs met somewhere else you're going to keep falling back to it over and over and over again. Josh: All right. Last two, super rapid fire questions. Number one. What is the top, the number one or... I'll give you top three, because number one's impossible. Top three books outside of your own that someone must read? Outside of your own because duh obviously is DotcomSecrets, Expert Secrets, and Traffic Secrets. Thinking bio... Russell: Oh, depends on which area of your life looking at. I just bought... I spent a... not a small, a pretty big fortune buying the Napoleon Hill thing. So I'm in the middle of this Napoleon Hill like Deep Dive. Can I give you my three best Napoleon Hill books because that's all I got right now. Josh: There you go. All right, modify the question, three best Napoleon Hill books? Russell: Everything else seems like a distraction. So for me Outwitting the Devil is the best thing he's ever written. It is insanely good and very, very practical. Think and Grow Rich, I've been revisiting and like, oh, it's so good. And then the Laws of Success is not a book. It's a book series, which I now own. Oh my gosh. I don't know if I've even told you this yet. I think I showed you a quick picture, but- Josh: You showed me a video, yeah. Russell: ... The Laws of Success was published in 1928. I have his version that he wrote in 1925 before he sent it to the editors or publishers, first edition signed that he printed at a schoolhouse here in my possession. It's insane. Josh: I can't wait to visit your library bro. Oh my gosh. It's crazy. Russell: But those are the three. I would start with Outwitting the Devil because I'll make you fall in love with Napoleon Hill, then go Think and Grow Rich. And if you love that, then go into Laws of Success' it's like a longer form version of stuff, but it's... Ah, he's my favorite right now. Josh: All right, last question for you. And we all know the answer to this, but I thought it was a great last question to end on just to make sure in business, in marketing, in success for all of success, what's the number one skillset that someone must learn? Russell: Oh, persuasion. Josh: Persuasion. Russell: It's learning how to tell a story in a way that gets people to move. Because everything else, like I can outsource all the rest of it. But like I said, we're talking about creating the offer for the Magnetic Marketing. It's the story, the persuasion, the thing that's going to get people to move. And that... Because that weaves into your funnel, weaves into your email, like weaves into how you get your team to move. How you get your community. All the stuff comes down to that skillset of learning how to persuade people. Josh: Awesome. Well, Russell, I think that wraps it up. We'll see what the audience says. But that is a fun run. Russell: That was really fun, man. I appreciate that. This has been a good day. I woke up this morning working, have a ton of energy. This has been a lot of fun energy. I appreciate you appreciate it. And if you guys like these episodes like this, let us know and we'll do it again. This was kind of a test drive to see if you enjoyed it. Josh: Yeah, you got to let us know guys. Russell: And I had a lot of fun. So hopefully you did too. Josh: Was this was super fun. Yeah, man, for sure. It was good chatting with you and everybody go buy Russell stuff and ClickFunnels and all the things because it'll make you tons and tons of money and that's it. That's just the end of it. Russell: That's the real reason we did this… I wanted you to pitch the stuff so I didn't have to awkwardly tell people to buy it. Thank you so much. Josh: Okay. Everybody go buy stuff right now. It is amazing. That's my pitch. The first thing you're going to get is you're going to get a change of belief. The second thing you're going to get is you're going to get, I don't know what it is, a step by step process of the marketing bible. The third thing you're going to get is increase the status because Russell will like you. Boom there's my pitch. Russell: Boom. What more do you want in life? Come on now. Josh: Yeah, you can't imagine. All right, Russell. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate your time and we'll talk to you soon. Russell: Awesome. Thank you too.

Unpacking Narcissism - The Original Douchebag | #45

Multifaceted Masculinity

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 22, 2021 47:26

True Narcissists are douchebags! Well, they can be. Narcissism in relationships, Narcissism in the Church or other organizational leadership - it seems to be a hot topic lately and many are still trying to understand it. It tends to creep into even the most beautiful of environments and stifle initially benevolent intentions. In today's episode, Josh and Seth unpack Narcissism and its close proximity to our worlds and how it can negatively influence, control, limit and block a healthy reality or paradigm for where we're at. In this episode you'll learn: Basic characteristics of narcissism and how it develops True healthy masculinity vs. toxic narcissistic masculinity Narcissistic tendencies vs. being a narcissist What Narcissists need to survive How to address your Narcissistic tendencies The Empowerment Dynamic - Victim vs. Creator Quotes “The church environment, in my opinion, is a breeding ground for narcissism because of the whole service mentality.” - Josh “Narcissism finds its safety in controlling” - Josh “You can't open your heart up and not be empathetic. Plant Medicine allows for you to be empathetic” - Seth “They could be a complete asshole and you can still love them but that does not mean you're supposed to stay in that relationship. Love is not always enough.” - Seth [Looks like Nadya didn't do quotes yet for this episode, so I didn't think to listen for quotes, but I kind of remember some things we talked about, so maybe the above will work.] Links Host Name: Josh Cearbaugh https://joshcearbaugh.com https://www.instagram.com/jcearbaugh/ https://facebook.com/joshcearbaugh https://www.jumpstartyourlife.com Links Host Name: Seth Conner https://sethconner.com https://www.instagram.com/sethaconner/ https://www.facebook.com/iSethConner/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethaconner/ Companies, Products & Places Mentioned Mushroom Doctor (psilocybin micro-dosing) www.MushroomDoctor.co/shop The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic) (https://www.amazon.com/POWER-TED-EMPOWERMENT-DYNAMIC-Anniversary/dp/0996871802) Default Mode Network (https://psychedelicstoday.com/2020/02/04/psychedelics-and-the-default-mode-network/)

love church original companies basic unpacking narcissism plant medicine douchebags default mode network josh you ted the empowerment dynamic

The MOST Important Part of the Funnel (I Guarantee it's NOT What You Think!)

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 22, 2021 31:22

What is the future of funnels...? With meta-verse coming, what should we be focused on now!? Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up everybody? This is Russell Brunson. I'm back with my co-host Josh Forti. How you doing, man? Josh Forti: I'm doing awesome, man. How are you? Russell: Doing so good. We just recorded a new episode for you guys. This one's all about funnels and I think it went in a different direction you thought it was going to go, didn't it? Josh: Yeah, it did, a little bit. It was super good. Russell: …because the question was like, "What is the next funnel? What's the thing?" And it wasn't a funnel thing, it was something different. So, I think this is an episode you guys can enjoy. Josh: It's tough. Russell: It's been so exciting for me, I literally woke up at 5:00 AM every morning this week because I'm geeking out on the thing that you're going to learn about. And hopefully, it'll help you guys with all your funnels, no matter if you're running a webinar funnel, or a book funnel, or a challenge funnel, or whatever, doesn't really matter. This principle, you can overlay on top of all of them and it'll make them all better. So, that said, should we queue up the theme song? Josh: Let's do it. Russell: Let's go. Josh: Now we got to move into.. I want to move into funnels, dude. This is a topic that continued to come up. So kind of a back story. When we're preparing for this episode, guys like, Russell hit me up and was like, "Do you want to do a podcast together?" And I was like, "Yeah, what do you want to do it on?" He's like, "I don't know, find something." And I'm like, "oh, all right." And so- Russell: "You tell me." Josh: I do what I all always do and I go to the community and I'm like, if the community tells me... I loved Poland's presentation at Funnel Hacking Live it's like, "Ask, go ask your community. What did they tell you?" And so, that's what we did. I went to my Facebook group and I went on my Instagram and luckily, I have a pretty engaged following that will give us lots of feedback back. And this theme that kept coming up was funnels. And obviously, this is your world. But it was interesting because I've been talking with several different higher level people that are like, "How are all the funnels, they made tens of millions of dollars or whatever?" And it's like, "This funnel's not really working anymore. This funnel's kind of working here. This type of funnel is working." And so there's like, I feel like we're in this phase of funnels are almost evolving, where it used to be that you could run an ad to a webinar and sell a 9.97 product, and make a million bucks, and high profit margins, and you can make it work. But I was talking to Dan Henry the other day and he's like, "Dude, I can't even make that work anymore." And he's like, "And I'm brilliant at ads." And like Sam Ovens, I was talking to him the other day- Russell: Dan Henry, "I know everything." I love Dan. Josh: And Sam Ovens was like, "Man, we're probably going to shut down our front-end $2,000 program and we're going to transition up and evolve the way we do funnels." And so, funnels are the thing, obviously. They're going to be around forever, they've been around forever, you popularized them. But I want to go and take this into two parts and see where this goes. But number one, what is the foundation of funnels? What are the things that like... it doesn't matter how it's executed, the funnel itself, this is the thing that works. Because I think a lot of people get confused that... Whenever I talk to a lot of my students that are building funnels, they're like, "Should I do this type or this?" And I'm like, "The core essence of funnels doesn't change," so what are the core essence of funnels? And then two, what is the future of what that looks like rolled out with technology? Because I mean, I know it's not here yet and one of the things we'll talk about, but- Russell: Metaverse. Josh: We got Metaverse. And my wife was like, "Oh my gosh, ask Russell. If I want to be able to walk into Metaverse and Russell's going to be right there being like, "'Hey, do you want to buy my funnel cake,' click this button and you go into a portal. Instead of another page, you enter a new world that is Russell's world, that'd be so cool." But let's start with the foundation of funnels. When someone is building a funnel, when they're looking at it, what are the core pieces that they're actually looking at? Take us back to the foundation of that because I think a lot of people miss that or forget. Russell: Yeah. So, I'll take you back in history back in time so back to my beginning. Think what example I have sitting here on my desk that I can show you. So, the core, the thing you have to understand why funnels are essential, and why they'll always be here, comes back to my favorite Dan Kennedy quote of all time which is, "Whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins." This is the foundation but... Everything else you have understand- Josh: Like 7,000 speakers at Funnel Hacking Live all said that. Russell: Yeah, because it's the thing. In fact, you'll see, if you look at the... And maybe we'll get into this. My next move, what's happening next year for me? I'm looking at this, all ties into that as well. Why did I buy Dan Kennedy's company? Why am I doing these things? And I'll show you it's literally to solve that exact same question. So, when I got started 20 years ago, people didn't have offers yet they just had a product. So, you would be... Just say a book, like, "Okay, here's my book," and I would just sell a product, and that was what I was selling. And it worked for a long time and then guess what? Everyone else is like, "Oh, dude's making money with this product, I can make a product," they make the same product. Now you got 10 people selling a product that's similar. And so, then it's harder to compete because now you're no longer a unique thing, you are a commodity. And anytime you're a commodity, the person with the lowest price always wins. So, as soon as everyone's doing it, you got to drop at the bottom and then you lose your margin and then life sucks because if you don't profit what's the point of what we're doing? So, there's the first phase. So, then the next phase is like, "Okay, well I got a product, everyone's got the same product but how do I turn this from a product into an offer?" That was the first evolution. It's like, "Hey, when you buy my book, you also get my book, but you're also going to get my video course, my audio course, and then my checklist and my..." And all of a sudden you make something truly unique again where it's like, not just a product, but this is my offer that's specific, unique to me, that nobody else has. So that was the next evolution. And we got really good then in making offers that were sexy. It's like, "Oh yeah, everyone's selling this, but mine, if you get mine, you also da da, da, da, these other things." Right? And that's where this whole offer development started happening. In my mind, probably 15 years ago is when this became the thing that we all focused on. And whoever had the best offer was going to win because ads didn't ship that much. It was just like you're competing so now you're competing with six different people or 10 different people. So because that, Google ads AdWords cost went up, because there's 20 people bidding on the same keyword versus just you, initially. Now you're coming in, you make a better offer. Then you get the lion share people buy from you because your offer is the best. That was kind the next phase. And then of course the market evolves. Everyone gets smart. Everyone starts making good offers. Now it's like, maybe they're unique offers, but they're all good offers. Now it's like the market's getting fragmented up again. And so this is where the evolution now of funnels started happening where... And it was before. We didn't have one click up-sales back in the day. But the first thing was like: you buy my potato gun DVD, fill in your credit card, you buy it. The next page, you're like, "Do you want the potato gun kit? Cool. Get your credit card back out and fill it out again." And they'd fill out all the credit card again. Josh: Dang. Russell: But even with that, there's no one-click up-sales, man, like 15, 20, 30% people would buy the second thing. And all of a sudden, I'm selling a potato gun DVD, but I'm making 200 bucks on the back of the kit and nobody else selling potato gun DVDs was doing. I could outspend them all. So even though costs me more per click, I was able to get all the clicks because I made way more money than anybody else. So I was able to dominate the market. And that was kind of the next phase. And what's interesting is that depending on the market you're in, depends on where this is. For example, I'm in a fun phase where I wanted some side projects. So I'm launching a couple supplement companies. The first supplement company launched is called Zooma Juice. It's a green drink company. And some of you guys know, I actually worked with Drew Canole and his team back in the day on Organifi, and helped them launch that when it first came out seven years ago, and helped him build an actual funnel. And what's interesting is because of that... The green drink market is sophisticated. I went and funnel hacked, probably, 30 green drink offers before we built Zooma Juice. And all of them have pretty advanced funnels. Everyone's doing the best practices pretty well. Second company that we are starting, I acquired a bone broth company. And so I took... Got bone broth company and went funnel hacked every bone broth offer. And that market's new. Nobody had a funnel, not one. They have an offer, they have a product, that's it. And I'm like, "I'm walking into virgin funnel territory." We'll be the biggest bone broth company on the planet in like 30 days? Because there's nobody who understands any of what we're talking about. We'll outspend everybody 10 to 1 because we understand the funnel structure. So depending on what market you're in, some markets haven't even evolved to the funnels yet. Some have, that's exciting. If they have, it's like, "Cool. We got... We can funnel hack. We get good ideas of what's working." If it hasn't like, "Man, you can bring all the stuff we know into these markets and just dominate and destroy them all." It was funny, as we were buying, I was funnel hacking the bone broth offers, I was like, "There's literally not single upsell, order form bump, email sequence. Like nothing." I was just like, "This is like, oh, embarrassing. Almost too easy." That was next phase though. And then to your point, initially it was like... In fact, I remember 10 pre-click funnels. Almost every funnel was the same. It was a video sales letter order button order form upsell one, upsell two, down-sell, down-sell. Thank you, basically. That was what a funnel was. In fact, if you look at, before we launched ClickFunnels, the first T and C event, Ryan Dice and Perry, and they had this whole team event talk about, "Here's the funnel." And they had a funnel and there's only one. And it was just like, "This is the five steps of every funnel." And it fits. It was like trip wire. They had these five steps like trip wire, profit maximizer, and they five or six... They had a name for each page. And it was like, "This is the funnel." And in reality, that was the funnel. There weren't funnels. It was like, "This is a funnel. This is kind of the one." And at the time when I was writing The Dot Com Seekers book and we had been playing with different ones, but there wasn't a lot of this thing out there. Was just kind of like, for the most part, there was a funnel. After ClickFunnels came out and it gave people the ability to create things fast and start innovating, creating ideas, that. And then I was like writing all my ideas in the book and people are doing stuff. It started evolving quickly. Last seven years have evolved where now there's been like a million different funnel things come out, from webinar funnels, auto webinar funnels, high funnels, low ticket funnels, trip wires, SLOs VSLs, challenges, paid challenges, free challenges, challenges to a webinar challenges to high tickets, a webinar to high ticket. There's a billion variations that come from that which probably gets people overwhelming. And so this os what I want to tell them because, this kind of comes back to your first questions, what is it? The reality is, it's going to be shocking for most of you guys, what funnel type you use doesn't really matter. They all work. The thing that matters is the offer. You still have to make the sexiest offer. That's still the most important. We acquired Dan Kennedy's company and we're doing this merger. And like I've spent I podcast episode this morning driving to the office. I've been up every single morning at 5:00 AM because I'm so excited. Because we have a fun, we picked a funnel on structure, we have all of products. I spend a week every morning at 5:00 AM, from 5:00 till like 7:30, when my kids are getting up, in there writing the page for the copy and the offer, and then tweaking and tweaking. That's the thing. The sexiness of the offer that gets people in is the key. So I can get them in, I can use this to get them in a webinar, in a challenge, in a free plus shipping. It doesn't matter. It's like the offer is the thing that puts people in a momentum. And the thing that I'm selling, I could sell it in the webinar. I could sell it in the challenge. I like there's I could sell in all the different funnels. It would fit in all of them. I'm picking the one that I'm using because I think it's going to go... For like the launch campaign, it the one that'll probably get sells the fastest, but it'll work in all of them. And So it's understanding that, it's still coming to the core fundamentals. The funnel structure is the sales process. All of them will work. You just got to figure out better way to sell. Like that's the harder thing that people are missing. Josh: All right. So let's talk... I want to dive into that offer. When you say specifically here... Because I think, and this is just from coaching with a lot of people, the questions that I get asked when I talk about this type of stuff. You talk about the offers, the sexy thing, but how does the offer affect getting somebody to opt in? How does the offer affect my ad? How does the offer affect the training? I don't show my offer until the end after the whole thing. So how does that affect every other step of the funnel? Russell: Okay, great question. So if I can see one here. Right, sorry. I had all the examples here a second ago. Oh, well. I'll just tell you the story. So when Dan Kennedy started his newsletter, in the Dan Kennedy company, the newsletter's the foundation of everything. And we could do a whole podcast episode just on psychology of the original GKIC, when Bill Glazer was running it with Dan. But the newsletter- Josh: Sounds like a sexy topic. Russell: Yeah. It'd be really fun, actually. I love... In fact, it's funny because I spent so much time with Bill Glazer geeking out about. I knew their business really well. And when that they sold it the very first time people bought it and didn't understand the business. And I saw within weeks of them destroying the foundation, I was like, "You guys literally don't know what you bought. You should have asked some questions before you wrote a check that big anyway." But the core is the newsletter. And so I had a chance to go back in the archives. I literally... they gave me, "Here's Google drive. Everything's ever been created." So I'm like, "This is... It's insane." for nerdy Russell, everything Dan's ever said is in this drive. And most of it, no one's ever seen before, so I'm freaking out. But the newsletter started back in like 1995 ish. I was like 15 years old when it started and it was just a newsletter. That's all it was right. It's like a product. That's how they sold it. And from '95 till I think I was probably 23, 24. So, 2004, 2005 ish was when Bill Glazer bought out the company from Dan and kind of ran it, and then they launched it. Instead of a newsletter, they launched it as an offer. And the offer at the time... I still remember the day it happened because I got like 400 emails from my Yanik Silver and all the different gurus at the time. They all started emailing about this Dan Kennedy offer. And it was called the most incredible free gift ever. And in fact, internally in the company called the MIFGE offer, M-I-F-G-E, the most incredible free gift ever. And what it was, it was like, "Hey, when you sign up for magnetic marketing net letter, what you're going to get is you're going to get..." I think it's like, "$639.93 for the money making material from Dan Kennedy himself." So it was like, "We'll give you all this cool stuff when you sign up for the newsletter." And it was the bribe. It's kind of like, if you guys remember back in the day, sports illustrator. It's really hard to sell sports illustrated issues. So what they would do is they would have TV commercials were like, "Here's sports illustrator, 12 issues year about the best sports. When you sign up today, we're going to give you..." And then they had their version of the most incredible free gift offer. It was this huge football clock and the sports illustrator swimsuit issue. That was the MIFGE offer for sports illustrator. And so Dan had their... They had their MIFGE offer, and they went from having five or 600 subscribers at that time to... Bill built it up to over, I don't know, 10, 15, 20. I don't know how big it got it as peak, but 10,000 plus members. And it was because they took a newsletter and they made it an offer. And that's how they launched initially. And so the MIFGE is how they did it. Now, fast forward to Russell gets access to all this stuff. I'm like, "This is amazing." So I'm trying to sit... I sat down Monday morning. No, sorry. It was last Saturday. Saturday. I wanted to write... I didn't want to do all the pages in the offer. So I have some of my team do the upsells and down-sells. I was like, "The landing page, this is mine." I want to write because I want to make sure I get the offer right and everything. Because this is... everything hinges on this. The landing page is broken, nothing works. And so I went and I funnel hacked. I every newsletter, sales letter, I could find throughout time. I just went deep in my archives, way back machine. People I knew who publishing newsletters, looked at every variation of theirs for the last 10 years. I totally geeked out like Russell does. Funnel hacking. I want to understand how people are structuring their newsletter offers. Gore's got a ton of them. So I'm looking at tons of them and everyone I looked at, I come back to like the Dan Kennedy one I'm like this offers just not sexy. More like $630 of money making information sounded cool in 2003. But today, it's like every opt-in, people are giving a thousand dollars worth of free crap. It wasn't that sexy- Josh: Right. Inflation, baby. Oh my word. Russell: Yeah. And then I'm like, "Now my funnel nerds are going to go and they're going to sign for this newsletter, and they're going to get this newsletter from Dan. He's talking about direct mail and faxing. And they're going to be confused and they're going to cancel." I have this weird opportunity. I was like, "This is just not the right thing." And I was like, "How do I make this sexy excited? How do I get myself excited to email about it?" And then Dan's email. I got to get affiliates on board and other people. How do I make this sexy so that I can create the noise? So that when there's an ad, there's a good enough hook in the ad that people are going to click? Because if the ads like, "Old marketing, grumpy marketing genius is going to give you 300 or $639 money making material for free when you join this newsletter," no one's going to click on that. The hook sucks now. It was good in 2003, horrible in 2021. And so I'm like sitting there and I spent three hours just going to yourself. And I was like, no matter how I tried, the offer just didn't feel right. And I explain to other knight, I was like, "I know I wouldn't click and I know I wouldn't buy it. And I don't want to even email my list tell them about it because it's not that exciting. How do I structure this in a way that's going to be really exciting?" And so that the problem. This is where I got stuck at. Right. And then, after about three hours of it is when I had the light bulb, I was like, "Oh my gosh." So all of the current Dan Kennedy customers, they love Dan. They're obsessed with them. And actually, this is a fascinating step. You'll appreciate this. Have you read a thousand true fans? Josh: Yeah. I love that book. Russell: It was crazy. So Dan's company was sold initially like 10 years ago, from Bill Glazer sold it. In the last 10 years, they haven't bought a single ad. So that's the attrition of the company, that's been happening. And I'm acquiring it like, "Oh, let's buy some ads." But what's crazy is 10 years since they bought the last ad, there are almost, to a T, it's like 990 something active paid subscribers still on a newsletter a decade later, without any ads at all. A thousand true fans. Is that crazy? Josh: That's insane. Russell: Really? Josh: And you're one of those true fans because you bought the whole company. Russell: Yeah. I thought that was a fascinating side note. So anyway, that's crazy. Like Dan's people love Dan. They love him talking. If they want Dan, but they need funnels. And I'm like, I don't want to come and be the guy who acquires the company and just starts emailing his own offer. I need them to.. I need to indoctrinate them to want it. So it's like, they're going to read Dan's newsletter and how do I bridge that to ClickFunnels? And I'm like, my funnel nerds are going to read his newsletter and be like, "I don't understand. This isn't..." They need it. They don't know they want it yet. If I can indoctrinate them for a while, they'll be like, "Oh my gosh, I get this," but it's going to take a while for them to really respect it enough that they'll get it. I was the same way. First time I heard Kennedy, I was like, "This guy's old, boring, and doesn't relate to what I'm talking about." And after I went deep in, I was like, "Oh my gosh, everything he says is literal. He's handing gold nuggets out." And I was just like, I didn't notice them. Now I'm like, "Oh my gosh." And so I was like, "I need this bridge." And some people know, when I first joined the Kennedy world, we actually launched my first print newsletter right afterwards. It was called The Dot Com Seekers Journal. It morphed from The Dot Com Seekers Journal to eventually call it, The Dot Com Seekers Labs. And then it became a Funnel Report and then it became Funnel University. So I actually ran a print newsletter for 14 years. We shut it down two years ago, but 14 years I ran a print newsletter. Josh: Yeah. I remember when you shut it down actually. Russell: Yeah. And I loved it, but I just, anyway... There's reasons like the person who was publishing it, she had a baby and she retired and all these things. I was just like, "Ah. I'm, I'm focusing ClickFunnels. Don't even worry about this right now." So we shut it down. But I loved that part of it. And I was like, what if I create an offer where the concept, the story, the hook of this whole entire thing is like, "Russell bought Dan company and they're coming together to give you two things like the best foundational direct response in the world. Plus the best in the marketing, the cutting edge, the new things are happening. So you can have both sides. So you understand the foundation you need to be able to survive Facebook slapping you and all these things happening and media shifting and changing. But you also have like what's working today so you can capitalize on things in real time." What if we took those two worlds together? The baby. And so instead of just being like, "You're signing for the new, from the Dan Kennedy newsletter," what if it was like, "Dan Kennedy, Russell Brunson?" Two different newsletters. You get two newsletters for the price of one. I was like, "That's the offer. That's the hook. That's what gets affiliates excited, to get ads excited, everything gets excited around this offer." And then, every mornings at 5:00 in this morning, or 5:00 AM every morning this week, I woke up and I'm writing copy for this page of like, "Okay, here's the hook. They're coming in. And there's Dan and there's Russell." How these things are coming together. And the story behind that, how it worked and then the offer instead of just like, "Here's $697 worth of free stuff," it's like, "you get two newsletters. You get the best direct response, best of Russell, every two weeks." So you get one in the mail and then 14 days later, you get the next one. And you're getting both of these. You get the old and the new but you only pay one price. You get both for the price of one. And then you get all Dan's bonus, all Russell's bonuses. Now becomes this like insane offer where, now, it's like, "I'm excited to mail my list." We bought Dan's company, you get all my best stuff in this to get, and it's this combination. And then affiliates will be excited. It just... And maybe the hook bombs, I don't know. But it gave me the energy, just like, "Okay, now, this is exciting and sexy." And so I can turn that into webinar where it's just like, "Dan Kennedy and Russell Brunson coming together to literally blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever." Like, "Opt in here to find our webinar," and people would opt in because the story, the hook is exciting or I can do a challenge like, "The seven day challenge. Me and Dan are going to go through how to destroy your business and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And in the end, I'm selling a newsletter or it could be a VSL telling the story with a newsletter or could be... all of them work. The book is the secrets of story. Josh: Well, what it sounds like... Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it sounds like you just created this story about the offer. And now that you know what the offer is, and there's a reason that that came together and like, "That's what it is," now, you understand the story behind that. I'm trying to think of it like an analogy. For example, Disney world. That offer is so good. You're literally going into a different world that pretty much sells itself once you put it out there. And so once you have the story, once you have that idea around what the offer does and how it's unique and how it's it's own unique thing, then you can just take that and then it fills the rest of the funnel. Because everybody wants that thing because now the offer itself is so good. And I think one of the problems that I had, man, for so long is, I was trying to convince people that they wanted my thing be... Or convince people that they had this problem, and then that they wanted this thing, and then I would make them an offer on it. And they wouldn't get to... they wouldn't even know about the offer, or what the offer did, or like anything about it, until like forced or like right before the offer. And they'd be like, "And then I've got this offer? Boo." And because of that, there was no story around it. There's no congruency with it. And so then it was like, "Oh, I didn't even know. That's what I was here for." And then I would like try to sell them something and it wouldn't sell. And I feel like that's the problem that got solved right there, is like first you created the offer and the story around the offer and you made it sexy. And then that made everything else on the funnel super, super easy, because you were just pointing them back to that. Russell: Everything, the funnel plus all the ads. Because now the ads are fun. "Why Dan Kennedy came out of retirement? Dan Kennedy almost died. What's he doing today?" All a sudden, all these hooks that tie into that. "Why did Dan Kennedy partner with the owner ClickFunnels? Why did... Is it true that ClickFunnels was built off the back of all Dan Kennedy principles?" There's so many stories I can tell now that are hooks. That'll grab his people in or my people in or... And then the landing page. And then... It creates everything. And the people that the best in the world of this, and they also make the most money, is Agora. The good Gora publishing. They're selling newsletters. That's all they sell. Right. But every single time they have these insane stories like Porter Stan's got... I think maybe not still, but for like a decade and a half, the highest of all the Agora divisions. I think he'll do like 1.5 or 2 billion dollars a year. Like these are big divisions. Porter's letter one. And, the story was like, "The railroad across America." And it was talking about like, "The original railroad, how it happened and all the people made money along the way. And this is the next railroad that's being built. It's the digital highway and all this stuff." And that offer was selling a newsletter. But it's the story behind it that became this thing that built a billion dollar company. And they're good. They're so good at figuring out the story, those kind of things. And I think sometimes we're like, "Hey, I've created a course in the passed. You should create a course too. I made money. It's going to be awesome." And then like, "You should buy my course creating software or whatever." Like, "That's not the thing." We're so bad at telling stories. We brag about our result. We tell them making the same result and that's it. It's like, no, that's not the key. It's the story. It's the entry. It's the... We want to be entertained. We want to be courted. We want to be... that's the game we're playing in marketing. And so when you figure that out... The offer is actually sexy. And then why is that sexy? The sexiness is not just, "You get a bunch of crap." The sexiness is the story about like how this was created. Josh: Literally what it does that. Russell: That's the fascinating part. Josh: Yeah. Yeah. Catherine Jones. One of her favorite things is, "When your stories become their stories, then your solutions become their solutions." and that's literally what this is. If you can tell them a story where they like it and they're like, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing," then, go and do it. So for example, Harry Potter world. The story, it... My wife freaking loves Harry Potter world. I mean, that was her thing. When we went down to Funnel Hacking Live, it was like, we were going to take a half a day just to go to Harry Potter world. So we showed up and then it was like, "Hey." Miles is like, "Dude, the buss is leaving for Harry Potter world." There wasn't much convincing that has to be done. The story is, "Oh my gosh, Harry Potter world's amazing. It's Harry Potter. I want it" She wanted that thing because of the story that was leading up to it. There was no, "What's Harry Potter world? Is it any good? What's this?" It's like, "No, it's Harry Potter world." And you're like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, I want it." That's like the story with that. So that's super, super interesting. So where do you see the future of funnels going? Because obviously there's a lot of changes coming with ClickFunnels and ClickFunnels 2.0, which, oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Gusting. Gusting hits me up. Probably... Dude, he probably hits me up once a week and is like, "Hey, guess what? ClickFunnel 2.0 is awesome. And you don't have it." And I'm like, "I heard you. Stop." Russell: He actually built out the magnetic marketing funnel hub right now for me, which is cool. Josh: So, yeah. So anyway, but what's the next evolution? And we don't have really have too much to talk about metaverse and where that goes. But we're entering this new world. I mean, the world is changing very, very, very rapidly. COVID is one of those things that we thought the internet was a big deal, and internet marketing was a big deal, pre-COVID, and then we watch zoom blow up by like 3000% or something like that. And they ruin zoom for us. But anyway, so where are things going that people should be paying attention to and going actually studying and understanding about the future of funnels? Because one of the things that I've been really, really focused on and we're kind of getting dialed in, is community funnels, Specifically, I think for me, one of the things that I've noticed is that it's very, very... It's getting increasingly harder to sell things unless you have a community that's tied with it. And so like for me, one of the things we're focusing on is how do we build funnels inside of our community where our community actually becomes part of the funnel? Which is kind of a cool concept. What do you see as those future things of where funnels are headed, where the big opportunities are going to be? What's the next add to webinar to a 9 97 course? You know what I'm saying? What's the future? Where we're heading? Russell: I hate to make it sound simple, but if I come back to the fundamentals we talked about the beginning of this call. Like Dan Kennedy, whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins. So you look at it through that lens. Went from a product, to an offer, to a funnel. And now with the funnel, I have more ways to make money. And then, from there, the next evolution was like from funnel to value ladder. Right now, it's like, I have a break even funnel and move people up a value ladder and that's how I may lose money or break even on my book funnel, but then my webinar funnel's going to make money or vice versa. Right? Josh: Right. Russell: That was the next phase. And I think, for me, where I'm playing because I'm trying to play for the next 10 years. How do I win this game? We're doing well. I want to.. How do I get a point where, Shopify, or Salesforce is like, "I want to write you a check for 20 billion because you're such annoyance." The way I'm going to do that, for me, is... and it comes back to why did I acquire Magnet Marketing? Why did I buy Brad Callin's company? Why am I doing this? Because I'm not looking at breakeven funnels anymore. Breakeven funnels, awesome. I'm going one chair back or I'm building breakeven businesses. So magnetic marketing, the only gold magnetic is to break even. The entire company, the value ladder, the coaching, the everything. So every penny made side of magnetic marketing be dumped back into ads, want 100% of the profits dump back into ads. So this company's blowing up. And I get now all these things dumped into my value ladder for ClickFunnels. Like that's it. Voomly doing 40 million a year? Why do we acquire that company? Tons of lead flow. Now, right now there's... it was 10 million dollars a year net profit. All that money now is being dumped directly into lead flow as a breakeven business, to acquire customers for ClickFunnel. So I think it's going deeper. It's looking past... from product to offer, to funnel, to value ladder, to how do I buy or acquire or create something where the only goal of this entire business is just get customers for free that can put into here. And I thing, for me, that's the next level is just like that thought. Josh: You just blew my mind, dude. Holy cow. You're creating an ecosystem, but in a very specific way. It's interesting, as you just told that out, just, "First, it was this. Then, it was this." The thing before it didn't change. That's still part of it. Russell: It's both the same. Yeah. Josh: Right. But it's kind of that next evolution, that next piece of where that comes out. That's fascinating. I think a lot of people need to just really rewind that, go listen to that clip again and let your brain sit on that. Russell: That's how I'm playing the game. Yes. Hopefully I'm four step ahead everyone else, but I'm all for showing that with you guys. And so I just... Again, for everyone to start thinking that, because it's going to get harder. It's going to get more expensive. It's going to get more... We've seen that this year. Ad costs have gone up. It's not going to get cheap. It's not going to bounce back down and be cheaper. It's going to keep doing that. The people who only had a product back in the day are out of business. People only had an offer back in day, they're out of business. People don't have a funnel are out of a business. People don't have a value ladder out of a business. So it's just thinking ahead of that. Metaverse or whatever next step is, doesn't really matter. It's the principle still is the same for me. For 20 years, whoever can spend the most money to acquire customer wins. Josh: Wins. Russell: How do I do that in a way that serves the customers, brings them in and then... I'll end on this, because it back to what you said. And I did a podcast on this. It's in the facts I got from Dan Kennedy. After the company sold last time, he was super mad at the company that had jacked up his brand and his legacy and stuff. And so like he sent this 25 page facts, like all the things to do to fix it. And there's one paragraph where he said, "There's difference between why customers come in and why they stay." He said, "People think they're the same things." He's like, "No, no, they're different." Why they come in is because they see the hook of like, "Ooh, the scene." They come in from that. They stay for something different. And you have to understand that. So like I had my inner circle meeting, right. Everyone paid 50 grand to be in the room. We had a hundred entrepreneurs in the room and I told them. I said like, "Well, you guys all because you want to learn funnels from Russell." But I'm like, "The reason why you came is not why you were going to stay here. The reason I get sick year, after year, after year is because of the community." That's it. That's why I sat in Dan Kennedy rooms for six years of my life is because the community built and I wanted to be around these people. I came for Dan stuck for the community. And I think that you start understanding that, that's how you get these people to come in on a front end, but they stay and they buy over and over and they stay on continuity. They stick because it's like.. They come in from a hook, but they stay for the something different. And so really understanding that and then weaving everything you're doing like you're doing now with the community funnels, which is perfect. Josh: That's amazing. That's amazing. All right. Well I think that's a good ending point for that topic. Russell: There's episode number two of our hangout today, which was amazing.

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What's the ACTUAL ROI from Podcasting (Answer Will SHOCK You!)

The Escape Podcast: Movie Reviews & Nonsense

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 17, 2021 30:46

With everything we have to do... does podcasting really make sense? Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ClubHouseWithRussell.com ---Transcript--- Russell Brunson: What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. We've got three special episodes for you. The first one, well, actually all three of them are with my guest host, Josh Forti. We're going to be breaking down some cool things. The first episode... What happened in the first episode? It was really good. Josh Forti: Yeah. We talked all about podcasting, why podcasting is important. Russell: Yeah, podcasting. So episode number one, we learned about podcasting, why we do it, how we do it, the reasons behind it, and a whole bunch of other things. If you haven't been doing a podcast yet, it's going to sell you on why you need to do one. If you have done one, it's going to show you guys why and how to amplify it, and why it's so important and how to find your best buyers from it. I hope you guys enjoy this episode. We'll cue up the theme song, and we'll be right back. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Like I said today, the next actually couple episodes, I've got a guest host with me, which I'm pumped for. We actually did two podcasts. Well, technically, they were podcasts episodes for your podcast, right? Josh: Yeah. Russell: And I ripped them off for my podcast because they turned out so good. One is after the Atlas Shrugged book, Josh Forti flew out, and we did... How long? We went for... Josh: It was three and three and a half hours. Yeah. Russell: Three hours. Yeah. Josh: Three and a half hours, yeah. Russell: Going deep into Atlas Shrugged, which was really fascinating. I actually just reread it recently, so if you want to do Round Two, we should totally do that. And then, after I read Atwood and the devil book, I freaked out, and then Josh flew out and we did one there. So you guys who have been listening to the podcast are familiar with him and his voice. But I asked him, I love doing the podcast, but sometimes I fall behind, and my brother who does our podcast settings, "Russell, any episode today?" I'm like, "Huh." I don't even know what to think. I want someone to help come up with ideas so it's not just me. And so Josh went out to the community, asked a bunch of questions and the next couple episodes are going to be some fun conversations. So I'm pumped, man. And thank you for doing this. I know this you're doing this pro bono to hang out and just to help me out, so I appreciate that. And I'm excited to find out what people want to know about. Josh: Yeah, for sure. I love podcasting. That's my life. If I could do one thing, it would just be, have a show that we just talk all the time. So this is fun for me. It's like asking you to come hang out and geek out about funnels. So I'm super excited, though. It's going to be super cool, and dive in further, and pick your brain, and open up a new world that I don't think a lot of people get to see. Russell: Yeah. It's interesting, because I feel that when it's me doing my own podcast, I pick a topic, I go into it. But it's fun when... Yesterday I had a chance to speak at a virtual event thing, and I did my thing and in the end people ask questions. It just opens up a different side that you don't normally do. And so I don't do a lot of Q&A stuff. So I'm excited to... Josh: Yeah. It's interesting. Russell: And maybe this is the only time we do this. Maybe it's a huge train wreck, and this is the only time it happens. Or maybe it becomes a thing. We'll find out. Josh: We'll try to make it not a train wreck. We'll try. We'll do our very best. I think one of the big things though that I want to start with and kick this whole thing off is why you spend so much time with podcasting. Because here's the thing, man. You're rich. We all know it. You don't have to do this. You have this company that you could. We all learned at funnel hacking live, you turned down a billion dollar offer, so clearly you're not doing this for the money. And you've got a company. You've got a team. You've got all these resources. You could spend money on ads. You could do whatever it is that you want. Yet, somehow you are calling me up and are like, "Dude, I need to do podcasts." And to somebody who gets it, and I get it. I have a podcast. I dedicate time when it doesn't make sense. I put money into a podcast that doesn't make sense. On paper, I get and I understand content and putting it out there, and I've never been at your level either. I don't think a lot of people understand. Why do you do it, dude? Why a podcast? And why are you investing so much of the time that you have now, which is limited, I'm sure? There's a lot of people trying for your attention. Why a podcast? And why is that such a core, fundamental piece that you actually spend so much time on, when you clearly don't have to? Russell: I could probably, in fact, I'll probably give you four or five reasons, because there's not just one reason. There's a lot of them. And I actually, I remember when podcasting started. I was at at Armand Morin's BigSeminar, and someone was on stage, Paul Collier was on stage. He's like, "There's this thing coming. It's going to be the greatest thing in the world. It's called podcasting. And you're going to put these things in your ears and listen to people talk." I remember, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. No one will ever listen to that." I just didn't get it. He's like, "No, this is the future." And I remember because I was my roommate at the time was Josh Anderson, some of you may know Josh, and Josh went and bought every podcast domain he could think of. And I was like, "You're dumb. That's never going to happen." But I do remember, "Well, if I ever did a podcast, I'd call it the Marketing In Your Car Podcast, because when I drive my car, I could record it. And I remember thinking that. And I remember I bought, at the time, Marketing In Your Car, and I did nothing with it for, I don't know, eight or nine years. I just had it. In fact, I even paid someone to write an intro song for it. So if you ever go back to the first episodes, the first hundred-something episodes, there was this really... At the time it was so cool, and now it's corny, but there was this theme song that some guy wrote for me. And I had it for five years, this theme song, and I never used it because I was like, "I don't get podcasting." Then in my business life, we had grown up my company at the time. We had a hundred employees. And then, the long story you guys have heard before, is the company crashed. Everything fell around, and it went from a 20,000 square foot office to 2000 square foot office. I felt like an idiot. I was embarrassed. My status was at an all time low. I was weird. And for some reason in that season of my life, I had this impression, "You need to start podcasting and talk about marketing." And I was convinced at this time I was the worst marketer in the world, because I had just crashed my entire empire. I'm an idiot. I didn't want to, but I felt this impression like now it's time to start a podcast. So I literally, from the ashes of my business, started this podcast, and I had at that time a four or five minute drive to the office. Okay, I can be consistent with this. It's going to happen all the time. I'm going to do it. So I got my phone out, I clicked record, and I would literally just drive to my office and I would just talk about what we were trying to figure out. "All right. Today, we're going in the office and working on this new offer, and this is what we're thinking and da, da, da." And then the next steps were, "Oh, we launched the offer and it worked." Or it didn't work. So we tried this. It was just me documenting. It's funny. I heard Vaynerchuk talk about, "Document your journey." And I didn't know. That wasn't a thing at the time, but that's literally what I started doing. And it was nice, because it was something that was so easy. It was easy to be consistent with. I think if I would have had to do a podcast where, for me, if I had a studio and a microphone, all those things, I probably wouldn't have done it because I wouldn't have gotten enough momentum to stick with it. But it was easy. And at first the way we set it up, we couldn't track stats, so we had no idea if anyone was listening, which was a huge benefit. Because had I known how few people were listening, I probably wouldn't have kept doing it. But I just kept doing it and doing it, not really knowing what kind of return was going to happen. It's funny now. I had someone, about a year ago, go through and start from the very beginning and listen all the episodes. I was trying to get some notes and trying to remember. And it was cool, because they started coming back, reporting. He's like, "Did you know on this day you talked about why you thought anyone who wanted to build a company over 10 million dollars in sales was a moron? You should never try to grow company that big. And then over here you talked about, you're never going to hire an employee again." All my thoughts at the time, which have morphed and shifted obviously. But it's this cool thing where I have this record now of this journey from the ashes to ClickFunnels and beyond. So it's been very special for me. Josh: Okay. Sorry. I want to continue down that path, I want to interject right there. The reason I started a podcast is because, literally, you told me to. You didn't physically be like, "Josh, start a podcast." But all your books, all your content, you're like, "Publish, publish, publish, publish, publish." And I'm like, "Okay." And so it started on Facebook. It started on Facebook Live, and then it grew. And then my friend Daxy, he is like, "Dude, turn it into a podcast. Way more people would listen." All right. So I have, I don't know, four or five hundred episodes now on my podcast that I have done with you and all these different interviews or whatever. But what I tell people is, and this is true in all areas of my life, I'm so blatantly honest on my podcast. I don't filter or mince my words at all. Shocking. Russell: You're filtered on Facebook and Instagram, you're telling me? Josh: Just a little bit. But what's interesting is one of the things that you pointed out there was you have this document. You have this record of exactly where you were at at the time. And so for me, one of the things... And this is bigger than just podcasting. When you're just blatantly honest with yourself and where things are at, and you just turn on the microphone and you just talk, you actually can go back and you can watch your progress. And you can see. Oh man, when I was 26 years old, when this happened, this is what I thought about life, or this is what I thought about this particular topic, or this is what I was learning here. When I'm building a funnel or I'm building something that I knew I worked on in the past and I talked about it, I can literally go back, and I can remember the struggles. And I think it was you. It might have been. It might have not been you. It might have been Gary. I think it was you, though. You were like, "Imagine if Jeff Bezos would've documented every single day or every single week building Amazon." How much people would pay for that. That would be so epically cool. That's what it's like. So I totally understand what you're talking about there. I feel like people are embarrassed to start, they're embarrassed where they're at now. And so they don't want to put it out there. I'll never forget Liz Benny. Obviously, you know Liz. She's amazing. I had her on my podcast. This is probably a year and a half ago. And she's like, "Josh, I've watched you grow so much." And I'm like, "Really?" She's like, "Oh yeah." I'm like, "How do you know?" She's like, "Because I listen to your podcast." And it was like, "Oh, this is a long term thing." It was at that moment that I realized it. Russell: Uh huh. For sure. It's interesting because, if I haven't publicly talked much about this yet, but I've been acquiring old books. I just bought this whole, literally, library of Napoleon Hill books and stuff. And it's been so fascinating because I'm reading through and these are the records of these people and their beliefs and their thoughts. I've got old magazines from early 1900s, late 1800s. I'm reading. I found articles from Thomas Edison, who were in the publishing these. I'm reading this stuff and it's so cool. And one thing, this is Russell guilt. In the Mormon church one thing they always talk about is, you need to keep a journal, so that way your posterity has this thing. And I've never been good at keeping a journal. And what I started realizing as I'm going through all the Napoleon Hill stuff, I'm so grateful that they wrote these things down and they have this journal. And I started from that guilt again. And all of a sudden I was like, "Wait a minute. I don't have a journal, but I've been podcasting now for seven years." This is my record. This is, when I'm dead, my kids or my grandkids or my posterity or people, whoever it is. This is how they're going to learn about me and figure out who I was. And hopefully I shortcut them some trial and error. Here's the journey I went on, but here's what I figured out. I can help them. I think all of us are always talking about wanting to leave an impact. I think my podcast episodes, I'm hoping these are my journals. These are my records. This is like what I just bought from Napoleon Hill. I'm hoping that this becomes something for the future generations that they can build their businesses off and their ideas and their plans. Because my podcast is... It's a marketing podcast, but I don't talk about marketing most of the time. I talk about my family and my kids, and I'm learning, and my personal development and all the things. Marketing is just the hook I got people in, but it's my life record. It's my journal, which is cool too. Josh: Yeah, that is super cool. It's funny. Quick side note, we have to shut down this indifferent theory, because Apple.... Russell: Just spell it different. Josh: Yeah. Believe me. We've tried some things. I'm not trying to push against the biggest company in the world. So anyway, we have a new name. I'm not going to say it yet, but it's coming. But anyway, in the last just couple weeks, I've had to pause doing podcasts. And it's weird because what you said right there is, "I don't keep a journal." But I know that I do keep a journal via that exact same thing. And it was weird. I went to my wife literally two days ago. And I was like, "I need you to, to help me create a system for the short term to be able to document my thoughts because right now I'm not doing it. And I have so many things that we're going through right now." So I totally get that. But I feel like there's got to be more than that. There's got to be another reason besides just the documentation process for the podcast for you. Russell: For sure. That's the first thing. Again, I got four or five that run in my head, so I don't know what the order they'll come out in. But the next one is eventually I wrote a book. And people were like, "These books are so good. How do you know all these stories?" And for me, I have an idea, and the idea percolates in my head for a minute, and I got to tell someone. So usually first person I tell is usually the podcast. I'm thinking about this thing and I talk about it. And so I tell the story the first time. The first time it may not even be that fleshed out. Then I get to the office and I see Dave over there. Dave's excited. I'm like, "Dave, check this out." And I tell it to him again. And then I tell someone else. And then I'm doing an interview and I say it again. And I tell the story four or five, six times, and I get better and better at telling the story. And then when I'm at a seminar and I'm on stage and I'm talking. I have no idea which direction I'm going. All of a sudden, this thing will pop up my head. I've told that story six times three months ago, and it appears. I remember Tony Robbins told me this. He said, "When I go on stage, I have a plan, but the plan, it never goes to plan. I start talking." And then he's like, "These downloads just come from God or from the universe, and they just show up." And for me, as I started podcasting and telling these stories over and over and over again, that's exactly what happens now. When I need something, I'm in a situation, I'm coaching someone, I talking, I'm on an event or a stage or something. I need something often that just, it appears when I need it. And I think it's because I didn't just think about it and forget about it. I think about it. I tell it on a story. It's published. I tell someone else. And then when I write a book, I've told the story 400 times. I know the best way to tell the story now. I've seen what people laugh at, what they don't laugh at, how to do it the right way. In fact, it's interesting, my next book is a personal development book. I've struggled with that one, because I don't have a personal development podcast. And I haven't tested these stories, these principles or these theories. I've been stuck, as you know. I sent you the rough draft eight months ago, and I haven't written a word since then. Part of it is I haven't had a chance to flesh these things out. So it gives me idea to flush out my ideas is another one of them. Another one that's interesting... I don't know the exact stats, but I read it somewhere. I think I talked about on Traffic Secrets.I put it in there. But conceptually, they talked about people who are podcast listeners versus the rest of humanity. And I'm going to tell you about the stat, and I'll tell you how the practical application of that stat, which is really fascinating. So the stat was something like the average person who listens to the radio makes, I don't know, $60,000 a year. And whereas the average podcast listener makes $120,000 a year. So the people you are getting and acquiring, they are people with more spending power. They're more affluent people that are the kind of people who are trying to develop their brain, their minds, things like that. They're more likely to buy a course or software or a Mastermind or things like that, because they're the kind of people who aren't just listening to the radio to numb themselves. They're listening to audio to grow. That's the fascinating thing that you're getting a better caliber customer who are listening. Number two, you are getting them in their most intimate moments. When do you listen to a podcast? It's when I'm working out and I'm by myself and it's me and them, and I have their full attention. I'm not listening to a podcast where I'm writing an email or texting someone. Or I'm in the car driving. I'm getting access to their brains and their minds in their most intimate moments. But it's just me and them. Even video. Josh: It's not even like that on YouTube either. Russell: Yeah. I'll watch a YouTube video while I'm cooking dinner, while I'm doing five other things. Josh: That's super interesting. Russell: I don't listen to podcasts with my kids in the room, because they're going to ask me a question. They're going to mess it up. It's when I'm separate and it's just me and them and that's it. I have a different level of intimacy with the podcast people that I'm listening to. So the higher quality customers, better level of intimacy, and then the practical application. The first time I really got this, it was after I launched my Inner Circle the very first time. And again, it was funny, because I always told everybody I never money on my podcast. I'm doing this podcast, I'm not making any money from it… And as I did it for four or five years, and I launched my first version of my first version of my Inner Circle, and we had a point where we had about 33 people in it paying 25 grand. And I remember at one of the events, somebody asked, "How did you guys bump into Russell?" And all of them were like, "Oh, I saw something, but then I got on this podcast, and I listened to him every single day while I was working out for six months. And he kept talking about this Inner Circle and talking about this thing. He's going to get all these things." And it was fascinating. Almost everyone in the room, they didn't hear about my podcast. Podcast isn't good for lead gen. It's never. Josh: Yeah. It's horrible for lead gen. Russell: You can't just buy ads and blow up your podcast. But people find out about you. They plug in to your podcast. And the people who make that transition from, "I saw a book." "I saw an ad." "I saw something." And they make that transition where they actually get the phone out, subscribe, and then plug you in. Those become your best customers, your highest buyers. They're the best. And so the practical application is yes, by doing this podcast, I'm taking... And I talk about this in Expert Secrets. And actually my Inner Circle meeting last month, we talked a lot about this. We talked about creating a new opportunity versus an improvement offer. And for the most part you want to create new opportunities. That's what gets people in the door. And I told everyone, your value ladder should be this new opportunity. There's opportunity stacking. The back of the value ladder, there's one section that's saved for people with ambition. New opportunity is all about getting people who have a desire to come in. But people with ambition, and the percentage of your audience is small. The percentage of people who have true ambition, it might be 15 to 20%, maybe. Josh: Yeah. Russell: But those are your most ambition. I told them my Master, I didn't sell you guys new opportunity. Do you want to come to Boise and talk to other entrepreneurs? Or are you going to get better and stronger and smarter, all the ER words? You guys are the ones at the top of the value ladder. You are ambitious. So I'm not selling you new opportunity. I'm selling you guys improvement. And it's the hardest thing to sell, but it's what one tier of your audience wants. I feel like same thing, the people who are listening to your podcasts, these are the people who want improvement. These are the ambitious ones. They're not the tire kickers. And so it's the best way to convert people in their highest ticket backing things as well. Josh: Yeah. And I also think, one thing that's very important to point out, I think here, is the style slash type of podcast that you particularly create. Because I've studied a lot of different podcasts. Joe Rogan obviously is a big inspiration of mine when it just comes to creating content or whatever. But what's interesting is that the type of content that a Joe Rogan creates, or that even a Logan Paul or any of the bigger mainstream podcasts, oftentimes it's much more for entertainment. And Joe Rogan, I think, maybe is the blend between the two. But a lot of podcasts, they're not specifically for solving a very specific problem. And so what I always say about specifically the type of podcast that you create, you or Steve or whatever, your type of podcast is horrible for lead generation, but is amazing for lead education. It's because once they're in there, you have that. And what's interesting is one of the times that I listened to your podcast most... I'm going to let you guess. I'm sure you're not going to get it. But what do you think one of the times I listened to your podcast most? Russell: When you're driving somewhere in your car. Josh: That's a time. Yeah. But it's when I'm in pain. When I have a specific pain around my funnel, I will literally go, "Russell has this podcast. He's got all these episodes. I bet you he's talked about it." And so I'll literally go on my phone and I'll keyword search for different things. And I'll specifically go. There was one time I was listening to, it was something about a webinar or something, and you were talking about how you wrote your headlines and basically how you came up with your framework for it. And I remember you did that one time. And so I was struggling with it, and so I literally searched it and I did it. And so the type of podcast that you create, in my head there's two different ones. There's one for entertainment. And then there's one for education. And you create one specifically for education. And when you do that, that's the type of podcast or that's the type of content that literally goes and educates your member. And when you have that, a hundred percent, my top buyers, anybody that gives me top dollar for my stuff, they all listen to my podcast or have been on my podcast and I'll pull something out of it. They're always the ones that pay the most money. For sure. Russell: For sure. It's interesting too. And there's, as you said, a lot of formats. When I did mine, I did a short form for a couple reasons. Number one is it was my drive to the office, so that's how it started. But number two, I love Joe Rogan and I probably listen to one of his entire podcast ever. Josh: Oh my gosh. I probably listen to a hundred of them at least. Russell: And I get overwhelmed, because each one's four hours long and there's all these different people. Everyone keeps talking recently about the Jewel one. "It's the greatest thing in the world. You've got to listen to it." Four hours. I could get a whole audio book, the entire book done in four hours. Is that worth the investment? I don't ever want to dive into it, because it's so big. Whereas mine, again, someone's in the car and only got a 10 minute commute. Boom. Throw it in. They get an episode. And then what happens is they get hooked, and then they'll listen for four hours. So it's different though, because if Joe Rogan's were broken up into even 20 minute blocks, I would probably listen to all of them. Josh: YouTube Joe Rogan clips. It's Joe Rogan experience clips. And it's literally 20 minute episodes. Russell: Oh cool. Josh: So if you ever want to. Russell: That's probably what I would do. And I think it's interesting. And then also another nice thing about short form is people come in, they listen to one... And I get this all the time. People are like, "I got your podcast, listened to three or four episodes, and I loved it. So I started at the very beginning and I binge-listened to all of them." It happens all the time as well. Whereas Joe Rogan, you're not going to binge-listen because that's 65 years worth of content you're going to go through. Mine, they're short. I'm going to go to the beginning. And they start and they binge listen. And then they've gone through your journey with you. And by the time they show up, they know everything that you've ever said. And they're so much easier to work with if they've got that stuff. I think everyone needs... It's one of the things where you're not going to see a big return or not initially. But over time, if you're consistent with it, it's the best thing. And then obviously, I don't use my platform for this, but you do and I think it's brilliant. It gives you access to all these people. Whereas the interviewing people, you get access to people you can't otherwise. Josh: Doors open that you literally can't even understand simply because you're like, "Hey, I have a podcast and hey, I've got these couple other cool players on here. You want to come?" Alex Hormozi is coming on my podcast. I literally reached out to him, "I have a podcast." And a hundred percent, I'm going to admit something to you right now. I was like, "Hey, I had a podcast, and Russell's been on a couple times. You want to come on?" He's like, "I love Russell. Of course I'll come on your show." Russell: That's awesome. Josh: Crazy big doors that get open simply because you have a platform to be able to allow someone to use their voice as well. Russell: I remember, before Tony and I were super close, we met a couple times and stuff, but I remember he was doing some launch. I remember Lewis Howes and him did a big interview. And three or four people they interview sound so annoying. Why is Tony hanging out with these people and not me? And now all of a sudden, I had the ahas. "Lewis Howes has got a big podcast. Oh my gosh. Okay, I need to be able to offer my platform to him to get in that door and really build that relationship." And that's one of the powers of it too. You have a platform, now you've got ability to access people you can't otherwise. As you know. Josh: All right. Two rapid fire questions here really quick. Because I want to move on to the next topic to keep us on track. But number one, what's the Joe Rogan episode that you listened to all the way through? Do you remember which one it was? Russell: Oh, I do know. Yeah. And I actually hate that I listened this one. It was the Gary Vee one. Josh: Oh. Yeah. Russell: And the reason why I listened, because I want to be on Joe Rogan's podcast someday. And I want to see what Gary talked about because... As you know, Gary and I have a... He probably has idea who I am. Josh: You have a light beef. Russell: We've got an interesting relationship. He's not my... Anyway. I've got to make sure I'm the next internet marketer who actually does a better job. Josh: Okay. Two things on that. One, anybody listening, I'm going to do this, so don't take it, but I'll beat you to it. If you ever can get Russell Brunson on Joe Rogan, that's a great Dream 100 gift right there. That would be amazing. Secondly, I've listened to so many episode of Joe Rogan. One of my favorite ones is actually with Kanye. I know everyone thinks Kanye's an idiot. But if you can, that's five hours. It's insane. It's one of the most intense episodes I've ever listened to. But one that is a must-listen to, seriously one of the best podcast episodes ever done is his first interview with Elon Musk. If you ever get the chance, just sit down and listen to it. It's three or three and a half hours, but understanding that dude's mind, Elon Musk, you will not regret that three hours of your life. It was a fantastic episode. So that's the one. Russell: Very cool. Josh: Okay. Last thing here before we move on, are there any other points that we didn't cover about why someone should have a podcast? Wrap up, make your closing arguments around why somebody should go setup a podcast. Russell: The last one I'll say, and I quote Nathan Barry, actually, in Traffic Secrets. And I'll probably mess up the quote, but it was interesting. He talked about how... I think the title of the blog post I share is, You Got to Publish Long Enough to Get Noticed. And he talks about how for most of us there's so much content out nowadays. There's all these things. It's hard to know what's going to be good. 5,000 podcasts launched today. How many Netflix episodes, all sorts stuff. He says most of us find out about a good show at Season Two or Season Three, because of this, we waited to see, our friends talked about it. All of sudden it gets a breaking point where everyone's talking about it, and then you become this overnight success. It's interesting. He said you have to publish long enough to get noticed. And I think that's the biggest thing to understand. Especially most people who are getting started and they're so scared. "I'm going to look like an idiot." "They're all going to make fun of me." "I'm just a beginner." Blah, blah. All these different excuses. The good news is, at the very beginning, no one's listening. Josh: No one's listening. Russell: It doesn't matter. Just do it. This is your chance to actually find your voice and learn how to speak and tell stories, and all those things. No one's listening. And if you keep doing it, I tell people all the time, if you publish consistently for a year, that doesn't mean once a month for a year, daily for a year, or three, four times, five times a week consistently for year. Two things will happen. Number one, you'll find your voice. Number two, your audience will have a chance and have enough time to actually find you. And so it's going out there and just setting it up, the ROI. And I'm a big ROI. You look at my DiSC profile, my number one value is ROI. If I can't see the return on investment on something, it's hard for me to do. It's why I struggled in school. It's why I struggle in awkward conversations. Because I'm like, "What's the point of this?" I don't get it. Podcasting was hard, because I didn't know what the ROI was. And luckily again, I didn't see the stats for three years. Josh: Is that how long it was? It was three years? Russell: Yeah, before we figured out how to get the stats on it. Josh: That's crazy. Russell: But because of that, because I didn't know what the ROI was, and I was just hoping and praying with faith that it would be good. Now I see the ROI. Now it's important. Now I do it twice a week. Regardless, it happens in the queue, in the can because it's that important. Josh: If your number one thing is ROI and you figured out the podcast is worth it, guys, there's your selling point. Go start a podcast already. Russell: Got a podcast. Let's go. Josh: Honestly, it's amazing. And it's so much fun too. You learn so much about yourself. And I think the one thing I'll say about podcasting is you've got to really find your own unique style. I was listening to, I know you know Alex Becker, but Alex Becker is probably one of the biggest influencers in crypto right now. Just insane. One of my friends who got his NFT, and he's up a quarter million bucks in three months. Just insane stuff. One of the things that he said is right now in the industry, everybody is trying to become an influencer. And so he says, "I see all these people trying to model exactly what it is that I do." And he's like, "I have no problem with you guys doing that because I get it." At the beginning, you don't know your voice yet or whatever, but he's like, "You'll never be me." And I won't use the language that he used. But he's basically like, "There's only one me, so eventually model me, do whatever you need to do. But eventually go find your voice. Go find your own thing, because that's why people are going to watch you. I'm going to make sure that you're irrelevant if you try to model me long term." And so it's giving you that permission to model somebody at the beginning, but then, people are not going to listen to you if they can go listen to somebody else that has the exact same style. So it allows you to really be yourself when you give yourself permission to just try different things. And at the beginning, like you said, no one's listening. Russell: Yeah. It's funny talking about modeling. I talked about this yesterday on a call I was on. It's fascinating because people, they're trying to copy or model somebody because they're trying to get those people to attract the right audience. And Myron said, "You don't attract who you want, you attract who you are." And so if you're trying to be someone else, you're not going to... Because you want those customers. It's going to be weird. I remember when we launched ClickFunnels, I was trying to be like all the other internet marketing guys, because I thought I was competing against Ryan and Perry and Traffic & Conversion. So I was trying to be more corporatey businessy, like they were. Wait a minute. That's not me. I'm not going to wear a shirt and tie on stage. I'm not going to wear a suit jacket. I'm going to wear my t-shirts and jeans. And I'm going to talk about my family and God and wrestling and things I'm excited by. And I don't care about agency, not that I don't care agency, but I don't care about... I'm going to speak to the entrepreneur, because that's who I want. Wherein Ryan and Perry, literally, one of their Traffic & Conversions were, "This is less for the entrepreneur, more for your teams and your staff." It's crazy now because you look at the... I thought we were in the same market, but as soon as I leaned into who Russell was, it's separated. And it's not that one's better or worse. They're different, but if you go to Funnel Hacking Live, it's my people. You're in the audience. Most of these people here are Christians, who are athletes, who've got kids, who are entrepreneurs, who are not doing this for the money, but doing it because they want to change the world. That's the overwhelming percentage of our audience. Not everyone. But as a whole we attract who we are. So lean into that, because otherwise you're going to attract people you don't like, and you're going to hate your life, and you're going to hate your business, you're going to hate your customers. But you put yourself out there, the people who do not resonate with you will leave on their own. You don't have to kick them out. They're be like, "Russell's annoying." I get people all the time, if I mention God on a podcast or anything, they're like, "If you're talking about God, I'm out." Sweet. All right. Bye. I'm good with that. I know people are like, "I don't believe in God, but I respect that you lean into it." They're cool too. But the people who are offended leave and the people who stick are the ones you want to hang out with anyway, because you attract who you are and not who you want to bring in. Josh: And I can talk about that topic super long, but I want to keep moving on the next piece here. Russell: That's it for the first episode then. Here with Josh on the Market Secrets Podcast. We're going to transition to the next one on the next episode.

E85 Beetlejuice 1988-The Escape Podcast (Oct 31, 2021)

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2021 53:50

“Let's turn on the juice and see what shakes loose.” Hey today's Halloween so we decided to do a Valentines movie. Hosts: Dave and Josh You like pictures, well guess what we got pictures. Check out our Instagram page. #TheEscapePodcast16 Write us if you dare at escapepodcast16@gmail.com Search “The Escape Podcast Movie Reviews & Nonsense” on YouTube for our older episodes. And lastly find the show on iTunes, Spreaker, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Podomatic, iHeartRadio, Podcast Addict, and Stitcher. Oh and get ready to hit that thumbs down button because you're really gonna hate what I had to say.

spotify halloween valentines day stitcher google podcasts nonsense spreaker beetlejuice movie reviews podcast addict podomatic podcast oct hosts dave escape podcast josh you

The Built Different Podcast-Episode 38-Josh Barrick

The Built Different Podcast with Zach Clinton

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2021 45:16

Description: In the wake of a tragic car accident, Josh Barrick was faced with a decision to desperately cling to his faith in God, or let unforgiveness destroy him. Choosing to forgive the drunk driver allowed Josh and his family to step into the fullness of everything God has for them. On today's episode of the Built Different Podcast, Josh helps listeners learn how they too can trust God through their own tragedies and come out stronger on the other side. Quotes: 12:41 Josh: “It's not our nature to want to surrender; it's our nature to want to hold on to our own life. 12:52: Josh “God wants us to let go and sometimes we can't do that until we are literally run over…”13:53 Jen quote: “I am thankful that God chose us, knowing that we wouldn't turn our back on Him. Rather than a family who doesn't know Him and would reject Him forever.” 14:21 Josh: “Have you ever thought maybe God is choosing you?14:24 Josh: “Maybe He has given you this task and wants to grow you into a person that only this tragedy can bring out.” 16:18 Josh: “The first first step of practically surrendering in any situation is forgiveness.”18:32 Josh: “In order to use it, we have to praise Him for it.”20:22 Josh: “You forgive for your own freedom.”21:03 Josh: “The first thing I had to do was stop calling the man who hit us, ‘the drunk driver' and start calling him by name. Because that man is a human being and I had to realize I'm 3 decisions away from being in his shoes.”27:03 Josh: “The only reason that you're built different is because of the Spirit that's living inside of you.” 28:00 Josh: “The only thing that's getting in the way of your freedom, peace, overflowing love...joy.. is you.”28:48 Josh: “You have to surrender to the Spirit in order to walk in it.” Links: MLK quote “Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it's a permanent attitude.”Ephesians 4: 31-32John 10:10

god spirit forgiveness ephesians built faith in god barrick different podcast josh it josh you

There Ain't No Business Like No Business

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2021 26:49

Show notes:Links:Bold Badgers NFTMantis scooterRidwellWrite for HoneybadgerTranscript:*note - this is an unedited automatically generated transcript with about 80% accuracy*Josh: So we really are we doing this, uh, super quick. Do we need to like speed up our voices? ArtificiallyBen: The chipmonk episode.Starr: There you go. No, we should just, we should slow them down. So it'll um, we can just record a minute episode and then we'll take minutes to listen to it.Josh: Yeah, yeah. That's right. That's what we've been doing all along. That's our life hack is it takes us minutes to record these episodes and you listened to them in minutes.Starr: Yeah. So that's the, um, so I'll fill in our listeners. We, um, we miss our normal recording day on Friday, and so we're making it up on a Monday, which means like we're jam packed in with a bunch of other stuff. Um, so this may be a little shorter than usual and I'm sorry. I know you just have to have all of us all the time and we're just giving it all we can right now.Josh: Yeah, it'll be just as off topic though. So, um,Starr: I would thank God.Ben: Yeah. Speaking, speaking of off topic, I have, I have a public service announcement to make. As, as you know, I've been getting more into the electric vehicles scene, uh, personal mobility, micro mobility, all that kind of fun stuff. And I, you know, a few months ago bought an electric scooter. It's a mantis for those who are curious, who are in the know, uh, and I've been really enjoying that, like riding back and forth to work and goofing off and that sort of thing. But the thing that's, the public service announcement is, uh, wear a helmet. If you're going to ride one of these pillars. I just, this past week saw two different people riding on scooters, similar to mine, like higher powered scooters, mixing it up with traffic, like on mile per hour roads and not wearing a helmet. And I just thought that is insane. Like, I don't know. Maybe, maybe, yeah, you should definitely wear a helmet if you're going to ride electric scooter at miles an hour, just saying that's my PSA.Josh: I did go for, I went for a, my first ride on an EBI bike, um, last week and I must confess I did not wear a helmet. And, uh, I have to say it was, you know, it was kind of fun. Like, you know, little dangerous, there was no traffic. Like there was very little traffic, so in my defense.Ben: Okay. That's a plus. Do you remember what kind of bike your Rover's like a super ? Like one of those modelsJosh: I have, I have a very bad memory for names of things and I was told, but, uh, no, I don't know, but actually I was, it was with, uh, it was the bike of, uh, Mike Perrin, who is a friend of the show and creator of sidekick. So I'm sure he will, uh, hopefully listen to this and, and let us know. And then we can fill everyone in the next week. MaybeBen: I think, I think he has a super . It's a, and that's a pretty sweet,Josh: It's like the super it's like one of the fastest ones on the market, he said, yeah, cool. Or something like that.Ben: I'm going to have to get down to Mike's house and borrow some of his bikes. AndJosh: It was a lot of fun. I'd never, I'd never done that before. And I, I get the appeal now.Ben: Yeah. So when, when I got my scooter, Mike was like, I don't know, scooters. They're kind of, uh, I don't exactly what he tweeted, but he's like, yeah, they're kind of sketchy because they're not very stable and stuff and he's right. They are integrated stable compared to the bikes, but it's still a lot of fun. So I just wear a full face helmet to counteract the wobbliness. Yeah.Starr: Did y'all know I have a, an electric bike? No, it's called a Peloton.Josh: You were so smug with that one.Starr: It's the perfect bike for me because it doesn't move. Um, it's like all the, got all the nice things about the bike, like the workout, but you don't go anywhere. You don't have to Dodge any traffic. Uh, don't have to wear a helmet screen.Josh: Yeah. Those sound, those do sound seriously though. Those, those, uh, look pretty, pretty nice.Ben: Yeah. I have, I have a low-tech Peloton. It's just a trainer. I brought my bike on.Josh: Is your bike on it? Yeah. Yeah. But I like, I don't know the what, from what I've heard of the Peloton , uh, those they've got all the bells and whistles right star.Starr: Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, really it's um, it's not so much about the actual bike for me. It is, as it is about having some like super enthusiastic person, like, um, playing really good music and just being like, you've got this, you were born for greatness and just like saying stuff like that at me. Um, while I'm like trying to, you know, read them a little bit,Josh: You say that, but like, you know, like I, I try to, you know, give that experience to Katelyn, for instance, my wife and she just like, she hates like, she's like get, get out of here.Starr: I think, I think it's easier. I think it's a little easier when there's not like an actual person there, you know, Just hire a social exerciseBen: That started out live, get, you know, the, uh, the motivational speaker guy lives in a, down by the river. I'm just, I'm just thinking about Chris Farley, like standing by your exercise bike. You can do it. You've got this.Josh: If we could get a, yeah. If we could get that, um, on the Peloton, I would subscribe like if he was one of the trainers, I mean, like, you know,Ben: So just bring him back from the dead, have him record some such the Peloton and then, yeah, that'd be awesome. I miss Chris Farley.Starr: So Ida likes to ride the Peloton too, that she's not big enough for it. Um, but she is a, her, her feet can touch the pedals. Um, but they can't reach all the way down. So she's kinda like kicks the pedal down and then catches it on the way back up. And so she asked me to put on a little video so she can do it to the music too. Yeah. Oh, I need to give an update about my, um, about the printing press. I know everybody's like waited, waiting the press breath about thatJosh: Date. I thought, yeah. I didn't know. There was news so, well, IStarr: Mean, the news is I have given up on it. I went down to Tacoma. I went down to see it and it worked and everything, and I just really got a sense for like how big and heavy it was going to be. And, um, then I started, I measured it and I started actually trying to figure out how I would get it into my building. Um, because like, it's just, my, my office is in the backyard. It's, uh, it's, we're having our backyard redone soon, but right now it's just all bumpy and lumpy. And so it's like trying to like roll this thing. I would have to construct like a, a path out of plywood. I'd have to build a ramp up to my, um, the doorway, um, then to actually get it into the location where it's going to be. I would have to completely like dismantle all my shelving and, um, then like re assemble it once I had put the thing in place. And so if I ever wanted to move it again, I'd have to like completely take down all my shelving. I was just like, this is too much. Like, this is, um, like I can't, I can't justify this on it. Like I'm, I'm waking up early in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep. Cause I'm like, how the hell am I going to like move this thing? It's like, no, that's not a good hobby for me right now.Ben: That's too bad. Have you looked into typewriters?Starr: I mean, quite the same thingJosh: I would get into typewriters though. Just like aside,Starr: I am looking into smaller, into a smaller press. They have smaller like desktop ones that are a couple of hundred pounds. Um, not, not like a thousand and looking into that sad,Ben: sad to hear it didn't work out, but I let's get pictures of that in any one. If you get a small one, that'd be kind of fun.Starr: Yeah. I just have to, I, uh, I almost saw him this weekend, but somebody swooped in before me. And so now I'm just going to have to wait like six months until another one pops up. Cause like it's, they're not very, there's not a very liquid market. It's not like in a, I guess, I guess there is a liquid market, I guess, I guess they just kind of get snapped, snatched up and then like, there's just not any of them. Yeah.Josh: Do you still get to like, do you have to do like type setting and stuff?Starr: Yeah. You do like, um, there's a couple ways to do it. Like you can do it the old school way where you have like the lead type and you like, um, you know, put it letter by letter and do like a composing stick and do all that. Um, I probably wouldn't do that just because I'm not sure I have the time and patience. Um, so there's a, an updated way to do it where, um, you can, um, you know, send a PDF off and they'll make a, uh, a plate for you and it's plastic and then you just use that. So, um, yeah. And you can make them yourself too. It's just, you know, takes more equipment and more, you know, you know how I'm work and stuff.Josh: Maybe you could get like a specialized, d printer to like printer plates for you.Starr: Cool. Do you use like, uh, um, people to use like a, a Glowforge like a laser cutter cool. Or laser engraver?Josh: That's a, that's a fun hobby. That sounds, that sounds like fun.Starr: Oh yeah. Oh, I went down the rabbit hole of reading all about laser engravers too. Like there's like this cheap one from China that you can get for like bucks. And then like, it's apparently got good internals, but like, you really have to soup it up. And so like that's some people's whole personality is they just do that.Josh: Nice before we get off the topic of a paper and things that interface with paper. Um, I like ordered something off of Amazon that I was like, I don't know why I was like this excited about it arriving. Like maybe I'm just like extreme, like my, you know, I'm extremely bored and needed something to look forward to. But like Amazon basics, paper, shreds, shredder, sharpening, and lubricate, lubricant sheets. And I get all, I'm not going to say that again. I hope you like got that. Um, I did not know that this existed though. Cause like I have like a paper shredder. It's like a cheap, you know, a cheap one, but like I never, like, I never oil it cause don't like just, I don't know how, okay. Like just the thought of like getting a, like a bottle of oil or something and like trying to like dump it.Josh: Like I just, I don't know. So I like was like trying to figure out like, how do you oil these things? And it turns out they make sheets of paper that had the oil like in them and you just run them through the shredder. I didn't know. Like maybe everyone knows this. I did not know this was a thing. And uh, I mean it's like the perfect, it's like the perfect, uh, lubricant solution for your shredder because, um, you just, you know, it's like shredding a piece of paper, which is fun in and of itself. Like who doesn't like shredding paper. So pro tip, you don't needStarr: Waiting. How do they work? Um,Josh: My shredder might be too far gone from the lack of oiling, but I'm going to like, wait and see. Oh no, we'll wait and see. Luckily I did get the cheap one. So now that I'm like an expert on shredder maintenance, um, my next shredder maybe I'll even upgrade or something.Starr: I actually, um, I bought an Amazon basic shredder. That is, uh, it's a, it's a fairly big one, um, for home use, but it's, it's uh, Amazon basics and it's actually really good.Ben: That is a cross cut. Cause that's the key feature right there.Starr: I, I think the cross cuts. Yeah. SeeBen: Mine. Mine's a cheapo one that just does stripsJosh: And that's, I mean that's the strips. Yeah.Ben: Gotta have the crossover.Starr: Yeah. They can always go in the strips back together.Josh: Yeah.Ben: I was a little disturbed to find out though. My, my local trash and recycling facility, uh, our city requests that you not put shredded paper in the recycle, uh, I don't know why they can't handle the recycle shredded paper, but yeah. So if, if all the stuff that I shred, it has to go in the trash, which seems kind of wrong, you know, it's like it's paper cause then recycle. Right. ButJosh: That's because I'm pretty sure recycling is a big scam and none of it actually works. Like you think it does because like Kaylin, like Katelyn knows all about recycling and I am constantly trying to like be a good person and recycle things and she's like, no, that's not recyclable. Like you can't like, that's going to actually like, that's going to like make the recycling people mad because like they have to sort through this and like, you know, take it out before they can actually like repurpose. So yeah, it seems like there's very, uh, relatively little that is actually recyclable. At least in my experience. So farStarr: We subscribed to an additional recycling service, um, read well. And uh, yeah. So they like, you can't recycle, um, just a normal city was like, when you can't put like plastic bags or any sort of like plastic film stuff. Right. So like they take that and um, like they'll take, uh, like fabric stuff, like clothes, um, and like batteries and light. And then they have like a rotating category where um, like once every three months or whatever, it's like, you can put your old electronic devices in there and they'll like, you know, have those recycled and whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty nice.Josh: Yeah. Cause I'm everything I hear lately about like just normal recycling, just as depressing. Like it's like, I don't know. I hear like, you know, half the recycling isn't even like being taken care of taken,Starr: You know, like they're like shippingJosh: It to other countries or burying it in landfills anyways. It just it's like, yeah, it's kind of sad. It doesn't make me want to recycle.Ben: Cool. Let's see. Maybe, maybe my municipality then is forward-looking because they know there's going to put in the landfill. So there's just saving a step, right? Yeah. Just put it in the trash. Cause we're going to put out the trash anyway. Right?Josh: Yeah. And thenBen: They actually did that for a styrofoam. We used to have a regular styrofoam collection event. Like every month you could go down to city hall and you could dump your old styrofoam and they would take care of it. And then like, you know what, we just can't even cost effectively handle styrofoam anymore. So don't even, it's not even worth driving down to the city hall to drop it off. Just put it in your trash. It's like, oh, that's so sad.Starr: Well, the, the rebel also does styrofoam. Like it's um, that's cool. It's it's not included in the base like price, but they give you a big bag and they're like, okay, whenever you're done with filling up this giant bag, like it'll cost, I don't know, five or $ to recycle it.Josh: Okay. Well we got to remember put it in the show notes cause I'm going to look at it too. Okay. Sure. I mean, it does seem like I'd rather the city, like if the city like legitimately can't handle it and they're just like secretly like just trashing it anyway. It's like, it's better just to acknowledge the problem so that a real solution, hopefully it can, you know, like maybe like something like this, like people can start to, you know, pay extra for it or, or whatever. But like, it just seems like ignore, like just pretending, like just, just so everyone can feel good. Like, you know, just keep the people, you know, let them feel like they're recycling when they're not, does not seem like a solution that's going to like solve any problems.Ben: But you know, what's, what's free to recycle the bits that you send to Honeybadger. We recycle those things all day long. You send us those, those API bits and they get efficiently recycled right away.Starr: I thought y'all were going to recycle those into NFTs.Josh: Oh yes. We don't. Don't uh, can'tBen: Spill the beans yet. Yeah. LikeJosh: Tell everyone our new business strategy. I think already I put that on Twitter already that we're pivoting into crypto and Airtraq and it's going to be a side business. Yes.Starr: It might confuse people. There's already like a Honeybadger coin or something out there.Josh: Yeah. And there's also like multiple Badger NFTs by the way. SoBen: Yeah, just a little delight.Josh: That was like a brave badgers. Brave badgers on Salada. I think there's one.Ben: Yeah. Put that in the show notes. Make sure people check it out. Not officially endorsed by Honeybadger, but still cool. IStarr: Think we should put out our own line of pugs.Josh: Yes. Yeah. I mean like I'm surprised pugs. Aren't like, so someone's rolling an NFT for pugs, to be honest.Starr: I wasn't making it come back. I hear.Ben: Yeah. If we're going to, if we're going to go retro, like let's go all the way. Retro let's skip the whole collectible cards and stuff and go straight to playing cards. Right. I'll play for the two cards with different batteries on them. Yeah.Starr: I thought you were going to say to me, light bulbs or something.Josh: Absolutely. I've been, I'm curious. Have you learned anything about, uh, crypto or NFTs lately?Ben: You know, no, I haven't really, I I've been, I've been watching people in my Twitter feed and it's, it's funny, there's this, there's this arc that I see, like their first tweet is like, what is this crypto stuff? And then their next tweet is like, this crypto stuff is crazy. And then a little bit later, there's another tweet. It's like, I'm going to look into this crypto set because I want to understand it. And then a little bit later there's like, Hey, check out this NFC I just bought. And then a little bit later, their final tweet is like, here, come join this, this core community and get into my mint.Josh: And, and they have a new Twitter avatar that has like laser eyes.Ben: Yeah. It's kinda, it's crazy. So, so I've like, I've seen this again and again and again, I'm like, okay, I'm not, I'm afraid. I don't wanna investigate the Nazis becauseStarr: So R oh, I'm going to get, I'm going to get, I'm going to get so much hate over this, but our, um, our NFTs just like, um, MLM for like tech rose.Ben: Yes, totally. They areJosh: Essentially,Starr: That's like, I've got, I've like, I'll just tell my I'm essentially. I've got my sensory over here. My essential oils.Josh: Yeah. Well spring as well. I mean like, technically I think you probably could code a MLM on Ethereum, so I'm sure it's already been done, but maybe that, you know, maybe, maybe we should just go for it. Just go full a full billing. There you go.Starr: That's it. Everybody you heard it. We're going full villain now.Josh: Crypto villain. Yeah. I I've checked it out as well. A little bit. Um, I bought a, uh, an FTE on Solano just to see. And, um, actually I did not follow the pattern that you, uh, that you described Ben:, but I also did not let myself do this publicly, which I think is a big key. Like you people know, like you can create anonymous identities on the internet. Um, it's still possible. And then you can go explore, you know, like NFTs or whatever, and you don't have to like have laser eyes on your main Twitter profile. Um, but you know, I went and looked at it and uh, I'm still, I'm like still learning. I'm like, you know, I'm trying to update my, you have the whole crypto scene is a little bit, you know, a little bit dated. Like I checked it out, like after Bitcoin got, you know, it was starting to get popular and stuff, read some white papers, but I think it's, I mean, it's, you know, it's not going away regardless, so it's good to keep your view current at least. But, um, I am not, uh, you know, bought into, I have an eight in as the kids say,Ben: Well, I mean, back to the two lips, I think I'll just wait until the crash happens. Right. And then I'll have a bias of nice to have thoseJosh: Do that. Yeah. That's the, that's the cycle. I mean, you know, it's going to happen. That happens like in every, every, it seems like every new application of blockchain that, you know, comes out that goes through the same, like boom and bust cycle, um, and then levels out to, uh, you know, fairly regular boom and bust cycle.Ben: I mean, you know, confessional here, but I'm actually a laggard when it comes to tech stuff. Like I'm pretty late on the adoption curve for a lot of things. Like, you know, my car is pretty old, my TV's kind of old, you know, I'm not really sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's just kinda, it's kinda weird. I'm in the tech world, but like, I don't really jump in on things like that. I'll just wait,Starr: That's pretty normal. Right. There's like, um, I don't know. There's I saw some, I forget where I saw somebody say it was like, there's two types of tech people. One has the newest of everything all the time. And the other one is like still working on like a, a PC.Josh: Yeah. Whatever.Starr: Yeah. I don't know about y'all, but like, I don't really know a lot of like tech people who have like, um, like voice assistance in their home.Josh: Yeah. I like that as much as like the consumer more than just regular consumers. Yeah.Ben: That's because we know it's like I write software. I know how bad it is.Josh: Yeah. Yeah. That's why I don't like having them. So I don't trust, I don't trust software, but I don't know, like the block, the whole blockchain thing. Like, I, I, you know, I kind of get the, like the future application argument, like there's something here. Like I think it is like that idea of having like very easy, like making contracts easier, for instance, or giving software, the ability, like making it easier to write applications that are built on like contracts or, or even like financial applications. Like the whole idea of like, like code being able to hold its own its own actual currency or money. Um, because it's like, you know, it's just bits. Like that is interesting. Like, I don't know, you know, I'm not enough of a futurist to be able to like see the future where, you know, that's like ubiquitous, but like it is, I can see that aspect of it. It's interesting. But like the whole, like, yeah. I'm not like collecting a bunch of, uh, NFTs in the meantime.Ben: Yeah. I think smart contracts. The idea is interesting. I think, you know, the stuff that's being loosely called web three, I think that's kind of stuff is interesting, but the, but the whole I'm going to buy a smart contract thing that represents a JPEG and then I'm gonna hold on to it and it's going to be worth a million bucks. That part of it doesn't really appeal to me. Like, yeah, I guess I'm just not yet.Josh: Well, you're also not an art. You're not like an art collector either. I would assume that's true. I don't think you have a house full of priceless art. I would, that would be my guess. I mean, I don't want to like, yeah, like over assume, but I mean, like, I think that's the kind of person that this would, this definitely like appeals more to like the collector and, uh, I'm, I'm also not a collector. So, um,Ben: Um, I do have one, I do have one piece of art in my house, so I'm not a complete, you know, Rube, but, uh, but yeah, I am not, I'm not a collector. Yeah.Starr: I think the big, um, like, like I'm thinking about how like Bitcoin and stuff has been around and, you know, blockchain has been around for over a decade at this point. Right. Um, and like still now, like, you know, it looks a lot, I don't know, to me, just from the outside, it looks very similar to what it did back then. It's like, it's like, um, a bunch of people, very excited about it and what it means, and this kind of like vague way, um, that like seems like, you know, it'll pan out in the future, but we're not quite sure how yet. And like, I'm wondering if the big, um, I'm wondering if the thing that like blockchain is actually successful at is in, um, being very like evocative to a certain type of person, um, making a certain type of, you know, developer or a tech person, like feel a certain way. Like I wonder if that's the main success of blockchain, because that seems to be like, mostly what I'm seeing is like a bunch of people, you know, excited a bunch of people. Um, I don't know, like, like wanting to discuss the future of things and you know, being smart about it. And it's like, I wonder if that, um, that process is the whole reason that it stuck around. I don't know.Ben: It's good, good point.Josh: There's definitely some interesting stuff out there. Um, and some very, I mean, like, I think it's undeniable that there are some very people that have thought all this stuff up, like yeah. But yeah, I don't know. You're right. It's, it's been around a lot. Like the, it seems like the adoption curve as much longer on this one. If, if it is going to be the, you know, the next big thing, I don't know. It does. I don't know. It'll be interesting. But I figured in the meantime, like keeping, keeping an eye on, let's just try to learn more about it. But, um, I'm not really the, I try to avoid situations where I just like dive in and become a like true believer. So I'm, I'm learning from afar.Ben: I'll just go buy some GME. That'll go to fix.Starr: I dunno. I'm just going to go for AMC, myself. Like the movies, like the movies have been around forever.Ben: Well, confession time I actually bought some AMC. Oh yeah. When the whole GME thing was going crazy and AMC got part of it. I went and bought some AMC. Cause I'm like, you know what, thinking about it. It's like, I wasn't really interested in the main stock thing, but I was thinking, okay, pandemics going to go away some point, right. People are gonna get back out and they're going to go to movies again. Right. It's going to be, and I'm actually, I think I'm doing pretty good on the whole AMC purchase. We'll see how it goes. Pandemic didn't end yet, but I can still close the fingers.Josh: I mean, as a futurist, I do expect more things to become MIMA fide. So if you can like predict those trends, then go, you know, get in early because, uh, everything's going to be a meme on the blockchain. Eventually.Ben: That's a good thing. Our business is based on a meme now. We're, we're, we're totally with it.Josh: Yeah. All right. We're finally with it on the whole meme thing.Starr: Well, as the present test, I think you should just enjoy it while you can.Josh: You mean all the mains or I don'tStarr: Really know. I just want to get, it seemed like a pithy thing to sayBen: It's apropos. Yeah. Yeah.Josh: Well, we discussed like, no, like I think we, I think we actually discussed like nothing related to the business this time and that is, you know, that's moving forward.Ben: This is our Seinfeld episode, the episode aboutJosh: Speed. Oh, speaking of Seinfeld, we finished the last, the final episode of Seinfeld, um, that like a couple nights ago. And it like, cause we've been like Kayla and I have been like going through it, like for like years at this point, like just slowly, like, cause it's not every night you want to watch Seinfeld. Like it's, it's gotta be like a Seinfeld night. So we finally, like, we didn't realize we were like at the end. Um, and it was kind of a, it was a little bittersweet moment kind of likeStarr: At the end of real Seinfeld when it aired. So, and you just heard that green day song starts swelling. It's something I'm predictive of your life. I know. So enjoy it while you can enjoy it while you can.Starr: You've been listening to founder quest. If you want to give us a review, go to wherever you do that and do that. I don't know. I've never been given a podcast or review, to be honest. I don't know how you do it. Um, so I may just be sending you out to nowhere. Um, and yeah, if you're interested in writing for us, we are usually looking for authors and stuff for a blog. Um, check out honeybadger.io forward slash blog and look for the right press link and learn all about, you know, all about that. And we will see you next week. See ya. See ya. Bye.

god tv amazon founders china pandemic speaking startups bitcoin nfts pc mine brave saas developers retro psa seinfeld amc api ethereum peloton dodge mlm tacoma rover elixir chris farley bootstrap gme honey badger solano jpeg no business lifestyle business fte rube ebi software as a service mima salada glowforge ben it ben you josh it josh yeah josh you ben so josh well josh oh ben well josh so josh there micropreneur josh do

019 - How to Be Funny with Josh Otusanya, Part 2

The No Cap Health Show

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2021 22:53

Click here to download the full transcription as a formatted PDF. Episode Summary: Welcome to The No Cap Health Show, a weekly podcast where Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler uses his decades of experience in medicine and ability as an expert researcher to provide a light-hearted approach and share health trends popular on TikTok. In this episode, Dr. Brian continues his discussion with Stand-up Comedian Josh Otusanya on How to Be Funny. What is crowd work? How can you utilize sarcasm and exaggeration to make your jokes even better? What role does relatability play in comedy? Find out in today's episode. If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you leave the show a Rating & Review at RateThisPodcast.com/NoCap. Key Takeaways 01:39 – Dr. Brian continues his discussion with today's guest, stand-up comedian Josh Otusanya 02:34 – Josh lists other principles of comedy he abides by 06:36 – Using sarcasm effectively 07:24 – The impact exaggeration can have on your comedy 08:34 – Dr. Brian and Josh break down jokes from a couple of TikTok videos 12:41 – Crowd work 14:46 – Mixed metaphors 16:46 – Why hard consonant words are funnier than non-consonant words 17:49 – Habits to avoid in comedy 21:48 – Dr. Brian thanks Josh for joining the show and let's listeners know where to find him Tweetable Quotes “When you're setting up a reality onstage and you use sarcasm, you can use it in a way that speaks to the audience's perspective of what's going on. It's almost like you break that wall a little bit.” (06:51) (Josh) “Relatability is huge. If you just know how to speak the audience's language and they feel like you're a part of their tribe, you're gonna win them over.” (11:03) (Josh) “You want to make sure people understand what you're saying. So, slow down. Time is on your side. The stage is yours. Make sure that everyone is understanding each word you're saying, because each word is important.” (18:06) (Josh) “This is confidence. So, sometimes delivering a punchline is just about how you say it. And if you say that punchline like you don't think it's funny, they may not laugh even if it is funny.” (19:47) (Josh) Links Mentioned Dr. Brian's Website Dr. Brian's TikTok Dr. Brian's Instagram Josh's TikTok Josh's Instagram Please remember, Dr. Brian is a doctor, but he is not your doctor. He is here to provide general information, not medical advice, so you should always check with your doctor before relying on any information. Podcast Production & Marketing provided by FullCast Copyright. Advanced Vision Education, LLC See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

time tiktok marketing stand funny habits mixed crowd be funny josh you

Our Ops Are Smooth Like A Jar Of Skippy

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 3, 2021 36:27

Show Notes:Links:MicromortNoblesse obligeJosh's dotfilesGitHub Code SpacesFull Transcript:Ben:Yeah. I've been holding out for the new MacBook Pros. The M1 is pretty tempting, but I want whatever comes next. I want the 16-inch new hotness that's apparently supposed to be launching in November, but I've been waiting for it so patiently for so long now.Josh:Will they have the M2?Ben:Yeah, either or that or M1X. People are kind of unsure what the odds are.Starr:Why do they do that? Why did they make an M1 if they can't make an M2? Why do they have to keep... You just started, people. You can just have a normal naming scheme that just increments. Why not?Josh:M1.1?Ben:That would be awesome.Starr:Oh, Lord.Josh:Yeah, it would.Ben:M1A, Beachfront Avenue.Starr:So last week we did an Ask Me Anything on Indie Hackers, and that was a lot of fun.Josh:It was a lot of fun.Starr:I don't know. One of the most interesting questions on there was some guy was just like, "Are you rich?" I started thinking about it. I was like, "I literally have no idea." It reminded me of when I used to live in New York briefly in the '90s or, no, the early '00s. There was a Village Voice article in which they found... They started out with somebody not making very much money, and they're like, "Hey, what is rich to you?" Then that person described that. Then they went and found a person who had that level of income and stuff and they asked them, and it just kept going up long past the point where... Basically, nobody ever was like, "Yeah, I'm rich."Josh:Yeah. At the end, they're like, "Jeff Bezos, what is rich? What is rich to you?"Starr:Yeah.Josh:He's like, "Own your own star system."Starr:So, yeah, I don't know. I feel like I'm doing pretty good for myself because I went to fill up my car with gas the other day and I just didn't even look at the price. The other day, I wanted to snack, so I just got a whole bag of cashews, and I was just chowing down on those. I didn't need to save that. I could always get another bag of cashews.Ben:Cashews are my arch nemesis, man. I can't pass up the cashews. As far as the nut kingdom, man, they are my weakness.Starr:I know. It's the subtle sweetness.Ben:It's so good. The buttery goodness.Starr:Yeah, the smoothness of the texture, the subtle sweetness, it's all there.Ben:That and pistachios. I could die eating cashews and pistachios.Josh:There you go. I like pistachios.Ben:Speaking of being rich, did you see Patrick McKenzie's tweet about noblesse oblige?Josh:No. Tell me.Ben:Yeah, we'll have to link it up in the show notes. But, basically, the idea is when you reach a certain level of richness, I guess, when you feel kind of rich, you should be super generous, right? So noblesse oblige is the notion that nobility should act nobly. If you have been entrusted with this respect of the community and you're a noble, then you ought to act a certain way. You got to act like a noble, right? You should be respectful and et cetera. So Patio was applying this to modern day, and he's like, "Well, we should bring this back," like if you're a well-paid software developer living in the United States of America, you go and you purchase something, let's say a coffee, that has basically zero impact on your budget, right? You don't notice that $10 or whatever that you're spending. Then just normalize giving a 100% tip because you will hardly feel it, but the person you're giving it to, that'll just make their day, right? So doing things like that. I was like, "Oh, that's"-Josh:Being generous.Ben:Yeah, it's being generous. Yeah. So I like that idea.Josh:That's cool.Ben:So-Starr:So it's okay to be rich as long as you're not a rich asshole.Ben:Exactly. Exactly. That's a good way to bring it forward there, Starr.Starr:There you go. I don't know. Yeah. I think there's some historical... I don't know. The phrase noblesse oblige kind of grates at me a little bit in a way that I can't quite articulate in this moment, but I'll think about that, and I will get back with you.Josh:Wait. Are you saying you don't identify as part of the nobility?Starr:No.Ben:I mean, I think there's a lot of things from the regency period that we should bring back, like governesses, because who wants to send your child to school in the middle of a COVID pandemic? So just bring the teacher home, right?Starr:Yeah. That's pretty sexist. Why does it have to be gendered? Anyway.Ben:Okay, it could be a governor, but you might get a little misunderstanding. All of a sudden, you've got Jay Inslee showing up on your doorstep, "I heard you wanted me to come teach your kids."Josh:I don't know. I'll just take an algorithm in the home to teach my kids, just entrust them to it.Starr:Yeah. Oh, speaking of bringing things back, I told y'all, but I'll tell our podcast listeners. On Sunday, I'm driving to Tacoma to go to somebody's basement and look at a 100-year old printing press to possibly transport to Seattle and put in my office for no good reason that I can think of. It just seems to be something that I'm doing.Josh:Do you like that none of us actually asked you what you were intending to do with it? I was like, "Yeah, just let me know when you need to move it. I'm there." I just assumed you were going to do something cool with it, but ... Yeah.Starr:I appreciate that. I appreciate the support. I'm going to make little zines or something. I don't know.Josh:Yeah. If I get a lifetime subscription to your zine-Starr:Okay, awesome.Josh:... that would be payment.Starr:Done. Done.Josh:Cool.Ben:Yeah, sign me up, too. I'll be there.Starr:Well, I appreciate that.Ben:I mean, who could resist that invitation, right, because you get to... If you get to help with moving that thing, you get to see it, you get to touch it and play with it, but you don't have to keep it. It's somebody else's problem when you're done with the day, so sounds great to me.Starr:There you go. Well, I mean, if you read the forums about these things, this is one of the smaller ones, so people are just like, "Ah, no big deal. No big deal. It's okay." But I was happy to hear that there's no stairs involved.Ben:That is the deal-breaker. Yeah.Josh:Yeah. But it-Ben:If you ever get the friend helping you to move their piano, you always ask, "Okay, how many flights of steps," right?Starr:Yeah. Oh, I just thought of something I could do with it. I could make us all nice business card to hand out to nobody.Ben:Because we're not going anywhere.Josh:I just think of my last six attempts at having business cards. They're all still sitting in my closet, all six boxes of-Starr:I know. People look at you like, "What, really, a business card? What?"Josh:Yeah, like all six generations.Starr:Yeah.Ben:I hand out one or two per year. Yeah, just random people and like, "Hey, here's my phone number." It's an easy way to give it to somebody.Josh:Just people on the street?Ben:Exactly. Like a decent fellow, "Here you go." Thank you.Josh:Yeah.Starr:It's like, "I've got 1000 of these. I got to justify the cost somehow."Josh:We got to move these.Starr:We could start invoicing our customers by snail mail. I could print a really nice letterhead.Ben:I think we have a few customers who would be delighted to receive a paper invoice from us because then they would have an excuse to not pay us for 90 days.Starr:Yeah.Josh:Isn't owning a printing press like owning a truck, though? Once people know you have it, everyone wants to borrow it.Starr:It's going to be pretty hard to borrow for a 1000-pound piece of iron.Josh:Well, they're going to want to come over and hang out in your basement and do their printing. This is the Pacific Northwest, like-Starr:It's their manifestos.Josh:Yeah. They got to print their manifestos, lists of demands.Starr:They don't want the establishment at Kinko's to be able to see.Josh:Right.Ben:I don't know. It's got to put you on a special kind of watch list, though, if you have a printing press in your home, right? All of a sudden, some people are really interested in what you're up to.Josh:It's like a legacy watch list.Ben:I'm just flashing back to, yeah, in the 1800s when cities, towns would get all-Starr:There you go.Josh:Well, yeah, because they're like-Ben:The mob would come out and burn down the printing press building and stuff.Josh:If you wanted to be a propagandist back then, you had to buy a printing press and then you get put on a watch list. That just never went away. They're still looking for those people. They just don't find as many of them these days.Starr:Yeah. It's so inefficient. It's not the super efficient way of getting the word out, though, I hear, unless you want to be one of those people handing out leaflets on the side of the road.Josh:Well, you could paper windshields in parking lots.Starr:Oh, there you go. Yeah.Josh:Yeah, that's how they used to do it.Starr:No, look at my beautifully hand-crafted leaflet that you're going to throw in the gutter.Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Ben:I think you just settled on what your next adventure's going to be after Honeybadger. You're ready to put this business aside and focus on printing up flyers for your local missing cat.Starr:There you go. There you go. Band flyers, that's big business.Josh:But you could get into fancy paper. That's a whole thing up here. It's pretty cool, actually.Starr:Yeah. I don't know. Really, I was like, "Oh, it'd be cool to have a big thing to tinker with." I'm learning about myself that I like having just a big physical project going on, and I'm pretty... Like, I built this backyard office, and that took up two years of my time. Ever since then, I don't have a big physical thing to work on, so I'm thinking this might fill that niche, that niche, sorry. I read a thing that's like don't say niche, Americans. Niche.Ben:I don't know, Starr. Maybe you should think of the children and then think about 50 years from now when you're dead and Ida's cleaning out the house and she's all like, "Why is there this printing press?"Starr:Oh, there you go.Josh:Have to move it.Starr:They'll just sell it with the house.Ben:There you go.Starr:Yeah. I mean, the funny thing is, is that it is wider than the doorway, so I would either have to dissemble it partially or take out the door. I put the door in, so I know how to take it out, so there is a good chance the door's coming out because I have less chance of messing something up if I do that one. But we'll see.Ben:Echo that.Starr:Well, thank you.Josh:You should've put one of those roll-up doors in there.Starr:I should've, yeah.Josh:Those are cool.Starr:What was I thinking?Josh:You really did not plan ahead for this.Starr:Yeah. I mean, walls are really only a couple of thin pieces of plywood, and you can just saw through it.Josh:Just a small refactor.Starr:Yeah.Josh:Yeah.Starr:And that would-Josh:Did y'all see that someone listened to every episode of this podcast in a row?Starr:I know. I feel so bad. I feel so bad for them.Josh:Speaking of-Starr:We're sorry. We're so sorry.Ben:I was feeling admiration. I'm like, "Wow, that's impressive," like the endurance of it.Starr:I just think we would've made different decisions.Ben:I don't know. But not-Josh:Maybe it's pretty good. I haven't gone back and gone through it all and never will, but-Ben:Well, I mean, not only did they say they listened to every episode, but then they were eager for more. They were like, "When are you getting done with your break?" So I guess-Starr:There you go.Ben:... that net it was positive, but-Josh:We must not be too repetitive.Ben:Must not.Starr:Stockholm syndrome.Josh:We're sorry.Ben:Well...Starr:I'm sorry. I don't have anything informative to add, so I'm just going to be shit-posting this whole episode.Ben:Well, I've had an amazing week since we last chatted. I kept reflecting on how I couldn't remember anything that I did over the past whatever months. Well, this past week, I can remember a whole bunch of things that I did. I've been crazy busy and getting a bunch of little things knocked out. But today, today was the capstone of the week because I rolled over our main Redis cluster that we use for all of our jobs, all of the incoming notices and whatevers. Yeah, rolled over to a new Redis cluster with zero downtime, no dropped data, nobody even noticed. It was just smooth as-Starr:Oh my God.Josh:I saw that.Starr:Awesome.Ben:It's going pretty good.Starr:Just like butter?Ben:Just like butter.Starr:They slid right out of that old Redis instance and just into this new... Is it an AWS-managed type thing?Ben:Yeah, both of them were. They all went on the new one, but... Yeah.Josh:It's, what, ElastiCache?Ben:Yep. Smooth like a new jar of Skippy.Josh:I saw that you put that in our ops channel or something.Ben:Yeah. Yeah, that's the topic in our ops channel.Josh:So it's the subject or the topic, yeah. We're making ops run, yeah, like a jar of Skippy.Starr:Why isn't that our tagline for our whole business?Ben:I mean, we can change it.Starr:I don't know why that's making me crack up so much, but it is.Josh:Skippy's good stuff.Starr:Oh my gosh.Josh:Although we-Ben:Actually-Josh:... usually go for the Costco natural brand these days.Ben:Well, we go for the Trader Joe's all-natural brand that you have to actually mix every time you use it. I prefer crunchy over creamy, so, actually, my peanut butter's not that smooth, but... You know.Josh:Yeah.Ben:It's okay. But, yeah, I love our natural peanut butter, except for the whole churning thing, but you can live with that.Starr:We're more of a Nutella family.Ben:Ooh, I do love a Nutella.Josh:Ooh, Nutella.Ben:Mm-hmm (affirmative), that's good stuff.Josh:We made pancakes the other day, and I was putting Nutella on pancakes. I did this thing, like I made this... We have one of those griddles, like an electric griddle, and so I made this super long rectangular pancake, and then I spread Nutella on the entire thing, and then I rolled it so that you have this-Starr:You know what it's called, Josh.Josh:What is it called?Starr:That's called a crepe.Josh:So it's a crepe, but it's made out of a pancake.Starr:It's a Texas crepe.Ben:Texas crepe.Josh:Yeah, a Texas-Starr:A Texas crepe.Ben:Yes.Josh:Is it really a Texas crepe because that's... Yeah, so, I-Starr:Oh, no, I just made that up.Ben:That sounds perfect, yeah.Josh:Well, it is now.Ben:Yeah, it is now.Josh:It is now, and I highly recommend it. It's pretty amazing.Ben:Throw some Skippy on there and, man, now it's a... That's awesome.Josh:Peanut butter's also good on pancakes.Starr:That's why people listen to us, for our insights about business.Ben:Yeah, there was this one time, speaking of pancakes and peanut butter...Josh:How did we get on pancakes? Like, oh, yeah, ops.Ben:This one time, I went over to dinner at some person's house, and I didn't know what dinner was going to be, but we got there and it was breakfast for dinner, which I personally love. That's one of my favorites.Starr:I knew that about you.Ben:So they're like, "Oh, I'm sorry. Hope you don't think it's weird, but we're having breakfast for dinner." I'm like, "No, no, I love it." So eggs and bacon and waffles, and so I'm getting my waffle and I'm like, "Do you have some peanut butter," and they're like, "Oh my goodness, we thought you would think that was way too weird, and so we didn't have the peanut butter." They whipped it out from in the counter. It's like, "Oh, shew, now we can have our peanut butter, too." I'm like, "Oh, yeah, peanut butter on waffles, yeah."Josh:Everyone had their hidden peanut butter.Ben:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Josh:Yeah.Starr:And that's how you level up a friendship.Ben:There you go. So, yeah, the week was good. The week was good. Bugs got fixed, things got deployed, and, yeah, just a whole-Josh:Yeah, you had a bunch of PRs and stuff for little things, too, which-Ben:Yeah. And got some practice with the whole delegating thing, got Shava doing some stuff, too. So, yeah, just all-around super productive week.Josh:Nice. I got Java to run in a Docker container, so my week's going pretty good.Ben:And that took you all week?Starr:What do those words mean? I don't...Josh:Yeah.Starr:Was your audio cutting out? I don't know. I just heard a bunch of things I don't understand.Josh:Well, for your own sake, don't ask me to explain it.Starr:Yeah, it's like better not looked at.Josh:Yeah.Ben:Why would you subject yourself to that sort of torture, Josh?Josh:Oh, well, because running Java on an M1 Mac is even worse.Starr:Oh my Lord.Josh:Well, actually, running it, period. But, yeah, like just our Java package. I mean, I've spent half this podcast ranting about our packaging, so I don't need to get too deep into it. But every time I release this thing, it's like it just doesn't work because I've forgotten my... I've changed my system, and Java and Maven package repository are just like that. So I figure if I can make some sort of reproduceable development environment using Docker, then in two years everything will just be smooth as a jar of Skippy.Ben:Skippy. Yeah, yeah.Starr:Well, I had a chance to-Josh:I reckon.Starr:I had a chance to dig into some numbers, which is one of my favorite things to do, and so... I don't know. There was this question that was just bothering me, which was... Well, let me just back up. So we've had some success, as you guys know, in the past year. We've almost doubled our rate of new user sign-ups, not new user sign-ups, like conversion to paid users. We've doubled our paid user conversion numbers, rate, whatever you call it. And so, obviously, revenue from users has gone up as well, but since we are a... Our plans are basically broken down by error rates, right? So what happens when people upgrade is they get too many errors for their plan. It says, "Hey, you should upgrade if you want to keep sending us errors," and they do.Starr:I had this weird situation where it's like I wasn't sure... In our system, revenue from users was coming just from whatever plan they picked when they signed up, and so I was wondering, "Well, what if they sign up, and then a week later they upgrade? That's going to be counted under upgrade revenue instead of new user revenue," which, really, it really kind of should be. So I got to digging, and I found that it doesn't really make that big of a difference. Some people do upgrade pretty quickly after converting, but they don't... It's not really enough to really change things.Josh:Yeah.Starr:Then, also, just sort of offhand, I took a little sneak peek. I've been running this experiment to see if lowering our error quota for our basic, our free plan, it would increase conversions. So I took a little sneak peek at the data. It's too soon to know for sure, but so far the conversion rate, I think, is going to end up being higher, which is what I would expect, so that's good, and-Josh:Nice.Starr:Yeah. And when we're done, I'm going to look at sign-ups just to make sure that they are still in line.Ben:Yeah. Anecdotally, I've seen a smaller window from trial to paid conversion. Well, not trial, but freemium to paid conversion. I've seen people who are signing up, getting on the basic plan, and then within some short time period they're actually going to a team plan.Josh:Oh, that's good to know.Ben:That's happening more often than it was, so... Yeah. So that's-Josh:Cool.Ben:I'm just saying the same thing Starr said but without real data.Josh:Yeah.Starr:Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, we need a little bit more time to see how things pan out, too, because it's... One thing I figured out that I will share with our readers, our readers, I'm used to doing the blog posts, I'll share with our listeners that I figured out that you really have to pay attention to, on free plans especially, is comparing conversion rates between time periods. So if you make a change and then you wait for a month of data to come in and you're like, "Okay, let's look at the conversion rate for the past month after the change with the conversion rate for the time period before the change," that is really an apples to oranges comparison because on the one hand you've had people who have maybe had a year to upgrade versus people who've had a month to upgrade. So you have to be really careful to make it apples to apples, right, where you only compare... If you have a month worth of users on one side, you compare it to a month worth of users on the other side, and you only count the conversions that happened in that time period.Josh:Makes sense.Starr:Yeah. So, anyway, that's just my little freebie data analysis thing for our listeners.Josh:We should have Starr's weekly data science tip.Starr:Starr's data corner.Josh:Yeah.Ben:Love it.Josh:Yeah. We could move the podcast to segments. We've never done segments. We could introduce segments if we need to spice things up on FounderQuest.Ben:Yeah. Totally. Well, speaking of spicing things up, I had a brilliant idea this morning.Starr:Oh, I want to hear it.Ben:Yeah. So one of the things that I keep an eye on is how much we spend on hosting because that's a good chunk of our expenses. We always want to make more money, and one way to make more money is to have fewer expenses. So I had this brilliant idea on how to cut expenses. We can chop our AWS bill in half by just not running everything redundant.Starr:There you go.Josh:Brilliant.Starr:Would you say the AWS is the sixth Honeybadger employee?Ben:Yeah, pretty much.Josh:Yes. That's a good way to put it, actually.Starr:Yeah.Josh:Yeah.Ben:Well, in the early days, before we were paying ourselves a full salary, I remember we budgeted 25% for Starr, 25% for Ben, 25% for Josh, and 25% for hosting.Josh:Yeah.Ben:Yeah, I don't think we ever exceeded the 25%, which is good. That would be a bit high. So, yeah, AWS is like our sixth employee.Starr:Yeah, it's funny because do we even have other expenses?Josh:No.Ben:I mean, salaries is definitely the biggest one, and our health insurance is not cheap either.Starr:Yeah.Ben:Advertising.Starr:I was thinking like marketing, advertising. Yeah.Ben:Yeah. Advertising and marketing, that's the next one.Starr:That's the next 25%.Josh:Can we make AWS our seventh and eighth employee, too?Ben:Eventually may. Yeah, I did some... Oh. Oh. So I told you my great success that I had this morning. Well, your comment just now about AWS made me think about the one failure, just amazingly huge failure that I had also this week, migrating a bunch of data from Redis to DynomoDB. So we have this situation where it's one of those seemed like a good idea at the time kind of thing where we're doing a bunch of counting of people and individuals that hit errors, and we're counting that in Redis. I'm like, "Okay, great," because Redis has this INCRBY and it's easy and it's atomic and, boom, you're done, and I just never paid much attention to it until a few weeks ago, and I was like, "Yo, you know what? That's actually a lot of data in there, and we're keeping that forever, and so it's probably better to put it someplace that's not Redis." So I'm like, "Ah, I know. I'll do DynamoDB because it has an increment thing and...Josh:Yeah.Ben:So I put a table together, and I wrote a migration script, and I migrated a bunch of data. It took two days. It's great. Everything is beautiful. Had buckets of data inside DynomiteDB, and then I went to go query it, and I'm like, "Oh, I can't query it that way because I don't have the right index." Well, that sucks. All right. So you can't create a local index on DynomiteDB without recreating the table. I'm like, "Okay, well, that sucks. I just lost two days worth of data migration but oh well." So dump the table, recreated it with the index, and started redoing the data migration, and I'm like, "Yeah, it might take two days, no problem." So I check on it every half-day or so, and it's not going to be getting done after two days. Three days go by, and I'm checking the work backlog, and I was like, "It's just flat."Ben:Turns out because of that local index, now Dynamo can't really write fast enough because the way they do the partition throttling and stuff because we have some customers who have huge chunks of data. So their partitions are too big for Dynamo to write very quickly. Hot partition keys is the problem. So I just gave up. I'm like, "All right, fine." Drop the table again, recreated it, and now we're just double writing so that, eventually, given six months from now or so, it'll be there and I can replace that thing in Redis.Josh:Nice.Ben:So this is my life, the ups and the downs. So, yeah.Josh:And just waiting six months.Ben:And just waiting six months.Josh:Yeah. That's funny, but that is kind of a pattern in the business. In some cases, we need to just wait for the data to populate itself, and we just have to basically wait our retention period because data tends to turnover and then we can drop the old database or whatever.Ben:Yeah. Yep. But, luckily, nobody noticed my big fail, so it's all good. It didn't impact the customers.Josh:I didn't notice.Ben:So, yeah, busy weekend.Starr:I noticed, but I didn't say anything because I wanted to be nice.Ben:Thank you, Starr. Appreciate that.Starr:Yeah, I [inaudible].Josh:Starr was over there just quietly shaking her head.Ben:Just judging. Just judge-Starr:No, sorry.Ben:So, Josh, I'm going to get back to this Java thing because I'm curious. I remember, I don't know, a year ago or something, we're kind of like, "Maybe we should just not when it comes to Java anymore." So I'm curious what prompted this renewed activity to do a new release.Josh:Well, I don't know. I figured... I don't know. Didn't we say we were just not going to do any releases?Ben:Yeah, it just-Josh:It's not high on my list of development. We're not spending a bunch adding stuff to it, but there are dependency updates that have been getting merged in. I merged the Dependabot PRs and stuff. There's something else. There might be some small PR or something that someone submitted that was sitting there on release, and I just can't handle just unreleased code sitting on the pane. So it's just one of those things that's been sitting on my backlog halfway down the list just gnawing at me every week, so I figured I'd dive in and at least get some sort of quick release, relatively quick release process down so we can just continue to release dependency updates and stuff, like if there's a security update or something, so...Ben:Yeah.Josh:Some people still do use it, so I want to make sure they're secure.Ben:Make sure they're happy. Yeah.Josh:Yeah. But, yeah, that's a good point. We are not treating all platforms as equal because we just don't have the resource, so we need to focus on the stuff that actually is making us money.Ben:Yeah. Yeah, it's tough when very few of our customers are actually using that for it to get a whole lot of priority.Josh:That said, we have already put a lot into it, so as far as I know, it works well for the people that have used it.Starr:So are y'all encouraging our customers to do more Java?Josh:Yes, switch to Java. Then switch to SentryBen:Ride a wave.Josh:... or something.Ben:So I've been contemplating this new laptop showing up, right, whenever Apple finally releases it and I get to get my hot little hands on it. I've been thinking, well, the one big downside to getting a new laptop is getting back to a place where you can actually work again, right, getting all your things set up. Some people are smart, like Josh, that have this DOT file, this repo, on GitHub, and they can just clone that, and they're off to the races. I'm not that smart. I always have to hand-craft my config every time I get a new machine. But I'm thinking-Josh:Oh. Take the time.Ben:So, yeah, I'm not looking forward to that part, but GitHub has released Codespaces, and so now I'm thinking, "Ooh, I wonder if I could get all our repos updated so that I could just work totally in the cloud and just not even have a development set-up on my machine." Probably not, but it's a fun little fantasy.Josh:Well, then you could have any little... You could work on your iPad.Ben:Yeah.Josh:Yeah.Ben:Yeah, I don't even need a laptop. Then I could save the company money. That's brilliant, Josh.Josh:Yeah. You could work at the library.Starr:Yeah. It's like, "So your main ops guy, I see he's primarily working from a five-year-old iPad."Ben:At a library.Starr:In a library.Josh:An iMac.Starr:When he gets paged, he has to run to the nearest Starbucks and get that wifi.Josh:Yeah. I got to say, having your DOT files all ready to go and all that is pretty good. Also, I've got my Brewfile, too, so all of my Homebrew stuff is automated in that.Ben:Well, that's clever. I never even thought of that.Josh:It does make it very quick to bootstrap a new machine.Ben:Yeah. Maybe I should take this as initiative to actually put my stuff into DOT files repo and get to that point.Josh:Careful, though, because you might... I've had four computers between your current one and now, so you might end up switching more often because it's easier to do it.Ben:Appreciate that warning. That's good.Josh:Yeah. Speaking of the M1s, I love the M1 MacBook Air that I have. But the battery has been... I don't know what happened, but the battery was fantastic, I don't know, first few months. Ever since then, it's been kind of like it hasn't been lasting. I've been surprised at how fast it's draining, and I go and look at, whatever, the battery health stuff, and it says that health is down to 86% and the condition says it's fair, which does not make me feel warm and fuzzy.Josh:It has 50 cycles, so I think it might be defective, and that sucks because otherwise this machine is maybe one of the best Macs I've had. I guess... Yeah. I've had a few compatibility issues with the architecture, but it's not too bad. I mean, I'm not a Java developer at least, so...Ben:Yeah, I think you need to take that in for a service because that is way soon for that kind of degradation.Josh:Yeah. I might need to do something.Ben:That's a bummer.Josh:Yeah. I don't know. I might have to ship it in because I think our local Portland Apple Store is shuttered currently.Ben:All those protests?Josh:Yeah. It's got eight fences around it and stuff. Downtown Portland's a little rough these days.Starr:Yeah.Ben:Well, I mean, you can always take the trip out to Seattle.Josh:Yeah. Oh, yeah. Or there's other... I forget. There's an Apple Store that's not too far outside of Portland. It's where I bought this, so I could take it down there.Starr:Yeah. I'm sad now because I bought my second MacBook from that store in Portland.Josh:Yeah? It's a good store.Ben:Speaking of you coming out to Seattle, I was thinking the other day that maybe we should do a company-wide get-together sometime soon. Be fun to see everybody again in-person.Josh:It would be. Now that we're all vaxxed, we're all super vaxxed. I don't know that Starr is even down for that, though. I'm just looking at Starr.Starr:I don't know. Like, I-Josh:You don't look like you're too stoked on that idea.Starr:I don't know. I'm just-Josh:What with Delta lurking.Starr:The problem is, Josh, is that you have not been reading nursing Twitter.Josh:Uh-huh (affirmative).Starr:So I don't know. Yeah, it's doable. Currently, I think the CDC just released a thing that said vaccine efficiency of preventing COVID infections... It's very good still at preventing bad, I don't know, disease, health problems, whatever, keeping people out of the hospital. It's very good at that. With Delta, it's about 65% effective at preventing infections, and so if you get infected, you can transmit it to other people.Josh:Right.Starr:Yeah. So it's not impossible. It's just like we're just back to this fricking calculus where every possible social interaction you just have to run it through your spreadsheet and your risk analysis and... Ugh.Josh:Yeah.Ben:It's like, "Are you worthy of the hassle? No. Sorry, can't make it."Starr:Yeah. Yeah. It's like, "Okay, so what's the probability that meeting with you is going to send my child to the hospital? Okay, that's low enough. Sure."Josh:Yeah.Starr:It's just such a weird world.Josh:Wouldn't it be funny if when you get into your car in the morning, it reads out the probability of you dying in a car accident?Starr:Oh, yeah. Do you know about millimorts?Josh:No.Starr:Oh, you should go Google millimorts. A millimort is a one in a million chance that you will die, and so there's tables and stuff that you can find online that have different activities and what the number of millimorts is about them. So you can compare, and you can be like, "Okay, so going skydiving has this many millimorts as driving so many miles in a motorcycle."Josh:That's awesome. Okay, we have to link this in the show notes because I want to remember to look this up-Starr:Okay. I'll go find it.Josh:... so that I can depress people.Starr:I think there was a New York Times article, too.Ben:Yeah, I totally have to see this because I just signed up for a motorcycle training course and I'm going to get my endorsements so that I know exactly what kind of risks... Though that's probably part of the course, where they try to scare you out of actually getting your endorsement. They probably...Josh:By the way, I'm really glad my morbid humor or my morbid joke landed because for a minute there-Starr:Oh, I'm sorry, it's a micromort.Josh:Oh, a micromort. Okay.Starr:I was like, "Isn't milli 1000?"Josh:Minimort, like-Starr:Milli is 1000.Josh:Yeah.Starr:Yeah, that grated at me. I know. My old chemistry teachers are just giving me an F right now.Ben:Yeah, I got to see that.Josh:Well, I'm sure you'll be all right, Ben. I mean, the risk of a motorcycle is much higher than a car, but you just can't think about that all the time because the fun... I'm sure the fun is much...Ben:[inaudible].Josh:It's worth it.Ben:It's worth every hazard. Yeah.Josh:Yeah. The risk is worth the reward.Ben:Yesterday, I just hit 250 miles on the odometer on my scooter, so loving that. It's a lot of fun.Josh:That's cool.Starr:That's a lot of miles for a scooter.Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Starr:I guess you just love to scoot.Ben:I love to scoot. Well, there you go, Starr. There's our happy ending after that slight dip there.Starr:That slight delay into reality.Josh:I like the dark humor. I don't know. It's always a gamble, though, with depending on... Yeah. But I think, Starr, you're always down to get dark.Starr:Oh, yeah. I'm down with the darkness. All right. Well, should we wrap it up?Ben:Let's wrap it.Starr:Okay. This has been a very witchy episode of FounderQuest, so if you liked it, go give us a review and... Yeah, if not, just keep listening to us. Make it a hate listen. You got to have a couple of those in your line-up.

covid-19 united states god america new york founders texas lord google apple pr americans new york times speaking seattle drop startups portland band starbucks advertising ipads delta cdc jeff bezos saas developers pacific northwest niche costco bugs smooth java aws github ask me anything macbook trader joe tacoma macbook pro apple stores nutella m1 maven homebrew elixir docker dynamo prs m2 bootstrap village voice honey badger jay inslee skippy lifestyle business redis software as a service anecdotally kinko indie hackers dynamodb patrick mckenzie m1 macbook air downtown portland ben it codespaces josh it josh yeah josh you shava ben there ben love josh no ben so josh how ben well elasticache josh well josh oh josh so micropreneur josh there josh do josh starr josh will josh cool

Live From The Indie Hackers' Backstage

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 27, 2021 18:37

Show notes:Links:Snohomish Centennial trailIndie Hackers AMAIntro CRMFull transcript:Starr:All right. Welcome back. Welcome back, everybody. So we took a little break. We're going to have her hot vax summer, but that-Josh:Hot vax summer.Starr:It turns out that was the mirage. It turns out that was a mirage.Josh:Well, it did reach 112 degrees in Portland. So it was hot.Starr:There you go. Yeah. The summer never existed. It was just an illusion caused by our overwhelming thirst for lots of things.Josh:Mirage.Ben:Well, there were a couple of weeks there that I thought, "Yeah. This is going to work out. And then Delta.Starr:Yeah. It was a couple of nice weeks, wouldn't it?Ben:Yeah. It was. It was.Starr:Except for the panic about, "Oh, crap. I need to learn how to deal with people again."Josh:Wouldn't it be wonderful when we can just look back on those two weeks and just remember those last good two weeks?Ben:Yeah. Went 112 in Portland. That's pretty bad. It got to 116 in my garage.Starr:Yeah.Ben:It's pretty warm.Josh:Yeah. That's like melt some things if you're not careful.Ben:I did not know this until well, at the beginning of the pandemic, that there was actually a special class of freezer called the garage freezer because at the beginning of the pandemic I wanted to have a freezer in my garage. I'm like, "Okay. I'm just going to go to Home Depot and buy a freezer." Oh, no, no, no, no. You can't just buy a freezer to put in your garage. You have to have a garage freezer to put it in your garage. So we have a garage freezer and even with 116 in the garage, the stuff stayed frozen. So I guess it actually works.Josh:Nice. Yeah. My freezer survived as well.Starr:I mean, not having a garage freezer in your garage is almost as bad as wearing white after labor day, or is it before labor day? I forget.Josh:I don't know. I never wear white.Starr:I just don't wear white.Josh:Yeah.Starr:Yeah.Starr:Stains too easily.Josh:I just always dress like I'm going to a funeral.Starr:All right. So today's going to be a little bit of a short episode. So we should probably get to the content.Ben:I thought we were already in the content.Starr:I know our reader.Josh:Yeah. It might be short. I don't know.Starr:Oh, we are?Josh:Our podcasts tend to have a mind of their own.Ben:That's true.Starr:Well, that's true. But we've got this Ask Me Anything schedule.Josh:Oh, yeah.Starr:20 minutes from now.Josh:Well, the great thing about asynchronous ask me anything is that they're asynchronous so you can post them even while you're on a podcast and answer the questions whenever you want.Starr:Yeah. Maybe you can, but my brain does not work that way.Josh:Oh, I've got it all queued up.Starr:I've got a one track mind.Josh:It's just a button press. We're locked and loaded.Starr:Oh, you're like Kramer. You've got the button.Josh:No. I'm ready to go.Starr:Sell sell sell!Josh:So yeah. At 10:30, we're recording this podcast. It's 10:08 right now. Pacific. And we're going to be doing an ask me anything AMA on the indie hackers forums.Starr:Yes. And it's a last minute affair as of 20 minutes ago. I didn't have an indie hackers invite code. We're running around scrambling.Josh:Yeah.Starr:Yeah. Ben wanted to try a new podcast recording software, and I'm just like, "No. I can't handle this amount of change in my life right now."Josh:We need to title this episode, live from the indie hackers backstage, by the way.Josh:[crosstalk]Starr:Oh, yeah. I don't know if you like a live album.Josh:Yeah.Starr:Okay.Josh:We're doing it live.Starr:Well, so Ben suggested, when you talk about one work thing and one vacation thing we did. And I guess, I'll start because I didn't actually have a vacation. I just got sick a lot, which I didn't get COVID, but there was some sort of bug that was going around and I got it and I was out for a couple of weeks. And so I guess that was my vacation. I don't know. I just played a lot of Diablo III.Josh:That's cool.Starr:Yeah.Ben:We got our worst vacations in Diablo III.Josh:Yeah. We got away for a few days. We went to this lake up north of Spokane in Washington and just five nights or something. But on the trip there, we're looking at our friends who were already up there, sent us the fire map of Washington. And we are traveling, literally our destination is in the middle of six fires.Starr:Oh no.Josh:We're like, "Should we be turning around?" I don't know. But it turned out all right. We breathe too much smoke the first couple of days, but it cleared up and-Starr:Yeah. After the first couple of days you hardly notice it.Josh:I only got a minor headache.Starr:Your nerves just die. The nerves in your lungs.Josh:Yeah.Ben:It's okay. We have good health insurance.Josh:I'm an ex smoker. So I'll just tack it on, it's just like adding a couple of days.Ben:It's like getting that upgrade package when you're buying a $30,000 car. And it's like, "What's another thousand dollars?Josh:Yeah. I've already got the risk.Ben:Yeah. I stayed closer to home. I read a bunch of books and I got out for a nice bike ride, went to the Snohomish Centennial trail. So it starts in Snohomish and it goes up through Arlington and it's rails to trail conversion. So there used to be railroad tracks there, but now it's a paved trail. And the thing that's neat though, they have a bunch of trail heads and a few of them have the recreations of the old train stations. So it's like, you can act like you're getting on board that train and actually getting on-Josh:Oh, that's nice. Really nice.Ben:Yeah.Josh:That's cool.Ben:That's a lot of fun. Let's see, a work thing that I did. It's a blur.Josh:Yeah.Ben:I probably migrated something somewhere at some point. And back-filled something-Josh:You were busy.Ben:Yeah.Josh:Yeah. You did a lot.Ben:Yeah. I can't remember what I did.Starr:Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of things, right? We're working with that sales consultancy, what is it? Intro CRM people?Ben:Yeah. Did do that.Starr:Have you done some outreach? You got some replies even?Ben:Yeah. Yeah. It's been kind of a mixed bag. So I've gotten some replies, but also the outbound stuff has not really been all that productive. So I'm questioning my life choices at this point.Starr:Have you had any overt hostility though?Ben:No overt hostility.Starr:Oh, you're not pushing hard enough then. You want your OH metric to be at least 10%. At least 10%, you want death threats.Ben:I will take that under advisement.Starr:Okay. That's how you know you're really-Josh:Really selling it.Starr:Yeah. I would say coffee's for closers, but you don't drink coffee. So there you go. Oh, cool. On my end, I don't know. We published our first batch of Honeybadger intelligence reports and I don't know. Loyal listeners might remember from last time, I mean, if you don't remember how loyal are you and how much should I even trust you, but yeah. You might remember that we were working on these things. Basically, they are quarterly reports for a certain programming language where if you kind of need to keep an eye on, I don't know. Front-end JavaScript, but you don't want to just inhale the feed of news that's constantly coming out, you can just look at this beautiful quarterly report. And we are publishing them quarterly now on our blog. And the first batch went out three weeks late, maybe a month late, I don't know. I didn't give myself enough time to get them ready for publication. And then I got sick for two weeks and just could barely crawl to the computer. So I'm sorry. I'll do better next time.Josh:If that's you're going to say, if you don't want to inhale the whatever weekly newsfeed, you can inhale it once a month or once a quarter. Just all.Starr:Well, no. We're not just collating everything together.Starr:[crosstalk].Starr:We're concatenating together.Josh:It's like a curation of curation.Starr:Yeah. We're not just a pending three months worth of Hacker News together. We're going in and applying some real intelligence to it. We have real domain experts.Josh:Editorial.Starr:Curating.Josh:Occasionally?Starr:Yes. Providing you the choicest morsels.Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Ben:Hand crafted morsels of information.Starr:Yeah. Maybe I should be doing these outreach emails.Ben:Yeah. I think so.Ben:I've got the wrong person writing this stuff.Starr:Yeah. They'd be like, "Are these people even professionals?"Josh:Well, that should be obvious from our website.Starr:Yes.Josh:I'll let you decide which way that goes.Ben:Wow. I've been sitting here while you're talking, thinking, what did I do? I'm like, "This is not good. If I can't remember doing anything useful for the past three months, that's probably a sign that I'm doing the wrong things."Starr:I mean, it could just be, you did a lot, Ben. I can remember things you've done. Can we got set up in a new compliance automated thing?Ben:Oh, yeah. Then the compliance-Starr:Yeah. An automated compliance thing. So you don't have to juggle all that stuff manually.Ben:Yeah. We got our SOC 2 type two report done. So we're legit now. We're officially doing the things that we said we would do.Starr:We're enterprise.Ben:Yeah. Full on enterprise.Josh:That's amazing.Ben:Yeah. And it wasn't a particularly painful process. I mean, it wasn't pleasant, but yeah. We survived.Starr:My favorite part of that was that, so as part of this automated security, your automated SOC 2 compliance stuff, all of the employees I guess, have to do mandatory security training once a year now. And it's this automated quiz where you have to read something and then it asks you questions. So it was a really weird big business moment, where I just felt, okay. I'm watching this training video. It should have 50s music in the background of it. And I hate to admit that I got stuck on the first question for 10 minutes. For 10 minutes. Because it was an easy question, but it was one of those things where it's like, "What's the correct answer? Choose one or more." And the correct answer was all of them. But for some reason, I had selected them all with my keyboard and that wasn't good enough. I had to click on them to show I really meant it because hackers generally use keyboards. So they're not really trustworthy devices.Starr:Yeah.Josh:Starr it was like a JavaScript bug.Starr:So eventually, I literally tried every combination. Eventually, I was just like, "Okay. I'm just going to try the first one again," and it worked. So there you are. There you are.Ben:I can't believe you're giving away the answers to our security questions on the podcast. That's a breach of security.Starr:Yeah. I mean, I think our security questions have some security vulnerabilities if, you can manually brute force them. You have four binary options. That's what? Four factorial combinations? You can knock that out in an hour.Ben:Starr is hacking the mainframe.Starr:I am hacking the planet.Josh:That's how Starr passed the security test.Starr:Yeah. That's also how I got such a great score on the SAT, by the way. You just take it, I don't know. 128 factorial times and then you just brute force it.Josh:Nice. How long did that take you?Starr:I don't know. I still haven't graduated from high school.Josh:I sort of graduated from high school.Starr:Well, you can tell you've been away for a while. Because I just have all this bullshit that I've saved up for you all, and it's just all coming out now.Ben:So I was surprised to learn. I don't know why this surprised me, but it surprised me nonetheless, when we had our all hands meeting recently that we have three Honeybadger employees that have children starting kindergarten this year.Starr:Oh, my God. Yes.Ben:That's pretty wild.Starr:It's pretty terrifying. It's pretty terrifying. I'm glad that I live in Seattle. You guys don't. Josh and Kevin don't, but I mean, you all live in fairly reasonable places where governors aren't banning masks in school.Josh:Yeah.Ben:As they themselves are going to get advanced treatments for their COVID infections. Yeah.Starr:Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's okay. We love you Texas. We just don't love your governor.Ben:Speaking of Texas. So this random tidbit I saw the other day, Austin, Texas of course, you know the housing market has been crazy. As far as prices go over the past several months, people have been overbidding regularly on how to just be able to-Josh:Oh, I read that.Josh:A hundred grand?Ben:Yeah. So Austin, Texas.Josh:That's what I'm asking.Ben:A hundred grand over asking price. So you have a $400,000 list price, but you actually got to pay $500,000 to get the house. That's crazy.Starr:That is wild.Josh:Yeah.Starr:Yeah. I had to drop off my car at the mechanic to get its normal service and I was walking by, and this was this morning and there's this kind of older condo building. It's not great looking or anything. And it's two bedroom condo, 900 square feet is now selling for the same price that I bought my single-family house with big yard and everything three blocks away. And that was five or six years ago? Six years ago?Ben:Crazy stuff.Starr:It's bizarre. Totally. I don't know. It's the sort of thing like it feels kind of gross even. Just because I was able to scrape together a down payment for a house, suddenly I get, I don't know. A hundred grand a year extra just in appreciation.Josh:You just hit a jackpot.Starr:Yeah. But it's just like, okay. I literally did nothing to deserve that. And meanwhile, people who could use that or I mean, I could use it, but I'm not in dire straits. I don't know. It's just like, "Wow, this whole system is just kind of backwards and weird."Ben:Yeah. It's to the point I'm getting unsolicited offers to buy my house, right?Starr:Oh, me too.Ben:I'm getting these letters in the mail like, "Hi, I'm Bob and my wife is Alice and we'd like to buy your house." And I'm like looking at the letters, "Is this is really an automated thing or do they really write this by the hand?"Starr:I've had people call me on the phone, in person.Ben:They called you?Starr:Yeah. They called me. Three houses on my block have been demolished in the past two months, three older houses, one of them was just really messed up. But two of them were these small houses on big lots. And essentially what happened is a developer bought almost every house on the opposite side of the street from me and is now basically filling up the lots with as many units as they can. So I think they're going to end up with like 18 units out of these five or six houses, which is fine. I guess. I don't mind density and everything, but it's just so wild because it's like, "Oh, it finally caught up with us." Because for a long time we were just over the edge where things were nice, we were just one block over from the nice stuff. And it finally caught up with us. So we're going to have to move now because we're not fancy enough for the neighborhood anymore.Josh:Yeah. Just cash out.Ben:Yeah. Move to Kansas.Starr:Yeah. I mean, that's the problem though. It's like, "Okay. Great." I get all this appreciation, but if I ever want to get a new house, it's like, "Okay. I've got to pay those new prices."Ben:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Josh:Yeah. We've looked at that too, or you could sell and rent for a few years and see if anything happens. That would probably be a gamble.Starr:That would be a really bad gamble I think. I mean, I don't know.Josh:Yeah.Starr:Yeah.Josh:Considering no markets decline anymore.Starr:I mean, they, they could decline, but you're trying to time it.Josh:Time the housing the market?Starr:Yeah.Starr:Maybe it'll decline, but yeah.Ben:This got me thinking, real estate agents, they want you to trade up, right? You buy your starter house and then you buy your bigger house and then eventually you downsize again because hey, why not have another transaction that a real estate agent can take a commission on, right? And it just got me thinking, why don't we have that for businesses? Why can't you trade up your business, right?Josh:Like trade it?Ben:Yeah. It's like, "Honeybadger, that's a nice little business. Why don't you trade it on up to a bigger business?Starr:So we sell Honeybadger and then by a larger business.Ben:Right. Right. Like that. Rolled into a down payment for a bigger business, yeah.Josh:Yeah.Starr:I'm not sure if you're very good at that.Josh:I love it.Starr:I don't know.Ben:Maybe this is a new marketing thing we can try. We can figure out new business models.Josh:Because we're getting trade-in program like the private equity firms.Ben:You're slapping the top of your business. You can fit so many customers in here.Josh:Might be our best bit yet.Ben:Well, I guess, we better get ready for our ask me anything session. Got a crack the knuckles and get ready to type.Starr:Crack the old knuckles.Josh:Almost time.Starr:All right. Okay. I will sign us off. All right. So this has been FounderQuest back from hot vax summer, back from vacation or being sick or whatever we call it these days. If you want to give us a review on Apple podcasts, whatever they call it, go for it. If you want to look up this AMA we're about to do on Indie Hackers, we recommend that and yeah. Otherwise, just stay cool, stay safe, and we will see you next week.Ben:Catch you later.Josh:See you.Starr:Bye.

covid-19 god founders texas apple washington seattle startups portland kansas front delta pacific providing saas developers ama arlington home depot loyal backstage kramer ask me anything javascript spokane elixir soc rolled bootstrap honey badger lifestyle business diablo iii hacker news software as a service snohomish indie hackers ben it benas ben you josh it josh yeah josh you ben oh josh no josh well josh oh ben well so austin ben right josh so micropreneur josh starr

Josh Carey - Co-founder of PodMAX.co

The Joe Costello Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 7, 2021 52:32

My conversation today is with Josh Carey, co-founder of PodMAX.co, an event that happens about every 6 weeks where business people and/or entrepreneurs are matched up with podcast hosts where they do 3 interviews in one day while also attending an event where there is networking, education and keynote speakers. Josh explains in this interview how this event that they hold quite frequently, is like speed dating for podcast guests and hosts alike. It's an efficient way for hosts to get 3 interviews in the can in one day and for business people and/or enterpreneurs,to get out there and promote themselves, their businesses and tell their story 3 times in one day on 3 different podcasts. This is an interesting interview with Josh as he shares his own journey to exposing himself and his talents and now helping others to do the same. As always, thanks for listening! Joe Get 30% off at The Healthy Place by using code "costello" Josh Carey Co-founder - PodMAX.co Website: https://podmax.co Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/onairbrands/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/onairbrandsLIVE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/onairbrands/ Email: josh@podmax.co Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Hey, Josh, welcome to the show. I'm very excited to have you. Josh: Likewise, Joe. Pleasure to be here. Thanks. Joe: Yeah, so this obviously as a podcast or this hits home for me, having someone unlike you that has this this business, if you will, called Pod Max. Right. I guess it's it's also an event. Right. So I need you're going to help me understand Josh: Yeah, Joe: It. Josh: I shall. Joe: I've watched a bunch of different videos and I watched the testimonial video, but I still want clarification. I think you hit it on the head when you said it's like speed dating for podcasters. And that was Josh: Hmm. Joe: That totally was a very clear thing for me. At least brought me to a point where I said, oh, this is really sort of different, but this is what I do with all my guests. So you'll have to you'll have to suffer through this part. Josh: I shall suffer. Joe: We because my audience is mainly entrepreneurs and it's it's me trying to help educate Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: Them as much as possible. I always like them to know the back story of my guests. I want to know Josh: Hmm. Joe: Where you came from, where you came from as far back as you want to go, because it doesn't Josh: Mm Joe: It Josh: Hmm. Joe: Doesn't matter to me. It's exciting to figure out the how you develop to who you are today and how you are doing what you're doing today and what was all in between to make this happen. And then from there, we'll get into the depths of tiebacks. Josh: I love it. I shall take you down that journey, then Joe: Perfect. Josh: We'll start we'll start with Current Day. Today, I'm known as the Hidden Entrepreneur, and that's because I spent 40 plus years of my life hiding. I literally showed up in every situation, hiding all of my true talent and ability. Everything that I was really capable of doing remained hidden because I was so desperate to seek the approval of others. Now, what really sucked about this is behind closed doors. I knew darn well what I was capable of doing. So this created a lot of anger, frustration, resentment, jealousy, all that stuff. And the bigger thing is that not only did I want to seek your approval, I was scared so much by the fact that if I were to come forward with something quite good, right. Impressive, even in any regard, you might feel so insecure about your accomplishments and talent and scale, what you may or may not be doing. Right, because we're all just a mirror and a reflection of each other that what it might make you a little upset by what you're seeing and then you might retaliate against me in some form. And I knew my whole life that I just didn't feel strong enough to stick up and stand up for myself. Josh: So all of that made for this recipe of living life that way cut to today. I'm the proud father of two adoring children. I have an eight year old daughter, a six year old son who are my absolute everything. I love playing the role of father. I love being their dad. And early on in their young lives, I realize that I see what's happening here. I'm the child in this circle and I'm the one who has work to do. So I said, guys, keep doing what you're doing. I get it. I can't continue to be this miserable kind of person and have them watch me that way their whole lives. It wouldn't end well. And fast forwarding to, you know, seeing an empty nester. Now, if I was 20 years down the road and they just grew up with that type of father, they'd naturally become that type of person. And in that scenario, there'd be nothing I can do and I wouldn't be able to live with myself. So I said, that's all I need to say. Right. I'm Joe: Yeah. Josh: Going to make them prouder. I'm going to make me proud or I'm going to do what needs to happen. And I started just taking inventory, replacing some of my bad non serving habits with slightly better ones and slowly but surely seeing the positive result in effect of that. And here we are. I just keep stacking those on each other and I've come a long way and still have a long way to go. But I'm very happy and proud with where I am today. Joe: And so what did you do in your past life, let's say that you're now doing what you do. I mean, what was your what was all these things you were doing while you're hiding from the world? Josh: So I got in in eighth grade, I got bit by the acting bug, right? I found that in there was a school audition taking place and I felt like I should audition to see what this was about. And I did. And it was a a drug awareness program, whatever it was. And I got a cast as the comic relief of all things. So I was bumbling around on stage and hundreds of my right, hundreds of my classmates were laughing at me from what I was doing on stage. Now, I knew that they were in fact laughing at me. Right. They weren't laughing with me, but I was I was OK with that because I was getting the attention I was so desperately seeking. So I thought, wow, I will continue to seek out this attention, hopefully thinking this is what I need to fill this emotional void. Right. This external approval is exactly what I need now. Doesn't work that way. It took me a few decades to realize that, but I set out on a path to become an actor and said, I'm going to dedicate my life to this because if I could just get this daily, my life sucked. So I pursued that dream. I wound up spending 15 years in New York as a working actor and filmmaker. Great credits, wonderful era of my life. But again, it didn't really, you know, fill the void. You know, when the curtain comes down, I'm still miserable and alone in the corner, often crying and trying to figure out where my life went so wrong. Josh: So I did that for a while. I had some, you know, day jobs to pay the bills. I taught myself webdesign to keep myself busy when the Internet started rising up in the nineties. And slowly but surely, I just became somewhat of an entrepreneur, not realizing at the time that that's what it was. But I was just trying to make ends meet while I was pursuing my passion. And then I found myself running my own digital marketing agency where I was building websites for an industry and all this stuff. Ten years later, this industry became just like any other toxic relationship we might find ourselves in personally. But this was my business and the industry taking full responsibility. It was on me because I was showing up that way, which is why I was attracting those very people. So I knew that something needed to change. This correlated with the time where me and my children had the talk, where I was the child, and I said, I get it. I know it has to be done. This relationship with the industry and my my work here, it can't continue. It's part of the problem. Let me rip the Band-Aid off. I said I don't know what's next, but I'm going to seek something. I'm going to figure it out. And just like if you're in a bad relationship, you don't necessarily wait until you have another relationship. Josh: You get out and figure it out. And that's what I did. I got out. I said, let me take a few months. Let me take some time, figure out what I want to do, where I want to go and be true to myself for one of the first times in my life. And I said podcasting. I think I felt that I would be good at it and I would enjoy it. And it would create opportunity and I would connect with people because, God, that's all I ever wanted in my life. I said, well, if I do it honestly and authentically, I might finally attract the right kind of people instead of attracting the miserable and getting what I don't want because you focus on it. So I created a brand called The Hidden Entrepreneur and then became that became the podcast. And I started interviewing people. And slowly but surely I started feeling good about it and getting a good response. And it just kept building the confidence. And I was told I was half decent and I certainly started feeling that way, still replacing a lot of my bad habits with better ones, trying to live wonderfully for my children. It all came together. And now here we are. I'm doing some some some really interesting things in the podcast space because of those moments that that got me here. Joe: Right. And that's what's important. That's why I wanted to ask, because, you know, as much as everyone can say, their life went on a certain path and certain things did not go right Josh: Uh. Joe: Or whatever, they all build the person you are today. And so I think probably whatever you're doing with Pod Max now, you're leaning on some of your marketing and, you know, Josh: Exactly. Joe: Your and all the stuff that you did earlier in Josh: All Joe: Your entrepreneurial Josh: Of it. Joe: Life. Right. So it's like you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. That's this. This is all created to help to create who you are now, to make this next portion of your life excel even more. Josh: Sometimes in the moment, we don't and can't recognize that a lot of acts in retrospect that the game is being able in real time when there's a little bit of a glitch or a detour that you're forced to take or something that's happening that you didn't quite see coming wasn't as you planned. You have to realize, wow, this is probably going to work out for the best. And as you're seeing everything I've spelled out, even my acting and film days to this very moment, I pull a lot from those days how to how to communicate, how to perform, how to create, how to talk on the mic, how to write. All of that is acting and film. And then, like you said, the marketing from the digital marketing, knowing what you don't want on a grand scale to know exactly what you do want. It's all relevant and quite perfect. Joe: Yeah, and it's funny, and you gave it away already, but I was going to ask you where you from? And I was like, he's got to be from New York. I can recognize and I'm from New York. So he's like, he's got to be from New York. And then you said it. You're like. Josh: What did I say, oh, that I spent time there Joe: Yeah, Josh: In New York. Joe: Yeah, and so did I and I and my background is I went to school for music and I Josh: Yeah. Joe: And I landed in New York. I lived two hours north of the city where I grew up. But then I landed Josh: Mayor. Joe: In New York as to be my big time career break Josh: As Joe: In. Josh: A drummer, Joe: Yeah, Josh: Yeah. Joe: Right. And so and at the same time, we all have to go find jobs. And then and then you sort of get steered off a path because you start making money and going, OK, how much do I want to suffer living in this one bedroom apartment and eating mac and cheese every night where Josh: True. Joe: It's just whatever, whatever developed over that time. But we had the same sort of path. So it's Josh: Yeah. Joe: Interesting to hear your story. Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: Ok, so you started podcasting and you have a podcast called The Hidden Entrepreneur. How did you make the jump from that to come to being the coach? When I heard you say you're actually a co-founder of God Macs. So where did this idea come from? How did we get to where we are today with that? Josh: In twenty eighteen is when I created The Hidden Entrepreneur Show, and it's still running strong today, over 200 episodes and I in the summer of 2019, I had the opportunity to record episodes of my show at an event. And one of the one of the people that I was interviewing didn't know him prior to this event was Eric Cabral, who's now my co founding partner in Pod Max. I interviewed him for my show and we hit it off and we connected. And after the interview, he said, you know, we're both from Jersey. I have. Which is where I live Joe: Mm Josh: Now. Joe: Hmm. Josh: He said, I have a I have a studio in in Jersey. Once you come out and check it out one day and, you know, we'll see we'll see what's possible. And I said, OK. And then it turns out I never left. Now, what I like to point out is that what what I did just, you know, basically, yes. By design, but subconsciously during that first interview where he was on my show when we didn't know each other prior, was I was already leaning into my full potential, which was quite different from what I did the first 40 plus years of my life, where I spoke about I showed up really small, didn't want to rock the boat, didn't want to make you feel insecure. So I just took a back seat. But then in twenty eighteen, I started figuring out how can I come to the table with the ability that again, I've always known darn well I'm more than capable of doing. And really I believe we're all in that same boat. We all know what we are capable of doing. We just adjust and alter that for so many reasons inappropriately, so more often than not. So I said, I'm going to just start coming out, you know, strongly with what I'm capable of and miraculously, quote unquote, I started attracting the very people who understood that, who liked it, who appreciated it, respected it. Ironically, all the things I wanted my whole life, Joe: Mm Josh: Just Joe: Hmm. Josh: Somebody to appreciate me. How can anybody appreciate when you're being, you know, a weak man, Joe: Yeah. Josh: Which I was. So I thought that if I were to come out powerfully doing what I'm capable of, everybody is going to retaliate against me. And oh, no, I don't even see those people. I only see people like you, like Eric, like people who are like, wow, you know, like attracts like, of Joe: Mm Josh: Course. Joe: Hmm. Josh: So that's that's the amazing thing. So all that to say, I was already able to do what I was doing to get in front of somebody like Eric, for him to recognize something within me because I had already appeared that way. So you have to sort of do the work first instead of like me hoping that somebody can see a glimmer of potential in me and then anoint me capable and relevant to the masses. You know, that doesn't happen. Joe: Right. Josh: So it only happens when you are first putting it out there to attract the good back. So Eric and I started talking and hanging out and we had a very similar vibe and connection, a lot of similar goals. He also came from the podcast space. He has and had his own show. And we just started talking about this idea Pod Max, which started in person in twenty nineteen. It started as a live in person event. We had the studio in North Jersey where we figured we do this one day kind of hybrid event where it's part conference, part workshop and part podcast recordings. So we set up makeshift like a dozen different studios like like little mini areas where hosts can record with guests. And we invited about a dozen show hosts in, sold tickets to the event to high level entrepreneurs and thought leaders who wanted to get their message out by recording on shows we would match them. Thus the speed dating for the podcast industry. And over the course of that day, each hour they would rotate into a new studio area and record as a guest on a different show. And in between those recordings, we would provide a catered lunch, we would provide networking, we would provide training and education, and we would provide a high level keynote. So we had the conference, the workshop feel the retreat and the podcast recordings. We did that a few times and then twenty twenty happened. So we're like, OK, well this is crazy because we're a live events company. What happens now? We had no idea, so he said, can this work virtually? There was only one way to find out. We took that agenda, that format. We sort of reworked what needed to be worked into a virtual format. And since May of 20, 20, which was our first pod, Max Virtual, we've never looked back. We're about to do our 14th 14th virtual event in August. And it's you know, it's one of those things that we we couldn't have seen that coming. Right. We wouldn't Joe: Yep, Josh: Have even looked virtual. Joe: Correct. Josh: So so now it's an eight hour event, which people who don't really know our style will say eight hours virtual. That's crazy. But we hear all the time that it flies by because we've sort of been able to really hone in on making all of those minutes per hour the best they can be. Joe: Right. Josh: And then the entrepreneurs get to record still on multiple shows. We have a keynote. We have training and education. So we know prior to the event we work with the thought leaders to help them further identify, practice and fine tune their message. So when they get to the recording, they feel confident and ready to go. Joe: It's so cool, so how many of these do you do? Josh: We do them about every six weeks. Joe: Wow, and how Josh: Yeah. Joe: Did you figure out the logistics, like I attended a couple virtual conferences and logistically it's very cool because you you don't really miss anything because a lot of stuff is is recorded to playback later and you're not wasting a lot of time on a showroom floor. You're going exactly what you want Josh: Exactly. Joe: Without having to walk around it. But how did you guys figure that out? Josh: Well, it came from the live, and then we we sort of transferred that virtually and we fill the eight hours, it's single track, right, to everybody's in the room going to the same places, Joe: Ok, Josh: Doing the same things. Joe: Ok, Josh: Yeah, Joe: And Josh: It. Joe: What's the number of attendees that you've gotten up to? Josh: We get about 50. Joe: That's amazing. Josh: Now. Joe: It's really cool, and I wasn't sure when so when when we talked about this being sort of like the speed dating for podcasting, there's a lot of podcasters out there who either are looking for gas or they want to be guest on podcast. And Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: I think they need to understand how iPod, Max, differs from those services that are out there, whether it's someone you get this connection with someone and they start feeding you gas or Josh: Yeah. Joe: You get this connection with someone and they keep putting you on different podcasts. Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: I think the important thing is that as a podcast for myself, I get I Josh: All Joe: Haven't Josh: The Joe: Been Josh: Time. Joe: On a podcast, which is kind of funny, but I haven't. Josh: Wow. Joe: But I get a lot of requests either from an agency that that Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: Said, hey, we want to work with you with really great guests or just people that find my podcasts and reach out and say, hey, I think you would really like this person. And I have to sort of filter through Josh: Yeah. Joe: What I think fits my audience. I'm not going to accept everyone because Josh: That's right. Joe: It's not fair to the listeners. Josh: Mm Joe: It's Josh: Hmm. Joe: A selfish endeavor for me. And you kind of hit upon it yourself. It makes it allows me to connect with people like you. It allows me to learn so much. But at the same time, I need to make sure that I'm servicing my audience and educating them on what they came here in the first place to see. Josh: That's right. Joe: So when you do iPod, Max, how do you do this matchmaking? How do you figure out that this guest is going to go and sit with this person and do recording and it fits the mold of their podcast or they're the right person? How does that all happen? Josh: Well, we've been lucky enough to do it for a while, and we have a lot turned out to be a core group of show hosts, like the vast majority of the show hosts return over and over again. Joe: Ok. Josh: Why? There's a lot of winwin. There's a lot of benefit. It's really cool for them to get to record three episodes in one day Joe: Mm hmm. Josh: In three different hours, which is a great thing. They also get to network with a lot of high level entrepreneurs and the other show hosts. They get to be right in the room with. We bring three now virtually we bring three keynotes in at a very high level of keynote. So they get to leverage that relationship off. Often they'll reach out to the keynote and then welcome them on their show. So it's just a really great vibe. There's a lot of a lot of personal growth and development built in to the day that you almost don't see coming until you're on the back end of it and you're like, oh, my gosh, it's just amazing. So they keep returning and through that then they become like family, right? Joe: Mm Josh: Like Joe: Hmm. Josh: At every event, the chats, everybody's just excited to see each other again. And it's sort of like old home week. So to answer your question, we've gotten to really know a good core group of the show hosts, knowing who they are, what their businesses are, what their shows are, what their goals are. And with that, we can then do our job. That takes a lot of the matching difficulty out because we know exactly who's coming through that they'd be perfectly matched for and because of the reputation where we've done such a good job prepping the entrepreneurs and attracting the right level of entrepreneurs and training them. Well, we hear all the time from the hosts that they don't even they don't even worry who they're going to be matched with. Joe: Right. Josh: You know, the week prior, you get you know, you get all the contact and bio information, but they're like, I don't even need to worry because I know whoever comes through, whoever you match me time and time again is going to be a home run. So then we we ask the entrepreneur coming through to fill out a somewhat detailed, extensive profile so we get to know them so we can properly match them. Then we just take the two sides and we have a few team members who are specifically dedicated to the matchmaking process because it's you know, it's got to be done right, takes a little bit of time, but we do it and then everybody seems to be happy on the other side of it. Joe: That's really cool, so when I saw on the website there was a apply to be a host, Josh: Mm hmm. Mm Joe: Correct? Josh: Hmm. Mm hmm. Joe: Is that the is that where the people that are going to do these interviews go to become part of TotEx? Josh: Correct, Joe: Ok. Josh: We're always, always open to meeting new potential show hosts for our event. Basically, you fill that out and the most important thing is we have to make sure because we we can't anticipate prior who's going to come through the event. But generally, our show hosts fill a category that can be broad enough in nature where it's an entrepreneur, it's a business show, it's about success, struggles, failures, life stories, growth mindset, that whole concept. A lot of categories fit into that. So as long as you're as long as you could, as long as you welcome guests that fit that, we could most likely start the conversation. And then we have a few other criteria just to make sure that you're relevant to to our whole brand and audience. Joe: So that was you actually hit upon one of my questions, which was what is the variety of hopes that you have at Cognex? Like, I would just give you an example off the top of my head. Would you Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: Ever have a. And it sounds like no, the answer is no based on what you just gave me, but that you at this moment there, it's more about entrepreneurial stuff. It's about success. It's about business. It's about things like that's not like you have one of these host who has a cooking podcast. Josh: It's so funny because Joe: Ok. Josh: To know well, yesterday, in fact, it's very strange you said cooking because yesterday a show we received an application from a potential new show host and it was, in fact, a cooking podcast. Joe: Unbelievable. Josh: That's the most yeah, it's the most amazing thing. But I think that to his credit, I think that there was an entrepreneurial spin. Like it's like he says like like I'll welcome chefs and cooks and entrepreneurs. I don't know. So Joe: Restaurant Josh: So there was Joe: Owners Josh: I mean. Joe: Were Josh: Yeah, Joe: Given Josh: Now Joe: A. Josh: Now something like that is going to be a little too niche for us because we can't fulfill. Right. Joe: Yeah. Josh: We don't get that kind of people, Joe: Now. Josh: But we are we do have the in the near future, we're going to start niching these out like pod max invest. Right. Joe: Oh, Josh: And then Joe: Cool. Josh: Every show is about investing in real estate and whatever. And then the people who come through or their pod max health and wellness. And then every show is that and then the audience supports that. But right now it's the first thing. It's entrepreneurial, it's business, it's growth, it's success. It's a life story. It's struggles, wins, failures, which we find a lot of people, even if they fit a specific niche, we help them extract. Let's get your life story out. And that's in. That's how we work with them prior to the event, to really fit a bigger a bigger audience here. Joe: Yeah, it's funny because my life partner, Joellen, and I have a YouTube channel that kind of morphed, we started it when covid hit and it sort of morphed over the year to now be really concentrated on travel. Our goal is to eventually have that the you know, Josh: A Joe: We're Josh: Travel log. Joe: Not young, so we're trying to inspire people of our age to go out and just do whatever you want to do and what's what's your excuse? Right. So we were talking about how some of these YouTube channels are lucky because they are they deal with things that are very current. So these guys that have these Krypto YouTube channels, they can't get out videos fast enough because that things Josh: Mm. Joe: Are changing so quickly. So it'd be interesting if you have a crypto pod, Max, someday and Josh: That's Joe: You could Josh: Right. Joe: Have like 12 crypto experts or I mean host Josh: Yeah. Joe: Having these people on because it's this new frontier. It's just crazy. But it's true that the things that are current, it's easy for those people. That's not so easy for people like us who are just in the trenches every day. Josh: Yes. Joe: But we're in New Jersey. Did you hold this just because. My own curiosity, because I live there as well. Josh: Trenton. Joe: Trenton OK, OK. I lived in Montclair, Upper Montclair, Josh: Oh. Joe: West Orange, even Newark, Josh: Of course, Joe: Even Newark Josh: One Joe: As Josh: Fifth Joe: It when it was starting Josh: Well. Joe: To grow. So. Yeah. Josh: 153 B, I went to Montclair State for a year. Joe: Oh, Josh: Yeah, Joe: That's so cool. Josh: You Joe: Yeah, Josh: Were by Joe: So, Josh: The campus, I imagine. Joe: Yeah, I was I was right there Josh: Yeah. Joe: Trumpet's the jazz club. You remember Josh: Yes, Joe: That? Yes. Josh: Of course, Joe: Ok, Josh: So funny Joe: I know. Josh: Jersey taqiyya. Joe: That's right. So talk to me about the people. So you have the application online for the host and you're obviously looking for those all the time to expand Josh: Mm Joe: Because Josh: Hmm. Joe: What is it? Each each host gets three interviews during that eight hour day. Josh: That's right. Joe: Ok, and then the people that want to attend Pod Max are potentially people that want to be guests be matched up with one or Josh: That's Joe: Two Josh: Right. Joe: Or any of Josh: Mm Joe: Those Josh: Hmm. Joe: Hosts. Josh: Three Joe: Three, three, three. Josh: Up to three Joe: Right, Josh: Up. Joe: Right. And then on the website I saw there was a button to buy. Is it is it to purchase a ticket for the next five max in August? Josh: That is correct. Joe: Ok. Josh: So the revenue and the and the tickets are from the entrepreneur side who want to be guests on the shows, Joe: Got Josh: They Joe: It. Josh: Come in, we train them, we work with them, we put them and match them on the show. So they record. We then, you know, they're in the room for the keynotes and the networking and everybody's happy. Joe: So explain to me, when you say we train them, what does that mean? Josh: We have so we when we first started virtual, we didn't have any sort of built in training, we just saw people coming to the event and the day the event happened and that was that. Then we had some people coming to us that said, you know what, I want to attend because they saw this as a great way to basically click a button, buy a ticket, and they'll be a guest on three shows. Right. How how else can that happen so quickly? And so guarantee that you're going to record in the course of a day and it's done now. You got three under your belt Joe: Mm hmm. Josh: More. We started getting people who in their own right were successful business people, six, seven, eight figure business people at everything from the C Suite on down. But they're coming to us saying, I've never been on a show before, but I want to or I've been on some. But I'm not that good. I need more confidence. I need more need more skill. And we thought, oh, my gosh, we're attracting a wide variety of successful business people who are now trying to break into podcasts, guesting. So we said, well, let's hold a prevent training where prior to the event, which is what we do now, we hold a 90 minute session with all the attendees prior to the event where we work with them in small groups. So they get one on one attention with Eric and me where we really get them going with their story, their message. We we listen to it, we prompt them, we give them feedback. We have them do it again. We give them notes. We say you're missing the bigger point. This is actually your sound bite. This is your message. This is what I'm hearing. And we just poke and prod until they're ready to go. And then they take the week prior to the event to get comfortable and practice and rehearse. And we do that kind of training. Joe: Well, that's very cool, and I think what I found as a as a host is I run into those people when they've written a book Josh: Mm Joe: And now Josh: Hmm. Joe: They want to promote the book. And Josh: Ok. Joe: They know that a really good way to promote the book is to get on as many podcasts as you can to get the message out Josh: Ok. Joe: That they've never been on one. So Josh: There you go. Joe: There you can see that they're a little awkward in having to talk to a camera and you know what I mean? So I find that that's that's a that's a big spot for me. When I get someone contacts me about, hey, we want to have so-and-so on. He's just written this great book and it's going to be released on Amazon in a month. And we'd like to get some sales. And Josh: Uh. Joe: And then you get that person and you can tell that they're just sort of wet behind Josh: Now. Joe: The ears in regards to being a guest. Josh: Yeah. Joe: So. Josh: Right, whether it's a host or a guest, you know, you said you have guests, but certainly, you know, as a host, it's not often as easy as it looks, right. Just because somebody is in front of a camera and has a mic, once you start doing it and then you put and then you're like, OK, this is a podcast. There's a lot of moving parts that you didn't anticipate. You have no clue what to do. And then there's so many things that you don't even know what you don't know until it's too late. And you're like, wait, what am I missing here? Same thing on the guest side. Everybody thinks like, no, I just talk to me, ask me some questions, I'll answer them. No way. Because there's two parts here. There's the technical and then the technique. Right. The technical is all this stuff, how you're framed, how you look, the lighting, the earphones, the microphone. Right. All very deliberate. And then there's the technique. What are your stories? How long are you answering? What's your energy and persona like? What are your sound bytes? Joe: Please, Josh: And we teach Joe: Please Josh: All that. Joe: Tell me that when you do some of this training with these new guests that you actually talk about equipment. Josh: Oh, my gosh, you have to, Joe: It's Josh: Of Joe: Just Josh: Course. Yeah, Joe: A. Josh: Thank you for observing that, because we don't want them showing up to the event because they're representing us and our brand. And it's all right. The next events that are better, they are they'll look good to the hosts and vice versa. Right. So we always require great professional level of host because we want a great host to represent the guests. And that's what makes it so well. So hosts nine times out of ten will already have, especially if they're working with us, they're professional. This is part of their business model and they're in it for the long run. They have a growth mindset. They get it. They're up and running guests. So you're right. Even like the ones that you would expect, like C suite level or quote unquote known famous company executives and employees, it's like they not ever you could assume, but they don't know. Joe: Yeah, Josh: A lot of them just don't know. So, Joe: That's. Josh: Yeah, we we do talk about that. Like you can't use your computer. Might stop with the window behind you, stop with that terrible green screen because half of your face is, you know, see through and it just doesn't work. Yeah. Joe: Yeah, I think the most brutal thing for me is when they have my voice coming out of their speaker and it keeps it keeps wiping out what right instead of it coming in headphones or in ears like I have, it just keeps Josh: Yeah, Joe: Hammering Josh: Uh. Joe: Over whatever when we're talking because it's the feet, it's the loop coming back through the mic. It's just Josh: Yeah, Joe: Brutal. Josh: Yeah, and even the angle, you got the perfect angle, you know, that that's, you know, are you too high, too low? It's it's all right. The technical and the technique, we cover it all. Joe: That's very cool. Well, that's that Josh: Thanks. Joe: Makes me so happy the more we can do that with guess, Josh: At. Joe: The better it will be. Josh: We're doing our part. Joe: So when is Permax? In August. Josh: August twenty seventh, we always have it on a Friday, it started that way and then we continued that way because one of the reasons it makes so much sense now to have it on a Friday, especially virtual, you spend eight hours from 9:00 to 5:00 Eastern again. Believe me, it will fly by. That's my promise. That's the way we make it happen. It's going to fly by no matter if you're a guest or a host. But you've still spent eight hours in the room absorbing everything and recording everything. So we just thought it was it was quite perfect to almost accidentally do it on a Friday, but then keep it it because let's take the weekend to sort of decompress and let it all process. Joe: Sure. Let me ask you the more of a personal question in regards to Josh: Sure. Joe: You with the hidden entrepreneur and you as a host and then as a guest, are you busy being a guest on other podcasts? And are you when you are a guest or are you talking about your show and what you've done as an entrepreneur? Are you talking more about, let's say, Pod Max and what you're doing with that? Josh: So I'm I'm a guest here and now in real time, Joe: Yeah. Josh: So you're so you're asking Joe: Do Josh: When Joe: You do a lot Josh: I'm Joe: Of these? Josh: Out. Joe: Do you do Josh: Oh yeah. Joe: You are you a guest? A lot on Josh: Yes, Joe: A lot of. Josh: Yeah, you ask a good question, though, what we what I do and really what we teach and promote is it's less about what you do and more about who you are, because that's what I think people are going to be attracted to. So I've spent time really honing in on and perfecting and continuing to perfect my story, my messaging, my communication, my positioning. A it's what I do on the business side. Right. So you sort of have to show that you can do what you're claiming to teach. Right. Which I think a lot of people Joe: Right, Josh: Don't Joe: What Josh: Do. Joe: You're asking others to do, right? Josh: Right. So if I can sort of show an example through me and be somewhat good at it, you're going to have more confidence coming along with what product or service I have. So it's in my best interest for a variety of reasons also because I still have some of that. I want the external validation right now. I don't need it, but it always feels good just as confirmation that you're doing something people value. Right. How else do you get that? But the feedback. So by doing something like this, it gives me feedback, my personal feedback and others. So I continue to hone and craft my story and message because it's what I teach and it'll help get my brand and message and story and business out there. Further, I, I talk about where I came from and my struggles, upbringing, and like we touched upon here, how I spent all the time hiding and all of those years led to creating what became the hidden entrepreneur, which then helped lead me into a career deep in the podcast space. But really it's about communication because you can apply it anywhere. You can apply it to your social media videos, to your emails, you know, to your sales calls, to all these stories and messaging still become relevant. So it's all encompassing. Joe: So for the entrepreneurs, again, that would be listening to my show, when you decided to do your podcast called The Hidden Entrepreneur. What was your main reasoning behind that? Josh: Great question, the reason out of the gate was I felt like I needed something to do right. I left that 10 year career running my own digital marketing agency, and I said, OK, what do I want to do with myself now? I didn't have all the answers. This is the important part. I didn't have all the answers. I just got the next answer, which I felt it clearly podcasting. And I said, I'm going to try it. I'm going to do it. I want to do it. I'm motivated to do it. And I think I'd be good at it. Meaning I think that I'll stick with it. And I think that this can really turn into something. I think that I can create this show and then around that show, parlay that into some sort of product or service in some regard that will put me on a path to success that I can live with and support myself with. That's really all I knew. And I knew that the show would give me confidence, right. Just by doing it and showing up each day, I knew that it would give me connection to each individual person. And lo and behold, it's it's it's literally has given me life. Joe: And the guests that you have on that show are entrepreneurs of all walks of life, but are Josh: Correct. Joe: So it's not that you are talking specifically to entrepreneurs who, like yourself, broke out of a shell and decided to do something. Josh: No, Joe: It's just Josh: No. Joe: It's just the name of it. It's something that speaks Josh: Correct? Joe: To your heart because that's Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: How you felt for a long time. And now it's just sort of like my show where we have great guests who are running their own businesses that have gone through the struggles are going through the struggles, have Josh: There Joe: Survived Josh: You go. Joe: 20, 20, all of those things. Josh: Absolutely, yes. Joe: Ok, cool, so then when let me ask you this question that when you are a guest, because I think all of this helps not only all the entrepreneurs that are listening, Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: That I don't have a podcast that don't go on podcasts that don't listen to whatever it might be, Josh: Right. Joe: Which is hard for you and I to understand, because, like, I was at the gym and I constantly having a podcast in my years. But when you are a guest, how do you figure out what your story is? Because you are this you led this life like I did, Josh: The. Joe: Right, with all of these things. And that's sort of like this is a selfish question, because I'm asking because Josh: Sure. Joe: If I was to be a guest on a podcast, Josh: Mm Joe: I'm Josh: Hmm. Joe: Not sure what Joe Costello would show up for that, because I don't there's so much that has happened. But it's not like I like I had Shaun Spawner on my show who summited all of the summits, like the they Josh: Right, Joe: Call Josh: Right, Joe: It the Josh: Right, Joe: I forget Josh: Right. Joe: What it's called anyhow. But he was amazing. He went to Everest, he went to the North Pole, South Pole, did all the summits. And so he has a story to tell and he has a short film that they did. There's people who come on and they have books. And so they've written a book on something very special. And Josh: Yeah, yeah. Joe: What's the story that you tell when you are on a show as a guest? Josh: The past forty six minutes will answer that. But in all seriousness, I I have over time you develop a library of stories that you have at the ready that encompass you and who you are, what you stand for, how you want to stand, why you want to stand for that, how you want to be perceived and positioned in your in your world. So I have a variety of stories that come about that I could explore based on the conversation I'm having. But they all wind up having an overarching theme, a core message, a core value, core stance that I deliver based on the hidden entrepeneur and where I've been and who I am and where I'm going. So you could learn about me so you can relate to me. So maybe you can like me enough to say, I want to I want to get to know this person more, see what else he does, Joe: Mm Josh: See Joe: Hmm. Josh: What he's about, and then we can explore each other's worlds together. So that takes a little bit of time to do, but that's sort of what we do. So if you're asking which I think you're asking, like, how would somebody like you who doesn't yet go on shows, where do you begin? Is that sort of what you're asking? Joe: Yeah, Josh: Like Joe: I mean, I Josh: Maybe Joe: Think. Josh: Right now? Everybody has a story where you you had a a life affirming or confirming incident that we can all write like I don't think I did necessarily, but I have enough of a story to make it interesting, relatable, compelling write. These are all things that are learnable skills, but they do start somewhere. Joe: All right. Josh: So you I read your website. So I know generally about you wanting growing up. You wanted to be a drummer, Joe: Mm hmm. Josh: Right, for the Stones or with the Stones. And so so broadly speaking, even if you started there with like a dream lost, never fulfilled yet, you know, where was the struggle there? I could spend five minutes and really dig into how painful did that get? What were some of the the turn how close did you get if if at all? What were some of those moments when you were behind closed doors in your own head? And then where are you today and how did it all go? Right. How did it all lead? OK, that could be a very compelling story that people can relate to. Of course, not everybody wanted to be a drummer for the Stones, but we all have our own version of that. So that's all you're tapping into, making it intriguing, making it compelling. And everybody has fascinating stories that they can put pieces together with and share them with the people who want to hear it. Joe: Yeah, that's great, I it's just that you think about it and you go and I think a lot of people feel this way, right? They're like, Josh: Nothing happened, right? Joe: My my story is not that interesting. Why should I tell it? And I don't necessarily feel that way. I've gone through a lot of iterations Josh: Right. Joe: And I have a lot of experience. And besides podcasting and our YouTube channel, you know, I run a seven figure booking agency here in Phoenix and Scottsdale. So I'm a successful entrepreneur. But again, this is the selfish thing for me is like I Josh: Yeah. Joe: Like meeting people like you and learning these kinds of things and sharing them before you. And I can help one entrepreneur out there with our show or what Josh: Yeah. Joe: You do with Cognex. That's a great thing, right? If it's just about and that's what I loved about this interview with you, is that you were very vulnerable and the way you spoke about yourself and it and it's refreshing to have someone to do that and not come and go. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I ran I did this and I was running these huge corporations. And then I had all this money and I figured I didn't need any more money. So I decided to start a fight or whatever. I mean, it's just it's nice to hear that you and I went sort of through the same kind of thing Josh: Mm Joe: And Josh: Hmm. Joe: It was refreshing to hear. So I appreciate you doing that. I wanted to say thank you earlier when you were doing it, but the momentum was going. But it was very, very cool that Josh: Great. Joe: You were that real about all of that stuff. So thank you. Josh: You're very welcome. Joe. Joe: So what is the cost for the August next? Josh: We have three ticket levels that you could you could explore on the site generally there between under a thousand, up to two thousand. Joe: Ok, and. Josh: Depending on how you want the experience to go. Joe: Got it and all of that up there, they click on that button and they'll have those choices there. Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: Is there a deadline? Josh: Yes, one week prior to the event, tickets, clothes, whatever, whenever you're hearing this, if it's one week prior to the very next event, tickets, clothes, because that's when we have to do the match ups and get all the information out to the attendees. Joe: What's the date and August again? Josh: August 27. Joe: Twenty seven. OK, is there anything else that I missed that you wanted to touch upon? Josh: No, you've Joe: Wow, Josh: Been thoroughly thorough. Joe: That's beautiful. OK, great. So the links that you got work for you in order for people to either contact you in regards to the hidden entrepreneur, contact you in regards to Pod Max, what's the website, you URL, all of that stuff so we can make sure and then I'll have it all in the notes anyhow. But if anybody's listening, I want to I want Josh: Mm hmm. Joe: Them to hear it. Josh: That's great. Well, the business side is Pod Max Dot CEO, and then on the personal side, which will lead you to all kinds of forks in the road that you could explore. It's Josh Carey Dotcom. Joe: Perfect. OK, well, this is been great, man, I really appreciate it. I was excited to hear about Max. I will also check out The Hidden Entrepreneur. I appreciate you coming on here and sharing this with the audience. And hopefully we'll get a bunch of people that will attend and maybe some new host and guest will come out of all of this. But I appreciate your time today, and it's very, very nice to meet you and very interesting to hear what's going on with Max. Josh: Likewise, I appreciate it greatly. Thanks so much. Joe: Thank you, man. I'll talk to you soon.

god new york amazon internet co founders new jersey pleasure jersey mount everest stones ipods ironically c suite mm newark impressive scottsdale north pole band aids south pole montclair north jersey joe cool healthyplace podmax montclair state joe it joe you hidden entrepreneur joe get josh it josh yeah joe yeah josh you joe well joe how joe so josh no joe there josh well josh oh joe do josh so joe all cognex joe did josh don joe now

Does Thinking Still Count As Working?

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2021 36:35

Show notes:Links:Write for usMaybeJosh Pigford Flu dataFull transcript:Ben:And today we don't have Starr, because Starr is on vacation this week, fireside chat.Josh:I will be on vacation next week, and the week after.Ben:Nice.Josh:I don't know if you saw, I extended my vacation.Ben:I didn't see this.Josh:Yeah. So, surprise!Ben:Two weeks back to back. That's a record.Josh:Yeah. I decided I'm feeling it and I don't think a week is going to be enough. So just thought I'd go for it.Ben:Yeah, I get that. I get that. It's funny, I was looking... We started this vacation calendar, recently, since we are looking at transitioning away from Basecamp, where our vacation calendar was, we are now putting a vacation calendar in Google calendar, because we use G Suite for all of our stuff. And I set up this vacation calendar, and I noticed that Starr put one on there, and then Josh put on a vacation and then Kevin put on a vacation. And then, Ben Findley, just week after week after week, it's like everybody's taking a vacation. I was like, all right, so I put myself on vacation.Josh:Yeah, you got to put yourself in there. Yeah.Ben:I did. Yeah. I added myself yesterday, for the week after Ben Findley's vacation.Josh:I don't know if you went and... I went in and just put a bunch of vacations for the rest of the year for-Ben:I saw that.Josh:... myself. Yeah.Ben:That's awesome.Josh:I mean, they might change, but I figured, if I at least put them in there, that'll force me to think about it and decide. Because that's been an ongoing problem, I always wait too long and then, finally, take the vacation when I just desperately need it, and I want to avoid that cycle, like we're supposed to be. This is supposed to be sustainable.Ben:This is a calm company. It means, lots of vacations.Josh:Yeah. We should be calm if we're running a calm company.Ben:I like that idea of putting on these dates tentatively and just planning on it. I might try that.Josh:Yeah. You should just plan them out. Also, yeah, I put our traditionally long winter vacation on there too, which I think is currently the last two weeks of December and the first week of January, which we can always move that around or sometimes we do the Hack week or whatever.Ben:Yeah. I've come to cherish that tradition. I like having that-Josh:It's nice.Ben:Knowing that's going to be downtime. You know?Josh:Yeah.Ben:I mean-Josh:I like the first week of the year off is kind of... there's something about that, where you don't have to go back to work the day after New Year's or whatever. That feels really nice.Ben:I mean, in reality, we're still on call. So if something broke, were going to work, but, yeah, it is nice not having that expectation of showing up and doing actual productive stuff.Josh:Yeah. Yeah. It's the low bandwidth mode.Ben:Yeah. It's also this past winter when we did that, I used that to just experiment with some stuff, work-related stuff like Elasticsearch and whatever, so that's kind of fun. It's a tinkering... even if we don't do an official Hack Week, it's still a good time to do some tinkering and get some of those creative juices going.Josh:Read some books on computer science or something like that, get excited about it again.Ben:Well, going through the SOC 2 compliance thing, the type two for the first time audit, one of the things that I came across that was new was this continuing education tracking thing. So the auditor wants evidence that we're actually doing continuing education for our employees. We always do conferences and stuff, but 2020 was a bad year for conferences, and we've never really tracked continuing education. We just like, "Yeah, let's do this conference," or whatever, and it's kind of ad hoc. And now it's like, "Oh, we need to track this, it's a good idea to plan something." So yeah, digging out those old computer science books or taking a course or doing a conference. Got to do it.Josh:Which is, well, you got to do it, but it's also, to me, that's one of my favorite things to do. I really like learning, so even in my spare time, that's what I like to do.Ben:Same.Josh:So I realized even with, yeah, my perfect workweek is a couple of hours maximum a day of doing the day-to-day things that you have to do, and then spend the rest of the day reading or learning something or working on improving your skills.Ben:Yep. Yeah. I to-Josh:That's what makes me happy.Ben:I don't try to do that every day, I like the idea, but I try to do that on Fridays. Friday to me is like the decompression day, I'm cruising into the weekend now. And so I try to put aside all the normal stuff and just something kind of interesting. Before we got on this morning, I was playing with some Docker stuff, not that we use Docker, but maybe we will someday, and just fiddling with it. You know?Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Ben:I think it's kind of fun.Josh:Yeah. Yeah. I like that.Ben:Until we get one of those customer requests that come in, I'm like, "Oh, I have to do some actual work now." And so, love our customers, but sometimes they can be kind of inconvenient, legitimate complaints about things need to be fixed.Josh:Or when there's an ops emergency, and so I drop everything and fix it. You had some of that going on this week. I know.Ben:But with both you and Starr got to experience those ops emergencies. It was actually a funny, so Starr, is on vacation, but the Starr was still on call for part of that time.Josh:The first night. Yeah. Because she had scheduled me to take over, was it yesterday? Whatever day it was-Ben:But in the morning.Josh:... but it was the night before. Yeah. It was like-Ben:Yeah, so I imagine in the future she might schedule you to swap a bit earlier, but-Josh:Yeah. I feel bad, because she said that, I guess, they had to get up early for a road trip and it's like 2:00 AM or something, or actually it was like 4:00 AM, I think, by the time the alerts died down.Ben:Yeah. The bad part was that there wasn't really anything to do. There was this spike in memory usage on our Redis Cluster, but it resolved itself, but only after sending some alerts saying, "Hey, somebody better pay attention to this," because that's a critical part of our infrastructure.Josh:Well, I mean, that's happened to me a few times. I mean, that's usually my on-call experience to be honest, and if it's worse than that, there's a good chance I'm waking you up anyways. But I mean, that's part of... You have a system well-architected, at least to the point, where if there is something, it does usually resolve itself, but still you need someone to sit up with it and babysit it until it does, just to make sure. And I mean, it would be totally unfair that you're the one who builds the system and also has to babysit it all the time, so our on call schedule is like a babysitter rotation.Ben:Yeah. Yeah. It's funny that you mentioned that, because I was looking at this vacation schedule, it's like, "Oh, when should I take vacation?" So I went and looked at the PagerDuty rotation to try and schedule my vacation away from my rotation on PagerDuty, so I didn't have to swap. And PagerDuty has changed their UI a little bit since the last time I looked at it, and I logged in and it's like, "When are you on call next?" And it says, "You're always on call." Because I'm the-Josh:Because you're level one.Ben:I'm the backup schedule. Yeah.Josh:I know, and that's a problem. I've been thinking about that, so you're not the only one worried about that, but, yeah.Ben:It was just kind of funny. I mean, it hasn't been a quality of life issue for a long time, because we've had so few problems, but still I am that backup. If it goes, what is it, more than half an hour or something, then I get woken up. But it was just kind of funny to see, you're always on call.Josh:Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'd say that's the major downside of our business is just the nature of that. And also just the nature of expertise. I feel like when I leave, it's much harder on the team, solving a lot of the customer support issues that come up related to our libraries and things. And I mean, that's part of the reason we've wanted to bring more people in the business, but then you end up with more people in the business, and then you're tied to a management role that you can't leave too. So there's trade-offs there.Ben:Yes. It's the struggle of all the bootstrap SaaS operators that are small like us, how do I get time away when I'm the solo founder? Or maybe it just two co-founders, how do we take a break? Justin has talked about this with their customer support for Transistor. They felt like they were always just having to stay on top of that, and they could never take a break. And so, they hired someone to help out with that. And having Kevin around has really helped spread the rotation out, and he's taken up a lot of the ops stuff and gotten familiar with it. So-Josh:Yeah. He's taken an interest in it, which is good.Ben:Yeah. It's been great for me.Josh:Yeah.Ben:Yeah. It's a hard problem to solve, because, I mean, yeah, you could add people, but then you got to pay those people, and so your profitability takes a hit, so it's a balance.Josh:Yeah. And I mean, I think, I don't know about you, I prefer to stay small. I don't think... I've moved past the idea of I want to have a company with tons of employees or whatever. I think that actually would make... I wouldn't be as happy with that situation, probably, as with our current situation, with a few employees and small team. We probably spend a lot more time trying to solve these problems than larger companies do, because they just throw people at it. But yeah, I feel like-Ben:That just introduces a different set of problems, right?Josh:It does.Ben:You really just have to pick which set of problems you want. Do you want to be tied to the business? Or do you want to deal with the layers of management and the people problems that come with not being tied, personally, to the business?Josh:Yeah. So, yeah-Ben:Yeah.Josh:I don't know, over time though, I think I tend towards wanting to spend less time on the business or at least, when I say, on the business, I mean, less time on those things that I just have to be doing and don't want to be doing. I want to try to always be doing the things I want to be doing. And yeah. I mean, I know just general management stuff does not fall into that bucket of what I want to be doing.Ben:It's not your dream in life to be a manager.Josh:Nope. It's not even my dream in life to be traveling the world 200 days a year or something, and preaching the gospel or something.Ben:Yeah. I've thought about that recently too. Looking at companies that get really big, whether they take a bunch of money or not regardless, but they turn into tens and then hundreds of employees. And I think about what would that be to be a CEO of that kind of company? And I'm just like, I just don't know that I would really enjoy that. There would be a certain set of excitement, yes, no doubt, about having that kind of business.Ben:I can think of right now about Tobi at Shopify, because I remember when Tobi started at Shopify, and watch that grow. And just thinking about, it's got to be pretty fun and in some ways to be Tobi, to be on top of this organization and doing these cool things and seeing the impact that you're making. And they've gone public, there's a whole lot of cool stuff there, but there's also a lot of annoying stuff there. That come along with those cool things. And it's like, ah, I think I'm happy where I am. I don't think I need to be the CEO of Shopify or something that size to have that fulfillment in my career right now.Josh:Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that you find new ways to guard your time and it just becomes even more, that's why no one can reach the CEO, usually. But, I mean, it's all... Yeah. It just puts you in an even more critical position. The pressure and responsibility must still be pretty, it just must be massive. But-Ben:It must be.Josh:Yeah. I guess, I don't really know, because I've never been in that position. I'm just guessing.Ben:Right, right. And life phases might change somethings and maybe when the kids are grown and gone, maybe you'll feel like, ah, I want a new challenge, something bigger. I think you see that a lot with founders, like us, who build something, sell it. And they're like, "Huh, let me try a bigger swing. Let me try..." Like Josh is doing right now, he did it did Baremetrics, he sold that, and now he's building out Maybe, and I think he's definitely thinking bigger scope kind of stuff.Josh:It looks like it. Yeah.Ben:Or you can just go buy a ranch somewhere and just chill, right?Josh:Right. Well, I think it's kind of... I mean, yeah, those aren't unsimilar to me. I mean, I think the big point is or the major thing is, if you're financially set and you can, again, do whatever you want to do, then, yeah, go do it. But again, even, say, if we sold the business and didn't have to work another day in our lives, we could just go buy that ranch and just kick back on it. If I decided to go and start another company, I wouldn't want to start a company that is going to demand my time and involvement, like most companies do.Josh:I'd probably try to go start another Honeybadger or something, maybe, you could go larger scale, but something that solves for those problems. Yeah, and I don't know what that looks like, but I feel like some companies of the future are kind of like... The ones that GitLab, that take a more open source approach. I don't know exactly what being in charge of GitLab is like, but I'm sure it's not a walk in the park either, but experimenting with new ways to spread responsibility around. Yeah.Ben:Yeah. And maybe the answer is, that's a scenario where you do have to take a bunch of money, so you can get those employees to make that lift, right?Josh:Yeah.Ben:Yeah. I think if we sold Honeybadger and we did something new, I think it has to be different in some dimension or otherwise, why did you sell?Josh:Yeah. It would have to be.Ben:And so maybe it's a different audience. Maybe it's a different size. Maybe it's venture backed versus doing it from scratch. I think it would have to be different in some significant way for it to be interesting enough to actually do versus just spending the rest of my retirement tinkering or whatever.Josh:Yeah. Yeah. I guess, getting to that critical point with employees is the thing that's hard, going from what we have, which is kind of like where we're so small that we have things we have to still be here for, but we can just disconnect whenever we want to, for the most part, like take a week off if we want to, and just do customer support or be on call. But jumping from that to the point where, say, you have 50 employees or something and you're the CEO, and you can just be like, "Okay, everyone, I'm going to be gone for a week, carry on." Which I think you can do when you have other people managing people.Josh:But in between that, there's a very... it's like if you're growing out your hair, there's that weird, you know, the annoying stage where your hair, just like you hate it. And it's like, it just doesn't work. And you're... Yeah, it just seems like that exists when you're trying to grow a business where it's hard with 10 people, all 10 of those people are looking to you for leadership on a regular basis. And you're still connected to the major centers of the business.Ben:Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I hadn't really thought of it that way, and that makes total sense to me. There's those growing pains that you would get going from one phase to another.Josh:And I guess, I'm not sure, having been doing what we're doing as long as we have, I'm not convinced that I want to go through that pain that I know is there to get to that stage where I know that we probably would be in another... we'd be back in the position where we could probably have more freedom, or hire a CEO then to just run the business, which people do.Ben:Well, I mean, I wonder, so two thoughts that I have. I wonder, if you're a venture back startup, if you start from scratch with a bunch of money in the war chest, do you avoid some of those growing pains? Because you can just, right out of the gate, hire a bunch of people, right?Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Ben:So I wonder that, and then the follow on-Josh:Good thought.Ben:Yeah, I have no idea. And the follow on thought is, well, like in our situation, we've been around for a long time, we have profitable business, we're great, what if we take on an investment now, and then that gives us that money to hire a bunch of people? To help you accelerate through that growing pain phase, right?Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Ben:If you had one or two people here and there that's painful, but if you add 10 or 20 people, I don't know, maybe that's a different kind of pain, but maybe it's a better kind of pain. Because it's like ripping the band-aid off, because you did all done at once.Josh:Yeah. No, that's a good point. Yeah. That's something that I hadn't factored in, in that line of thinking. So, yeah, I think he could be right, that that is a common use of funding and capital investment and all that.Ben:Yeah. I would be open to that idea, if we had figured out the sales machine. If we could say, "Oh, we can deploy X amount of people, and we know that X amount of revenue would come in, because we'd be doing these Y activities."Josh:Totally.Ben:But we haven't quite got there yet. We have a really strong inbound, but we don't really have an outbound or we don't have a process even for dealing with inbound sales, because everything right now is hands-off, right?Josh:It's not scalable. Yeah. Yeah. So, we're doing this to ourselves, to some extent, just in our own lack of knowledge or experience in those areas, but that's part of the learning process. So-Ben:Yeah, you're right.Josh:... we are... I think it's smart though, to be focusing on those areas now, to open up those possibilities in the future. So that if we change our minds and realize that we could scale the business to a point where we can, again, have the same thing that we have now only potentially better because we don't have those, even the small responsibilities, that drag us back in, on a regular basis.Ben:Yeah, yeah. We're still choosing to grow slow and to keep it pretty calm, keep that calm company.Josh:Yeah. That's the point of calm-Ben:Right. If we take it big chunk of money, we could hire the VP of Marketing, the VP of sales, the VP of engineering, right? And then we could-Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Ben:... presumably step back once we got these people set on the, here's the goal, now get it, right?Josh:Yeah.Ben:But, yeah, that would be a less calm company, for sure.Josh:Yeah.Ben:At least for a while.Josh:Yep. And even if that's to the extent that that's possible, yeah, I don't know, I mean, you still have to build the idea of the calm company into that business. Otherwise, you'll just end up with 30 to 50 people that are chaotic and-Ben:Right. Yeah.Josh:... calling you all the time or emailing you. Yeah. So I guess I'll revise my statement, it's like, I'm not willing to grind it out to get to the next level. If that's what it comes down to, I'm happy, let's just stay where we are for... I'm fine, we run the business as an asset and try to build the lifestyle aspect of it more than anything else. But if we can find a way to scale the business and then maybe invest in it so that we can accelerate the jump, or a hair faster, so to speak.Ben:I like that.Josh:I'm terrible at metaphors. I feel like this one might actually be working, but Starr's the metaphor person. So I feel like I'm really on... I'm going to risky position right now.Ben:Better stop while you're ahead, right?Josh:Yeah.Josh:No more metaphors for the rest of the day.Ben:I think that the hair growth thing works, just have to take care of not to offend all of our bald listeners, you know?Josh:Right. Yeah. So I went to a Starbucks this week and did some work inside of it-Ben:Whoa.Josh:... without a mask.Ben:Wow. That's brave.Josh:I still did the distancing stuff just because it seems smart. I wasn't hugging everyone, but, yeah, they've got it all posted, it's like, if you're vaccinated, the mask is optional. Plus I was drinking a beverage, so... But yeah, I had a Zoom session at the Starbucks, and it was a novel experience.Ben:Very nice. Yeah. I went to a Target this week for the first time in a long time, and yeah, I just put my mask on out of habit. It's like, get out of the car, put the mask on, go in the store, right?Josh:Yeah.Ben:And I'm walking around and I don't know, maybe a quarter of the people there didn't have masks, it's like, oh yeah, it's not required anymore, really. I'm vaccinated. I'm like, huh, cool. And I'll just get a long my way, but it's like, I have to get used to this new reality of not having to wear a mask.Josh:That not everyone... Yeah. Although I still suspect that a large portion of the people that are going to take them off or aren't going to wear them are the people that were always not wearing them.Ben:Yeah. Although I will say, if I were still doing mass transit every day, like I used to do, I would definitely be still wearing a mask, if it was any time cold or flu season-Josh:Oh yeah.Ben:I'm not going back to that prehistoric animal way of not covering myself during germy season.Josh:Well, there's that flu statistics that I guess have been coming in from the CDC, since the season is coming to an end 2020, 2021 or whatever, and it seems the whole social distancing. Masking situation, hand-washing really drastically improved that situation. I don't know, I forget what the numbers were, but it was ridiculous.Ben:Yeah, it's dropped like 99% or something crazy.Josh:Yeah.Ben:Yeah.Josh:Something like that.Ben:It's nuts.Josh:Which is-Ben:It's awesome.Josh:... wild. Give it a little time for the data to get worked out, I guess, because just seems prudent. But I mean, either way, it seems like it's a massive thing.Ben:Yeah. I would definitely need to normalize mask wearing during germs, no doubt.Josh:Yeah. Yep. I'm cool with never getting sick again.Ben:Totally. Well, and on that note, this fall kids will actually be going to school, and it'll be an exciting adventure. All those, snot nosed punks running around getting each other sick again.Josh:Yeah. That'll be the real test. That's just going to knock us out. Yeah. Yeah. My daughter's, Tatum's starting kindergarten in the fall.Ben:Wow.Josh:And that'll be her... We did preschool at home. So yeah, that's going to be wild.Ben:First school experience, huh?Josh:Yes.Ben:Yeah, that's-Josh:I'm entering a new stage. I feel like, a new phase.Ben:Yeah. It's bittersweet. You're like, oh, that's so exciting. And it's like, oh.Josh:Yeah.Ben:Yeah, yeah. I remember those days with fondness.Josh:What's also going to be weird, because it's going to force me to start interacting with other parents in the community, which I think that's my biggest thing right now is like, oh, no, I-Ben:You better watch out, next thing you know, you'll be the president of the PTSA. You'll be organizing bake sales, and-Josh:Yeah, we're definitely going to be the... I think we'll be the weird parents, in our area, anyway.Ben:It's funny. I've noticed this, this arc, your first kid goes into kindergarten and you're so into PTA and PTSA. You're like, "I'm going to take care of all the things. I'm going to volunteer in the classroom." And you're really engaged and involved and it's so good. And then over time you start to back off a bit. It's like, "Oh, I don't really need to do all the things, there are other people that help," you know?Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Ben:And then by the time they get to the tail end and they get close to graduation from high school, you're just like, "I don't even care what they're doing anymore. Educate yourself, kid. You figure it out."Josh:Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean I had to basically educate myself, so you can.Ben:Yeah, yeah. Totally. It's funny seeing the new wave of parents come in every year to the PTA, and then all of a sudden they go out, again, as the new wave comes in.Josh:And you having been there for a while, that sounds kind of like, oh no metaphors. Like if you go to a gym regularly and every New Year's, like the first two weeks of January, that's what it sounds to me.Ben:Yep. Yeah. Totally. Yeah.Josh:Because everyone comes in and is just super dedicated, and then over the next couple of weeks, it's just, they all filter out again and you're back to the same 10 people in the afternoon or whatever.Ben:Right. Yeah. And all the regulars get annoyed because of it. They're like, "Oh, all these people crammed in one place."Josh:Yeah. All this exuberance is just... Yeah.Ben:Yeah. So gym, that's a open question for me right now. So I still have a gym membership. I haven't canceled it, but I haven't been since the beginning of the pandemic. And even though I'm a 100% vaccinated, and I'm feeling invincible, still, the gym is one place I'm like, I don't know. I still feel kind of uncomfortable at that. Still trying to decide whether or not I'm going to keep that membership, because I really enjoy going, but I don't know, I don't really want to wear a mask while I'm exercising, that just sucks.Josh:Yeah, that was mine too, I just didn't... Yeah.Ben:Yeah. And wiping down everything, I'm not a super sweaty person, so I'm not the kind of person that really needs to wipe down the equipment as soon as I'm done with it, because it's like, I just touch it. I didn't have a bath on it. And so I'm just... I don't know. I don't even know if they have a kitchen cleaning procedure that you have to do now, because, again, I haven't been to the gym, but I don't know. It's tough.Josh:I haven't been to the gym, because I got my home gym in 2019, the end of 2019, and so it's been that long. But I do sweat and I was used to just wiping down the equipment in between, it's not that bad. Especially if you... you can even carry a towel with you if you want, but most gyms have the whatever clothes-Ben:Yeah. Wipes.Josh:... and spray bottles and stuff. It's not the end of the world, but the mask thing, yeah, the idea of working out in a mask does not appeal to me. Even though it could be a plus for some people, like the people that are training for high altitudes and stuff. Some people wear the mask on the treadmills and I'm sure those people are like, "Sweet, that's just extra challenge."Ben:Right, yeah.Josh:Yeah.Ben:So I'm still doing the home stuff and it's just not as-Josh:You should-Ben:... awesome.Josh:... give it a try.Ben:Yeah. I guess I should. I should call them and say, "Hey, what's the deal down there?"Josh:I mean, I figure from what has been reported, the vaccines are very effective.Ben:Yeah, totally.Josh:And I mean, I understand the hesitancy, give it some time, obviously, that's prudent, the wait and see approach is completely valid. But after that, I mean, if you're immune, you're immune. So at some point you have to start-Ben:Living again.Josh:Yeah. Getting back out there, putting yourself back out there. But I mean, it's not a bad thing to be cautious, so I understand.Ben:Yeah. Just get back in the habit, I guess.Josh:Yeah. And I mean, to be fair, I'm also not at the gym with a bunch of people spitting in my face. So just to be clear, I'm giving this advice from my bunker.Ben:Yeah. You've got the sweet home gym set up. I'm jealous.Josh:Yeah. Actually, I've reduced my routine a little bit lately, and I've actually been doing more yoga and flexibility things, because I always go really hard with the weightlifting, and I'm not getting any younger. And so injuries are more frequent, and so I've been doing two days, two days a week right now just to keep up the major lifts and stuff, but kind of taking a little bit of a break.Ben:Have you done any of the Apple Fitness stuff?Josh:Yeah, I did one of the yoga sessions on it, when I was just... because I did yoga last year, when I had some injury stuff, and it was good, and I should have just kept doing it. And so, that's why I tried when I first started getting back into it this year, and it was really good. It was a little intense though for a beginner like me. So I've been doing this more beginner training, learning the actual postures and stuff. But then my plan is just to use the Apple Fitness stuff after that, because they seem like they have a lot of good just general-Ben:Yeah. I really like the Apple Fitness stuff. I've done some of the yoga. I didn't do the 30 minute stuff. I did the 10 minutes stuff, because I'm a super beginner, and so I did the really easy yoga, which was great for me. And I've done their high intensity stuff, which was pretty good. I'm not really an aerobics kind of person. I run and I ride, I figure I get enough aerobics that way. But when it was raining and cold and stuff, I just did the high intensity stuff, and that was pretty cool. I really liked that. And I've done their cycling, which is okay, but it's geared, at least the ones that I did, were geared towards being on a indoor cycling machine where you can adjust the intensity easily and stuff.Ben:I'm not, I'm on my own bike on a trainer, where the wheel is propped up and it's on that little roller. And so a lot of the instructions in the thing were, "Okay, let's dial up the resistance." And it's like, "Well, okay, I don't have that good of a setup here. I can't just dial up the resistance." So I had to alter it a bit, but it was still nice.Josh:You got to get your weighted boots on.Ben:I mean, but they do have trainers like mine that actually do have remote control, and so you can do that, but I don't have one. But anyway, I really enjoyed them. The fitness things are cool, and they're set into 30, 20, 10 minute intervals. And so you can like, "Oh, what kind of workout do I want today?" Yeah, I really like it.Josh:Yeah. I like the high intensity stuff for cardio a lot. And otherwise , yeah, I don't know, I could get into running, I think, but I really like walking, so I'll go for super long walks. But again, time is sometimes a factor that... sometimes I'll even just go for the afternoon and just start walking and end up back home at dinner time or something like that. I like that, but I've never been like going out too much. I've gone through a few running phases, but it never really stuck. So I like the high intensity stuff, because as far as I understand, it gives you some of the same benefits without having to run for an hour or something.Ben:Yeah, yeah.Josh:Yeah.Ben:I too love long walks.Josh:Yep. I think that's a great way to spend some of your just general workweek. That's the good alternative to sitting and grinding away at the desk-Ben:No doubt.Josh:... for eight hours a day or whatever. This morning I was wrestling with my kids and stuff. And I was picking them up individually and lifting them up and then throwing them on the bed. And then I was like, "Okay, now I have to go, I have to go back to work." And they're like, "No, no. We just, we want one more." So I was like, "Okay, I've got one more." So I picked them both up, one in each arm. And I do, basically, a lateral raise with them. And as I do this, I don't know what they weigh, but Tatum's over 50 pounds, and of course they're unbalanced, but my entire upper body, just like... I hadn't done any stretching or anything, so my entire upper body just cracks all over, and Caitlin, she's like, "Are you okay?" Apparently it was like, she was concerned for me. So, yeah, I realize, man, it's not the good old days anymore.Ben:You're getting up there in years.Josh:Not that out there, but at the age where you start to notice these things, right?Ben:Yeah.Josh:But I'm not past the point of trying.Ben:So did you do anything this week? I didn't do a whole lot actually. Well, I mean, I did responding to those urgent issues-Josh:Like working, you mean?Ben:Yeah.Josh:I did not get a whole lot of work done this week no. Yeah, no, you're good. I figure, yeah, I mean, again, yeah, I'm ready for a break, so I've been trying my best, but-Ben:You're coasting into that vacation.Josh:Yeah, it's been a struggle.Ben:That's awesome.Josh:But I mean, I think, we need to learn not to feel bad about that. Having a "unproductive" week. And I mean, if I'm... Yeah, honestly, I did things this week, it just wasn't as much work things. Dealt with things at home, read some books, that sort of stuff, that's still being productive, right?Ben:Totally. Yeah.Josh:Yeah.Ben:Yeah.I thought a lot about our project that we mentioned last week on the podcast about working together with Kevin on, I had spent a fair amount of time thinking about that. And that's one of the things that you can do on those long walks, it can still be working.Josh:Thinking.Ben:Thinking.Josh:Yeah, thinking is totally work.Ben:Thinking is totally work, so I did a lot of thinking this week, and responding to urgent stuff, but also, nearly, nearly done on the compliance thing. I think I have 11 out of 150 evidence requests left to complete. So-Josh:Wow.Ben:... yeah, it's almost there. Next week, I'll be actually talking to the auditors and-Josh:Awesome.Ben:Yeah. It's almost done. That's nice.Josh:And you've got ideas for making it easier next year.Ben:Yep. Yeah.Josh:Yeah.Ben:So, yeah, just plugging away.Josh:So I guess we're cruising.Ben:Yeah, no worries. Well, I guess we can wrap it.Josh:Yeah, wrap it.Ben:They're getting a good one. This has been FounderQuest. We're still coming at you mostly every week, and we really enjoy it. And if you enjoy it, hope you give us a review at iTunes or wherever you can review podcasts, because I never do that, so I have no idea. But if you're into that, please do, and, yeah, check out Honeybadger, of course, because we love having more customers. And I guess we'll see y'all next time.Josh:Catch you later.

ceo new year founders google marketing zoom thinking startups target starbucks cdc hack saas developers educate shopify ui basecamp pta masking dealt elixir soc docker bootstrap honey badger gitlab transistor wipes g suite lifestyle business elasticsearch software as a service pagerduty apple fitness baremetrics ben it ptsa ben you josh it josh yeah josh you josh no ben so josh well josh oh ben well ben right micropreneur links write josh not

Kicking The Tires On Basecamp Alternatives

Play Episode Listen Later May 14, 2021 38:23

Show notes:Links:Threads.comBlueyVogmaskTwistIt’s a Southern ThingIf I had a front porchFull transcript:Josh:How y'all doing?Ben:I'm doing.Starr:Yeah, about the same.Ben:I've been riding my scooter to work all week.Starr:Oh, how's that?Ben:It's a lot of fun. Got a little electric kick scooter and top speed about 25 miles per hour. I was concerned about it being able to get up the hill that I have to go back up on my way home. It does drag a bit on that hill. I only got a single motor. Guess I should have gone with the dual motor. Otherwise it's fun. It's nice to be out in nature, I guess, air quotes, because you're still on the road and you're still a victim of cars and stuff. Being able to see the sun coming up over the hills and down to the valley and while you're just feeling the wind on your face, it's all good.Josh:It sounds nice.Ben:Yeah.Starr:Yeah, sounds awesome. I don't know. It seems terrifying to me, but I'm sure it's a lot of fun.Ben:It helped that I have done a lot of bike riding on roads for the past several years, so I'm already comfortable with the idea of mixing it up with cars and weaving in and out of traffic and realizing that people aren't going to see me and things like that. I think if I had just gone from driving a car straight to riding a scooter in the bike lane, that would be a little more terrifying.Starr:Yeah, that makes sense.Josh:Next you're going to have to upgrade to one of the electric skateboards or a Onewheel or something, just remove the handle bars.Ben:Right, right, right. Get one of those Onewheel things.Josh:This is leading up to-Ben:Totally.Starr:We're just working up to hoverboards. I mean I commute to my backyard office, so maybe I should get a zip-line or something from the main house.Ben:I like that, yeah.Starr:... then I could be extreme.Josh:We want a zip-line at our place out into the forest.Starr:That would be fun.Ben:You could do a zip-line from your deck to the sandbox, send the kids out to play.Josh:The kids would love it. Well, I was thinking more for myself though. Screw the kids. They don't need a zip-line.Starr:There you go. That's actually not a bad idea. We're going to get-Josh:That would be cool though.Starr:... a deck in the fall.Josh:Oh, nice.Starr:I had thought it would be fun to put a fireman pole on one side or something so kids could slide down it. It's raised up a little bit but not that much. It's like a kid's sliding size.Ben:That would be totally awesome. That would-Josh:We have been loving our new deck that we have had for a month and a half or something now. It's a new deck. If you have a really old, rickety deck, a new one is a big upgrade. Also ours is a little bit larger, too, so it's like a bigger house almost.Starr:Oh, that's great. We don't even have a deck it's just like a little stairway.Josh:I think you're going to like it, Starr.Starr:I think so, too. I know, deck life. It's going to be covered. I was just like-Josh:It's just the small things.Starr:I know. All I want is to be able to go out on a nice evening or something and sit and drink a cup of tea and be outside.Ben:And think about all-Josh:I was going to say, where do you drink the sweet tea in the summer if you don't have a front porch?Starr:Yeah, that's the main problem with houses up here in the Northwest is there's not real front porches. We have one that's like a weird nod at a front porch. It's like somebody maybe had seen a front porch once when they were... They were like, "Oh, maybe I'll try and do that from memory," without really knowing what it's supposed to be like.Josh:Some of the ones in Portland have them, but they're boxed in usually, and they're the older houses-Josh:... like the old Craftsmans or whatever.Starr:The stately grand dames.Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Ben:Well, here in Kirkland we're destroying all those old houses and putting in-Starr:Thank God.Ben:... townhouses.Josh:Hell, yeah.Ben:I drove by one this morning. This morning was the first morning since I got my scooter that I actually didn't ride the scooter because it was raining and the ground was wet. I was like, "Ah, I don't want to deal with that this morning." So I just drove. I drove past this house that... Well, yesterday it was a house. Today, it's a pile of sticks because they sold the lot, and they're going to split it into probably, I don't know, four lots and put in some townhouses. It's always a sad thing, but people got to have a place to live.Starr:Yeah, it's a shame. They tore down a house on my block, too, except it was a condemned house. It looked like a gingerbread fairy house that you'd find on just a random stroll in the woods where you'd go inside and you'd find just a delicious meal laid out on the table just waiting for you. So I'm a little sad it's gone just for, I guess, the storytelling aspects, the mythology of it. I guess it's probably best not to just have a condemned structure hanging out.Josh:I still do feel like Ida's is missing out with your telling of that story. I feel a little sad for you all.Starr:I know. I know.Ben:You're totally missing the threat possibility there. Like, "Don't misbehave or I'll send you over to the gingerbread house."Starr:Oh my god, yeah. Yeah, lots of great ways to traumatize my child.Ben:Speaking of traumatizing children, I was going through Twitter the other day, and the Washington State Department of Health had a tweet. I don't remember what the tweet was, but they had a GIF embedded in it. It was Stimpy from Ren & Stimpy as a scene from the show. I was like, "That's from the Department of Health? My generation is now in charge."Starr:With the Twitter account at least.Ben:We're now putting in-Josh:Yeah, exactly.Ben:That was the weirdest... It's like, "I'm an adult." That was a weird, weird experience.Josh:It is kind of strange when the people in charge start looking more and more like you until you realize they're just like-Ben:They're just little kids, just like I am.Josh:Then you wonder why the hell they're in charge.Starr:I'm getting like Paul Ryan listening to a Rage Against the Machine vibe from this.Josh:That's what I'd be playing if I was in charge of the Department of Health's-Starr:There we go.Josh:... Twitter account.Starr:I think this week has all been a little bit... I don't know. We're all maybe a little bit having a hard time focusing. I know I have a little bit just. It seems like that happens every spring as soon as the weather gets nice and it stops being nice, then it gets nice and it stops being nice. You're waiting by the door with your kayak. You just got to get the jump on it before everybody else gets to the lake.Josh:Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. Also allergies have been kicking in lately.Starr:Oh my god, yeah.Josh:I was really on top of it this year, but then I ran out of my Zyrtec or whatever. It was on the list to replenish the supply or whatever, but I procrastinated and missed a few days. That's a huge mistake.Starr:Oh, yeah.Josh:That was this week. Now I switched to Claritin, so we'll see how... That's the big news of my week.Starr:Oh my gosh. I'm getting vaccinated later today, my second dose.Josh:Nice.Starr:Yeah.Josh:Congrats.Starr:I think I'm still going to keep wearing the KN95 respirators outside, though, just for the allergies.Josh:It's probably a good call.Ben:I was helping a neighbor with some yard work and doing a bunch of weeding and had the weed whacker out, and there's just dirt flying everywhere. I'm like, "Man, I should really wear a mask." Like, how ironic. I've got like, I don't know, a thousand masks in my house, and I'm not wearing one as I'm doing all this dusty stuff.Josh:That's a good thing to do.Starr:Oh, this is reminding me, I need to stock up before fire season.Ben:A few years ago when we had the really bad fire season, we got some Vogmasks. This was before the world knew that you were supposed to wear masks. Vogmasks are fantastic. They're a fabric mask that have the filtering stuff on the inside and highly recommend. I'll put a link in the show notes.Starr:Cool.Ben:Good stuff. When the pandemic hit, of course, they were out of stock immediately because everybody and their brother wanted one, but they've been back in stock. They're nice masks. They're really nice.Starr:Well, one thing that we have been doing is casually just checking out alternatives to Basecamp for our internal company's message board. I don't know. I feel like we're just perusing the alternatives. Honestly, it's been a little bit difficult finding just a system out there that's just a simple thread and message board without a million complex adjustments for running a forum that has thousands of people. Somebody on Twitter yesterday recommended Threads. I don't know. I think we're currently evaluating that one but no decisions yet.Josh:Is that like Twitter threads? You just-Starr:Oh, yeah, just Twitter threads.Josh:We do all of our communicating but just public threads.Starr:No, we're just going to use Twitter stories. We're just going to take some pics of ourselves in different-Josh:If we're trying to go to the opposite direction of Basecamp, we could just... Well, I guess this is like Basecamp, just do all of our communication via thought leadership.Starr:There you go.Ben:What if we did all of internal communication via TikTok?Starr:Okay, I'm getting this. I'm on board with this. We're just going to be influencers. Whoever's the most influential is going to-Josh:You know what? If our employees don't like it, too bad. You're getting a Twitter account, and it's getting verified.Starr:Yeah, they can interpret our really random TikTok video and try and figure out what it means. That's how they'll discover our disapproval.Ben:On the Basecamp thing, though, it was interesting as I was looking at it this week and realizing that the only thing that we use in Basecamp is messages along with the files. We sometimes attach files to our messages.Josh:Or email forwards.Ben:Yeah, occasionally we do an email forward. But we don't-Starr:Usually we do calendars, but we also have Google calendar.Ben:And Slack.Josh:And Notion.Ben:And notion. So we don't do to-dos. We don't do hill charts. We don't really use the project management side of the project management software that we're using. As I was looking at alternatives this week, I looked at monday.com and ClickUp and, I don't know, a few different ones. They're all these project management things. It's like, well, we don't really manage projects. We do that via chat or via a Zoom call every once in a while or via Notion. We don't use a project management tool for that. So it's like, yeah, all we really need are threads, conversations.Starr:It's the sort of thing where you could just do it in email, but it's nice having that archival ability, the ability to go back and check things out and not have it dependent on, "Oh, maybe I deleted that message by accident or whatever."Josh:Well, you could do it in Slack, but then you end up with the weird history aspect of it, and you'd have to have some sort of... You have to create a channel for it with the rules so it doesn't end up being just a chat. You have to say, "The rule of this channel is every message is a thread or a post or whatever."Starr:You kind of have to do it manually.Josh:Yeah.Ben:I did look at Twist. That was pretty cool, pretty close, but it also has chat. It's like, "well, I don't want a second chat since we already use Slack." We're not going to ditch Slack.Starr:Basecamp has chat, too.Ben:Right, and we don't use that. I guess you could use Twist. Twist is pretty nice.Starr:I think we need threaded messages, we need everything to be archived, and we need some way to see what people have been writing on lately, see what the latest activity is. That's basically it. I don't even use notifications. I get them, but I don't really... Usually by the time I see them... That's not my process. I don't look at my notifications and be like, "Oh, I'd better check this out." I check out the messages at a set set time basically.Ben:Then, like you said, the forum software, like the discourse, and it's just way, way too much. It's like, "Yeah, we get it." We just need a message board. We don't need all the dials and knobs. It's totally a dials and knobs application. I saw it in the settings, and I was like, "Whoa, okay. I'm just going to back away slowly."Starr:It could be fun, I don't know, if we want to be passive aggressive, we could shadow ban people. We could just do all sorts of fun things.Ben:But I suppose we don't have the hard requirements supporting BBCode.Starr:Isn't that a negative requirement? Supporting BBCode, I think that's a detriment. But we do have a chance to maybe, I don't know, maybe... One thing that I've always really... This really annoyed me about Basecamp is that it doesn't support Markdown, and everything we use supports Markdown, so everything I have is in Markdown. So if I write something in my personal notes, it's going to be in Markdown. If I want to transfer that to Basecamp, I got to manually format it, which is just like, "What am I? What is this? Who do you think I am?"Josh:That's my number one gripe with Basecamp, like the editor, is just a WYSIWYG editor that... I constantly... even just when I'm writing and I want to make a list and I just type a dash like I normally... in most things these days, and it just doesn't do anything in Basecamp. Then I remember, "Oh, I have to get my mouse and click on the bullet." It's a huge hassle.Ben:I can imagine your quality of life being dramatically affected by that.Josh:Yeah.Starr:You know we're developers when we're complaining about things like that.Josh:This is why I'm wearing wrist braces.Starr:Or dual wrist braces.Ben:I totally get what you're saying. I want to be able to type star, space, stuff, stuff, stuff and I get a list. Yeah, totally.Starr:It looks like threads.com, it does support Markdown, which is nice. I don't know. I haven't really played around with it a ton. Some aspects of its design, I'm not super happy. I wish the column widths were a little wider and stuff, but also I don't like certain aspects of Basecamp's design. So it's kind of a toss up for me.Ben:I did an export of our Basecamp content, and I got to say their export is fantastic. They give you an HTML page that links to a bunch of other pages per topic or project or team, whatever they call it, and the files are there. It's really well done. So I think if anyone's looking for inspiration on doing exports in their app, they should totally look at Basecamp. They nailed it. It's actually usable. You get this zip file. You open it up and bam, you can just browse through all your stuff.Starr:That's pretty great. I guess I should declare, I think maybe I started this casual looking for alternatives just because I've seen a lot of stuff online about people are angry at Basecamp. It's like, I'm not really angry at them. Well, this isn't really the point. I'm sad and disappointed in them. But also a lot of the reason why I think they have had our business and they had my business, I've stored personal stuff in a personal Basecamp account, it's just because they're trustworthy. That feeling of trustworthiness has gone down a few pegs for me.Starr:Also, I just kind of felt gross logging in there. If you haven't been keeping up with this, part of the deal is they were making fun of people's names and stuff. I don't know. Are they making fun of my name? I've got a weird name. Are they going through my stuff making fun of it? I know they have access to pretty much everything that I put into Basecamp. I don't know. Even if they're not doing that now, are they going to do that in the future? Because it seems like they're going in that direction. I don't know. It seems like they're shutting down people trying to hold them internally accountable for that sort of thing. I don't know. It's just like a gross feeling. I'm just sad about the whole thing.Josh:I personally I kind of doubt that that's like... I got the feeling that the list was more of an artifact from the past, and it had stuck around for too long. I didn't get the feeling that they're condoning that sort of activity really, but I get what you're saying. Also for me, a big factor of it, it's not even just that I'm mad at them or something, they did lose 30% of their company, and they're supporting two products now, one of which is a major infrastructure product but basically is like email. So they have operation overhead and stuff. They did just lose 30% of their company including their, what, head of strategy but basically head of product. So I just wonder, where is the product going from here? It was already, I felt, a little bit stagnating. I don't know. I think they've been working on the next version of it is what I heard. I don't know. It just seems like there are questions about just the stability from that nature, too.Ben:I'm probably in a third place from you two and I probably care the least. I'm like, "Eh, it's a message board. They can make fun of my name." Okay. I had that happen when I was 10. People do that. It's like, "Oh, get on." I have a hard time getting up the energy to care, I guess.Starr:Don't mistake me. I'm not like up in arms about it. This is more like a passive viewing. It's like, "Oh, I got to go on Basecamp and check my things. Uh, I just feel kind of crummy about it." This is-Ben:It's one of those friction things in your life you just don't need. Yeah, absolutely.Starr:Yeah, yeah.Josh:Absolutely.Starr:I'm like, this is a message board. Like, should I be having to deal with this just to go check some messages? It's ridiculous.Josh:I think all of us are really just talking these are passing thoughts we have using the product in light of the drama of the past few weeks.Starr:If we end up staying on it, I'm not going to be super upset. I'll probably get over it. I don't know. It just seems like it might be nice to try something different especially if we can get that sweet Markdown.Ben:I've been surprised that there are so few products that are just about this one use case of the simple messages. I expected there to be tons of things to try and no.Starr:Of course, in our company Notion, there's now a design document-Ben:Of course.Starr:... for a simple-Josh:Because we're going to build our own.Ben:We're going to build our own, of course. What does any good tech team do when they're frustrated with the 20 solutions on the market? They build solution number 21.Starr:Of course.Ben:Maybe we'll build that. The code name for that project is Budgie. I named it Budgie because I went to do the Google search, I'm like, "What's a communicative type of animal? What's a social animal?" I can't remember the search I did, but the first thing that got turned up was like, the most social birds. I don't know. So there's this list of birds, and budgie was the number one bird. So I'm like, "Okay, cool." Then I was like, "Well, what kind of domains are available?" Because of course when you start a project, you have to buy the domain. Before you do anything else, you got to buy that domain. Surprisingly, and perhaps not surprisingly in retrospect, every variant of budgie is taken, of course, budgie.com but also budgie.app and budgieapp.com. I'm like, "Wow. How many...?" And they're all for sale. None of them are actual products. They're all parked, and they're for sale. I'm like, so a bunch of people have had this idea about what's a social animal. I guess budgies are really popular for pets, and so they're looking for the ad opportunities with people looking for, "How do I take care of my budgie?" Anyway, just kind of a diversion.Starr:That's interesting. The first thing that pops into mind when I heard that... I like the name. It's a cute name. There's this really good Australian kids' cartoon called Bluey, and there's an episode where they find a little budgie that's injured, and it dies. So the kids have to come to terms with that. I don't know. It's just like, "Little budgie died."Josh:Bluey is one of the best cartoons ever, by the way.Starr:Yeah, Bluey. Oh, I'm glad you like it, too.Josh:It's so good.Starr:It's super good. It's super good. Basically the whole cartoon is just these kids... They're dogs but they're kids. They're just making up games to play with each other. How it works is the kids watching the show see it and that makes them want to play that game, too. So it's just not dumb TV. It gets them doing stuff outside of the TV, which is kind of nice.Josh:That's a really good analysis of the show. I hadn't thought about that aspect of it, but come to think of it, my kids totally imitate them.Starr:Oh, yeah.Josh:Climbing all over us.Starr:I now have to play every game in that show, and I've got to know them by name and what the rules are.Josh:One of the things we like about it is just they really got the sibling dynamic down. It is like our kids to a tee. It's pretty funny. Now that I think about it, maybe it's like our kids have now become the characters in the show.Ben:It's a good thing I watch the Simpsons.Josh:Oh, no. Actually we do watch the Simpsons.Starr:Is the Simpsons still on?Josh:It's on Disney+.Starr:Oh my gosh.Ben:Yeah, it is still a thing.Josh:They're still making it, too, right?Ben:Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.Starr:Wow. I don't know. I don't even know about that.Josh:We don't watch much of the Simpsons with them yet, a three and four-year-old.Josh:I don't know if I'm quite ready for a couple little Bart and Lisas.Ben:You put that off as long as you can. Well, I actually did a little bit of work this week. I was working on something, I don't know what. I noticed one of the tests was running kind of long like it was just stuck. I don't usually watch tests. I don't usually run the tests actually. I just let our CICB run the tests. I don't even worry about it. But this morning for some reason, I don't know, I was working on something, and I happened to be running the tests. I noticed one of the tests was just stuck. Like, that's weird. So I did a little investigation.Ben:It turns out that a number of our tests do some domain name server resolution because, for webhooks, when someone puts in their webhook, we want to verify that the destination is not like a private thing. They're not trying to fetch our EC2 credentials and stuff like that. So it does some checks like, is this is a private IP address? Does this domain name actually resolve, blah, blah, blah? Also for our uptime checks. Obviously, people are putting in domains for that, too. It turns out that, I don't know, maybe it was my machine, maybe it was the internet being dumb, whatever, but the domain name resolution was what was holding up the test. This happens, as you can imagine, in a variety of ways in our tests. This one test that I was running, which was only, I don't know, seven or eight tests, it was taking a minute or two minutes to run. Then I fixed this so that it stopped doing the domain name resolution, and it took two seconds.Josh:Wow.Ben:So a slight improvement to our test suite there. A quality of life improvement.Josh:Did you benchmark overall? Because that's got to be a huge improvement if it's doing that everywhere.Ben:Well, it's not doing that everywhere. I did do a push, so I have to go and check and see what GitHub... see if it dropped that time.Josh:Well, it might have been whatever was wrong with your DNS resolution in the first place that was causing it to be extra slow. Would it be faster if DNS was fast?Ben:Yeah, it could have been. I actually did some tests on my laptop at the time. I'm like, "Is my DNS resolution slow?" No.Josh:So it's-Ben:The test... I don't know what the deal was.Josh:It was just resolving a bunch of actual URLs in the test.Ben:Mm-hmm (affirmative).Josh:Yeah, that's bad. So nice work. You reminded me that I did some work this week, too.Ben:OhJosh:Very important work, I must say. I added a yak to our Slack bot to where-Josh:... if you mention the word "yak" when you're interacting with the Slack bot now it will return... You should do it in Slack, just whatever Badger bot. Say Badger bot yak me, it-Starr:Okay, I'm doing it.Josh:Okay, do it.Starr:Oh, sorry. It was the wrong channel. Hold on.Josh:You got to do it in general, I think.Starr:Come on Badger bot. Oh my god. It's a little text space yak.Josh:Yeah.Starr:Awesome.Josh:This came about because earlier this week I was just passively mentioning in chat that I'm just yak shaving. My entire life is yak shaving. That just got us talking about, why don't we have some representation of that in our chat, in our Slack? Obviously, I had to stop everything I was doing and build that right away. Of course, there were some escaping issues that came up as a result of that, so obviously I had to deploy a few hot fixes.Ben:The whole episode amuses me. I love it. I would do exactly the same thing. But also what amuses me is that we already have, as part of Slack, GIPHY, and you could just dump a picture of a yak in there. But you're like, "No, that's good enough. I must have an ASCII yak.Josh:It's got to be an ASCII yak, yeah.Ben:This is great. I love technology.Josh:I kind of miss Hubot where it would just automatically... if you just mention it. Maybe I should change our Slack bot so that it does that. So if you say "yak," a wild yak appears. By the way, that's what the text at the bottom of the ASCII yak says, a wild yak appears. I just wish it would pop up if someone just mentions it in a chat, like if they're talking about it just because-Josh:It's listening to everything, right?Starr:That would be fine.Ben:We used to have Hubot, and every time you said "ship," it would show the ship-Josh:The ship, the squirrel. But I definitely would like... annoying at times, but overall I'd say it was worth it.Ben:Totally worth it.Starr:Yeah, definitely. I do remember sometimes where things were on fire, and it's just popping up funny GIFs, and it's like, "Not now. Not now Hubot, not now.Ben:Sit in the corner. Should have had that command. Like, "Go away for a while."Josh:Or just make it a separate... Maybe we should just make this a separate bot that you don't have to have any ops channel. Maybe this'll be our next product.Starr:Oh, there you go. It's like when you mention yak, it turns into an Oregon trail-type hunting scene, and you have to shoot the very slow pixel at it.Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative). I do love this aspect of our business of being... I assume it's like a side effect of being small. I don't know. I'm sure large teams also do this, I didn't spend a day on this, but spend a day just doing something completely useless. I like that we can do that-Ben:Yes, it is.Josh:... and the total lack of responsibility, to be honest.Starr:Is there a total lack of responsibility? I don't know. I don't know.Ben:I think you could argue that there is a total lack of responsibility.Josh:Maybe relatively.Starr:Maybe.Josh:I think we're speaking relatively.Starr:Relatively? Well, there's responsibility to customers. I don't know. Do they count? Nah.Ben:Speaking of being a small company, just because of a recent acquisition of one of our competitors, I had gone to look at what some of our other competitors, what status they were, and I was just blown away with how many employees our competitors have. It's really amazing.Starr:What are they doing with all those people? Are they paying...? Do they have a professional volleyball team or something?Josh:Not in the past year.Starr:Well, they play over Zoom.Josh:It's a professional pong league now.Starr:There you go.Ben:We have five employees. The competitor that has the closest number of employees comes in at a hefty 71. Then the largest number that I found was 147 employees. That's impressive.Josh:With the competitor, the first one that you mentioned with the 70 something employees, and I assume over $100 million in funding, were they the ones that were recently bragging on Twitter about how much more usage they have than everyone else?Ben:I don't know because I don't remember seeing that bragging.Josh:They were. It was kind of funny. Yeah, you would probably be the major player.Starr:That's something I definitely learned throughout the course of running this business is that a company that has tens or, I don't know, hundreds of, did you say $100 million, that's a lot-Josh:It's a lot.Starr:... of funding can do more work than three people even if those three people are very, very good. It's-Ben:That's right.Starr:They can do more work, and that's all right. We're just going to have our little garden patch over here. It doesn't matter if ConAgra is a mile down the road. They can do their thing. We can do our thing.Ben:As long as they don't let their seeds blow into our farmland, right?Starr:Oh, yeah, definitely. Let me just ask you a question. When it comes to buying your strawberries for your traditional summer strawberry shortcake, are you going to go to that wonderfully, just delightful artisanal farm down the road, or are you just going to slide over to ConAgra and, I don't know, get some of their strawberry-shaped objects?Ben:I got to say, I love roadside fruit stands. Those are the best. When cherry season happens here in Washington, going and grabbing a whole mess of cherries from some random person that's propped on the side of a road, I mean it's awesome.Starr:My favorite ones are the ones have no... if you stop and think about it... I used to live in Arkansas. One time I was walking by and there was this roadside fruit stand just with oranges. It was like, "Hold up. Hold up. Oranges don't grow in Arkansas. What is this?" I don't know if he just went to Costco and just got a bunch of oranges or maybe he did the Cannonball Run from Florida straight up-Josh:Road trip.Starr:... and was selling oranges all the way up. There was some explaining to do.Ben:I didn't realize until I was saying it, but it really does sound ridiculous that you're going to go and get some fruit items from some random person on the side of the road. But I love roadside fruit stands. They're great.Starr:Oh, yeah.Josh:I don't know. In this day and age probably, yeah.Josh:Maybe things should be more like that. Maybe that would solve some problems.Ben:Well, coming back to the front porch thing, do you know that country song, If the World Had a Front Porch?"Starr:No, I don't.Ben:Definitely have to link it up in the show notes. It's all about if the world had a front porch like we did back then, then things would be different. People would be more friendly. We'd be chatting with our neighbors. Things would just be overall good.Starr:Yeah, totally.Josh:We'd all know each other.Starr:Is that true? Is that true?Ben:I got to say, I grew up in the Deep South. I did not have a front porch and none of my friends had a front porch because we all lived in the same neighborhood and all the houses were the same, but we were all still pretty friendly-Starr:Oh, there you go.Ben:... even though we didn't have front porches.Starr:Well, I had a front porch and people were assholes, so I think the correlation between front porches and nice people is weak.Ben:The song If I had a front porchJosh:.Isn't it more like a metaphor? I don't know.Starr:You could say the internet's the world's front porch and look how great that's worked out.Josh:If you just build a front porch-Starr:I'm sure it's a nice song. I don't mean to make fun of the song. I'm sure it's a good song.Josh:You build a front porch that the entire population of the world could fit on, just see how that goes. That's what we-Starr:It's like, "Oh, shit. We deforested the Amazon to get the wood for this."Ben:We should name our little message board product Front Porch.Starr:Front porch, ah, that's nice. You could have add-ons to that. Like for upgrades, you could get the rocking chair or the whittling knife.Ben:Yeah, and the sweet tea-Starr:The sweet tea, yeah.Ben:... or the mint julep.Starr:Can I ask you a question? Was sweet tea a thing when you were a kid?Ben:Yes.Starr:Do people refer to it as like, "Oo, sweet tea," as a saying?Ben:No.Starr:Okay, that-Ben:They'd just refer to is as tea.Starr:Okay, thank you.Ben:There was no other tea. It was just that.Josh:But it was sweet.Ben:Yeah, it was sweet, of course.Starr:Yeah, of course. It's-Ben:That's the only tea that existed. None of this Earl Grey hot business, no, no, no.Starr:I just noticed, I don't know, around 2007 everybody started talking about sweet tea. It's like, "What? What's this?" Ben:Yeah, totally. It's a Southern Thing, on YouTube, their channel, is pretty funny. They go into the sweet tea thing quite a bit. If you want some additional context, do some research on that whole aspect. You can go and watch that YouTube channel. I'll have to link it up in the show notes.Starr:Yeah, I'll check that out. Well, would you gentlemen like to wrap it up? I think I've got to start... I'm going to be Southern here. I'm fixing to get ready to think about going to my vaccine appointment.Ben:Jeet yet? You know that joke? Have you heard that?Starr:I haven't heard that joke. What?Ben:It's like, oh man, two southern guys, one's like, "Jeet yet?"Starr:Ah, did you eat yet? Okay, yeah.Ben:"No. Y'want to?"Starr:I haven't been back in a while.Josh:Did you eat yet?Starr:I haven't been back in a while.Ben:Oh, good times. Sometimes I miss the South but not during the summer.Starr:One of my favorite words, I think it might be a local Arkansas word, is tump. It's a verb, tump. It's the action of tipping something over and dumping out its contents. The perfect use case is a wheelbarrow. Like, you tump out the wheelbarrow. I'm sorry. Tump out the wheelbarrow.Ben:Totally.Josh:I am learning so much on this episode, by the way-Starr:There you go.Josh:... about the South.Josh:It's great. I'm learning more about-Josh:This is your second vaccine appointment, right?Starr:Yeah, it's the second one.Josh:Second and final. Well, for now.Starr:So I'm ready for it to hit me. I'm like, "Bring the storm.Josh:Yes, it hit me.Starr:Bring it on."Josh:Mine was like a 48-hour ordeal, but back to normal now. I feel great.Starr:That's good. You got your super powers.Josh:Yeah.Ben:Well, good luck with that.Starr:Thank you. Maybe one day we'll be able to have a conclave in person again, although I might need the support of a therapist or something because just like... I mean I like y'all, but I don't know if I'm over the droplets yet.Ben:You can still wear masks.Starr:Okay, that's good. Thank God, okay. All right, I will talk to y'all later.

tv amazon founders tiktok health google disney man washington zoom australian oregon south startups portland arkansas southern honestly kicking ip saas developers simpsons twist slack bart threads costco thank god alternatives northwest nah screw github notion html rage against the machine badger tires basecamp kirkland gif deep south dns oranges gifs bluey elixir urls paul ryan bootstrap oo front porch earl grey giphy cannonball run lifestyle business stimpy markdown lisas budgie ascii software as a service jeet washington state department ec2 wysiwyg tump conagra claritin onewheel zyrtec ben it benas ben you josh it josh yeah josh you ben there josh one ben oh ben so josh how josh well josh oh ben well benon hubot josh so ben right micropreneur josh not

"Outwitting The Devil" with Josh Forti - Part 1 of 3

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2021 27:25

Welcome to the first part of a special three episode series! On this episode, Russell and Josh start talking about the book “Outwitting The Devil” by Napoleon Hill. They discuss some of the background of how this book was published, and then go into detail about the premise and the lessons that it teaches. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. So I told you guys a couple episodes ago, I told you about one of my new favorite books, which is Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill. I told you a little bit about the book and why you should read it. I told you I was doing a podcast interview with Josh Forti where he was going to ask me a bunch of questions about the book. We did that and it was really, really fun, and so I'm going to actually... I want to stream that interview to you guys over the next three episodes here on the podcast, and it's fun. The interview went way different than I thought it was going to go, and so I think you're going to enjoy it. The first part we talked about the book and the story behind it, and the breaking down the doodle and explanation, and the difference between faith and fear, some of the basic stuff. The second episode, we start talking about my biggest takeaways from the book and why personal development is important, and then Josh start asking questions about a time in my life when I used faith over fear and stuff like that. The story that came out, most people probably haven't heard this about ClickFunnels crashing and a bunch of other stuff, and so that episode two is going to be really fun for you guys. I'm excited, and episode number three is about my next book, so that was what the interview was about. It was really fun. It was a little over an hour long, and so we decided to break it up into three episodes for you guys, and so that's the game plan. So this is episode one of The Outwitting the Devil interview with Josh Forti, one of three. So when the theme song comes back, we'll cue that up. You'll have a chance to listen to the first one. Make sure you listen to all three episodes over the next week or so because I think you're going to enjoy it. The first one is really cool because you understanding why I'm so excited about this book, the biggest takeaways, but then some practical application, episode two and then episode three, we'll talk about the new book, why, what we're talking about, and a bunch of other cool stuff. So I'm excited. With that said, we’ll queue up the theme song. When we come back we'll jump into the first part of my interview with Josh Forti. Josh Forti: What's up, everybody! Russell: We're back. We're back. Josh: We are back. Russell: Four months, we're back. Josh: We're back. We're back guys. What is up? Welcome back to another episode of Think Different Theory, I'm going to claim this one, episode of Think Different Theory. Russell: And I'll probably also use it on the Marketing Secrets podcast; we'll use it for both. Josh: That's perfect, a dual episode. Guys. We are back. We were supposed to do this last week, but Russell's- Russell: Circumstances didn't allow it. Josh: Yeah. Russell was in a bad mood. So we have to do this, but guys, welcome back today. I'm really, really excited because we are discussing- Russell: One of my new favorite books. Josh: One of your new favorite books, Outwitting the Devil, which you recommended to everybody, the whole world, what? Like three months ago, four months ago. Something like that. Russell: Yeah. I'm shocked when people read it. If you haven't yet, go buy it on Amazon. There's two versions. I got to share this real quick. He'll share that while I'll tell you guys about this. Josh: Perfect. Russell: There's two versions of it. This one's got Sharon Lechter's notes, one doesn't. I'd get the one with Sharon Lechter's notes and oh, I talk to the camera here. Hey, what's up camera. And also you get the audio book. It's awesome. Because in an audio book, you can actually hear the two voices and one voice is the devil. One's Napoleon Hill. And it's amazing. Should I tell the story about the books? Josh: Okay. So actually I want to do that. I actually want to do this because how I want to open this up is, I want to take it back. Kind of take a step back because you've built Clickfunnels and now I feel like you've gone into kind of this new stage. You start reading a bunch of books and then you like geek out on Atlas Shrugged, and then you geek out on the next thing now we're at this book. So back us up, how did you find this book? Where did it come about? And then let's dive into it because I feel like context is important. Russell: Yeah. So, man, a lot of things. So obviously those who've read any of my books. I feel like I'm done. I wrote all the marketing books, I'm out of secrets. That's it. Trilogy is done. Work is finished. It's over. Josh: Guys, we're done with Russell forever. Russell: But then for me it's like, I don't know. I think in any area of life there's a point where you get mastery and it gets harder and harder to find new things. So there's all these incremental things, but there's not a whole bunch of new stuff I can discover, like oh my gosh, ah, freak out. Josh: Right, something about marketing you've never seen before. Russell: Yeah, so it's harder. And so for me, I'm a learner. I'm always pursuing education ideas and things. And so I started just kind of re geeking out on personal development stuff just because I miss it. I'm trying to think about things in my life. And so I was going through a bunch of different things and rereading a bunch of books I read back a decade ago, like Think and Grow Rich. Which by the way, that's kind of ... This Is the first edition printed Think and Grow Rich. Russell: Josh knows I'm kind of a geek with old books. You guys will see why more in about 18 months from now. We're doing some cool things, but this is first edition Think and Grow Rich. Think and Grow Rich was written by Napoleon Hill in 1937. It's the most, outside of the Bible, it's the highest personal development book ever sold. And it's really, really good. And so I was reading that again and then people kept tell me about this other book. And there's a lot of books. Right here, this is Think and Grow Rich, this is the Laws of Success. I'm trying to acquire a first edition Laws of Success, which is, I was telling you it's insane, expensive. Josh: It's crazy expensive. But Russell's over here, geeking out on all the books. Russell: I love old books. Josh: Actually a side note on that guys, the very first time ... So this is back at, I think it was the first or second offer. I can't remember mind lab mind, the big one. Offer mind you spoke at it and you were coming off stage. And I walked out and it was you and Dave and I like ran up to you as you were getting on the elevator. Do you remember this? Russell: Yes I do. Josh: And remember I was like Russell. And I didn't know you hardly at all this time. We kind of knew, basically, we had had some interactions. I was like, I'm trying to dream 100 you, what's a good gift? And you're like old books. Ding, the elevator door shuts. You're on the elevator, I'm off the elevator. And I was like, all right, that's all I have to go on. Russell: And you sent me some amazing old books. Josh: Yeah. Russell: So, very very cool. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Yeah. And so I just, again, I'm kind of going back through and I'm relearning from Tony again and from other people and stuff like that. But then this book keeps coming up and for some reason the title didn't grab me. I was like, Outwitting the Devil, it sounds stupid. I didn't want to read it. It never even crossed my mind as a book I was going to read. It's not something that I would really care about. And then one day I downloaded it on Audible. I download almost all the books I buy physical copies of- Josh: A hundred percent. Russell: I do it Audible too just in case. And I'm one of those kind of people that when I'm in a mood for something, that's why when I travel, it drives my wife crazy. I'll bring a backpack with like 40 books. I don't know what mood I'm going to be in. Russell: And she's like, why don't you bring a Kindle? I'm like, because like paper and I wanted to be able to hold it and see where the bookmarks at. Josh: Yeah, yeah. Russell: And the same thing is true with Audible. So I just download all the Audible just in case. And so one day I was working out, I was trying, anyway. This is a longer story, but I was trying to buy success.com at the time, it ended up falling through. I didn't get it. But Napoleon Hill was actually one of the original, he wrote for success in 1980. In fact, hold, this is kind of cool. This is Napoleon Hill's, he started a magazine. He actually talks about it in Outwitting The Devil. So he started a magazine called Hill's Golden Rule. This is one of the original, this one is from 1919. But anyway, he was also an author in the original Success Magazines back in 1800, I have a whole bunch of copies, actually 1800's and Napoleon Hill's articles in Success Magazine. Josh: Dang, that's so cool. Oh my gosh. Russell: So I had just gotten some of these things. And then one morning I was working out and I was looking at my playlist and Outwitting the Devil popped up. And for some reason I was like, all right. So I clicked it and it start talking about this magazine, talked about Hills Golden Rule, talked about Success Magazine, which I was trying to acquire the time and all these things. I was just like, oh my gosh. And so the very beginning he tells the story, he's kind of telling the story, I don't really know what I was going to go. He's telling this story about his life. And then all of a sudden transitions to this conversation is happening with the devil. Russell: And as you know, you've read it. Josh: It's so good. Russell: It's just like, I started getting like, oh my gosh. Why did nobody tell me about this before this is ... Let me put in perspective, I've read a lot of personal development books. I love Think and Grow Rich. This is so much better than Think and Grow Rich. Josh: It is, I agree with that. Russell: And, do you want me to tell the story behind or do you want to tell? What's the... Josh: Full behind... Russell: Just what the book is, where it came from. This is an amazing story. Josh: I just want to pass it over to you because I have questions about it. So I want to kind of hear things from your perspective here on this thing. I think a lot of people do as well. It's funny though, because when you put this on, gosh, I kind of picked up reading halfway through last year. I made a public declaration when I graduated from high school, I literally, I bought a pickup truck. Russell: I don't read anymore. Josh: And I put down the tailgate, I got up there, I stood up, I held my arms there and I literally yelled audibly out loud. I will never read another book ever again, outside of the Bible. Literally I was so done with reading my mom made us do all this reading in high school. Right. I was like, I'm so done. And thankfully that's not the case. Russell: Do you know what that reminds me of? I got done wrestling my senior year in college and after my last match. I've publicly said I will never run again. And then I gained 60 pounds, now I run. Josh: And now you run. Yeah. Russell: We had a similar experience. We were like- Josh: We'll never do that again. But six months into last year I started picking up reading more or whatever. And actually I've been averaging three books a month this year, which is freaking awesome. But, I'm halfway through. I can't remember what book it was. I see on your Instagram story. And you're like, everybody read this book. Russell: Every chapter, it was like, oh my gosh. Josh: Right. So I immediately go and buy it. And as soon as I finished the next book, I read the whole thing. And I think I read it in two sittings, right? Like the whole day I was like, oh my gosh, this is so good. So I do. I want you to kind of break it down for those people out there that don't know what it is. It is a story of Napoleon Hill interviewing the devil essentially. So I have a lot of questions just after you kind of explain the context of it all, but why don't you just kind of give people some context around what that is. Russell: By the way I spent last little while trying to take the entire book and put it into a framework like I do. So that's what this is back here, we'll talk about this. And some of the things… Josh: We have this here too. Russell: That hopefully serve as a framework for you guys. If you decided to read, here's some stuff to help. But, okay. Russell: So there's the story. So Think and Grow Rich was published in 1937, the next year. And if you've read Think and Grow Rich, there's times in here where he's like having conversations, people would pass away. People died, he's thinking about them and having these, in his head, these conversations that they come into the book. So it's pretty cool. So in 1937, 1938 he writes the manuscript for Outwitting the Devil. Josh: Yep. Russell: And so it's a year later. And the premise of this is literally, he talks about, I don't know if this is a little interview or if this was a physical, just something in my head, but this is the conversation I had with the devil. Josh: Yeah. Russell: And it's less of just an interview, but more like he's putting the devil on trial. He's on trial and he's like, you have to answer my questions. These are my questions. Josh: And the during this time, the devil, I can't remember how he explained it in the book, but the devil is forced to have to tell the truth 100% of the time. So any question that he asked him, he cannot lie. He has to be able to tell the truth. And that's one of the questions in there is he even says, it doesn't matter if you're religious or not. It doesn't matter whether you think it's a metaphor or whether you think he actually sat down and interviewed the devil. No matter what it was, the principles still reign true. Which is why I love the book. And you basically take that element out of it. Don't let that belief get in your way, still read the book. So, yeah. And 1938 is when he wrote the book, but didn't get published in 1938. Russell: Yeah. So imagine, this is one of the coolest stories ever. So 1938, he writes the book and in the book, he actually talks about the devil's like, if you ever publish this, it'll destroy your life, it will destroy your family it will destroy everything, because all the people fighting against this are going to destroy you. And so he finishes this book a year after Think and Grow Rich, has the manuscript. And he's so scared. He never actually publishes it. So he ends up dying. I think in '78, I believe. He passes away. His wife, second person gets the manuscript. She reads it. And she's like, I'm not publishing this. Josh: Yeah. Russell: She refuses to publish it. Later, she passes away. Napoleon Hill foundation gets the book. It gets to them, they read it and they're like, oh my gosh, this is probably the best thing he's ever written. Russell: And then they actually contacted, this is cool. I talked to Sharon Lechter last week. So I called Sharon Lechter. She's right here. Says- Josh: No way. That's awesome. Russell: Right here. Sharon Lechter. So she was probably the fourth person to ever read the manuscript. They sent it to her, what do you think we should do with this. So she says she got it. She sat down and she was reading it. And she's like, this is one of the greatest things ever published. If you don't know Sharon Lechter. She was the one who helped with all of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad books. She was the CEO of the company for a long time. She helped build the biggest financial education company on the planet. And now she's coming over here to this mission and she takes his book and she's the one who takes it, gets the manuscript ready for print. Inside of here's got her notes, which is kind of cool. Her notes taking it from, it was published back in, the last big crash what were the two- Josh: Eight, yeah. Russell: 2008. So she's sharing things in here and how they relate back then, which is kind of cool. But anyway, so she published it. Josh: And it's in the audio book as well, she kind of goes through and comments. Russell: She jumps in. Josh: There's a devil's voice. And then there's Napoleon Hill's voice. And then there's her kind of commenting, which is actually kind of cool through the thing. Russell: Yeah. Josh: Yeah. Russell: It is kind of cool to make it natural or make it kind of tied to the time. But I think even nowadays, a decade later, whatever, it's even more- Josh: Well. Russell: Applicable. Josh: And that's, what's crazy is you read the book and if you didn't know that it was written back in 1938, you'd be like, oh, he's totally talking about right now. Russell: Yeah. Josh: You have no clue he's talking about- Russell: Because some of the references he's talking about Hitler and Mussolini. All of these people and we're like, okay, well, the dictators nowadays are different, but that was who- Josh: Right. Russell: The things that were happening. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Right then in time. Josh: Yeah. Yeah. And just the craziness of fear and economic turmoil and depression. I'm like, huh. Sounds like where we're at now. So anyway. Russell: So that's, the cool story about it. It's just this book that this manuscript has been lost for generations from literally the best personal development author of our time. Josh: Yeah. Russell: And to bring it back. I was just visualizing myself as Sharon Lechter reading that original. Can you imagine just reading the manuscript and be- Josh: Being the first part of the third or fourth person to ever read it? Russell: So insanely cool. So anyway, that's kind of the backstory and then you get into it and it's fascinating. So that's the story behind the book. Josh: That's why you guys have to read it, how cool is that? Yeah, it's super, super cool. And kind of what I'd love to do, I want you to go through, because I think this is important. For the sake of time, I mean, we could probably talk for four or five or six hours on this book. But for the sake of time, the time constraints, I think this summarizes the book super well. Josh: And so I'd love to go through the book. I'd love to see your interpretation of the framework and kind of explain it. And then, it's funny because whenever I go through personal development books, you see everything through the world of funnels and marketing and things like that. I cannot read a personal development book without looking at whether or not the fundamental principles of it are true or what they align with. Right. So they align with Christianity or Atheism or whatnot. So I have questions about, because I'm a huge fan of the book. You're a huge fan of the book. Right. But there's some certain things in here that he talks about that I have questions that I'd love to know your opinion on. So I think if we go through and kind of talk through the overall context of the book here and then kind of pivot towards that towards the end, I think that would be awesome. Russell: Well, one thing to just kind of address that before we get too deep into it. Because I know a lot of people have this fear of reading, anything of what if I don't believe it. Well, I'm not this belief therefore, I can't. And I'm such a big believer in there's truth in most things, I think there's truth in all things. And I can read something and be like, oh my gosh, 97% of this, I believe spot on. 3% I don't really agree with, but I can still appreciate the 97% and love it and enjoy it and be grateful for it. In fact, I do the same thing in my personal relationships, I can talk to somebody I don't agree 100% with. And I still like them afterwards, which is something I think our world needs to learn how to do better. But. Josh: Yeah, even if you lose Bitcoin bets. Russell: Hey, now. Let’s talk about frameworks… That's 3% of him I can’t stand right now. Anyway, okay. So the way my mind works, when I read it ... So I read the book first time and I was just in this whirlwind of, oh my gosh, there's so many things. And I was re listening today as I was working out, trying to ... This is a framework, but there's so many levels and layers and things go deeper and deeper and deeper. So the first time I listened to it, I was just kind of overwhelmed because there's so much good stuff. Russell: And the second time I was going through it, I was like, okay, if I was trying to doodle this to explain to somebody what's the overarching- Josh: Yeah, what's the promise of the book? Russell: The framework. Josh: Yeah. Russell: That's just kind of the way if you've read any of my books, that's how my brain works. I read like 30 books and from there I'm like, okay, this is what I think they're saying. So this is kind of the premise. I'll walk up to the board and kind of show you guys this. But the basic concept is all of us, me, you, anybody. Right. We have a decision comes to us and we've got two choices every single time. And that's kind of where this whole thing starts from. So should I go over there? Josh: Yeah. Yeah. You take my mic too. Russell: Okay, I'm taking mic. So I know you guys can't see this perfectly and this is going to be the words they're all small, so I'll kind of talk through it and hopefully that'll work. So here's me or you. And this is us and we have decisions come to us. They come to us. Am I audio right here? Can you hear it? Cool. So we have decisions all the time. So the biggest thing is, if something comes to us, we can make decisions based on one or two things. Right. We're either making decision based on faith or based on fear. That's it, those are the two things. And obviously, especially in the last year, we've noticed, I think that this has been amplified. Where do most of us make our decisions? I think the way you'll find is that people traditionally make their decisions one way or the other. Russell: Either they make all their decisions towards fear, or all of them towards faith. And so that's something start thinking about personally yourself, as I start thinking about when I'm making decisions, am I doing them through fear or through faith? And I feel like people, not a hundred percent, I think you tend to favor one of these. And it's important because when you start understanding Satan, how the devil is using these as tools, it starts helping you think, I got to start making my decisions differently or else I'm doing what he wants. So I'm going to start on the fear side. So his initial goal is to get people to make decisions based on fear. If he can get that, you become what he calls the drifter. So drift or somebody who's drifting through life- Josh: I'm going to stop you really quick. Russell: Yeah. Josh: Really quick. I'm just going to take my mic back really quick. I think one of the things I want to just cover here really quick, is kind of the premise of how this, even before we dive into this, how this came about. Because in the book, basically Napoleon Hill asks the devil. He's like, Hey, listen, I want to understand what you, as the devil are doing to try to control people. Because in the book, one of the things that he claims, and I guess you have it up here, the 98%. Is that the devil controls 98% of people on the earth by getting them to do drifting, which we'll talk about here in a second. Right? And so the whole premise of this book is basically Napoleon Hill is interviewing the devil and getting the devil to explain how the laws of the universe work and basically how the devil is using those laws of the universe to pull people towards him. And then he also draws contrast of that, of how God uses them to draw people towards God. And so it's basically understanding the laws of success, the laws of the universe, how they work and it's, what is it? The secrets of freedom and success. So if you understand he's asking questions with the specific intention of trying to figure out how the world works, how the devil is using those, and then how we can use those things to ultimately have success if we can figure out how they work. Is that? Russell: Perfect. Josh: Good. Yeah. Russell: Cool. Thank you for adding that. That was awesome pre-frame and I think that ... Hope that works. When you understand that it's like, that is this that's the war we're in every single day, right? I mean, it's every movie. Right and wrong, good and evil. Right? That's the fight. Right? And so the devil here is showing, this is my playbook. This is how I get people to come to my side. And so his side, he calls them drifters. Drifters, people who are drifting through life. They're not ambitious, not doing anything. There's kind of there. And when you're a drifter, he controls you. And he said, 98% of the population he controls by getting them to drift. The first thing does that by initially, decision comes, you act in faith or act in fear. If you act in fear, you are moving down towards being a drifter, okay. Now he starts going through what are the most effective ... Ugh, so good. So many good things. But so he said, how does he get people to act towards fear? So he's like, these are my six tools. I have six tools. Off camera: Are we good on volume? Russell: Is the volume good? Do I need to yell louder? Okay. These are the six tools, the most effective tools I use. I have to get people to act towards. So the first one is poverty. If you can get them to fear poverty, oh, if I do the thing I might could be poor. Then I'm going to be fearful instead of having faith. And, I don't care if I'm poor, I'm going to go for it. Right. So he gets people to fear through poverty. Through criticism. How many of you guys have had a decision to make, and you have fear. Oh, what if people criticize me? That's one of his tools, right? Health. Ah, I don't know if I can do that. Because I'm not healthy enough. Loss of love, old age and death. So those are the six most effective fears that the devil uses that get you to take fear over faith. And he said of those six, the two most powerful are poverty and death. He can get you to be scared of, I'm going to lose all my money. I'm going to be broke. Or, oh, if I do that, I might die. Or, I might not... Those things. Those are the two most powerful tools. So that was really fascinating for me. I look to that because I have so many times in my life when I have decisions, I am scared of criticism or I'm scared of loss of love or whatever those things might be, right. Entrepreneurship. How many times you trying to gamble everything. If you're scared of poverty, right? Then it's like, ah. In fact, I have entrepreneurs all the time. This is a conversation I have way more often than you would think where they're coming to me. And they built the business to a certain point and they're stuck and they're so scared. And the thing that I always had to come back to them, what's the worst case scenario? Because there's a spot where they're so fearful. They can't act and they can't make decisions. They can't do anything. And they just are frozen and they start shrinking right there. You see them going from people who have the presence to be able to take action. Do things. These people are stuck and frozen. And I literally, my conversation I have over and over and over again, it's like, well, what's the worst case scenario. Because if you're not okay with the worst case scenario with poverty, with death, these things. If you're not okay with those, there's no way you're going to have faith to move forward. You have to break yourself of the worst case scenario. And so I see this in my own life. I see it in so many entrepreneurs, coach, I see this as the cycle for them getting to fear. So everyone take a personal reflection. Which one are the ones that you're most afraid of, is it poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age or death. Josh: And I'm actually just going to stand up here. Because I think it'll be easier. And one of the things that... So what he's trying to do is he's trying to use one of these six things to get you to become a drifter. Ooh, we just moved the screen. That's the key thing. And I'm looking at this camera here. Okay. That's the key thing that he's trying to get you to do is the devil wants you to become a drifter because if the opposite of being drifting is, and it's the characteristics of a non drifter over here, is you have definitive purpose. You have mastery over self, you have a learning from adversity, controlling environmental influence, time, positive thoughts over time. And then thinking through plans before you act on them. So if you have those things, that's the opposite of being a drifter. If he can get you to drift, then you don't have definitive purpose, then you're not actually going after anything. Then you're not going to be able to have control over it. And then he has control over you. And that's the comparison that he keeps drawing in the book, right? If he can get you to drift, then he has control over you. But if you're not a drifter, then guess what? Then he doesn't have power over you. And then you're ultimately going to have success and freedom in life. And so, these are the things that he lays out in the book and it's like, okay, look, if you choose to be a free thinker, if you choose to be someone who is like, this is what we're all about. Has control of your mind. You're going to come into this spiritual, mental, and physical freedom category versus the drifter category. Russell: Yeah. It's amazing. And yeah, I think what... In fact, I almost called this column here, definitive purpose. Because it's so in fact if you read Think and Grow Rich, he talks to the whole chapter about definitive purpose. People who say, this is the thing I want going to go through it. I'm at a definitive purpose. No matter what happens, no matter what obstacles, trials I'm going to go get the thing that's definitive purpose, right? Again, that's the big premise of Think and Grow Rich. And here he comes back to it. Again, I almost made the title of this, but it's not- Josh: I think it fits better. Russell: It does. But it's not an opposite, where this is freedom versus drifting is the opposites. And this is what it actually says in the book. Josh: If we just summarized it as one word drifters versus freedom. Russell: Yeah, yeah. Spiritual and physical freedom. Yeah, because freedom of mind, this whole thing is he trying to control the mind if you control your mind, you win. Josh: Yeah. Russell: And so, yeah. The definitive purpose, that's the number one characteristic of a non drifter is definitive purpose. Right? So, you're coming here. I'm an act. And you're like, oh, I got fear. I got fear. What if, what if, what if they criticize me? And you don't act. Where here you're like I've got definitive purpose. This is my mission. This is the goal. I don't care what happens. I'm going to go for it and you just go for it. And that's where you're acting in faith. I don't know the path. I don't know where I'm going, but I believe in my skillset, I believe in my mission. I believe in my calling. I'm going to go and you start moving and eventually you show up and you end up over here. Josh: Yeah. Russell: So anyway, and then these other ones are all amazing. We can go deeper, but. Josh: Yeah, we can go deeper. And I think we can hold this. This is the same thing. Right? Russell: Okay. Josh: So we can hold up there? Russell: All right. Josh: And that way we can get kind of back to poor Brandon's over there. Brandon's over there like, yeah. Russell: You're ruining my mic. Josh: Yeah. So one of the things I want to dive deep down in on this is specifically on here, you have this thing called hypnotic rhythm. And if I were to do this, as an overview, it's basically, there's a human and then there's the devil. And then there's God, this is basically how he describes it in the book. Right. There's the devil and there's God. And there's the human and the human is going through life and there's the devil pulling for him and there's God pulling for him. Right. And then that person has the choice. Russell: It's like two angels, devil on your shoulder Josh: Yeah, pretty much. Right. And then you have the choice to either choose faith or choose fear, which is why, one of the things that I've been so adamantly kind of fighting right now is, don't live in fear. Why is anybody fearful of anything? And I know that's easy for me to say, because I'm not afraid of death. Right. And that's literally one of the top things that he uses to control the mind. Right. And you look around the world today and everyone's so afraid of dying or it's like, who cares? Whatever. I know where I'm going when I die. But, that's one of the things that I've been fighting so strongly. So, I have a fear and I become a drifter or I have faith and I become someone with definitive purpose and I have freedom ultimately in my life. But there's this thing underneath that is kind of the core crux of what ultimately keeps us there. And it's, I actually have notes on it, but it's this thing called hypnotic rhythm. Russell: It was interesting because he talks about hypnotic rhythm after he talks about drifters. And he's like my goal is to get them into hypnotic rhythm. He says that if you go from routines to habits you have, it's going to be habitual. And they're habitual, they become hypnotic rhythm where you're stuck in this cycle. And he says is that how you control the drifters. That's how the universe controls everything. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Positive and negative. That's why, if you look at the bottom here, it's got the little whirlpool at the bottom for hypnotic rhythm. It's the same thing. So if you have good habits and you're doing things, do you get a spot where eventually it's a pattern that you're just stuck in. It's easier to stay in the 2%. If you're in the 98%, it's easier to stay there too. Hypnotic rhythm serves all things. Josh: And that's the thing I think is so interesting about it is the way that he explains it is hypnotic rhythm is the thing that keeps the world in harmony. Right? And one of the quotes out of the book that I wrote down is nature, which in this particular case he's talking about nature in the form of hypnotic rhythm. "Nature is not interested in morals, as such she is not interested in right or wrong. She is not interested in justice or injustice. She's interested only in forcing everything to express action according to its nature." Right? So when you go into hypnotic rhythm, either positively or negatively, you get into the rhythm of nature, right. And nature is interested. And if you look at it purely from an objective standpoint, he's saying that nature is only interested in making the thing, the object, in this case you do what has been designed to do. So if you're choosing to be in hypnotic rhythm in the spiritual freedom side of things, nature is going to keep you in that. And that's why, it's almost rewiring your whole brain and your whole life for success. It's why successful people continue to have success. And it's why non-successful people do not have success. And I think understanding that and understanding that hypnotic rhythm is, I almost like to think of it as the subconscious mind. Right? Once your subconscious mind goes into the hypnotic rhythm to just do the same thing over and over and over again, it's very, very difficult to escape that. Russell: Yeah. And you see it happen in your life all the time. There's times in my life, when I was wrestling where I had so many routines, so many things where that structure in my life was just, it happens on autopilot because that was what I did. Right. And so it was perfect. I didn't have to everyday figure out, how am I going to be successful? How am I going to have definitive purpose? It become part of me. Right. Josh: Yeah. Russell: It’s something in business, or other parts. I think that it's true. We get these patterns, these ruts, these things, wherever it is. Either positively or negatively, but that's the hypnotic rhythm where that's the goal is to get in those. But in the positive side, not negative side. Because you see it's a downward spiral. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Right. Upward spiral positively or downward spiral negatively. But if you get into hypnotic rhythm, that's the thing that keeps you in that spot. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Does that make sense? Josh: Yeah.

#13 GRAMMYs On The Hill Awardsって何？オススメ楽曲の翻訳「Lil Nas X / MONTERO ( Call Me By Your Name )

ceo grammy awards lil nas x montero lil nas x montero josh you

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 26, 2021 59:19

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

#7「グラミー賞に投票できる権利を得るためのメンバーシップ制度について」

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 37:35

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

#1 ROAD TO GRAMMY ENGLISH 「「バイデン大統領就任での式典エピソード」「歌詞翻訳 Justin Bieber ／ Yummy」

ceo english grammy justin bieber yummy josh you

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 47:23

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

#2 ROAD TO GRAMMY ENGLISH 「「バイデン大統領就任での式典エピソード」「歌詞翻訳 Jacob Collier ／ All I Nees」

ceo english grammy jacob collier nees josh you

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 57:45

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

#3 ROAD TO GRAMMY ENGLISH 「中国の著作権事情を解説」「歌詞翻訳 BTS ／ Dynamite 」

ceo english grammy dynamite bts dynamite josh you

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 43:35

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

#4「グラミー賞を運営しているRECORDING ACADEMYとは？」

ceo recording academy josh you

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 56:46

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

#5「ソニーグループが会社を統合し、音楽出版事業を強化！コロナ禍に業績をあげた理由が明らかに！？」

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 44:07

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

#6「RECORDING ACADEMYが運営しているMUSICARESって何？

ceo recording academy musicares josh you

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 61:22

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

#8グラミー賞を行っているレコーディングアカデミーが、BlackMusicCollectiveを設立した！

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 58:14

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

#9アメリカでのグラミー賞の授賞式の視聴数は過去最低を記録！グラミー賞の役割はいかに？！

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 74:05

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

#10 グラミー賞を運営するレコーディングアカデミーの求人情報！グラミー関係の仕事はすぐ近くにあるかも！？

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 52:47

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

#11アジアのアーティストを世界に発信する88risingの新しいレーベルが発足！フィリピンの音楽

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 46:04

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

ceo 88rising josh you

#12 レコーディングアカデミーは政治や政府を巻き込んで音楽文化を守っている話！

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2021 75:16

オーストラリア在住のギターボーカルJoshと、日本で活動する音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家のウェルカムマンでお届けする、ポッドキャスト番組です。日本人初のグラミー賞主要４部門にノミネートそして受賞するという根拠ない夢の持ったウェルカムマンがグラミー賞に関係する最新の音楽ニュースをトピックスにあげて、英語を日本語に翻訳しながら情報収集と英語の勉強を両立させております。音楽情報を得て、楽しく英語を学ぼう！をモットーに配信しております。是非とも拡散＆フォロー＆コメントお待ちしております。リクエストもどしどしお問い合わせください！ Josh You can lead a horse to water, and you can lead a horse into water, and you can swim around with the horse and have fun. Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/chapxii/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/chapxii ウェルカムマン音楽プロデューサー＆グラミー賞研究家「ウェルカムマン」、日本のインディーズシーンを世界に発信する音楽エージェント＆レコード会社（音楽出版社）「株式会社ブラッシュミュージック」のCEO。ヒューマンアカデミーミュージックカレッジ講師。夢は日本人初のグラミー賞主要4部門にノミネート、そして受賞されるプロジェクトメンバーであることです！ Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/welcomeman/ Twitter @ https://twitter.com/welcomeman9 http://welcomeman.net http://brushmusic.com #english #study #英会話 #podcaster #youtuber #business #publishing #grammy #award #welcomeman #brushmusic --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/welcomeman/message

Fresh Take Network – We Talk Podcasts

FTN-Pat Steinberg 4/23/21

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2021 93:47

The journey from a Calgary High School and an usher for the Cannons, to one of the most respected Flames reporters. Pat Steinberg joins Dick & Josh You can also email via freshtake42@gmail.com or Jawa31@gmail.com You can find Josh on Twitter and and Instagram Snapchat: jawa31 Join the We Talk Conversation on Twitter @wetalkpodcasts. Plus give us a like now on Facebook. The post FTN-Pat Steinberg 4/23/21 appeared first on We Talk Podcasts.

flames cannons pat steinberg josh you

Furious and Fast with Chris Van Vliet

Theme Park Pulse

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2021 31:35

Media personality Chris Van Vliet shares the story of how Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson almost got him fired on live TV, and Josh’s new game will give you flashbacks to your childhood…they might be weird flashbacks. - For bonus audio, and early, ad-free access to all of our shows - support us on Patreon starting at $1 a month! Thanks in advance! - AUTOMATIC TRANSCRIPTION WILL CONTAIN COPIOUS TYPOS AND MISIDENTIFICATIONS.IT'S BASICALLY USELESS YOU SHOULD JUST LISTEN Kory: Welcome to theme park pulse, the game, the game show for theme park fans. I'm your host Corey in San Francisco, California. And I'll introduce you to the rest of the panel in just a second. If you'd like to be a contestant email, Nikki with two ks@nomidnightmedia.com or call (213) 935-0513. And leave a message. If you love this podcast, the next logical step in your fandom is to join us on Patrion, where for as little as a dollar a month, you'd help us cover some of the costs associated with this podcast. And you'll pick up several pieces of bonus audio each week. More information at the link in the description. This week media personality, Chris van fleet tries to re-imagine a Disney attraction based on a guy who flicked him off on television. That story. Plus Christie Brown, a former Disney cast member turned author plays, mucked up musicals up first. It's the Park's pop culture pop quiz. If you'd like to play theme park, post the game. Call (213) 935-0513. And leave a message or email Nikki with two ks@nomidnightmedia.com. Let's welcome. Our contestant on theme park pulse, the game from Orlando, Florida. It's Christy Brown. Hey Christie. How are you guys? Christy: Thanks for Kory: having me. It's good to see you. Thank you for joining us this week. And just a minute, I'm going to test your Park's knowledge with the Park's pop culture pop quiz. But first I want to introduce you to our panel of lost toys. You know, now that one division is complete. He is back to obsessing over more important things like, you know, tick talk and star Wars and. His hair in Sacramento, California. It's Alby. Hey, yes, Sean: it's true. Josh: I've changed my hair color, I think three times already. What Sean: is this color Kory: that we're Josh: looking at now? I mean, I got the Agatha purple up there, so it's kind of like a pink. Sean: Ish. Kory: It was Alberta all along, just the lab does in fact, you to reopen on April 1st, there is a pretty good chance that he will get there first for no other reason than simple geography and the energy of the young in San Diego, California. It's Jackie boy. Hey Jack. Jacky Boy: I feel like probably being on the road with one arm driving is bad, but I will make it happen so I can be the first one in line. Wait, does Kory: that not, is that not totally healed up yet? That's just how it is Jacky Boy: now. This is reality. Kory: It's messy from Jackie Jack, Jack, Jack to Shawnee, just as many Shawn's in Greenville, South Carolina. It's you guessed it, Sean. Hi. Sean: I feel like now I have to go with the most Southern sounding ridiculous accent I can possibly Kory: do as the personality and to finger point of an experience Disney cast member, but Disney frankly can not afford to pay for her Disney habit in Morgantown, West Virginia. It's Nicki Drake. Hey Nikki. Hi. Welcome back everybody. And last, but certainly not least he lives in Denver, Colorado for now. That's a tease. And so is he it's Josh Taylor. Hey, Josh. Josh: I'm so much closer to being on the West coast. You don't know. Kory: Oh, but is the West coast ready for Josh? I hope so Josh: because I'm coming in strong Kory: Christie, you worked for Walt Disney world for the better part of 13 years. What roles did you play while you worked for the County? Christy: I started with merchandising and then I spent the last 13 years with the Disney's very, to weddings team. What's Kory: a typical day, like in weddings. It is Christy: stressful and crazy, and it was so much fun. Kory: You still live there in the Orlando area with your family. Give your family a shout out. Of course. Christy: Hi, Phillip Gus, Lila, and Jacoby. Kory: How did you meet your husband? I was a Christy: wedding intern back in 2007. They were doing a bridal shoot for the new David Tutera collection. I think I just fit the dress. So they asked if I would put on the dress and step into the role of a bride. I met Phillip. He was the groom for the day and I said, hi, I'm your Bradford today in 2011, we got married. At the wedding Kory: pavilion at the Christy: wedding pavilion. Oh, that's so cool. I met him in a wedding gown and then Kory: theoretically married him in wa yeah. Since you left the Disney company, you've leaned a lot into writing something I'm getting into at this stage in my life. What are you working on right now? Christy: I've got a book being published. It's being released July 1st. It's called a ring bear. And it's a book for anyone who's been asked to be a ring bearer in a wedding. Kory: Oh, so it's a ring bear. B E R. Yeah. Yes. The little boy Christy: thinks he has to be a ring bear. That's Kory: so cute. And where can people pre-order that book? They can go to Christy: black Rose writing.com and look for a ring bearer. Kory: Can't wait to read it. All right, Christie, we're going to play the parks, pop culture, pop quiz. I'm going to ask you three questions about some recent parks news. And if you get two out of three, correct, we'll send you a glow in the dark theme park pulse wristband. Okay. Okay, here we go. Question one. Walt Disney world recently gave us a first look at artist renderings for new rooms at Disney's Polynesian resort. Featuring a Pacific ocean inspired color palette inspired by witch film franchise. That's right. I actually love this remodel and this film so much that I do not have a bad joke for this. You're welcome. All right. Question two Orlando theme park fans got some exciting news when it was announced that universal is resuming construction on their new theme park called what? Oh, Epic Christy: universe, Kory: right? A universal fans are excitedly chomping at the bit for yet another gate while Disney's fans are busy, constructing gallows at Disney Springs over the cancellation of the magical express. And Nikki is Jacky Boy: the Kory: lead Sean: construction worker. Alfred swinging a hammer. Kory: Last question. A touch of Disney is the name of the now completely sold out food festival, taking place where. In Josh: my tummy, Kory: is that it? Disneyland? Yeah, Disney, California adventure. The tickets went really fast to the latest of course, is that the California theme parks will be allowed to reopen on April 1st with some restrictions. If it's anything like the bars here in California, you may get to ride pirates. So the Caribbean, but you'll be required to purchase one food item and one beverage in order to clear the state's COVID-19 standards, because reasons Alby, how did Kristi do on the Park's pop culture, pop quiz? I think Josh: she needs to do my wedding at Epic universe Malanda style. So she got them all. Kory: Christie, will you stick around and play some more games later in the show? This is so fun. Up next to media personality, Chris van fleet plays, elevator pitch on theme park, pulse, the game. Welcome back to theme park pulse. The game. Our guest is the host of the podcast insight with Chris van fleet and he has a wildly popular YouTube channel under his name. Let's welcome to theme park, post the game, my friend and media personality, Chris van fleet. Welcome, Chris Van Vliet: man. Thank you so much. Good to see you. Good to hear you. All of the Kory: things it's been forever, where you and I first met in Cleveland, Ohio, many, many moons ago. That is not where you live now. And it's not where you're from. How many places have you lived at this point are Chris Van Vliet: too many originally from Toronto, but then it was Toronto, Vancouver, Cleveland, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Cincinnati. And now I live in Los Angeles. Kory: Well, welcome to California. Yeah. Thank Chris Van Vliet: you. Thank you. The weather is beautiful here, but I think, I think I'm done moving for a little while. Kory: Canada. What would you say your awareness was of theme parks like at an early age. And did you go to Canada's Wonderland? Chris Van Vliet: Everyone went to Canada's Wonderland and then Canada's Wonderland became paramount. Canada's Wonderland when paramount. Yeah, paramount bought it. And then they renamed all the rides after their movies. So I can't even remember what the original name was, but we would ride top gun and we would ride the Italian job like it. One day we showed up and all that, all the rides had brand new names. Cool. Kory: Were there any that were just bad? Chris Van Vliet: Like the names were bad or the rides were bad either. Italian job. That's so great. Sean: Do you get to drive mini Coopers in a tunnel? Because if you don't then the right is garbage Chris Van Vliet: and it was very strange. There was the bat and I don't want to get too much off on a tangent here, but the bat was this rollercoaster that went forwards and then backwards. And the one for that was always like two hours long. That's all I did. Christy: We're loops and Chris Van Vliet: stuff too, but it was the entire ride. And then backwards, the Josh: segment was not sponsored by Sean: paramount Kory: plus not at all. Chris, you host a podcast and a YouTube channel. What will we find if we look you up on YouTube and check out Chris Van Vliet: insight? Like, I'm just fascinated with the idea of like people that are like super successful. There's a reason they got to be at that level. So my podcast is all about like reverse engineering. Like what are the habits and techniques that they have, so we can all apply them to our own lives. So some recent interviews are. Lots of wrestlers on big wrestling fan. As I know you guys are as well, but Freddie Prinze Jr. Was on the show. Chris Kirkpatrick from end sync was on the show. I just interviewed Jeff Timmins from 98 degrees. Andrew Yang was on talking wrestling with me, which is so cool. It's been a lot of fun and like I've selfishly do the show so I can learn from these people and go, Oh, you do that thing. Well, I'm going to start doing that thing now. Kory: Tell me about what you did to get the rock to flick you off on television. And why are you still alive? Christy: And he's now done it twice. He's probably Chris Van Vliet: out twice, but the first time he was on the red carpet for the ballers premier in Miami, when I was working in Miami and. The interview was supposed to happen at like seven ish. And I was live on TV TV at our, now our seven 30 show at seven 38. And I'm like, Oh, perfect. We'll be able to do the interview with him. We'll like take a clip and I'll be able to throw to the clip, like live on TV. We talked to the rocker, right. Here's what he had to say. Well, as you guys know, red carpet stock are never on time. So the rock starts walking down the red carpet, like super late. And, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, like, he's going to either be here. Like. Right before I'm on TV or right after I'm on TV. And then the rock is walking up and I'm, we're in a commercial break and we're like a minute away from me going live. And we start this interview and I'm like, Oh my God, like, what are we going to do? We're we're in a commercial break. And my producers yelling in my ear. Whatever you do, keep him there. We need him there. Live on TV, watching this interview out as much as I can, like asking like just silly questions. Finally, we come back live and I'm like, rock. Just want to let you know, we're live right now on deco drive. He's like, Oh, we're live. I could. Say anything I want and I'm like, ah, please, please do not. So I turned to the camera at the end of the interview. I go, let's have a people's eyebrow off, you know, where the rock raises the eyebrows. So we do that to the camera, as we're doing it to the camera, unbeknownst to me, he gives me the middle finger on live TV behind my head. I didn't see this happen. So I turn around. Rock. Thank you so much. That's Christy: so great to talk Chris Van Vliet: to you. I turned back to the camera. Dairy is one of the biggest stars in the world. Can you believe we got the rock live on TV? And then as soon as the segment ended, my producer calls me and goes, yeah, the rock flipped you off. I'm like, What they said. Yeah. We're not sure if we're going to get fined by the FCC. Now, why I spent the next couple of days, like wondering if we were going to get an FCC fine, which thankfully we did not make for a great viral moment. Then when I saw the rock at the Moana junket a few months later, I said, you know, the last time I saw you, we got in a lot of trouble. Cause you. Flip me off on live TV. He goes, ah, you know what that means? And they gave me another one. So the rock just thinks I'm number one, I guess Kory: I feel like he's such a good guy though, that if you actually did get fined, you could throw a go-fund me on Twitter and he would take care of it. Chris Van Vliet: I'd hope. So then that's the same guy who gave me the middle finger on live TV. So I don't know. Kory: All right, Chris, we've invited you here to play a game that Jackie boy invented where we're going to put your imagination. No. You're Imagineering all to the test. This is elevator pitch, Jack. Jacky Boy: Chris welcome to elevator pitch is, is a game of speed wits and armchair Imagineering. Imagine walking into an elevator with our panelists and having to explain an idea before we hit the top floor. Okay, I'm going to give you a topic. It could be a holiday, a character, a movie, or a show, and you're going to imagine you're it into an attraction or refurb. Or an overlay. Now you'll have a moment or three to construct your magnificent proposition and then 45 seconds to pitch us your ideas. You'll be competing against Nikki today. And the rest of us will get to vote on our favorite and the most haphazard way possible. And we'll get to that in a little bit. Please note also there's a small chance that I will steal your idea and one day make it a reality. When I become an Imagineer, I like this. Okay. We all know that odd Topia Disneyland needs a good refreshing, as much as I love the little Honda robot, the appeal is lost just about the time you get your license and you actually get to experience LA traffic. So I figured we switched things up a bit. Chris, your friend, Mr. The rock was in a franchise of movies that has to do with fast cars. That may be a little more interesting when it comes to a driving attraction. Now I know we already have fast and furious supercharged at universal, but just like Apple says. Think different. Okay. This week on elevator pitch, we're going to be reimagining OD Topia with the fast and furious Kory: Dawn. Jacky Boy: Chris, you are our guest, so I will actually let you go second. Cause I feel like that's probably where you want to be. Anyway. Mickey, go first. Okay. Cool. All right, Nikki, you've got 45 seconds. You're walking into the elevator. Are you ready for it? As Nikki: ready as I'll ever be doors are closing. Jacky Boy: Let's go. Nikki: Oh, my gosh. I just had an amazing idea because the most boring ride at Disney is and then even in Disney world, they've got that silly, boring ride there to it. Jacky Boy: Nice. Okay. All right. Yeah. So. Nikki: I want to take all of the retired superstar, limo people and change them into the fast and the furious cast and throw them into October would be Christy: amazing. Nikki: We need that little pep in the step and we can speed up the ride just a little bit, but not too much, but I also need the rock in here somewhere. Not only flipping us off, but taking a giant, like torpedo thingy and turning it around and blasting it backwards. And I ran out of time. I tried to stretch that beginning as long as Kory: you did Jacky Boy: it. Very good job. Nikki, do you have a name for this attraction that you've created? Kory: Um, Sean: not so fast and mildly annoyed. Nikki: I'll take it. Thank Jacky Boy: you, Sean. All right, Chris, do you get the gist? Are you ready for it? Let's do it. Doors are closing. Here we go. Chris Van Vliet: I Topia is not only the worst ride there. It also has the worst name. So first thing we're going to do is change the name of this guide is now going to be called furious and Christy: fast. And I think Chris Van Vliet: one of the biggest problems about this ride is it looks awful. Like these cars are so ugly, so we're gonna, we're going to throw some new cars in there. There's also nothing to do when you're in these cars. It's not like if you turn left actually goes left. He was on this track. So we're going to put some stuff inside the car. Like there's gonna be some buttons in there. One of the buttons. If you push that button, it's going to fire off our Christy: torpedo and actual torpedo. Chris Van Vliet: Then the rock is going to jump in just like fast and furious six, I believe. And the rock is going to shoot away with his bare hands because that's what the rock does. Jacky Boy: I can't believe it. Now, the way that we're going to figure out a winner for this is my favorite part of this game. So. The rest of us here on the cast are all going to shout the name of the winner on the count of three, the most haphazard way possible. Okay, here we go. Three, two, one. . Oh, I'll be. Who do we got? What do you think, Chris? Sean: Yes, you had me at Chris Van Vliet: and the actual Rockwell be there Kory: and Disney can afford to get him to not flick the camera's off. So it'll be good, Chris, will you hang out on the panel for a bit and play the eighth dwarf with us at the end of the show? Yeah. Welcome back to theme park pulse. The game. If you'd like to be a contestant, call (213) 935-0513 and leave a message or email Nikki in ikk@nomidnightmedia.com. Let's welcome back to the show from Orlando, Florida. It's Kristy Brown. Hi Christie. Hi Christie. I hope you're wearing your ears Disney humor because you're here to play a game with Josh Taylor, cold mucked up musicals, Josh. Josh: Disney songs are iconic. Even those who don't really care for Disney movies probably still know a handful of classic Disney tunes. So instead of asking you to just name a Disney song, cause that'd be too easy, I've taken these songs. I've run them through my machine and I've spit out something different. No, no. This game I'm going to play three clips. You just have to name the Disney song. Get all three to win the catch here. All of these songs are now being played at an elementary school concert by a student named Jimmy with his musical record. Christie. I hope you're ready for a concert. Sean: All right, Jimmy, Josh: give us your first song. can you name Jimmy's tune? Do you want to build a Sean: snowman? Josh: You're in the ballpark. There it is frozen. It's let it go. Well, Jimmy, you got a better song for us. Christy: Is it supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Sean: he's reading the lyrics and coming up with music instead of you can't fault, like a seven year old kid. I can I will. Christy: It's this a real child play? Kory: No, I think it's Josh. Sean: I Josh: heard that girls like musician, so I've been my recorder with me everywhere. Christy: Is Nikki: that your recorder? Are you happy to see me? Sean: In Josh: fact, Sean: my recorder, maybe we'll give you one more song. Okay. Christy: The bare necessities. Kory: Yeah, good job. The good news is that's not the standard by which we judge things. Jack Alvey. How did Christie do on mucked up musical Josh: Christie? Don't let your kids play that please, but you got them. All right. Sean: Oh, Kory: thanks. No, no, she got the first one. Christy: Yep. Sean: Like I said, you're a winner Kory: and that's why LV is the scorekeeper. We'll wrap up the show with part guests behaving badly. The eighth dwarf is next on theme park, pulse, the game. Before we wrap up the show this week, we're going to play another round of the eighth dwarf. And now you can grab your stylish eighth dwarf t-shirt at theme park, pulse.com. John, take it away. Sean: All right. So we all know that the seven dwarves were designed to represent specific behaviors, personality traits. And at some point during any Disney trip, we're all likely to see or be sleepy, dopey, happy, or if you're meet with my students this past week, pretty grumpy, but every now and then we will witness people in the parks that we just can't categorize. And one of the seven different names, their behavior is so outrageous. They fit into their own category that we like to call the eighth dwarf. Now the eighth door stories are all based in real life, but I usually embellish a little bit for traumatic effect. However, today's examples are going to be an exception with the behavior, actually running the gamut from dumb to disgusting. I'm just going to go ahead and present them as they are and let them speak for themselves. Surprising no one there. Both pandemic related, suffice it to say it's been a long and exhausting year dealing with COVID-19. And unfortunately that's pretty much exactly how pandemics work. The virus doesn't actually care if you're tired of the imposition on normal life or that you might be too stupid to understand how modern medicine works, the latter of which. Definitely seems to include Kelly, a resident of Louisiana, according to the police report, who recently decided that getting his temperature checked in order to access private property was some kind of violation of his rights. Not content to duck pass the temperature checks. Kelly apparently proceeded directly to the boathouse where he was found berating, a security manager, Kelly, who is a shining example of why variations in your genetic line are desirable, managed to get himself arrested and charged with a misdemeanor of trespass on property. All of this occurred on February 13th. So in honor of that, I wrote a Valentine's adjacent poem just for Kelly. Roses are red. Welcome to jail. That trip was expensive because you had to post bail. Yeah. Very good shot. Corey, what do we call Kelly? If he was the eighth Kory: auntie Maskey Sean: legacy. Josh: Passholder. Sean: Probably probably a good one. Probably. Yeah. Jack, Jacky Boy: I'm going with Trumpy on this one. You're not wrong, Nikki: right? Because it has to do with his temperature fiery. Sean: Oh, yeah. Josh: I mean, this is clearly Texas governor Greg Abbott. Sean: Hey guys. Again, Josh has gone from throwing other podcasts under the bus to politicians. Oh yeah. I'll keep going up this Kory: ladder. That's fine. Chris Van Vliet: We support you. How about, because Kelly went directly to jail, it will take something out of like the monopoly playbook this'll be, do not pass, go Sean: and Christie that guy. I don't want to be that former employee of Disney, you know, plenty of that guy. Sadly. I think we're going to go with, do not pass. Go eat. So I don't actually know this person's name, but the police report said it was a middle aged man wearing a fedora. Usually I would just refer to that dude as a tool, but let's go with that. Seriously. It's totally acceptable to wear a fedora. If you're in your sixties or a former member of the rat pack, like most of us, Chad is apparently really tired of wearing a mask or he's parked camel. One of those things is understandable. The other would explain a lot, like for instance, his pension for spitting on people, according to the Orlando Sentinel, a security guard at Disney's contemporary resort reminded Chad to put on his mask before entering the resort in response, Chad, spat on the guard and ran into the elevator screaming. I'm a guest. Which honestly sounds exactly like something I'd expect from a tool in a fedora walking, although I'm not sure about him being middle-aged because speaking as a middle-aged man, there's no way in hell I'm running to an elevator or anything else, except maybe a chiro cart. I'm thinking this guy has to maybe be in his late twenties or that I'm in denial about being older than middle-aged. Because I like the last one so much. I decided to go ahead and write a poem for Chad as well. Roses are red. No one likes the foot. Dora. I wouldn't cry. If you were eaten by a banshee from Pandora, Corey, what is Chad's eighth dwarf Kory: name? Lougie Sean: lb Josh: Cecil hotel guest E Oh, Sean: probably. Oh, Jack drew Carey. Christy: Why because he's wearing Jacky Boy: Dora and superstar limo. I feel like maybe too much explanation on that one probably should have gone with something else. You think also Kory: why, why is Josh offended? Sean: Uh, barely drew carries the line for Josh. I'm trying to go up the Josh: ladder. Like I don't need to fall back down the level. Kory: Oh Sean: wow. Oh, Nikki Nikki: IDG, a F Christy: E. Sean: All right, Josh. Who's on the bus this time. Josh: Vanity. Christy: Oh, I was like, who's that? Josh: the bus Christy: every day. Kory: I really thought you were Nikki: going to say Ted Cruz Sean: in Mexico couldn't have been him, anyone to SeaPak Chris Van Vliet: literally anyone. I liked it. The fedora was so important to the story that it was written into the police. That is right. Josh: That's not an embellishment. It was in this story, Chris Van Vliet: but like, have you ever seen a police report was like, well, the man was wearing like a flannel shirt. It doesn't matter what he's wearing, Kory: unless it's a fedora. Is it matters Chris Van Vliet: since most of us are wrestling fans here, I'm going to harken back. To Randy or in his legend killer days, he would spit in the face of the legends before beating them up. This is legend killer. Kory: I feel like that would go right to this guy's ego though. Dora Sean: the fedora standing there, go home Dubbo. All right, Christie, bring us home. Christy: Well, if he's wearing a fedora, he's gotta be douche-y. Sean: Christie. You just cut to the heart like that. Kory: Christy and Chris, thank you so much for joining us something park, posted the game. Oh, thank you. Thank you so Jacky Boy: much. The bipolar as the game was created, written and produced by the panelists you heard on the show today, Sean: Corey Alby, Nikki, Jack, Sean, Kory: and Chad. We'd like to thank our special guest Chris van fleet of insight with Chris van fleet. And of course our guest Christie. They're in Orlando and Nikki: all new episode of the doom squirrel drops tomorrow on our Patrion. That show is weekly and at Kory: all tiers Josh: assemble each Tuesday. Where right now we're going into a deep dive on Falcon and the winter soldier. Check out the link in the description and support our work for as little as $1 a month. And you'll get that and some other Sean: cool bonuses. We'd also love to see you for trivia Tuesday on the theme park, pulse Twitch and Facebook live that's at 5:00 PM, West 8:00 PM East every Tuesday night. Josh: The single most important thing that you can do to help us out is share theme park posts the game with Sean: all Kory: of your friends. Like all of them, maybe, actually don't, I'll be we'll know. Yeah. From our family to yours, wear a mask or however many it is. They want you to wear this week, wash your hands, keep your eyes on the road and join us next time for another all new theme park pulse. Sean: Yay. Oh, the game. Josh: Sorry. No one likes your content, Jimmy.

The Atlas Shrugged Interview - Part 3 of 5

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 25, 2020 39:18

Welcome back to part 3 of this special episode series. Today Russell and Josh try to answer the question, “does everybody need to be an entrepreneur?” They also talk about celebrating other people’s success and how having kids has changed the way they work. So listen in and enjoy part 3 of this very special interview. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to Marketing Secrets podcast. We're about to start the third part of our five-part Atlas Shrugged interview series. I hope you guys enjoyed part one and part two. I'm sure there are things that you agreed with, I'm sure there are things you disagreed with, that's okay. This whole thing is not about me trying to force anything on you, it's more just to get us all thinking and open the conversations and help us look at things from both sides. With that said, we're going to move now into the third part of the interview series. Again, we broke down our three and a half hour interview into five podcasts episodes. I know these are long, but I hope you're enjoying them. And hopefully it's just getting the wheels spinning. Hopefully, you're enjoying it. And I really hope that it gives you the desire to go and read the Atlas Shrugged book and kind of see some of these principles through that lens. So, with that said, we'll queue up the theme song. When we get back, you'll have a chance to listen to part three of my interview with Josh Forti. Josh Forti: Okay. I want to circle back to one quick thing and then we can move on. Russell Brunson: Okay. Josh: So the question I was trying to ask was, when you were like, "Hey, there's the technician or there's the plumber, there's this, or there's that or then there's the person that comes in and makes it rain." There's only a few people in an organization that like, make it rain, right? Like you in ClickFunnels, you make it rain. You're the one that brings it in and, I'm sure there's other people to a certain extent, but you are that person. And you probably have what, 100, 200 people on the support team? That don't actually make the company any money, but they do play a critical role in the sense that the company couldn't function without them. And so, to those people there, how does somebody who... Two-part question. One, can you live your best life in a position like that? Can you be most alive and fulfilled and live a great life, doing something average like that? Number two, does that person need to go learn how to make it rain? Does everybody need to be an entrepreneur? Does everybody need to be... Like, you are so fascinating, you got this whole community of funnel hackers and like, "We're going to go out and choose a world. We think differently. We do it differently. We got all this stuff." Would it be good if the whole world thought that way? Or do we need people that don't think that way? Russell: There was a time in life where I thought everyone should think that way. I don't think so now. I have family members who love what they do and they're obsessed with the art, like the art is what they do. Some people... I've had good masseuses and bad masseuses. Some masseuses, that is their art, you can tell, you're just like, "Oh, my gosh. They're the best at their craft." And I think that's okay, I think if it brings fulfillment, that's more important. But people aren't fulfilled, that's the second question. If you're not fulfilled then why, you know? And I think one of the most powerful things, Myron Golden taught this at Funnel Hacking live, and he taught it at two comma club a couple times, he has a thing called the four levels of value. It's so fascinating because… Josh: Such a good one. Russell: Yeah, it's so good. The first level of value, for those who haven't heard this before, is it just talks about I'm going to not do it justice, Martin's the man. One of the greatest speakers of all- Josh: Tell YouTube. Actually I don't even know, if it's on YouTube. Russell: It's on my... Anyway, yes. So bottom level is, people work their hands, right? And this is the hardest work. Like, the person that's actually building the building. Or typing, you're doing support, or whatever the thing is, they're working with their hands. That's the lowest level of value, right? Like the most you make when you're, when you work with your hands is maybe 50, 60, $70,000 a year, but you're tapped out, you can't get higher than that. Now, if that's your calling and you're good at, and you love it, go all in. Become the best in the world at that thing, and that's totally cool. But you cap out on salary, you can't make more money at a certain point. Because that's the value of that tier value. The next tier value, if you move up one tier, is management. Somebody who can manage all of the workers. And there's people... One of the big mistakes we made inside of ClickFunnels, we took the people inside of our team who were the best workers and we upgraded them to management and they were horrible managers, amazing workers moved into management. And they weren't managers, this is a different mindset. They can go learn that, but that's not where they were gifted. And a lot of times it was irreparable, we couldn't move them back down because in their mind, like, "Oh I'm a manager now." It's like, "No." I think one of things we learned is someone can be a worker and make more money than the manager. Just because sometimes their skillset, like the programmers and developers, getting an amazing programmer to code something is, a lot of times, worth more than the managers managing that person. But in most businesses, most organizations, manager's next tier, right? Because you make more money as a manager because you're managing a lot of workers, as opposed to one. Then you go up the next tier value and it's the communicators. People learn how to talk and to sell, that's the next thing. You make more selling and you do managing, and you typically make more managing than you do actually doing the thing. And not everyone's going to be great salespeople. I think it's a teachable skill. I think you may have seen my early videos, everyone thinks this is a gift that I was born with. It is not, it is something that's been developed. Josh: Guys, you should go look at Russell's old videos, they're so embarrassing. Russell: They are the worst ever. Yeah, when I was your age I would not have been able to do this, it's crazy. So that tier is the communicators and the top tier are the visionaries. Imagining it, you're using your brain to make money. So your use your brain, your mouth, your management skills or your hands. Those are the four tiers of value. So I think wherever you fit in there, that's cool, we need people all the tiers, but like... I did a podcast about this the other day, I'm like, "Whatever you going to be, don't just be a person doing it, become the best in the world." We were in Oakville Tony's Event and we're in a hotel and it was kind of weird because there's a spa, so like, all excited to get massages, but it's also COVID right now. So the masseuses have masks on, they have plastic gloves, it was weird. And I got my very first massage, they paid for two massage it. So I was like, "It'll be fun." The first massage was so bad. I was like, "I never want to get a massage again, ever." It was so bad and I'm sitting there on the table, it was only an hour long massage, by the time it was done I was like, "I want to get out of here, this is just weird and horrible." I did not enjoy it. And I'm a massage person. Josh: Yeah. I love massage. Russell: And I was to the point I'd never want massage again, but they'd already booked us for the next day for the second one. And I was annoyed. I went to the second one and same thing. She's got plastic gloves on like we have to do and the mask. And I'm just kind of like, "Oh, I don't even want to be here." And then she puts her hands on me and it's just like, it was art, it was different. And both of them are doing the same job, right? But somebody was like, "I want to be the best the world." Versus, "Oh, I'm just doing the thing." And you see that in every area of life, the chiropractors, there's chiropractors, that are good and there's ones that are great. Doctors, dentists, business. I'm more, wherever you're at, don't just be mediocre, become the best in the world there. That's more important to me than... You know, if you can be a plumber, be the plumber who you walk in... Like we've had, our house, so many plumbers come in. We had some that come and they fix the leak and then something else breaks and they go “uh…” And other guys should come in to check everything, they make sure it's perfect. I want that person, I want the artists I want the person that this is their art and not just like, "Ugh, best job I could find." Josh: Yeah. All right, so now I'm about to ask you a question and I understand this is totally your opinion on it, maybe you have something to base it on. So, the person that is at those lower levels of value, the average worker that's out there, that's doing their thing, especially in today's super soft victim mentality America that wants to vote for free stuff. Makes me so mad. Anyway. The average person that's out there, looks up at people that make a lot of money and the general consensus, I think, or the way that America slash the world is going is, rich people are bad, right? Like, "You're so greedy, man. You got all his money and you're not giving any to me, you get to go sit in your massive house and your cars and you can do whatever you want." And so, even if they are doing what they are called to do, they'll look up to a millionaire, a billionaire, somebody that has all this stuff and they'll look at it as bad. Like that shouldn't happen. How do you create a society? And this is why... I know this is big picture type stuff, but how do you create a society that allows people to be okay with being the best version of themselves where they're at without looking at you and being like, "You're bad."? You know what I mean? Russell: Yeah. Well, it's not going to happen in our lifetime. It's not going to happen, my belief, till Christ comes again. And when he does, it'll be a perfect, you know, things will be great. But until then, it's not going to happen because humans are humans. Right? Josh: You mean Donald Trump's not going to just fix everything? Russell: Oh, if he does that'd be amazing but I'm not holding my breath. But I would say more so just, for anyone who feels that way, I would look at that more... And I did a podcast about this, if you're not someone who celebrates other people's successes, everybody, I don't care if you hate the person, if you're a big fan or you're not a big fan, if you don't celebrate their success, then you are going to struggle to ever be successful because you're going to be so scared of other people not celebrating your success. I remember... I am not a huge Gary Vee fan, you know this, for reasons I'll talk about in my next book. But- Josh: When I tweet this out on Twitter, Gary, when you follow me, shout out, by the way, The Patriots won the Superbowl more than The Jets. Just throw that out there. All right, continue. I just guaranteed he'd never come on my podcast. Russell: I do like Gary, I just, we had a thing, but whatever, he doesn't remember it, I'm sure. But anyway, he got the shoe deal with... Whatever the shoes. Josh: Adidas. Russell: And he's going to market and for half a second, I was like, "That sucks." And then I was like, "You freaking he's in our industry and he got a shoe deal!" And I ran to my computer. Josh: Or K-Swiss, yeah. Russell: The K-Swiss. I bought the shoes. I got them… And I did a podcast, celebrating the fact that someone in our community got a shoe deal and all these things. And most people that I know were like, "I thought you're not a big Gary fan." I'm like, "I'm not, but that's a huge success, we should celebrate success." Because if you don't, then what's going to automatically happen in your head. If you're Not celebrating people's successes then you have the subconscious fear that someone's not going to do yours. And so you're going to stifle yourself and be successful. So I try when anybody around me is having success. Whether I like them or I don't like them, I always am like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to try to celebrate it." And then by doing that it changes your brain to the spot where you're okay having success, because you're assuming everyone's going to celebrate like you. And they're not going to, but it's different subconsciously. If you are not celebrating other people's successes it will stifle you from ever having your own. And so I think that's a big part of... If that's where you're at right now, it's something you got to change. And when you start making that little shift and start celebrating people's successes above you, it's freeing, it's amazing. Because then all of a sudden you're unlocking yourself, like I can succeed because they did and people are going to celebrate me. And it shifts those like psychological things that you do and it changes everything. It's weird. Josh: Do you think... You're not political, like hardly at all. Like, do you even pay attention? Russell: No, not too much. I was like, so those who read the book, Hank Rearden, and this is part of his demise, is he doesn't pay attention to it at all. So as I read the book, I'm like, Hank Rearden, doesn't pay attention, I don't pay attention. Real quick, can we do a shout out for these shirts again? You guys have seen them? By the way, how many of you guys would like one of these shirts? Josh: Ooh let's make them comment for this first. Russell Brunson: Okay. Josh: Guys, how many of you want to shirt? Yes or no. Comment yes or no down below. Russell: So this is the Rearden Steel one. And this is who is John Galt? One. Josh: Very dope. I'm not going to lie though. Like that was pretty dope, but this one wins for one reason. Russell: The quote is cool. We can put that quote on this one too and make it silver. Josh: Ooh. Ooh. Russell: Okay. This is my selfish pitch. Can I do- Josh: Hey guys, can Russel do a pitch real quick? Russell: Is it okay if I sell something? He says something to you. Keep in mind. I make no money off of this. I don't even know what he's doing. No, we have a little fun site we created just because that'd be fun called TshirtSmackdown.com where we have two shirts and then people vote with their wallets, which shirt they want better. So if you guys want these shirts, you could actually buy whichever one is your favorite, or both if you like them both. Just got to go to TshirtSmackdown.com and they're up there right now. And guess who was the models on TshirtSmackdown? I assume. Are we the models? Anyway, go to TshirtSmackdown.com, you can get one or two- Josh: Oh my gosh. Look at that big your team. Russell: We're super models! Josh: Your team's amazing, dude. They put it together that fast.. Okay. Let's geek out the book here for a second. Russell: Yeah. Josh: The audible door. That, the password that was audible. When I read that I was like, "Yes!" That's a brilliant mind at, it's like you have to say it. And the part that I thought was interesting was, it wasn't just the words he's like, and it's programmed to where it will not open unless the person that is saying it is actually like saying it with conviction or something to that effect. They actually have to like, mean it. Can't just be like, "Duh duh duh duh duh. Okay, I'm in." Like, now you guys want to read the book so bad. Okay. All right. We'll come back to the TshirtSmackdown, comment. down below. Let us know and let us know guys. Let's not go down the comments, if you're listening on audio you can go leave a rating and review and leave us in the comments. But like, if you're just listening, YouTube, Facebook, wherever, comment down below your favorite part of the conversation was so far. I think that'd be super cool. Okay. Let's geek out on the book for a second here. I actually have a lot of questions about the book, but I want to know, what was your favorite scene? Russell: Oh, Oh, so many good scenes. My favorite scene in the book. So it's kind of like the crescendo of the whole book. Because the whole book is asking, who's John Galt. Who's John Galt. Josh: Okay. Hold on. Sorry, David's sitting in the background. Have you read the book, Dave? Okay. So I'm just making sure that you're not just sitting over here, like freaking out. Dave's like I have to read it too. I was like, I need to talk to somebody. Dave, go read this. I'll see you in six months. Russell: So the whole books leader, who's John Galt, who's John Galt. We're kind of introduced to him a little bit when Dagny meets them. And then she leaves and goes back to the real world. And all of a sudden, there's this part where the looters and the government are trying to do this broadcast. And all of a sudden… (static noise) the broadcast is interrupted and they're trying figure how to fix it. But all of the people who would fix it have been taken- Josh: Because all the great minds as society are gone. Russell: And all of a sudden over the loud speaker comes John Galt and he starts the speech. And the speech I think is 80 pages in the book. It's four hours on the audio book, four hours. This is why you don't watch you to movie you by the way. Cause it's less than 30 seconds in the movie. Josh: How do you take out four hours? Russell: Oh, it's such a good... Anyway, he gets on this microphone broadcasting to the entire world, nobody can cut them off. And he gives this speech about… Josh: The entire book. Russell: I’m just freaking out… The set up. It was so crazy, all of a sudden it happened. I was like, "Whoa." And anyway, that was my- Josh: And he ends with this and he goes, and I'll say it one last time “I pledged my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for mine.” Russell: Anyway, that was my favorite part. Josh: The 80 page. Four hour long version of it? Okay. Russell: Oh yeah. So good. Josh: Okay. I like that. My favorite part of the book, I read this and I was like... So, I like play my life on and act like I'm in a movie, right. Sometimes I'm like, do this. So do you remember what the wedding? Russell: Oh, Francisco speech. Dude! Josh: That might've been better. I promised Leah I would be done after this chapter. And it ends, and I'm like, "No!" Russell: The John Galt had a better buildup and then I didn't know it was coming, there's a wedding and everything. And then all of a sudden it starts happening. I was like- Josh: Out of freaking nowhere. Russell: Yeah. So Francisco, he gives a speech that was like, yeah, I wasn't expecting it. So I think it was less buildup, but it was amazing. Yeah. The John Galt buildup was like, this is like, I was waiting when you said movie. Because I was like, "It can be amazing." Then it's like, come on. Anyway. Yeah. Those are the two best parts. Josh: Yeah. Yeah. At that wedding... I'm reading this and it was like that moment I was like, "Okay. She finally made it all..." And that was relatively early on in the book. I was like, Oh, if the book follows anything like this, this is going to be such a good book. Right. Because he gets done with that and you're just... It's something you'd want to watch out in real life and know that somebody thought this up and they wrote down. You're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was so good. That was, that was hands down my favorite part. Russell: I want to read the book again, I wish it wasn't 1200 pages because I want to go back to experience it but it's so big. Josh: Okay. Have you read the cliff notes version of the book? Russell: No. Josh: Okay. So yeah. So there is there's, I think there's the cliff notes, like the one that you buy. I think it's like a four-hour audio book, I haven't listened to that one. But usually on cliffsnotes.com, can like read the book. You can basically get a summary of the whole book in like, 30 to 45 minutes. I read it. Russell: It's still worth reading though, you guys. Josh: Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. But that's the reason I'm bring it up because I notice 1200 pages, but if you just read the Clifton, but you're like, "Oh, okay. Cool storyline." But you miss the effect of it all. Russell: One of the things that I thought was fascinating. Just because I'm working on my next book, which is not a how-to book, so I'm learning how to write differently. So I've been- Josh: Ooh, you want to tell us all about it? Russell: I'm really proud, excited for it. But one thing was interesting, if you look Ayn Rand did the dialogue in the book, she did all the dialogue, but it's just one person speaking. So it's fascinating. Every time you notice that, like when her partner was in the cafeteria with some guy we didn't know, you only hear his words, you never hear the other side. Josh: That's so true. Russell: Most of her dialogues were just, you heard the one person talking and you could get the gist of the conversation by reading one side, but they never had the other side and I'd never seen someone write that way before. And there's a lot of cool things like that where it's just like... Again, I've written three books now, but I wrote books with Google Docs, with editors and people. Like imagine writing a book in the fifties with a typewriter. Think how much forethought has to go to something like this. Josh: Yeah, that's wild. Russell: It is insane to think that. Yeah. So I have so much respect for people who wrote then. And especially, I'm trying to learn how to write as a story as opposed to how to, and the art of it is just fascinating. As a book, it's worth reading just to see how she wrote is fascinating as well. Josh: What was your biggest... Actually, I want to go down that rabbit hole a little bit further. So writing, is your next book fiction or not? Russell: No, it's just the next book is about bootstrap.com. Bootstrapping is the ClickFunnels story, but it's not like the how-to, it's telling the story as the story, which is going to be cool. Josh: Oh, that's going to be so good. Russell: First thing we're doing is all the core people who've been part of ClickFunnels story. We're flying them out and interviewing them for... I've been mapping out the entire timeline of events as close as I can remember and I'm going to interview... All the pieces from their point of view. Trying to get that from like 50 different people and then take all that stuff, think the timelines up and write the book as a story. So it's a different writing style I've never done before. Josh: That's interesting. Russell: Oh yeah. Dave wants to tell you the cool part. So I'm also like been re-geeking out on The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Hero's 2 Journeys and all that stuff. Because I want to make sure... Well someday I want to try to sell it to Hollywood or something. So who knows? I don't have the end of the story yet, but like- Josh: Which is by the way, super fascinating because of how the concept concept of going for a target and then going towards it. Like, you don't know the end now you're just like, that is so cool. Russell: Oh yeah, and so it's cool. But I was like- Josh: Russell's so much fun to watch. Russell: So I've been, I've been geeking out on the hero's journey. So I'm like, I'm trying to sync the timeline of the ClickFunnels startup story to the timeline of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, all the core things. To see if I can get it to fit inside that framework, which I think we'll be able to do. it's going to be amazing. Then what I'm trying to do in my new office is I'm going to build the rumors, like a timeline, so the entire room wraps in a huge chalkboard with a timeline that goes around and it has the dates and the years of the journey and stuff. And then writing in each core thing on the wall. And then, you know how in the spy movies, you have like a string that goes and you have the pieces of paper. Josh: Yeah. Russell: As I'm writing the book, I'm going to have the whole thing timed out in a square room. And so you see it all and they can see all the pieces, how they all fit together. And then when the book's done, in that room, that'll be the wallpaper on the room. Josh: Oh my gosh. Okay. All right. So here's deal. Here's a great idea. So you do that up until a certain point, like this is modern day, and then there's an end of the wall. And then from that point to there, that's when you're writing and when you get to the end of the wall you have to sell everything and go into hiding and become John Galt. Like that book's done, I’m out. That's fascinating. Russell: But I get to write a story that's way different. It's not, like all my other books are how-to books so they're written differently. And so it's just been fun- Josh: Which by the way is why when I first got into entrepreneurship I was like, "I don't know why anybody would write a book that's not like that." Like I'm like, "Why would anybody write a book like this? This is so lame." And now I'm reading it and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is so cool." Russell: I tend to respect the books I'm reading now, I just finished Shoe Dog, which is the story of- Josh: Oh that's a great book. Russell: American Kingpin, which is the story of the silk road and the dark web, one of my favorite stories I've ever read, I've read it twice already. And the writer is probably the best writers I've ever. I read it and I was so depressed. I was like, I'll never write... Because I tried to hire him to write my book for me. And he's too busy. Josh: I will give you a blank check, just write this book. You're so much better than I could ever dream of. Russell: So I had to go and learn how to do it. Josh: What was the most fascinating thing about Atlas Shrugged, to you? Like, the way it was written or the concepts of the character, anything. What was the overall, the most fascinating part for you? Russell: Character development was so cool. I think the coolest thing for me was... I'd love to see a sim diagram because I don't know it, but each of the characters each played, like they were a character, they played a role that is like this magnified society as a group, almost. Right? Josh: Yeah. That's actually super true. Russell: Like, you have Hank Rearden and Dagny, and then... Josh: James Taggart. Russell: Taggart's wife. All the people, they were humans, but they were personification of a segment of society, which is really cool. And so seeing that where you're getting this micro versions, macro problem. That was cool because I never, again I don't study politics, I'm not deep into it so I don't know all these things. And you hear this character and you hear the story, and all of a sudden you're like, "Oh my gosh, that represents this group of people that I..." And so for me, it was cool because I was able to understand things at a different level. And I'm not the best at this, I always try to put myself in other people's shoes. I try to understand... That's why I'm not super political, because they get so divisive and I see good on both sides. Like, I understand, I can love people on both sides of it. I think it was so cool for me because you see the pros and the cons of each thing. Right? You see the positives, negatives, each belief pattern. Josh: Yeah. Russell: I think Rearden, as much as I related to him, it was like, there's the good and evil, right? And all of them have that. So it was just cool because it gave me this perspective, I didn't know of so many different segments of society. It made this really cool tapestry and picture for me. Josh: Huh. All right. So now the polar opposite. What do you think the book lacked in? Or didn't communicate well or left out? Russell: I think, something we talked about today, I do feel like most of the producers in the book, they didn't have the other side of it. Right? The social stuff is important, helping other people is important and I get why she did it. Like I said, the Phil Donahue interview, she's like, "People should be social. They shouldn't do it with a gun." But she never showed that she, didn't show, Hank Rearden going in like, "Oh, this is a cause I care about like, let me go and..." Josh: At all, in any part. Russell: I think that stuff's important, that's why we talk about political. On the left side, what they're trying to do is good it's right, it's from God, it's so good things. Right? But there's ways that people twist and all sorts of stuff like that. And I wish they would have showed more of that because I felt like the characters were one sided where it's just, the people that are looters and the people that are producers. And I feel like there's more blend for all of us, we have blends of those things. And they did a good job as dissect- Josh: Super, yeah. Russell: You know? I think we all have all those things, I want to give, I want to serve, I want to do things, but I also want to produce, I want to do both those things. like how do I, what's the world look like where we do both of those things. And I don't know how to. In my little universe that I've created for myself and my family, I'm trying to produce. I'm trying to contribute and try and do my version of what I think is right. All we can do is what we think is right in our own little world that we create. And so this is my world I've created, I'm trying my best to do it. And I wish that they would have showed some of that side. But I think that that was a part, I feel, that the characters were missing just that part of it. Josh: So what's interesting- Russell: Christ-like, charity, love stuff. Josh: Okay. Well, and I'm so glad you brought this up, what I think is interesting, the thing that I felt like the book was lacking the most is nobody had kids. Russell: I didn't think about that. Josh: Think about this, none of them... Because one of my questions, she was going to be like, "How Was having a kid?" And I kind of asked her... Kind of changing perspective, but I'm like- Russell: Interesting. Josh: Nobody had kids. And I don't have kids. I'm not married, I don't have kids. I'm getting married. Russell: Yeah, woo hoo! Josh: By the way. Shout out to my beautiful fiance. All right. But for me, I'm so focused right now. So I grew up in a big family, right. Eight kids. I'm the oldest living. I had one other brother who passed away, but like six younger siblings. And like, my whole life changes once there's kids in it. And I know that even though I haven't experienced it, because I've seen it. And so for me, and Leah and I have talked about this like, "The twenties are for us, thirties are for kids." And so I'm like, "I got to make as much money as I possibly can before the because ah!" And I even told Colette this, I said, "If there's there was one thing that I would sacrifice my career for in order to be able to do, it'd be to homeschool my kids." I can't fathom sending my kids to public school, that's just me because I grew up homeschooled or whatnot. But as I was going through the book, I'm like, "I can relate to all of these people, but like they're leaving out like this key component." Imagine being Hank Rearden and living like he did, with your five kids. Or do you have? Russell: I have five. Josh: Yeah, I was going to say, before I was like, "Oh my gosh." So think about that. You know what I mean? And so I feel like one of the, because there's a lot of people I know that I've read Atlas Shrugged, like, "Heck yeah man, this is the greatest book ever, like for-profit blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, "Yeah. But like imagine living your life that way with a family." Imagine living your life like that with the kids and responsibilities, people that you actually like. How- Russell: I think about this. Because like our timeline, it comes back, we talk about growth and contribution. Right? So most of us, we get born. All of us, we get born right. Only way to get here, we're all born. Right? And from when you're born until you're, whatever, for me I got married at 22, I was 22. And so it's like the first 21 years, it's all about you. Right? It's selfish, it's growth. It's whatever it is, it's you, you, you. And everyone's very inward focused. And then all of a sudden you meet this beautiful person and then you fall in love, that's amazing. And also what happens is it shifts from you, you, you, to us. And you're giving, taking, giving taking, and it's cool because, all of a sudden all your focus isn't on you, it's on somebody else. But they're focused on you too and it's this amazing thing where like, I'm giving, but I'm also getting, it's this amazing thing. It's this transition that's easing you into kids because then kids come out and it flips now where it's like the opposite where you're just serving a hundred percent, especially the very beginning with kids. I was joking my kids about this one night when they're like, "Why are you guys so mean?" And I'm like, "Do you realize we get no value from this. We don't get paid a penny from this, there's nothing in parenting. We kill ourselves, we serve, we don't sleep. We work. We hate money." And that's not true, there's value. Josh: I'm just sitting here imagine Russel telling his kids, "We get no value, you do not pay us." Russell: I'm like, I'm killing myself. Josh: To be fair, you do get a tax break. Russell: Yeah. But especially when they're first born, they're cute and you get lots but they're in the selfish space now where you're giving a hundred percent and they're not giving back. Other than they giggle and cute and you're like, "Oh, so cute." But for the most part, you get this time where you're selfish and then it's like, "Oh, I'm serving someone else, but they're serving me." And amazing, then all of a sudden it's a hundred percent service there. And I think that that's a good point. Hank Rearden had only done this thing. And then, he never had a chance to like, a hundred percent serve somebody else and see what that's like. Because the value you get as a parent is when you serve a hundred percent of kids and you see like who they become, that's the value. But it doesn't come from the quid pro quo that you normally get with like, "I'm going to buy this thing or pay for this thing." Josh: Right. Russell: It's like, "I'm gonna serve, and serve, and serve." And eventually hope that someday they turn out to be cool. Josh: Yeah. And that's a super interesting point. And maybe that's why she left that part out of it because she was like, "None of these people would ever have kids-" Russell: And she didn't have kids, so that's a big… that might be the part, she's never seen that. At least not that I'm aware of, I'm pretty sure- Josh: That's crazy. Because going through I'm like, "This book I think would mean so much diff..." So when I first read it, like I said, whenever I first learned about this, back in high school, right. I read it. I hated reading. I publicly declared, and it's actually funny. When I graduated high school, I bought myself a pickup truck, I stood on the top of the pickup truck and I publicly declared to the world, I would never read another book ever again in life. I hated reading. So that's funny because now I'm reading 1200 page books and I've read every one of those books back there. It didn't really take on the same effect as now, being an entrepreneur, being someone at... Like at one point I had five employees and I'm 26 years old. So now I'm reading it and I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." But if I read it with kids, I feel like that would even give you a completely different perspective on like... How has having kids changed your... Because you're an entrepreneur basically from day one, right? You never really had a job. Right? Russell: I've served tables and stuff, I didn't have a job more than three months. Josh: Okay. So you're, you're a failure in the normal society, right? You can't hold a job, you get fired for... But how's having kids and having to balance... Because man, like, dude, you're running a... ClickFunnels is a billion dollar company. Right? We're allowed to say that? Like that's a thing, right? Like roughly, I'm not off on that. All right. Russell: The value is based what you will pay for so hopefully somebody pays that some day. Josh: So we're going to say a billion dollar company. So you're running this billion dollar company, you've made hundreds of millions of dollars, you've been payed a million dollars an hour from stage before... By the way, big props, congratulations. How has balancing work now with that, with the kids growing up, I feel like now they're at, because you're oldest is what, 12, 14 or 15. Right? So how has that changed the way that you view your work? Do you struggle with that? Like the balance. Russell: Yeah. Especially now with COVID stuff happening. Kids being homeschooled. Because before it was easy to separate because they're going to school, I'm going to here. Separation is easy. Now it's harder because it's they're still home. And it's like, "Oh, should I be there?" It's definitely tough. Yeah. It's interesting. I have so many entrepreneur friends, I always tease them because it's like, who don't have any kids and they're doing amazing things. I'm like, "Yeah. But I'm doing this stuff and I got five kids and a beautiful wife and I got callings in my church." And there's so many things. I hired a trainer, Dave knows a safe trainer. I remember when he started working with us, he said the biggest thing he knows me start working with me is that you'll be shocked what your body can actually endure. I think that most people don't understand what they could actually do. How do you run a company this big and have a family and have a successful marriage and have these... You can do it, and most people don't because they sedate. And like, I don't watch four hours of football a night because I have all these other things. Right. I don't know, it's just you take away the excuse of sedation you can produce so much more than people are able to understand. I don't know. So it's interesting. And then it's been such a weird thing too, with kids, because I think when you first start having kids, you assume they're all going to be like you. Like, "Oh, they're all going to be entrepreneurs." And then I had twins, it was crazy, our first two that came out are twins. Now they're 14, almost 15. It's crazy because I assumed they'd all be the same, the same as me or the same together. And they are so polar opposites. Josh: Yeah, I didn't even know, I just found out today that they were twins. I had no clue. Colette's like, "Yeah they're both turning 15." I'm like, "Wait, what?" Russell: Yeah. They don’t look like each other, they don’t act like each other. One's more entrepreneurial. One's more, if you look at disc profile, I have a DI and we have an SC. Josh: Oh my God. Russell: Introvert, extrovert. All the things are different. And I always thought, you know, my kids are going to be entrepreneurs like me and now I don't think they have to be. It goes back to what we talked about earlier. With my kids, I'm like, "What do you want to do?" And I think some of my kids are very entrepreneurial, a lot of them aren't. I think some of my kids are super smart, hard workers who are going to be amazing at the roles they play in something, they're going to be a huge part of changing somebody's world, but it's not going to be the front person of it. And so it's been interesting watching that and fulfilling and hard and it's all the things wrapped into one. It's an interesting experience, you're going to love it. You should start having kids right away. Josh: Yeah. That's not going to happen. But why though? Russell: Because you should know, it takes time. Josh: Okay. But how long did you go? How long did you wait? Russell: Uh, two? Let's see, we had our 18 year anniversary, the kids are turning 15. So almost three years. We tried earlier, but we had fertility drugs, stuff like that and everything, But yeah, so about probably two years and when started trying. Josh: Yeah. I can't... Kids scare me dude. But it's interesting because like I grew up with six younger siblings. So I was definitely old enough to remember the whole diaper phase and like, you know... Obviously I wasn't a parent with it. And the church that I went to, eight was like average to small amount of kids. A lot of them were like 13 kids, 12 kids, 14 kids, whatever. I think the smallest in our whole church was four, and they were the weird ones. Russell: "You only have four kids? What's wrong with you?" Josh: Right. And so everywhere we went, that's just what it was. So for me, I had that rebellion phase, if you will. I don't want to call it rebellion phase, but where I was like, "I don't want any of this. Why would you... They're expensive and they suck all the time. And I can't go do this." I'm like, "I want to be so filthy read before I go having kids." And I taught Sunday school and was very involved in the church growing up and things like that. So for me it was like, "I want to go build my business, doing that is more fun." The interesting thing about kids. And I told my parents this, I don't remember when it was, but my parents aren't super wealthy or successful when it comes to business or anything like that. But I look at my parents as some of the most successful people that I've ever met in my life, because my mom's favorite... There's little things that my mom told me over and over and over again. And one of her famous lines is, "The only thing I need to know in life is I just need to know that my children walk in truth." Right. And my mom, particularly, and my dad too, like both of them, but I relate it with my mom, cause she'd keep saying it, it's like my mom's definition of success and achievement was, "Do my children walk in truth?" That is what was success to her. And she's like, "Yeah, money would have been great, like all these different things." But that was kind of the pinnacle of success for her is, do my kids walk in truth. And so as I have gone through my own journey of faith, which has been, I mean, it has been rough at times, right? I've watched her struggle with it and freak out because she's like, "I just want..." But that's not her journey to bear, but it is at the same time. And so it's always been interesting, kids are this thing where I feel like once I have them, obviously I'm there for the rest of my life, but I feel like there's this stress or there's this new piece of my life that's unlocked that I've never explored before. I don't know anything about it. And I'm like, afraid isn't the right word, but I'm pushing that off as long as I possibly can because once that's opened then I never get to close it again. And that mystery is almost fun to like look forward to, but at the same time, I get to focus over here. Russell: Essentially I remember thinking about this a lot, especially for the first two years. I was like, "his is so much harder than I thought it was going to be." Flat out, way harder. But also remember feeling and thinking out loud, "This is so much cooler than I ever dreamt it was going to be." Like this double-edged sword. And I was like, "Man, I didn't realize how tired and worn out." And all these things. But then so much better than I thought. It's funny. Cause I had a lot of friends who are like, “well, I want to make money, and then I’ll have kids”. I don't think, I don't know. It's different. I would just have kids, you can do both. It's not impossible. Especially when they're first born, they just sit there. I would spend a year or two and just not- Josh: Right, right, right. Russell: But I wouldn't wait until like, "Oh, I need a million bucks in the bank." I get people all the time, I know people that are broke, that have eight kids. They're not that expensive. Like, Cheerios are not that expensive, if you need to. It's just being willing to be there and be loving and be being present for as much as you can. Another thing that's been interesting, especially now that our kids are going to be teenagers, it's like so much harder. That's harder. Josh: Really that's harder than when they're young. Russell: Oh, for sure. Yeah. Josh: Dave's over here just laughing. Russell: It's different- Josh: Oh gosh. What am I in for Dave? Oh no. Russell: Yeah. The young part is like, "I'm tired." That's a hard part when they're young. When they're older, it's just like, am I messing these kids up, I just want them to be successful. That's the bigger fear. I remember a little thing that gave me some grace, Tom Bilyeu, I heard of this Instagram post about him talking about being a parent, and it was so funny because he's like, "Who here is scared that you're going to eff up your kids?" That was how he would have said it. Josh: Right, yeah. Russell: I would say “mess up”. Who's gonna mess up your kids. And everyone's hands like, "Yeah. I'm scared." He's like, "Guess what?..." I got to make sure I gets right. He's like, "My parents messed me up. You're going to mess your kids up. But guess what? We turned out okay in the end. Just be okay with the fact that you're going to mess your kids up because you are." And I remember, I was like, "Okay, everyone messed up their kids, that's part of it." That's part of the whole journey, that's the journey. And it gave me some grace of just like, "Look, I'm going to do my best. I'm probably going to mess them up." But at the same time you have to have faith, they're going to do their thing and they're going to hopefully make the decisions. And if not, that's why we have God. That's why we have repentance. And just in the kind of leaving it to leave it to him and do your best.

covid-19 god america jesus christ donald trump hollywood kids man super bowl real doctors hero event fall in love patriots jets heck separation flat journeys makes gary vee imagining duh versus google docs clifton russel bootstrapping ayn rand clickfunnels russell brunson cheerios marketing secrets tom bilyeu atlas shrugged thousand faces shoe dog phil donahue dagny john galt myron golden funnel hacking josh forti josh russell josh yeah josh you atlas shrugged part josh how josh oh josh so hank rearden josh do russell it

The Atlas Shrugged Interview - Part 2 of 5

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 23, 2020 42:24

Welcome to part 2 of the 5 part Atlas Shrugged interview! On today’s segment you’ll get to hear Russell and Josh discuss being a producer and how important it is to continually create content. They talk about being a good steward over the ideas that God gives you, and how you should be preparing for even bigger and better ideas. And finally, they explain how “motion is the key”. So enjoy part two of this fun interview and don’t forget to go to tshirtsmackdown.com for your Atlas Shrugged swag! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- What's up everybody, welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. All right, my first question for you, is how'd you like the first part of the interview with me and Josh of Atlas Shrugged? I hope you enjoyed it. Today, I'm going to give you guys part two of a five-part interview series. We will pick up after the intro song, we'll pick up where we left off. We'll keep diving into these topics, these concepts. Again, throughout this interview, we talk about religion, we talk about politics, and we talk about all these things through the lens of the Atlas Shrugged book. So with that said, we'll cue up the theme song, we'll come back, we'll go into part two of my interview with Josh Forti about Atlas Shrugged. Josh Forti: Because what I'm trying to figure out, this is open discussion here... I am a pretty motivated, driven person. I never would've described what I was doing as greedy. Russell Brunson: Would you have thought that when you were an athlete, or thought when you were a kid- Josh: Yeah. Russell: ...no. But what is it? Josh: Well, yeah. And that's why I asked you the question. Because I don't know the answer myself. Russell: I feel the same way, because I never... it wasn't until I was reading the book, The Utopia of Greed- Josh: Yeah, yeah. Russell: ...and all of a sudden, I started thinking, all these things we're doing... we call them growth, we call them whatever, which is awesome, but it is... it's a greedy time in your life, right? Josh: Yeah. I wonder what the actual definition of greed is. Russell: Yeah. Josh: I'm going to look this up. We'll see. Definition of greed. Russell: It has a def-... negative connotation in our world today. Josh: Intense and selfish desire for something, especially money, power or food. Russell: Or food. Josh: Well- Russell: There you go. Josh: All right. Money, power or food. Russell: For me, thinking about the lens of wrestling, when I was wrestling, I had a selfish desire for, I wanted to be a state champ, I wanted to be an all-American, I wanted to be a national champ- Josh: But why? Why? Russell: Because I wanted my hand-raising. That was all I thought about, all I dreamt about. I couldn't... I'm a very obsessive person, that's why I don't gamble. Because I was like, I put a quarter in and I win, I'm broke. It doesn't matter how much I started with, it’s gone. And I know that about myself. So when I started wrestling, and I got my hand raised the first time, I was like, that feels good, I want to feel that every day for the rest of my life. And I just went, blinders on, and that's all I did, that was my... and I mean, I wouldn't have thought of it as greedy, but by definition, it's like, you need to focus on these things about yourself. Now I'm in the phase of my life where I'm coaching wrestling, coaching my kids and stuff like that, and it's different, because there's nothing in it for you, except for seeing their hand-raising and that light in their eyes go off, and it's just like, that felt way better than my own. But you don't know that until you're in that phase. Josh: Yeah. Did having kids change that for you at all? Did it help solidify or give you a different perspective on that shift from greedy to- Russell: I think... maybe not so much solidify as much as I'm experiencing that in multiple parts of my life, not just the business part. Josh: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Russell: A lot in part, you think about our success stories and our business are our children, the children of ClickFunnels, whatever you want to say, they're the people that have come off it. So I think I'm experiencing it now with them, and it's been interesting and fun and... yeah. Josh: How long did it take you to finish the book? Russell: I think about two months. Josh: Oh, wow. Russell: You read it way faster than I did. Josh: Well, it's one of those things... it's funny because my mom was like, have you even read the book? I'm like, what do you mean, you made me read in high school. And I went back and I was like, oh, I didn't actually read... I knew the book, so I assumed I had read it. And then I realized it was 1200 pages and I was like, I don't remember reading a 1200-page book. I feel like I would've remembered that- Russell: I got to do it right now, because Russell's going to be talking about. Josh: Right. And that's exactly what happened. So it was like, oh, we want to do this, cool. And I could've sat down and had the conversation without reading the book. Because I knew the concept, the premise. And so then I went through it and... every night, two-and-a-half speed, couldn't sleep, I'd get up and like, oh, man, it's 3:00 in the morning. Close the book, go back in there. So- Russell: Can I interject? Josh: Yeah. Russell: Because there is something you started on that I want to make sure we don’t miss, because I think it was... you started leading real good and there is somewhere I want to wrap it because it’s an open loop in my head now. Josh: Okay, okay, okay. Russell: You started talking about how you agree on the left side of social helping people, but not the way that they do it- Josh: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Russell: ...is that how you said it? Okay, so- Josh: I agree with what they want to do- Russell: Yes. Josh: ...i don't agree with how they want to do it. Russell: Okay, so, this is something that was powerful. So after I read the book, I was geeking out, and I'm like, who is this Ayn Rand, I want to see. So I started searching her and I found an interview she did on Donahue, 1980, three months after her husband passed away. And it was a fascinating interview- Josh: Oh, dang. Russell: ...she's atheist, does not believe in a god, all these things like that, so- Josh: She even made a statement about how part of the reason she wrote the book was to prove that religion was fake and to destroy all belief in any form- Russell: So once again- Josh: Super different. Russell: ...this is not the Bible for me, this is just... stimulating book that got my mind spinning. One thing she said during the interview that was so cool, because Donahue's like, "So based on this, you believe that we should all be producers and greedy and keep all our money and we should never... we shouldn't help anybody." And she said, "No, no, no, that's not what I said." She's like, "I never said that." She said, "What I did say, is that it should not be the government coming to you with their guns saying, 'Give me your 50% of your taxes.'" That's what's messed up. You think about this, if you give a gift... if someone comes to you and gives you a gun like, give your friend a gift, are you actually giving them a gift? No, you're not. Josh: Yeah. Russell: If you don't pay the taxes, they put you in jail. That's the thing. She said, "People should go and support people on their own." This comes back to... this is the whole thing we talked about before, the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, unless he yields to the enticing of the Holy Spirit. Us yielding saying, "Hey, I have all this money, I should go help other people with this." That's God saying, you should not be greedy, use what you've blessed with and help other people's lives. Right? Them coming to you with a gun saying, "Pay your taxes or go to jail," is not you giving a gift. It's them taking it from you and giving it away. So you're not a better person because you did it, right? And then we get into the whole depth of... this is the government now who's the worst run organization in the history of all time, which… I won’t even rant on that. You want to trust them with the money, right? So I just want to share a practical example, because people are like, "Well, you wouldn't give money if you didn't..." whatever. Right now, I'm taxed more than 50%, so more than half my income goes to Uncle Sam. He's doing whatever the crap they do with it. Josh: Well, you just need some Cash Flow Tactics. Russell: Yeah. Josh: Shameless plug. Russell: Yeah. Anyway, I have no idea, I don't actually do my taxes. That's the tax bracket. But then you look at... when you yield to the enticing of the Holy Spirit. So there was a time when my friend Stu McLaren is like, "Hey, we're building schools in Kenya, and this is mission and we believe in it, will you help?" It wasn't greedy Russ like, "I'm going to help and this is going to be awesome." Josh: Yeah. Russell: I felt something, I was like, "Oh my gosh. That is a great cause. Yeah, how can I support you?" In that process you can see, here's pictures of Stu and Amy in Kenya, we've been to Kenya four times now. We donated money, we built schools... that is a gift, versus give us money so we can go do something with it, right? And then a couple years later, I heard about Operation Underground Railroad, and I was like, oh my gosh, and I felt the spirit saying, "This is a good cause, you should serve, you should do this thing." And I put time and energy and money into this thing. We raised multiple millions of dollars now to save children from sex slavery. And not everyone's willing to do that. Again, there's a segment of people who will... it comes back to, the natural man is an enemy to God and has been since the fall of Adam and will be forever and ever. A lot of people never get off the greed boat. But most people, as you start making more and more money, you look at anybody, you look at Bill Gates, look at Elon Musk, anyone who's making much money, what do they do with their money? Eventually they start giving it to charities or helping people... all these things, because there's that transition point where you feel that, you hear the voice, you hear God, whatever you want to call it. You should be serving more. And I think... I know that if my tax went from 50% to 20% to 10% or whatever that thing was, I would and could give so much more, and everybody could. Right now, half the money goes to organizations that... what's happening with the money? Do we know? Do we see any ledger of what's happening? No, it's insane. Josh: Even Bill Maher, who... do you know Bill Maher? Russell: I know who he is, I don't follow him- Josh: Stupid... super left, right? Definitely would not align with our political views, or your... or my political views. But even him is like, I have no idea what my tax dollars are going to. I have no idea where my millions of dollars I pay every- Russell: Isn't that scary? Josh: Isn't that crazy. It's wild. Only the government. It's crazy. Russell: And then they go like... sorry, this is a plug for OUR and Tim Ballard. Tim Ballard, I know does not take a salary. His payment for being CEO of Operation Underground Railroad and risking his life day in and day out is zero dollars they pay him. He funds it himself. All the money he makes is from his books, his speaking, other things he does, externally to pay for himself, because he doesn't want to take money from an organization saving kids. Can you say that about any of the government- Josh: Yeah. Russell: ...no, it's insane. It's... anyway. But, yeah. So for me, it's like- Josh: Somebody's going to mention that Trump takes a zero dollar salary in there. That's not what we're talking about. Russell: But for me, it's like, that's my big thing, understanding that I think there's this blend of left and right. If we're not producing, the fact that I'm going to wake up every morning and kill myself, even though I have more money than I'm ever going to need, now we have 400 plus people who have full-time jobs here... excuse me, full-time jobs here at ClickFunnels. It's 144,000 people who have active ClickFunnels accounts. Each of those people, if they had one employee, it's 144,000 jobs. If they had two to three, that means... you're looking at... it's probably half a million to a million jobs have been created because of ClickFunnels, because we get up every day and we're chasing something, we're producing, producing, producing, right? If you take away incentives of that... I'd have to lay off half my staff, which then... and then everything starts disappearing really quickly. Where it's like, if they took that away, now we can go and how much more could we do? We did the OUR... we talked about OUR and showed the documentary at Funnel Hacking Live, and since then, four or five dozen people who were in our community showed the OUR documentary at their events and made money, and it's like this ripple effect keeps growing, growing, growing, versus the other side where it's just... it shrinks and- Josh: Okay, so, I want to get non-specifically political here for a second with this and... I don't want to say play the devil's advocate, I just want to understand your thoughts on this. So the argument on the other side, if you will, the people that are more traditionally higher tax bracket, you should be taxed even higher. We want to take more of your money away because it's this. Basically, the thought process is like... listen, you have donated your money to Kenya and to Operation Underground Railroad and things like that, but guess what, there's probably people here in your own community, like in Boise, for example, right, or wherever these entrepreneurs are, that you have millions and millions of dollars, there's people that are homeless. There's people who can't afford medical payments, or there's people who genuinely need help. And so the argument is, yeah, you've given some, but you have so much of it, you could do that and be taxed higher. We could take even more of your money and your life wouldn't change at all, and we're also like... not talking about your business money, we're only talking about profit, we're only going to take that part of it away. And so the argument on the other side is, if collectively... and I'm just going to make up a number here. Let's just say there's 10,000 entrepreneurs like you in America, that have millions of dollars or billions of dollars... I know you don't have billions.... billions of dollars, we could take all that money, and hypothetically, we could solve a lot of these issues. We could tax the top 10 richest people, whatever. Why doesn't that work? Or, A, I guess it's a two-part question. A, are you... A, why doesn't that work, and B, what is your solution for that, if any? What's your perspective, your view on how that would help? Russell: Yeah, I think- Josh: Or can you not help everybody? Russell: This is the fun part, politics, right? It's tough, and I'll preface this before we dive into the actual question... it's tough because there's good on both sides and there's bad on both sides. That's the hardest thing, right? And so that's the hard thing, is you can argue both ways. Let's say me as an entrepreneur, because I only know experiences through my own self, right? Josh: Right. Russell: I know what I pay in taxes every single year. I know how much goes away, I know how much I make. And it's tough because the more... the less you make for the more you work, the less incentivized you are to keep working. If my take-home was $100 grand a year, I'd be like, why am I killing myself? I could work three hours a day and make that, so why would I keep doing this stuff? If there's no reward, then it's hard, right? It's like, what's the purpose of doing any of this stuff? And it'd be really easy to then shrink back, and the company shrinks, employees shrink, everything shrinks because there's no incentive for us to risk everything. It's a risk reward thing. That's a big part of it. How do you solve it, I don't know, I don't think the solution is the government to come in with a gun and saying, give us half your money so we can go solve this problem. I think it's, man, what are the things in you're interested in saving? What are the things that touches your heart, what are the things that you're inspired to actually help? For me it's Kenya, for me it's this, for me it's... there's other things that we give money to that I don't talk about publicly. But there's things that... what are the things that I care about? Let me focus there. Everyone's got different agendas. I had Matt Maddix, someone who I... Caleb Maddix is the father, he's super awesome guy. He came to me and he's like, "Hey, my mission is to save these kids off the streets and this stuff..." all these kinds of things. I'm like, "That's amazing," he's like, "Can you help me?" I'm like, "That's not my calling. My calling are these things here. That's your calling, dude, I respect it, I support it, I'll help give money or whatever I can do to help. But that's your calling. God gave you that. That was the thing that you were given, that's the mantel you're in charge of." And everyone's got a different mantel. So your calling might be different from mine, people come to me all the time like, "Oh, that charity's cool, but I support this." Like, good, I don't care who you support. Everyone's got different callings and they're all good. So I think we should be able to say, what's the thing that speaks to our heart that we're passionate about, and that's what we should focus our time and our energy and our money on, not... again, don't come with the guns saying, "Give me 50% because I think it should go over here." Josh: But what about the people though, that... let's pretend, and I have... guys, I love Elon Musk, I'm going to use him purely as an example. Clearly I have no idea what he does with his money. But let's pretend. So, Elon Musk and all his money... what if he wasn't charitable? Should the government, or anybody, be able to come in and be like, "Yo, you have so much money." Or Zuckerberg, or whatever. "You have so much money. We're going to... you got..." I don't know, he's worth $90 billion. Let's say he has $3 billion in liquid cash. I'm just... hypotheticals here. "You got $3 billion here literally sitting here. We're going to take that away and we're going to give you... you can have $500 million if it, but we're going to take $2.5 billion and give it to people who actually need it." Do you think that there needs to be some overriding law or power or something that's like, "Yo, you can't just hoard. You got to... if you have more than enough, you got to go and give it back." Or do you think that's a personal choice? Russell: I think it's a personal choice. Think about, how many jobs has he created? He's giving that stuff, and this is the reward for this risk and reward side of thing. And his $3 billion, let's say, what's his next thing? He's not just going to sit on it, that's stupid. For him, for anybody, right? Josh: Right. Russell: He's going to go invest in the next thing, he's going to create more jobs, do more things, to stimulate the economy in different ways. He's going to go and start PayPal, and then he's going to start Tesla, and then he's going to start sending rocket ships to space. A producer's going to produce, because they want to produce. It's the art for them. So let them create art because the byproduct of art is jobs, it is stimulation of the economy, all those things happening. And so for me, building funnels is my art. I couldn't care less about the revenue that comes from it. I need the revenue to be able to hire the teams and the people and the things that we need to be able to continue the art, to pay Zuckerberg, to show my ads on the thing. All these things are part of it. So I think, yeah, if he's sitting on $3 billion, it's just sitting there, but producers don't typically do that. They're reinvesting, they're doing stuff with it that creates more. Josh: I want you to come up with a story on the spot, go. Which you're pretty good at. But I want you to talk about that. Producers produce. I think that might be one of the... actually, I'm curious to know... I feel like that is one of the most misunderstood things about the ultra-wealthy. The people that are actually... not like, I inherited $200 million because I'm a trust fund baby. But the actual Elon Musks of the world, the Jeff Bezoses of the world, the Russell Brunsons of the world, what ultimately drives you to go keep doing more? You have all of the money. And I know... we talked about the... you want to contribute back part, but there's a million different ways you can contribute. Why do you do the things that you do? Because I feel like one of the misunderstood things is... and this is something I don't know how to explain it to people that don't know it, I told my fiance, I was like, "You should listen to Russell." Because I'm like, "I think like that." You know what I mean? If you don't understand me, maybe you could see it from somebody else and know that I'm not weird. I mean, I am, but there's other people like me, that think like this. But it's like, how would you explain to somebody that Elon Musk is going to do what Elon Musk does. He's Elon Musk. Zuckerberg, or whoever- Russell: Hank Reardon. Josh: Right, right, whoever. Russell Brunson. You're going to do what you do, because that's who you are. You build things, and the result of... because you need to build things, you need resources. So you're like, man, if I want to go build this thing over here, I need $100 million, or I need $10 million. I'm just going to go make that money, and I'm going to go do it here. And you're basically just organizing things. You're either creating or you're organizing. How does that mentality work? I don't think the average person understands that. And I think that's one of the big misconceptions of... because this goes back to the greed thing, and the reason I really don't like the word greed is because there is so much misconception about it, although I will say the definition says that it's probably that. Russell: It is a negative word... the connotation's super negative. Josh: But it's like, you don't exclusively do it because you're greedy. You did it because you don't know how to do anything else. You know what I mean? Russell: Yeah. Josh: Sorry, sorry, Alex Charfen… We can't turn it off, and we don't understand why anybody would want to. Russell: Yeah, yeah. Josh: Like that, that's the thing. Russell: If you think about it, it's creation. Why was man put on this earth? Were we put on Earth to wake up, watch TV, go back to bed? No, we have creative powers in our body, that’s how husband and wife get together and have children and create. That's the mission on Earth, we're always creating. Any of us, you get married, you create something, we need a house, where are we going to live at? And you create things to be able to get a job, to be able to organize matter, to be able to make, oh, we have a house now we can move into. And that's the thing, so many people though, they become... the word that Garrett White uses best, sedated. Where there's pain, and so because the pain, they're sedated, so they just sit in the moment of, they don't want the pain. Because the pressure is too heavy for the one point, it hurts so bad, they say, I have to stop. Versus what we talk about, over the last six years, I get destroyed, then increased capacity, then destroyed. And so there's two sets of people, there's the people that aren't producing, they're sedating, because they're afraid of the pain, nervous of the pain, trying to hide from the pain, I get that. There's been seasons of my life where I've felt pain and I just want to hide, and I have. And then there's seasons of your life, at least hopefully for most... and I wish everybody could experience it, because the opposite of it, when you're in the creation zone, when you're creating, you're doing it, it's hard, it's a different... both of them are hard, they're different hards, right? One is there's so much fear, there's so much just trying to get out of the pain, and the other one is just... you create to create, right? You can ask my team, we build a funnel, and for me, it's just like, look at this thing we created. We create a product or an event or whatever, and it's like, the creation of the thing, and sharing it with people, that's... I don't know. And I think it's the same way when I was wrestling, that was my art at the time, and I didn't want to do anything besides wrestling. When to tournaments and tournaments, I'm like, what's the next tournament, what's the next thing, kept doing that, kept doing that, my entire life, because that was the art. After awhile, you just want to keep performing what you're doing, right? And I think that if you can get out of that sedation that most people live in... I say the majority of- Josh: And I think that's the issue, that for you and I, we create. Entrepreneurs, funnel hackers, free thinkers of the world, they go out there and they create because it's like, that's what we do. Russell: Yeah. Josh: I don't think that's how most of the world operates. Russell: Yeah. Did you... initially, right, when they're born, they have that seed, that seed of whatever we call it, growth, greed, whatever, right? Something happens in life where they get the pain and they sedate because it's easier. I think that's one of the biggest problems, and I am anti-drug, anti everything that causes sedation, because most of the world, I see... especially in entrepreneurial community, where people could be doing so much more, but instead there's sedating with drugs or alcohol or weed or whatever, because it's like, let me take the pressure of myself. And man, what a tragedy. You could be producing and changing so many people's lives, but it's like, I need an outlet. The outlet causes sedation, it takes you out of your ability to produce. I think the majority of people, that's what they do. It drives me crazy, I see all the conversation on Facebook of... there's entrepreneur events where people come together, they literally... there's sessions, we talk about what mushrooms they use to hallucinate... it just drives me nuts. You guys are sedating to get out of this pain as opposed to stepping into the pain, creating and changing people's lives. So I'm very vocal, anti all that kind of stuff, because I think so many people, that's what they slip back into. One of the greatest blessings of my religion that I believe is I don't have these tools to sedate that most people use. And so my outlet is creation. If my outlet was drinking, if my outlet was drugs, if my outlet was these other things, I wouldn't have been able to produce, but I don't, so my outlet's got to be what, what is it? Production, let's create something amazing. And I think too many people let themselves off the hook and just, oh, I can create or maybe watch TV, or I'm going to go eat, or I'm going to go... if your outlet is something that sedates you, that's taking you out of your creative zone, I think most people slip back because it's easier, it's cheaper, it doesn't cause the pain. Garrett White's whole mission, Wake-Up Warriors, waking men up from that sedated state that most of our society are stuck into. That’s why I relate to him so well, because I see it in people I love, that I care about, like, you're sedated, if we could break you out of that and get you into production, you could change the world. Josh: Yeah, I think it's interesting. So, I have a coach who I think did that for me... I mean, I don't use Garrett White, which... that's an intense man, oh my word. Garrett, if you're listening, I would love to talk to you. Come on the show. I've always plugged him. Hey, if I'm ever going to get a guest... Elon Musk, if you're listening. Anyway. But I have a coach, Katie Richardson. You know Katie. Katie is... outside of my immediate family, and Leah, obviously, top three people that changed my life, Katie Richardson and Russell Brunson are two of those people that are in that top thing, right? So Katie is someone that I work with one-on-one. I don't think I was ever sedated in the sense of what you're talking about, but the opposite of sedation is being alive. Really, truly, coming alive, understanding who you are, what you are put on this earth here to do. And so the thing that I struggled with for the longest time, even from the beginning days of this entrepreneur, is right and wrong. I didn't want to do the wrong thing. I didn't want to tick anybody off, because that would be bad. Like, oh, man, you don't want to get into a fight, because that's bad. I don't want to make too much money because that might be bad. Or I don't want to say the wrong thing because it might be bad. So I lived in this black and white, is it right or is it wrong. Katie came along, and she's like, "Josh, there is no right and wrong." There is in the sense of moral right and wrong... I'm not going to go into that concept, but... universal truth, I do believe there's absolute truth. But in the sense of our everyday life, it's not so much is it the right thing or the wrong thing, it's what are you going to choose to do. But you can only know what you're going to choose if you're alive, if you know who you are, and you know what you're put on this earth to do. And that's why... it's funny, you might... I think you may know this sorry. So my brother dies, helicopter crash, beginning of 2019, kind of wrecked my whole life, ending up selling the company, sold the business to an investor, business partner took over, and Leah and I took off on our own. And it's supposed to be this four-month long trip where I was going to disconnect and figure out life and everything like that. And Christmas time, it's about a week before Christmas, and we're in the Philippines, in the middle of absolutely freaking nowhere. The nearest airport, hospital, anything, is six hours away. Absolute middle of nowhere. And Leah gets an intestinal eating parasite. She gets super, super sick. Can't sit up, can't keep food down. I'm like, oh my gosh, we're in the Philippines, middle of nowhere. So we go to the emergency room, and we get there and it's a cart... it's like a piece of plywood with two-inch foam, and there's no doors on the bathroom, no toilet seat, there's ants crawling... it's terrible, right? And so long story short, we end up having to cut our trip two months early, we lose tens of thousands of dollars in deposits getting her home or whatever. And I have no business at this point. We're supposed to be going for two months longer. I was supposed to fly home... I was supposed to come to Funnel Hacking Live, that was going to be our coming home. And I find myself in the basement of my girlfriend's mom's house, the night before Christmas, going like, "What am I doing with my life? How did I end up here?" I go through the process like, okay, I need a coach. And I go through and I interview a bunch of different coaches and I end up choosing Katie. And I'm like, "All right, Katie, you're going to solve all my business problems for me. You're going to help me make all this money, you're going to help me build this million-dollar business," and everything like that. And so the very, very first call, I'll never forget, the very first question, she's like, "All right. Vent. I know you need to." Just brain dump, vent for 20, 30 minutes straight. I'm like, "What's the answer?" And she goes, "Josh, who are you?" I was like, "Really? That's where we're going to start this whole conversation?" I just paid you 60 grand? And looking back now, that... and I do have a full circle with this. Looking back now, figuring out who I was gave me my permission to go do what I was called to do, without the fear of what anybody else thought. And I'm not trying to intentionally piss anybody off. I don't want people to actually hate me. But I'm so certain in what I'm doing and knowing who I am, that I know I'm a contributor to society. I know that I make the world better with what I do because I believe that everybody, deep down inside, God has given talents. And I believe that the thing that, whatever it is that you're good at, that you like to do or whatever, that's the talent that God gave you, and you have a choice on how you're going to go out and use that, and I believe that we should use that to serve Him. The problem is, is that I don't think... I think an overwhelming majority of the world has no idea who they are or what they're called to be. And because of that, the people like you or Elon or whoever, the producers of society, that know who they are, what their talents are, what they're called to do, things like that... you've seen my growth. You've watched me transition from this crazy little kid to this... that came by learning who I was and how I was contributing in the world and doing what I was called here and what I was put here for. So when you talk about sedation, I feel like that's the issue of, you're sedated, and so they don't even know who they are. They don't even know how to tap into it, they don't know how to understand it. Because of that, they look at someone like you, they look at someone like me, and they go, "Well, you're preventing me. You're taking away my ability to go do something, because you're taking all the money. You're taking all the opportunity. You have a category and the king of the market, so I can't go and do it then." To those people, this concept of, because you're successful I can't be successful, what is your response there? How do you interpret that? Russell: Yeah. Josh: How do you help someone shift and be like, just because I did it doesn't mean you can't. Russell: Yeah. It's interesting because... it's funny because for me it's such a foreign thing to understand that. I see that so many times entrepreneurs where, it's that mentality of there's not enough money, not enough opportunities or resources, whatever. You know this, I know this, and the bigger problem I have is there are so many opportunities, every single day... it's not that there's not enough opportunities, it's there's so many, it's like, how do you... I think when people start understanding that, look around. Learn some basic skills. The original DotComSecrets book I wrote because I'm like, if anyone took these principles, looked at any business, you could apply it and boom, it just works. It's magic. There's not a business on this... Adam’s Eye Care, I can see right there out the window... I can take DotComSecrets principles and blow that company up overnight. And so if you have these tools, you could do anything, you could sell phones, you could sell watches, you could sell books, you could sell podcasts. I think when people start understanding that, it's just education, they don't understand it. I have friends before who are like, “life's tough right now, there are no opportunities”. And I'm just like, what? There are so many opportunities, but you have to have the skillset that actually... can produce it. I think a big frustration obviously, I have, I think you have as well, is... and we talked about this a little tonight, with my kids... a lot of the things we were equipped with are school... the school system doesn’t equip you to be able to capitalize on opportunities. It doesn't, unless you're like, I want to be a doctor. Cool, this is the process, now you can capitalize on being a doctor or being a dentist, or whatever that traditional path is. To be able to walk in and make it rain somewhere, those skillsets aren't found in school. And you think about in any business, there's a couple personalities. There's the entrepreneur who starts it. Then there's the managers who are managing the people, there's the technicians who are doing the thing, and there's the rainmakers who come in and make money. If you learn that skillset... how do you become a rainmaker? How do you go in, and you can plug in any business, any opportunity, and you can turn it into money? And every door you walk past, there's opportunity. There's infinite, every human you see there's opportunity, right? People have to learn how to take the talent and learn how to market the talent. God gives us all different things. Some people... Kaelin Poulin, God gave her a gift to be able to help women lose weight. But it wasn't until she learned how to market that that it was actually now... now, the opportunity is huge. They’ve got, I don't know, 100 employees at her company, millions of women they've served across the world. Taking your God-given talent, learning how to make it rain, putting those two things together, now, unlimited opportunities. So I think a lot of times, we're given... and that's why I'm so loud about my mission, I try to share so much, because I believe that God's given everyone a calling. Says in the Scriptures, many are called, but few are chosen. Everybody's called. Everybody gets a calling. Everybody gets that tap on the shoulder. Everyone gets the opportunity. No matter where you're born, where you're... everyone gets the opportunity, you're called. Most people don't do it, or they don't know how to do it, because they have this talent, this hobby, this thing... and then what happens? They sedate, they hide, or they search. And if you search, you find the answer, and it's like, oh my gosh, now I can make this change the world. Josh: But do you think everybody has that talent though? Obviously, there's only one Russell Brunson. But I have discussions with my mom a lot. I have a great relationship with my mom. My mom always tells me, she's like, "Josh, not everybody's you. Not everybody thinks like you. Not everybody has to drive like you. Not everybody has the confidence like you. Not everybody has the..." and I'm like, you don't have to. You can do the same things, just in your own way. Russell: And everyone's got a different view of success, too. Josh: Right. Russell: One of my first mentors taught me that... when I launched my first mastermind group, he pulled me aside and he's like, "Your mastermind group's going to fail if you try to put your version of success on all those people." And I was like, "What do you mean?" He's like... it was funny, because he was in the room and he's like... I can't say names because some of you may know someone. He's like, "you see that guy, you know why he’s in the room?" I'm like, "Why?" He's like, "He wants to hear himself talk. That's why he's here. And if I try to force him to do something, he's not going to do it. That guy right there? He's here because he wants to hang out with the group and network people. You? You're here because you want to steal everybody's ideas, right?" He's like, "If you try to launch a mastermind, your goal is to build a $100 million company, you try to put that, your values on the people, you're going to make them all fail." And that was a big a-ha for me, everyone's got a different vision of success. Maybe your brother, someone, your sister... family member, may not think like you or be like you, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean they have to change a million people's lives to change the world. It could be they're a mom, and they can be the best mom in the world and they change their kid's life, that's a calling. Josh: And that's what I want you to touch on. I want you to expand upon that. Because I feel like... man, I hear so many arguments, I'm trying to figure out which one fits best here. But, "Josh, we need the plumbers of the world." Russell: Yeah. Josh: Right? We need the people who will come in vacuum the carpet. We need the people that'll just do the mediocre tasks and that are not important, and that'll do those in and out and in and out and in and out. And, yeah, that. Because I feel like... how do I say this. I believe that a majority of the people in this world are not living up to their true potential. A massive... overwhelming majority are not- Russell: I don't think anyone is, to be honest. I don't think I am. Josh: Right. Russell: Yes, so, yes, 100%. Josh: But, you're living far more potential like the average person is, right? And how I look at is, I go, hey, listen, not everybody can do what you do or what I do, or whatever. Okay... how do I bring it around so it’s more… clear? I’m going to use a political aspect of things, because I think that's something we can all understand. Hey, poor people, victim mentality people... that's a controversial... you know what I'm saying. But victim mentality people, or poor people, they don't think like that, or maybe they didn't have as good a schooling, or maybe they didn't have as good an education, whatever. They don't have the same understanding that you do. So shouldn't we help them see that they can go and achieve more? Or should they... is their version of success... what am I trying to ask? Russell: The answer's yes, we should be, and that's what we're doing. I heard some of the... before, they're like, "Well, Russell, you have a $50,000 or $100,000 mastermind group, I can't afford that, that's not fair." I'm like, "Yeah, but I also do a podcast two to three times a week, every single week for six years. I've written three books you can get for 10 bucks, or you can get them for free." There's levels of it. The thing is there's value everywhere and if you pick it up, it increases... and you actually apply it? I'm a big believer that God gives all of us stewardship over things. He'll give you an idea, he'll give me an idea, he'll give anybody an idea, or desire. Here's some desire for you. You look at these kids who are struggling, but they get desire to play basketball and then they become Michael Jordan, or whoever... the people, right, because God gives them desire, or give them ideas, or talents. I'm a big believer in my business life, as I've been doing this journey now for 18 plus years, is that I got ideas, and a lot of the ideas I didn't do anything with. But some of them I took, I got the idea, and I'm not naïve to think, oh, I came up with this great idea. These are blessings from God, he's like, here's an idea, let's see if you're going to be a good steward with it. I get the idea, and if I do something with it, He's like, "Oh my gosh, Russell's a good steward of ideas, let me give him another idea." And if I don't do something with it, He's like, "All right, let me give it to somebody else." All the stuff is happening that would've happened without... somebody would've taken it. But I was a good steward of the thing and so I got blessed with another one and another one and another one. And I think that's a big part of it. I don't think that God... I do think that He puts us all on different spots to start with- Josh: Okay, that's a fascinating concept. Russell: 100%. He's giving us ideas or desires, things like that, and He's watching, are you going to be a good steward with it? If you are, I'll give you more, if you are, I'm going to give you more. So people can go from the worst of the worst and become the best in the world, people can start the best in the world and be horrible. Because what do you do with the things you're given stewardship over? Josh: So, what you're saying here, which is actually a fascinating concept, is that... I'm going to use the idea for ClickFunnels for example. The idea for ClickFunnels wasn't yours, per se. Russell: Do you know how many people were trying to build a funnel software when we built ClickFunnels? Josh: I'm sure a lot. Russell: All my friends were. Everybody was. Josh: So you have this idea that is essentially open for anybody... anybody could go and take advantage of this idea, you just... you're saying God put this idea in your head... and he probably put this idea in 100 peoples' heads, or 500... 10,000 peoples' heads or whatever. But you're like, I was the one who answered the calling to be, okay, I'm actually going to take this idea and do something with it. And so because of that, it's not that you took it away from anybody else... anybody could've done it, you're just the one who went out and actually just chose to do it and bring it to reality. Russell: Yup. 100%. Josh: Okay. Russell: There's a... I wish... somebody shared it to me and I haven't read the book. There's a book that tells a story... there's an author who had an idea for a book, sat down and started writing it, and someone's going to know it... it's a famous book, people would know this, I guarantee someone on this chat knows this. Josh: Somebody comment below when you here it, what it is. Russell: The author's writing the book, and then stops, runs out of time, forgets about it. And then six years later, this new book comes out, becomes a New York Times bestselling book, buys the book, starts reading, and is like, "This is the book that I was supposed to write." And it was like, oh my gosh, I didn't take stewardship of the idea, I stopped, and so God gave it to somebody else. It's the same book, right, it's just I didn't finish it. And I 100% believe that. I think it could be an idea, it could be desire, it could be a million things, we all have these different gifts of the spirit, that are given to us, and they sit back and watch and see what you're going to do with it. Josh: I feel like that could give a lot of people permission to go out and do stuff, too, right there. That viewpoint. Because one of the things that I struggled with early on, which, to a certain extent, I think I still struggle with a little bit, not nearly what I used to... why me? Not in a bad way of, oh, man, why do I... but why do I get these cool opportunities? I live a pretty good life, you know what I'm saying? And I'm like, why do I get to have this conversation and not somebody else? Why am I the first person that gets to sit down with Russell Brunson and talk anything related to politics, ever? But it's like, that concept of simply because I chose to go do it. I chose to be the person that was capable of having this conversation, and became that person. And I think that because of that, what you just said right there, gives... to get people permission, you're not taking away from anybody else, and you're not inherently special. You are in your own way, but you're not... it wasn't... you're not the only person that could've built ClickFunnels. Russell: I'm shockingly average. You ask my wife, ask my parents... Russell is shockingly average. Josh: And you're actually super awkward to meet for the first time. Russell: Yeah. Josh: You know the first time... you remember the first time... I think I actually told you this, the first time I met you? Russell: Remind me. Josh: Okay, the first time I met you was at Grant Cardone’s 10X, the very first one. Russell: Okay. Josh: At the time, Grant had hired our team to do Instagram stuff. And this was super, super early on. I was dead broke. I couldn't afford to go to that conference if I wanted to. But because we were doing Instagram stuff, he gave us tickets. And we saw you get offstage and we're like, "Dude, I bet you if we run right now we can meet Russell." So we run downstairs and sure enough, there you are, coming down. And I walk up to you and I'm like, "Russell, oh my gosh, huge fan." And you're like, "Hey. Thanks." And we're like, oh, okay. We're like, "Can we get a picture?" You're like, "Um, yeah, I guess." So I go and normally when you go and take a picture, you put your arm around him, and things like that. You just literally just stood there. And I was like, I guess we're not doing that. And so there's this picture of me in… Russell: I gotta see this picture. Josh: I'll find it. I'll vox it to you. We're sitting there, I'm like... so, guys, Russell is- Russell: Is shockingly average. Josh: Is shockingly average, apparently. But back to the conversation, I remember what I was trying to ask. That was the very first time I met you. I was like, oh, man, I can be a millionaire, too. Russell: Before... I just want to... when I got started, this whole business, it was me and then I hired two of my buddies to come work for me, because they were the only people who cared what I was talking about. Josh: Yeah. Russell: And we're all working on this business, and I remember one of my buddies pulled me aside one day, and said, "The only difference between us two and you?" I said, "No." He said, "The only difference is you're in momentum, you're moving forward, so these opportunities keep coming to you because you're moving, moving, moving, moving." He's like, "We're sitting back here doing the thing, there's no opportunities coming to us because we're not moving." I think what you need to understand is when you're moving in forward, people are like, "Oh, you're lucky you came up with ClickFunnels." I'm like, "Do you know how many funnels I launched before ClickFunnels?" Over a 150. This is not 150 ads that are “create funnel in ClickFunnels, oh, that's a funnel”. It was me coming up with an idea, hiring a designer, writing a sales letter, putting the product together, putting the pages in FrontPage, uploading them through FTP, getting a shopping cart, connecting them 150 times. It took us three months on average through each one. 150 times before we came up with ClickFunnels. I was just moving forward, over and over and over and over and over while everyone else was sitting around waiting. Motion is the key. Josh: Yeah. Russell: The opportunities come. This is what I'm talking about with being a good steward. God gave me an idea for ZipBrander. Do you remember ZipBrander? No one does. That was the first idea and I was like, oh my gosh, ZipBrander. I found a guy in Romania, I paid him 20 bucks to build the software. I created, I got a thing... a header designed and a headline and a thing and I launched it, and I made 400 bucks. And then the next idea was this thing called Article Spider, do you remember the Article Spider? Josh: No. Russell: No one does. I paid someone a couple hundred bucks, I did that, I launched, I made 1700 bucks, and I was like, oh my gosh... Four Hundred Fortunes was number three. And then the next, and the next, and I could show you guys, I did this, I wrote them all... I went back in the Way Back Machine, I found all of them. Thing after thing after thing after thing. Idea after idea. The ideas pop in there, I execute on them, try and try, each one got better and better and better and better, and eventually, God's like, "All right, you're capable, you're a good steward, here's ClickFunnels, let's go with it." If you were to give me that initially, I wouldn't know what to do. It's the momentum, it's the motion that makes you worthy of the calling. And if you're not in momentum, if you're not moving forward, you're never going to get the calling. Many are called, but few are chosen.

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The Atlas Shrugged Interview - Part 1 of 5

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 18, 2020 44:08

Welcome to the first episode in a special 5 part series. Over the course of these next 5 episodes, you’ll get to hear an interview between Russell Brunson and Josh Forti about the book “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. But this interview is much more than just them talking about the book, they are actually discussing business, religion, and politics (a subject Russell doesn’t talk about often) as they pertain to the concepts in the book. In this first section, you’ll get to hear the introduction and the basis for how the entire conversation will flow. The first main topic of the book, and the main concept for this episode is greed. Is it bad? Can it be good? Are we born with it? Can we change? So listen in to part one of this unique interview and start reading “Atlas Shrugged” (just read it, the movies aren’t great), so you can be ready for part 2! Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- What's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. And right now, I have a treat for you. Over the next five episodes, I'm going to be taking you in behind the scenes of an interview that I did with Josh Forti about the book, Atlas Shrugged. And some of you guys have read Atlas Shrugged, some of you haven't. Some of you know the premise, some of you don't. And I want to preface this by saying I do not believe in everything taught in the Atlas Shrugged book. I love a lot of it. It talks about producers versus consumers, the looters and the takers versus those in society who are the creators. Right? And there's a lot of things I strongly align with. There's also things that I don't strongly align with. And so I love the book, one of my favorites I've ever read. And so that's the first thing. Number two is, as I finished the book, I remember Josh Forti, who's one of our funnel hackers, he wanted to do the interview with me and I was just like, "I don't have time for interviews." And we're getting closer and closer to the election, we talked on Facebook. We were posting some comments and I was like, "You know what? The interview that I would actually love to do would be about Atlas Shrugged, looking at the whole political thing as it's happening right now and the elections and everything, through the lens of Atlas Shrugged. That'd actually be fascinating for me," because I don't typically, as you know, talk about politics. Right? I do talk about religion, but I don't talk about politics. That's not something I typically go into, but I thought it'd be interesting to look at politics from the lens of Atlas Shrugged. And so in this interview series, it's a lot of fun. We talk about producers versus consumers. We talk about the left and the right. We talk about some political things. Now Josh, just so you know ahead of time, he's very pro-Trump, very much on that side of the discussions during this interview. And this interview, just so you know, took place before the elections. As of right now, I'm still not sure who won. You guys probably will know by the time you're listening to this, but as of when I'm recording this, we don't know, but he definitely leans on the Trump side. I don't really share much of my political beliefs, but you'll get kind of what I believe and why I believe it through the lens of Atlas Shrugged over this interview series. So I hope you enjoy it. It was a lot of fun to do, a lot of great feedback and comments. And again, we talk about stuff I don't typically talk about ever. So this may be a one-time shot to hear inside my mind when it comes to politics, religion, and all through the lens of Atlas Shrugged, the book. So with that said, I want to introduce you guys to the first part of this five-part interview series with me and Josh Forti, talking about Atlas Shrugged. Russell Brunson: Are we live? Josh Forti: We are live. Russell: What's up, everybody? Josh: Oh, my word, with the incredibly ... I don't know if long-waited. It hasn't really been that long. Two months ago. So much expected podcast with Mr. Russell Brunson, himself. How are you doing, dude? Russell: I'm doing amazing, man. Thanks for flying all the way to Boise just for this conversation. Josh: Yeah, absolutely. Dude, this is probably the conversation I'm looking forward to most, certainly in my life thus far, when it comes to business and philosophy and everything like that. Russell: No pressure at all. Josh: Well, it's funny. Your wife said, "Oh, thanks so much for coming out." I was like, "Yeah, it's certainly ... Yeah, because it's inconvenience to me to fly all the way out here." I will say, this is my first ever in-person interview like this. Russell: Oh, really? Josh: Yeah. Russell: We got the microphones set up. Josh: I know. We have- Russell: He’s a professional. I've never done this before. Josh: Literally, we have a soundboard down here. We've got Russell's mic. Can you guys hear us all right? By the way, guys, for all of you listening on audio, we apologize because we're going to answer some comments in the Facebook feed here because we've got everybody down here. By the way, you can see all the comments down here. Russell: What's up, everyone? Josh: All right, guys. If you are live, comment down below. Let us know where you're tuning in from. Let us know if you know Russell or if you know me or if you know both of us or what you're most looking forward to. And Russell, I'm going to be honest with you. We're just going to be super chill. Guys, we have a live audience back here. We've got Dave. Dave's over there. We've got Jake and Nick. Russell: What's up, Dave? Josh: Where'd Jake go? Russell: Jake's working. Josh: Oh, there we go. Jake's working late over there. Russell: Jake, by the way, designed these amazing shirts for this- Josh: Yeah, check us out. Russell: This is my Rearden Steel shirt. This is my Who Is John Galt shirt. Josh: Isn't this great? Okay, but I feel like the back- Russell: Yeah the back I’ll read what it says. It says, "I started my life with a single absolute, that the world was mine to shape and the image of my highest values never to be given to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle." So do you guys like these shirts? These are custom made for tonight. And you guys may have a chance to get one of these, but not yet. No, not yet. Josh: Not yet. Russell: We'll let you know when the ability ... If you guys ... Josh: Oh, man. Oh, man. Russell: Anyway, it's going to be fun, but these are custom ... We literally made these today. We needed some sweet shirts…for the show. Josh: Okay, Will says he got your text. Did you send my text to everybody? Russell: Yeah. Josh: Russell on top of it. I sent out a ManyChat, Russell sent out a text. All right, guys. Let's lay some ground rules here. So the quick backstory behind this ... And it's going to be weird. You've got to look in the camera here. Quick backstory behind this is I make a post on Facebook about, what, probably three months ago now or so? Russell: Yeah. Josh: Two, three months ago. And I go, "We need some epic people to interview for the podcast. Who do you know? Tag them all down below." And shout out, Georgie. Georgie comments and goes… "I coached Russell. You should totally interview me." And I was like, "You've got to be pretty gutsy to tag Russell in your comment and tell him you coached him," but then Russell comments back- Russell: And George is an Olympic wrestler. He was on the Bulgarian Olympic team. He wrestled at Boise State with me. He's the man. So yeah. Josh: I commented back. I go, "You coached Russel?" And then Russell goes, "Well, yeah. He coached me. He's awesome. You should totally interview him." And so I said, "Yeah, Georgie, of course, you can come on. We'll do an interview, but Russell, I've got an open invitation to you if you want to come back on." And then you were like, "Sure, if we can talk about…" or no, you didn't say sure. You said, "Can we do it about Atlas Shrugged?" Russell: Yes. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Because I interview a lot about business stuff and- Josh: I'll pull the microphone just slightly. Russell: Yes. I don't do a lot of interviews because ... I feel like I've said, but I don't want to say, but I just finished literally probably the fattest book in the history of books called Atlas Shrugged. And I was geeking out on it and I wanted to talk about it. I didn't have a way or someone to geek out with, other than some of my friends here. And I was like, "If you want to talk about Atlas Shrugged, I'm in." And then you started freaking out. Josh: The funny thing was is I go something to the effect of, "You want to talk about the fall of capitalism because of a boycott, because of a brilliant person and why socialism sucks? Yes, absolutely. I would love to do that," to which you don't give me a yes or no answer. You reply back and go, "Ha-ha. Oh, man. That'd be fun." I'm like, "Talk about an open loop, man. Come on." So anyway, I immediately messaged Russel and I'm like, "You better not be joking because that would just be rude." He goes, "No, I'm totally in." Josh: So about two months go by. You had a bunch of stuff. You had some fun stuff during that time, hanging out with- Russell: Lot of stuff is happening. Josh: Tony Robbins? Russell: Yeah, Tony, man. And it's been chaos the last couple months, not going to lie. And as we got closer and closer to the election, I'm like, "This is an interesting conversation, post-election, but I think it's more interesting before election." And so was it two days ago, three days ago, you're like, "I will fly to Boise to record this." Josh: Yeah. Russell: "What day do you have open?" I'm like, "Only Wednesday night." And now we're here. Josh: Yeah. It was Friday afternoon. We were Voxing back and forth and you're like, "Dude, we've got to get this done before the election." I'm like, "Before the election? Oh, my word." I said, "All right. Sounds good. What time do you have available?" And that's when I was like, "You know what? I was going to ask you creatively, but I'm just going to ask you. How about I fly out to you?" And you're like, "Heck, yeah." Josh: So guys, that's the backstory. That's how we got here. And so this is an open conversation about Atlas Shrugged and kind of everything that encapsulates. I think we'll talk about some religion, some politics, kind of both sides of the aisle there and open it up. Russell: Fun. Josh: Anything else you want to add to that? Russell: The only other thing I would add is, because this book, by the way, if you haven't read it yet, is very polarizing. There are people on both sides of it. Russell: And I think both of us wanted to stress ahead of time that I do not believe in everything in this book. A lot of things in this book, I do believe in. And it's interesting. One of the things I want to dive deeper in in this conversation, I'm excited for and I told you not to do Voxer. I was like, what's fascinating to me is not, "This is what we should believe." What was fascinating to me as I was reading this book, and we'll get into the premise of the book for those who haven't read it, but the big thing is producers and going out there and creating stuff and doing things, which is what entrepreneurs do. Right? And it gets in the part of greed is good. You should be greedy because it's going to create all these amazing things, which then the byproduct's really good. Russell: And part of me is like, "Yes, yes, yes, yes," and then part of me, as a believing Christian, I hear this message I believe in and then I hear in my mind ringing Christ, talking faith, hope, charity, and love. And I feel like they're these two polar opposite things, which by the way, we dive into politics a little bit. There are two polar opposite sides, one that believes one, one believes the other. Russell: And I think that there's a happy medium and that's what I want to dive deep into just because I don't want anyone thinking, "Oh, Russell and Josh just believe this," or whatever. It's like, no, there's sides of this and I empathize on both sides. I want to talk about both of them because they're fascinating. Anyway, I've toyed writing a boy about this concept, these two things. Anyway, I think it should be fun to first time verbally ever talk about this stuff. So I'm excited for it. Josh: Yeah. And I would just echo that, as well. I think one of the things that often happens with me, with my ... So funny. You, who never, ever talks about politics and me who doesn't know how to get on Facebook without arguing about politics, colliding here, but is that a lot of times I get grouped into, "Oh, you like this reading. Therefore, you believe with everything." "You read this book," or, "You support this person," whether it's a political figure or a book or something like that. It's like, by saying that you enjoyed that or that you learned a lot from it, that all of a sudden you suddenly believe everything in it. And that is not the case at all. And I've gotten a lot of criticism from people that are like, "How could you possibly like Atlas Shrugged?" And I'm like, "Well, this is the conversation that we're going to have." Josh: So real quick, before we dive in, I'd be curious ... I want to do a poll real quick. How many of you guys have actually read the book? I'm curious to know. Hold up here. There's two different versions of it, but if you've read the book, just comment below the number one if you have read the book, the number two if you have not read the book. I think that will just kind of give us a poll. We've got 200, 300 people. Russell: And if you listened to the audiobook, we'll count that as reading, too, either way. Josh: Yeah. Not if you know the premise of the book, but actually have read the book and have a deep understanding of it, or not deep understanding. But have like… Russell: Understand the stories them in. Josh: Yeah, things like that, because then it'll be interesting. Russell: One is read. Josh: One is read, two is not read. Oh, more ones than I thought was going to. Russell: Yeah. Me too. Josh: Russell's book is so underrated. Russell: We're 50/50. Josh: Ooh, yeah. I think we should take a poll at the end; what's better, Atlas Shrugged or Dotcom Secrets? That's the real question we should be asking right now. Russell: That would be good, that would be good. Josh: Okay. So we have a lot of people that have not read it, so we'll have to go into the premise of that. Okay. Russell: Are you ready to get started? Josh: Yeah. I'm ready to rock and roll with it. Russell: Oh I’m ready. Josh: Okay. Guys, we want to lay a couple ground rules. Okay? Because I don't know what it's like to be Russell, Russell doesn't know what it's like to be me, but I think we both have a mutual understanding that we could very easily be taken out of context here. Josh: I think the goal, and then I want you to kind of expand upon this, is we're not trying to take a side here. We're trying to have an open discussion about it. This could very easily turn into something that's like, "Why did you vote for Trump? Why Biden sucks, why Biden's great, why Trump sucks," something like that or certain religion. We're not trying to convince you of anything, really. In fact, this is honestly more of a conversation for us. And we're like, "We think it'd be cool to stream it out to a bunch of people because there's a reason for me to fly out here and do that," but the purpose of this is to have an open discussion about the book, the premise of the book, an understanding of it, and then honestly we're probably going to be in our own little world over here. Josh: And we want you guys to interact and comment and engage and push your questions. And we'll go back through it, obviously, but the purpose of this is not to try to convince anybody of anything. It's simple to, at least from my perspective, shed a new perspective and give the perspective of somebody who, for those of you that don't know who Russell is, the founder of a ... ClickFunnels is a billion-dollar company, SaaS company. You have 400 employees? Russell: Yeah. Josh: 400 employees. So from that perspective and from my perspective, to open your eyes to a new perspective of what we like, what we don't like and, like I said, more of a conversation for us. Russell: Yeah. I think that's good. And I think a big thing that we will talk about ... Our goal is not to convince you of anything. In fact, I think I'm still convincing myself of both sides. I believe both these two things that seem contradictory, but I think there's a middle ground and I'm excited to explore it. So it'll be fun. Josh: Cool. So I think we got to- Russell: Talk about the premise of the book? Josh: Yeah, we've got to talk about the premise of the book. Russell: I might have a little mini statue behind me that might help. Can I grab that? Josh: Ooh, yeah. Russell: Okay. So folks that have not read Atlas Shrugged, I didn't know what the premise was at first, but this is the story of Atlas. Some of you guys know Atlas was cursed to have to carry the entire weight of the universe, entire weight of the world upon his shoulders for forever. Right? And so this is where the premise of the book ... All of us, people who are listening to this might guess that you are a producer. Right? Otherwise, you probably wouldn't be listening to me or to Josh. I attract, I teach, I coach, I help producers, entrepreneurs, people who are trying to change the world. Right? Russell: I'm curious, how many of you guys have ever felt this pressure. Right? When you feel like you literally have the entire weight of the world upon your shoulders. And if you haven't, it's time to become a producer. That's first off. Second off, I can empathize, though. There's so many times, you can ask Dave or any guys on my team, there's days I come in, I was like, "I feel like I'm going to crack." There is so much weight to carry this around. And I'm guessing most of you guys have felt that. It could be with your family, could be in work, could be business, whatever, but you've felt the weight of the world. Right? Russell: So this is what Atlas had to hold. Right? And so the premise of the book, Atlas Shrugged, is what would happen if the producers, the people that are carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, what happens if they were to go on strike and they were to shrug their shoulders and be like, "Meh." In fact, should I read your tile you gave me here? Josh: Yeah. Russell: So Josh, as a gift today, gave me some amazing tiles. This is a quote, actually, from the book, Atlas Shrugged, talking about this. It says, "If you saw Atlas, the giant holds the world on his shoulders. If you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling, but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater of his efforts, the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders, what would you tell him to do? Just shrug." That's things like, what happens to society when us, the producers, when we no longer want to carry the weight of the world? We shrug and we walk away from it. Russell: And the book is a story about that. What happens when these producers start disappearing and they start leaving, they start going on strike? You see society, what happens when the producers disappear. Josh: Yeah. It's interesting because there is no one named Atlas Shrugged in the book and there's nobody named Ayn Rand in the book. And so there's concepts that she's writing about outside of that and it's this ... How do you summarize a 1200-page book? Basically, in the book, there is a main character by the name of Dagny. Russell: Oh. Yes. Josh: Oh. Russell: I was going to say John Galt, but you're right. Yes, Dagny’s the main character. Josh: Sorry. For the first two thirds of the book, the main character is a woman by the name of Dagny. And basically, she is one of the producers of society. And she's not the head boss of the railroad, but she's basically the person that runs this railroad company. And it is written, what, 1950 is when this was- Russell: Yeah. Josh: So 1950, and it's basically this forecast into the future of a government that is basically forcing super, super strict restrictions onto private businesses and making them do things, kind of like today in America, but super, super government overreach in a lot of ways. And so Dagny is trying to keep the world afloat, more or less, by getting the railroads done on time and getting orders shipped. Josh: And I'm super oversimplifying, but around her, all the people that she works with that owned all these other companies that she would buy copper from or she would buy steel from or buy the railroad track from or buy the coal from, all of a sudden all these head people ... Imagine people like Russell, all his friends just start disappearing. Imagine Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and Russell all just started disappearing. Right? That's what's happening all around her and she doesn't understand what's happening to them because just, one day, it's up and it's gone. Josh: And so the premise of the first two thirds of the book is showing this story of this producer who is living in this world of super government tyranny, overreach that's super, super controlling and she's watching all of her friends disappear and she doesn't know why. Would you say that's a pretty good explanation of it so far? Russell: Yeah. And every time they disappear, they leave behind a note or something that says, "Who is John Galt?" That's this theme throughout the book, is who is John Galt? Who is this John Galt person that makes all the producers disappear? Josh: And Dagny has no idea who John Galt is. Right? She doesn't even know, actually, for awhile that John Galt's actually even a real person. And so once she does find out that John Galt is probably a real person, John Galt becomes her sworn enemy because she doesn't know who he is or what he's doing. All she knows and all she associates with is that John Galt is taking away all these producers of society and is making her life harder because ... Imagine you being an entrepreneur and all of your entrepreneur friends that you buy stuff from and that you send all your people to, your referrals and everything, you buy all your supplies from, imagine they're all just disappearing and you think it's because of this one guy who's taking them all away and you don't know what's happening to them. Obviously, they'd become your sworn enemy. Josh: So for the first two thirds-ish of the book, that's kind of this premise of they're painting this really, really vivid story of the ... what are they called, the great thinkers of society? Yeah, the great minds of society, basically disappearing. And Dagny and ... there's a guy by the name of Hank Rearden, I think. Russell: Yeah, Rearden Steel. Josh: Rearden Steel, yeah. So Dagny and Hank Rearden are the two major ones left right before the big plot twist happens and you're like, "Oh," and then you get introduced to John Galt. I'm going to let you explain John Galt now. Russell: Oh, man. Okay. So that's the first two thirds of the book. By the way, there's movies. Don't watch them. They'll ruin the book. The movies were really bad. Josh: Yeah. Read the book. Russell: So two thirds into the book, she starts trying to figure out this mystery of who's John Galt. She ends up finding him and turns out that he has been going around and getting all these producers to go on strike, convinces them to, "Look, it's not worth fighting for anymore. All your incentives are gone. Let's leave. Let's go on strike," and they leave. And John Galt's trying to get her to leave and she's like, "I can't. I have to do everything in my power." The last third of the book is her leaving John Galt's presence and going back and trying to figure out how to do this thing as she's watching just government regulations getting harder, and harder, and harder, and harder to the point where everyone just has to disappear. Russell: But one of the things John Galt and the people say, "When the lights of New York go out, then we'll come back and we'll rebuild society from the ground up, after the looters and the people are gone." Josh: And that's basically how the books ends is lights of New York go out and then- Russell: For such a long book, all of a sudden it just ends and you're like, "Oh, I need one more chapter. Come on. Just end it." Josh: And we're never going to get it. Ah. Russell: Well, maybe I'll write it. Josh: Yeah. So that's the storyline of the book, but what I think we really both want to focus here is kind of the premises and the overarching ideas that the book presents, and capitalism versus socialism, and I think we'll talk religion and politics and kind of everything that’s in that, but I kind of want to, if it's all right with you, I kind of want to turn the conversation more towards us now and just kind of start geeking out just about that. Josh: So guys, we'll obviously go back and ... By the way, we want all your comments if you're ... Actually, comment below right now. Where are you watching? Are you watching it on YouTube? Are you watching it on Think Different Theory page or are you watching it on Russell's page? Comment down below because we went to multiple different locations. So we have a bunch of different people tuning in for everything. So just comment down below. Leave your comments, leave your questions, smash the like button, love button, share this out, and we're going to be here. Josh: All right, Russell. What's up? Russell: Hey, man. Josh: All right. Dude, I've been wanting to, and I hate this terminology, but just pick somebody's brain like yours for the longest time. And this book, oh, my gosh. So what do you like about the book? What was your favorite thing? Russell: Yeah. Well, let me tell the backstory. So 2008 is when the market crashed last time, right? Josh: Yeah. Russell: And I didn't realize that, that year, over 500,000 copies were sold organically by people talking to me about it, talking about, "Everything's she's prophesying is happening right now." And so, back then, I remember all my entrepreneur friends, like, "You have to read this book." It was the word-of-mouth buzz that sold 500,000 copies of a book has been ... The author died, whatever, 30 years earlier. There's not active marketing out there. It's crazy. And everyone's talking about it, like, "What's happening in this book is happening in 2008." And it was just this prophecy that was being fulfilled. Russell: And so everyone in 2008 was telling me to read this book. I remember buying it and I was like, "This is a really, really big book." And it took me awhile to get into it and I could never get into it. I read the first, I don't know, first 200 or 300 pages four or five times. And then, finally, this summer, one of my very first trips where I didn't bring a laptop since my marriage. So my wife is very proud of me. Josh: Dang. Russell: And so as I was leaving the office, I grabbed this book. And I picked it up and I was like, "I have no computer, but I've got this." And usually, I bring 20 books just because I know I'm going to read. I just brought one and I was like, "I'm going to do this. I'm going to be forced. I'm on a lake for a week and a half with my kids and all I can do is read this book." So I brought it, got the audiobook, as well. It's funny, I do the same. I listen to the audiobook and I read along so I can listen to it way faster, that way. And I started going through it. It took me a little while. She does such a good job of character development at the very beginning, it took awhile to get into it. Josh: Yeah, for sure. Russell: And then the story hits and then you're just like ... And you couldn't- Josh: It's like thing, after thing, after thing. It's so quick. Russell: Oh, yeah. And it got crazy. So for me, it was interesting because I think, if I would've listened to it 10 years ago or read it 10 years ago, I had never experienced any of the things they talk about in this book. Right? Josh: Now you don't have to worry about it. Yeah. Russell: Even better. I never experienced government regulations and things like that or just those kind of things. And as ClickFunnels has grown from me and Todd to our first member, to our first thousand, 10,000, 100,000 members, 400 ... I don't know how many employees, a lot, 400 plus employees. As it's grown, it's been crazy because you would think all we'd be focusing on here inside ClickFunnels is the next feature in the app, next thing. Russell: And there's the year where we had to spend an entire year just refactoring the software for GDPR compliance. We have regulations that come in on taxes and this. It's constant where most of the battles we fight at ClickFunnels right now is not about, how do we make this thing better for the customer? It's, how do we protect our customers from the government? It's crazy. And just so many regulations and things. Russell: And so I have been feeling this pressure. Some of you guys may have seen my interview I did with Tony Robbins ... not interview, but Tony Robbins did an intervention with me last year in Fiji. Josh: Yeah. That was fascinating, by the way. Russell: I'm so glad we captured that. It was a really cool moment in my life, but if you listen in there, I talked about ... He's like, "Well, what do you want to do?" And I was like, "I don't know, but the pressure ... I love the same, so I love everything I'm doing. I love the people we're serving, but there's these other pressures that aren't the game, that aren't the people, that they just get so heavy sometimes where it makes me want to just walk away." And again, as I'm reading this book- Josh: You hadn't read the book at the time. Russell: I hadn't read it yet. Josh: Yeah, okay. Russell: As I'm reading this, it's like- Josh: Did you know anything about the- Russell: I did not know the premise, no. Josh: You knew nothing. Okay, okay, okay. Russell: I didn't know what Atlas Shrugged meant. I was just like, "Oh, it's Atlas ..." I didn't know ... And it was like, when I read this title, like, "What would you tell Atlas if this was happening? Just shrug." And I was like, "Oh, that's why they called it Atlas Shrugged." And then I remember vividly feeling the pressure of this calling and how heavy it is. Russell: And there's so many times I wish, like, "Okay, sometimes it'd be so nice to walk away or to shrug or whatever." And so I instantly, with Dagny's character, I was like ... I feel that with Hank Rearden. I had so much empathy and understood their characters because I feel that so many times. Hank Rearden just wanted to invent his steel and put it out. That's all he cared about, right? For me, funnels are my art. I can't draw, but funnels, that's my art and entrepreneurship. That's my art. And so I just want to do my art. That's it. He just wanted to create steel. And it's all these other things and it's just like, "I just want to do my steel. I just want to do my art. Why do I have to deal with all this other stuff?" Russell: And so as I'm reading this, I just had so much empathy for the characters because I felt like I was the characters, even though it was weird because it's railroads and stuff like that and I'm internet, but I think that's why I really got into it. And then I got just curious, what happens? How does this story end? Be I'm in the middle of it. And depending who's listening, you may or may not have felt some of these pressures. As you grow, you feel them. Russell: It's interesting. As ClickFunnels has grown, we've talked about the pressure that I feel today would've crushed me five years ago. Right? And so you have to go through this thing where you build capacity to handle the next set of pressure, and build capacity, and build capacity. And nowadays, stuff happens daily that's just like, "Man, that would've destroyed me five years ago." Russell: And so I think, if you guys haven't felt that, as you grow, as you continue to try to get your message out and try to grow your businesses, whatever, the bigger you get, the more that pressure comes. Josh: Do you think…with that ... And I want to continue that because it's such a good conversation, but with the pressure, the things that are happening now daily that would've wrecked you five years ago or three years ago, whatever it was, do you think it's good, though, that they would've? Is it good that, at the capacity that you understood, that you took those things seriously then or would it have been better for you to just be in this mindset? I know it's not possible, but looking back, if you could snap your fingers and back then would've had the mental capacity to just ignore all those things and go up, would that've been a good thing? Or the fact that you went through all those things, does that help? Russell: The going through it is what makes you worthy of the things, right? Josh: Being able to… Russell: It makes you ready for it. Otherwise, just like lifting weights, if you try to squat 800 pounds, that's what it feels like. Right? Your legs buckle and you die, but because you went through that thing, you're able to have the capacity to hold the weight. Josh: Okay. Russell: Yeah. So anyways, the thing for me that was the big thing is reading this. And so I was just fascinated because I was like, "This is kind of my story. How does it end?" Josh: How long did it take you to get through it? Russell: I'd say about two months. I got a lot of it done on the boat, and then I got into biking for a little while, so I was listening to it while I was biking. Josh: That's right, I remember that. Russell: I just kept biking and biking, like, "One more chapter, one more chapter." I'm in really good shape because of it. It's funny because one of the premises ... And they don't say greed is good, but there's a chapter, I think it's called Greed. And I remember, if you guys have ever seen Wall Street, Gordon Gekko talks about, "Greed is good," and I never understood that premise. Right? In the book, they start talking about that, how greed is what drives this whole thing. Is it called Greed? Josh: I'm trying to find it. Russell: Utopia of Greed, yeah. Josh: And then Anti-Greed. So Utopia of Greed and then Anti-Greed. Russell: So what's interesting is ... because all of us are taught that greed is bad, right? That's just, like, you shouldn't be greedy. That's, I think, a principle that's instilled in most of us, but then I think about, for me, when I started this business, why did I start this business? I wanted to make money. That's greed, right? And you think about any of us, we go through a phase in all of our lives that greed is the driving factor. Right? When I wanted to become a good wrestler, I wanted to become a good wrestler. It was greedy. I went and got coaches and spent all my time and it was a very selfish time in my life. Not that it's bad, but it's a very greedy time. Right? Kids, when they're first born ... I love my kids. They are so ... not in a bad way, but they're greedy. It's about them. Right? Josh: Right. Russell: And it's this growth phase where growth ... You have to be greedy. You're in the growth phase. Right? When you're trying to learn, you're sucking things and you're learning and you're not contributing it. You're just learning, you're growing. And it was interesting because, as I'm going through this, I'm like, the greed is what got me into business. Right? And it's what got these things started and then the byproduct of that is jobs were created and things ... All the byproduct of it is ... I think, in the book, how it justifies it, Hank Rearden going after ... he wanted to build his steel and make a bunch of money, created tens of thousands of jobs and changed the world and changes all these things. Russell: And so the premise of the book is that greed is this driving force that gets you moving. And it is. If you think about any aspect of your life, from sports to education, to business, to everything, it starts with greed. Now, we'll go deeper into this. I don't want everyone to think that I'm just into this for the greed, because there's a transition point. We'll talk about it in a minute, but there's a transition point from growth to contribution that happens, but that's in the book where it starts talking about that. Russell: And I remember I was on the greenbelt here in Boise, riding my bike with James P. Friel, listening to that chapter. And I was trying to think, "Is this true? Did I get started because of greed?" And it's like, yeah, I didn't start a business because I wanted to change the world. Eventually, that happened, but it wasn't like it was ... Greed was the driving force that moved me forward. I think it moves all of us forward such a long time. And as I was listening as I'm riding my bike, I'm like, "Yes, I understand this," and the other half of me was like ... I started thinking about my spiritual upbringing. Right? Josh: Yeah. Russell: I'm very Christian. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints and I started thinking about Christ and his teachings, which are, honestly, the opposite of that. Right? It's like- Josh: Really the polar opposite. Russell: Yeah. Josh: Which it's funny, whenever you say that, people are like, "You know, Jesus was a socialist." I hear that a lot. I'm like, "You need to read the Bible." Anyway, but I think a lot- Russell: But he definitely is way more liberal leaning, 100%. Josh: Right, right. And I think that that's where Republicans, conservative, traditionally on that side of the aisle, fiscally Republicans get into trouble is where we're like, "Yeah, we're Christians, but we also want to get rich," and they never talk about all this other ... People like to use Christianity, I feel like, when it's convenient. Russell: We call it cafeteria Christians. Josh: Right. Russell: They pick and choose the things off the menu they want. Josh: Right. And then they go through and do it. So I definitely want to dive further into that, but continue that. Russell: Yeah. So that started this question in my head, though, of just, so is greed bad then or is it good or where does it fit in the whole grand scheme of things? Because it is something that's instilled in all of us from birth. Right? When you're born, you're a baby, if you didn't have greed, you would just die. Right? It's me. I need food, I need love, I need shelter. It makes you cry, which creates people coming to you. Greed is a driving force that's instilled in humans from birth, right? When we come here, greed is what helps us survive the first part of our life. Russell: And first, I was having this conundrum. I'm just like, "God, is this book evil? I don't know what to do with myself." Right? But all good things in my life that happened happened initially because the seed of greed started me on motion, started me in momentum. And then I started thinking, if you've read the Expert Secrets book, which- Josh: If you haven't, come on. Russell: If you haven't, you must hate money. Come on. No, but in the beginning of Expert Secrets book, I talk about this concept, as well, where as an expert, there's two phases to go through. The first is a growth phase. Right? I want to be an expert in whatever. You go through and you're a consumer, consuming everything. And that's greed, right? And then there's this transition point where, eventually, you keep trying to grow, grow, grow, grow, trying to learn everything, going there. I'm listening to all the podcasts, I'm reading all the books, I'm growing, growing, growing. And eventually, there's this point. I remember feeling it in multiple parts of my life. In wrestling, I felt it. In business, I felt it where you can't continue ... The ability to grow through consumption slows to almost a halt where you can't continue to grow. Right? Russell: I've shared this story. I think I shared it in the book with wrestling. I was a really good wrestler. I was a high school state champ. I took second place in the nation. I was an All-American. And my senior year, I got invited to go to a wrestling camp. My coach was like, "Hey, do you want to come coach wrestling this summer?" And I was like, "Why would I do that? What's in it for me?" Josh: Before you go on here, I want to ask you something. So you're riding your bike, wrestling with this whole greed thing. Is this the first time that you've thought about greed in this way? Russell: 100%. Josh: And this is, what, six months ago? Russell: Not even that. Maybe four months ago. Josh: So you've built most of what ClickFunnels is today and now this is the first time you're really sitting down and wrestling with this idea of greed and is it bad, is it good, what's the balance there and stuff like that? Russell: Yeah. Josh: That's fascinating. Russell: Yeah. It never crossed my mind, really. And then it became this thing where it bothered me because I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. I don't want to be a greedy person." You know what I mean? Josh: Right. Russell: I'm like, "I don't feel like I am," but I was stuck. I couldn't figure that out. Right? And so I'll rewind to the wrestling story because I think it will set it up. Josh: Yep. Russell: But my senior year, again, I'd been growing as a wrestler. I was going to camps. I was getting coaching. I was greedy. I was sucking up everyone's brainpower I could and I became a really good wrestler because of it. And then my coach asked me to go coach a wrestling camp. So I say yes, go to the wrestling camp, and I remember he's like, "Okay, I need you to teach ..." My best move… I'm really good at tilts. So for all the wrestlers out there, I'm really good at cheap tilts. And he's like, "Teach these kids how to do a cheap tilt." Russell: And I was like, "Okay." So I walk out, there are like 30 kids. I'm like, "Yeah, you do this. You just do it like that." And they all look at me and they go try and they try to do a cheap tilt and they all just fall apart. I'm like, "Are you guys dumb? This is not that hard." I'm like, "Come back in, come back in. No, you did it all wrong. This is how you do it." I show them again, like, "Go do it." They go back out, nobody can do it. Russell: And then, all of a sudden, I'm like, "Gosh, they're missing something. What is it?" So I have them come back in and I start breaking down, "Hey, for the move to work, your hips have to be here, your legs have to be here." I start walking through all the things. And as I'm doing that, I start realizing, "Oh, the season why I'm able to do this is because of this," and I started realizing what I was doing as I was teaching people. And as I taught it to people, then the kids started doing it and they got better and better. And all of a sudden, I started realizing, "Oh, my gosh. This move works because of this." Russell: And now that I was aware of the situation, now I was able to make these tweaks and stuff on my own. And I realized that, but coaching the kids, that was the next-level growth. It was a shift from selfish greed growth to contribution. So that's why I started coaching camps every year and that's why I went from slowing down my progression to, all of a sudden, it sped back up again by shifting from growth to contribution. Okay? Russell: And so I think the same thing happens in business, right? I got in business because that seed of greed is in us. It gets us moving, gets us in the momentum. And some people never get out of that. Some people live their entire lives chasing greed and they die and it's a tragedy, but I think for most people, there's this transition point. And I don't know where it happens. It happens different spots for everyone where, all of a sudden, you realize ... you make the money, you started the business, and you realizing how unfulfilling that is. You're tapping out. You're like, "I'm not growing anymore. I thought I wanted money, but I don't. I want growth. That's what we're here on this planet for, is to grow as humans. Right? Russell: You don't get that and, all of a sudden, you realize money's not fulfilling and then you start seeing the other people you're contributing to and you're helping. Then it shifts to ... We hear people talk about, "This is about impact, about growth, it's about helping other people," and that's that transition. That's charity, love. That's pure love of Christ. It's that transition, but greed is the seed that gets us moving, right? And so there's this handoff. It doesn't happen all the time. And are you guys cool if I share scripture stuff? Because- Josh: 100%. Russell: -all this stuff is scriptural. It's not just- Josh: They don't get to decide, Russell. I get to decide. It's my podcast. You can talk about whatever. Russell: If you hate scripture, just close your ears and go, "Blah, blah, blah." So I wrote down some scripture. This is a scripture because it illustrates this point. I think it's so good. Josh: Also, I just want to say, Russell Voxed me and he said that this is the first episode of a podcast that he's ever prepared for. When you said that, I'm like, "Ha! I was the first for something for Russell. Let's go." Russell: I want to be ready. Okay. So this is a scripture. It says, "For the natural man is an enemy to God and has been from the fall of Adam and will be forever and ever." I'm going to stop right there. Okay. So natural man is an enemy to God. Why is that? We're born. We have this greed inside of us, so the natural human is the enemy of God because we're chasing after greed. Right? But God gives us that seed because it creates momentum. It creates motion. It creates us doing something. Right? Russell: And then it says in here, it says, "For the natural man is an enemy to God and has been from the fall of Adam, will be forever and ever," and then this is the transition point, "unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit." So he's greedy forever, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit and puteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ, the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father." Russell: So growth is the seed. It's the natural man. It's the thing we have that's ... It's good, right? God gives it to us because it gets us to do stuff, gets us to learn, gets us to not die in our crib because we need love and attention and to get fed. Right? So then it gets us off our butts, off the couches, us being producers that gets us moving. And if we're not careful, though, the natural man will destroy us. You see so many people who made tons of money and they destroyed themselves in their lives because they don't do that second thing, which is, "Unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit." Russell: That's the thing saying this is not about money, this is about the impact. Look at the people you're changing. And it shifts, right? If you make that shift, all of a sudden, now this thing you’re creating is not about greed, it's like, "Oh, my gosh ..." I remember, for ClickFunnels, when I had that transition was when I started seeing Brandon and Kaelin Poulin. I started seeing the ripple effect of their business. And I can name hundreds of people, person, after person, after person. Russell: I was like, "This isn't about money. This is about the ripple effect of what we've created in each person's life." Now, that's charity. That's love. Now the mission isn't about money. We don't care about the money. We keep score with money, but that's the mission, is the people's lives and the impact. And I think that's that transition where greed is the thing that gets us moving, but if we don't have that ... Russell: I think that's happened in the book. We talked about it. You said this at my house earlier, like, "A lot of people in the book seem like they have a miserable life." And it's like, yeah, because they never yielded to the spirit. They never made that shift. It was all greed to the point where they let everything collapse as opposed to the charity side of things. Josh: Yeah. So one of the things about the book ... And I'm sitting on the plane on the way over here and I'm like, "How do I articulate this?" Because that's always the hardest thing. You have this idea in your head and you're like, "How do I get it out and explain it in a way that somebody else can be like, 'Yes, I understand that?'" I'm going to go kind of political here for a second. I'm going to bring it back, too, specifically to the book. So I am pretty vocally a conservative. Right? I'm a blatant Trump supporter, very much so conservative when it comes to everything fiscal, but I call myself a libertarian because I actually think that I lean left on a lot of social issues. I think the government should stay out of gay marriage. Right? There's a lot of things that I lean left on, but when it comes to money and finances and things like that, I lean to the right. Josh: But the reason I lean to the right and I typically go with the right is because I like what the left is trying to do in concept. It's like, okay, there's a bunch of people that are really truly in need. I agree. We need to help them. The problem is is that the way they go about doing it, I so radically disagree with it. It's against everything that I stand for. Right? I'm like, it's not that I disagree with what you want to do, it's I disagree with how you want to do it. Josh: What's interesting is I feel like, in this book, I feel like it's the opposite. I actually don't agree with why they're doing it. This concept of ... I mean, Hank Rearden says it over and over again, "Everything that I do is for profit." That is it. Even to his friends. He took a bullet for John Galt, right? He gets shot. And John Galt thanks him for it. He goes, "You know I only did it because it's what I wanted to do, right?" Literally saves a guy's life. Josh: So it's all about what he wants and only for him and that's it. And it's profit and money and dollars. It's not about everything that he helps. And I'm like, I disagree with that premise, but what that leads to, I actually do like. And I feel like it's flipped compared to the world I'm living in now. Half the stuff that the Democrats ... I hate to… oh I want to go into politics so bad… Russell: Left and right. Josh: Yeah, the left. Guys, we're going to say left and right. Generalized here, right? Oh, my god, but generally speaking. And so when it comes to the whole greed issue, I'm like ... It's interesting to hear your perspective because I never, even throughout the book, I'm like, "Greed is a bad thing." And hearing your perspective, I'm like, okay, I understand what you're saying, but is it greed or is there some other driving ... If I were to ask you a year ago ... When were you in the heart of ClickFunnels, like a year and a half ago, two years? There was a time of your life when all you ... I know all you do is ClickFunnels, but when- Russell: It's the last six years of my life. Josh: But you know what I mean? Wasn't there a year or two period in there, in the growth phase, where 100% of everything you do was just ClickFunnels, ClickFunnels, ClickFunnels. It felt like you were going nonstop. It feels like you're a little bit more balanced now. Maybe not, but from the outside perspective looking in, it does. Anyway, during that time of growing ClickFunnels, before you read that, would you have described yourself as greedy? Russell: No. Josh: What would you have described yourself as? What's the word? Russell: I don't know. That's a good question. I was always trying to create stuff. It's art for me, right? So it's like I was trying to create stuff. I think, initially, I was creating for myself as opposed to, "Oh, my gosh. I create this for myself, but look what happens to the people." Josh: What point was that shift for you, though? Russell: You can see it in my marketing, by the way. And by the way, for those who are greedy capitalists who only care about money, it actually is a better marketing way, too. My marketing went from- Josh: For all you greedy capitalists out there, switch to being a contributor, you’ll make more money. Russell: Well, think about it. My marketing is always like, "Here's Russell. Here's how much money my funnel made. Here's how much ..." It was me talking about me all the time. And then I realized, "Who cares about me? I don't care about me. Let me show you what this person ... Let me show you all the results of the people we're serving, what's happening there," which first off, is better marketing and, second off, it's that transition where I was literally like, "Everything I've accomplished is stupid. What they're doing, that's the real ... What we're doing, that's the thing that's amazing." Right? That's the spiritual side of it. That's the thing where it's like, the thing that got you into motion now is doing good in the world. And when you start seeing that, it's like, oh, my gosh. That's so much more fulfilling and so much more exciting. Russell: And people ask me, "The last six years, why'd you keep getting up? Do you need more money?" I'm like, "No, that's not what keeps me up," but I can tell you 100 stories of people who ... literally the ripple effect of how many lives they've changed because I did my thing. Right? We made a documentary of the Two Comma Club and Jamie Cross has this whole part there where she's bawling her eyes out and she said, "Where would my family be if Russell wouldn't have fulfilled his God-given calling?" And every time I see that, I start bawling, myself. That's why, eventually, you start doing it. Right? Josh: But when did that shift happen? Russell: I don't know. It wasn't a day that it happened. The energy of it shifted. Right? I don't know. It gradually kind of happened. Josh: What's that? Dave: Tell them about your dad. Josh: Yeah. Russell: Dave, come on in. Dave's here. Dave, take the mic. Here. Dave: Yeah. No, honestly, I think… this has been one of those things. It's been fun for me to watch Russell from the sidelines here. I think, honestly, it was your dad's 60th birthday. Josh: Which was how long ago? Dave: I don't even know. Russell: Three, four years ago probably. Dave: But it was the reflection on that and it was the difference from having your hand raised versus ... because I remember you… Russell: Yeah, you want me to tell that story? Dave: Russell is a much better storyteller. I'll seed the thought, but I'll let him finish. Russell: All right. Josh: Oh, thank you Dave. Russell: Thank you. Interesting. Josh: Guys, we have a live audience here. Russell: So yeah, my dad turned 60 and we have our little family reunion every year we do. And so it was during his birthday. And I remember my mom gave him $60, six $10 bills. And so she gave them to him one at a time and said, "Okay, the first decade was one to 10. Tell us something you remember about that." He's like, "I don't remember anything back then." The second one, he's like, "10 to 20, that's when I was a wrestler. It was so much fun for me." And then, 20 to 30, he was like, "Okay, that's when I was starting my business, trying to figure things out and trying to get our family stable." 30 to 40, "That's when my kids were wrestling and I was coaching them." And then 50 to 60, he kind of went through everything. Russell: And then, after it was done, I asked him, I said, "Well, Dad, of all the decades, what one was the best for you?" Thinking, in my world, the best was going to be when he was a wrestler because I was like, for me, the greatest part of my life was when I was wrestling. And my dad said, "The greatest decade was when I got to coach you." I forgot that story until Dave said that, but I remember coming back and telling Dave and other people that I always thought the best part was being the all star. For my dad, the best part was coaching other people and seeing their hand raised. Josh: That was a good interjection there, Dave. Huh. Russell: …which was really cool.

god america jesus christ new york church lord donald trump kids bible man talk olympic games thinking christians holy spirit joe biden christianity dad saints teach wall street republicans democrats jeff bezos guys rock and roll heck saas tony robbins greed all american gdpr fiji boise russel ayn rand blah boise state clickfunnels russell brunson voxer atlas shrugged manychat generalized friel expert secrets dagny gordon gekko dotcom secrets john galt two comma club dave russell josh forti josh russell josh it josh yeah dave yeah josh you think different theory josh one atlas shrugged part james p friel josh how josh well josh oh dave tell kaelin poulin josh so hank rearden jamie cross josh do josh for josh all josh not russell it josh also josh cool

Episode #246: Authentic Secrets to Create a Comprehensive Practice with Dr. Joshua Austin

The Best Practices Show

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2020 50:48

On this episode of The Best Practices Show, Kirk and Kevin spend time talking with Dr. Joshua Austin. Initially, Josh points out that he strives to always be authentic because he doesn't want others to think that he's anything other than a normal comprehensive dentist. It's easy to look at social media and assume that because you aren't doing big complex cases, that you aren't a good dentist and Josh encourages listeners that this isn't true. Josh goes on to explain that comprehensive dentistry should be a goal for everyone. For the sake of your patients, you want to be able to offer those services to them. Both Josh and Kevin recommend educational courses as a way to work towards comprehensive dentistry. Additionally, they emphasize the importance of having a mentor. In regard to the cost of continuing education, such as Seattle Study Club's Symposium, Josh shares that this is the year to do it, as it is virtual, and the tuition is very cheap in comparison. Josh goes on to share steps to implement what you learn through your continuing education. First, he recommends increasing the level of your comprehensive examination experience for your patients. An important component of increasing your level is to include some sort of imaging, whether it's photography or an intra-oral scan, so that you can communicate with the patients. This helps the patients understand the issues more and trust you to treat them. Additionally, it's important to give the patients plenty of time, even if that means bringing them back for a second appointment. While transitioning to comprehensive care can feel intimidating, Josh recommends starting by just setting aside one half of a day a month for comprehensive exams and treatment. By starting with this amount of time, you are actually starting to do comprehensive care and then that amount of time will grow over time. Another important aspect of comprehensive dentistry is to have a team of specialists around you. These relationships with other specialists evolve into mutually beneficial relationships. You are able to ensure that your patients receive the best care, that you are only doing work you are genuinely qualified to do and capable of, and then you often receive referrals from the other specialists you work with. Something like Seattle Study Club's Symposium is a great way to find a good team of specialists to work with. Main Takeaways Comprehensive dental should be a goal for everyone (12:38) The cost of continuing education is well worth it (24:16) Incorporating imaging into your comprehensive exam goes a long way (28:41) Slowing it down and taking more time with a patient is of great value (33:30) Start by setting aside half a day a month for comprehensive care treatment and examinations (37:30) Key Quotes “Comprehensive dentistry is a goal that we should all have.” -Josh “You don't just go to these educational courses and all of the sudden become a comprehensive dentist overnight.” -Kevin “The best clinicians are going to be a part of the Seattle Study Club, and they're there to lend their expertise.” -Josh “You can't treatment plan it if you don't examine it.” -Josh “If a picture's worth a thousand words, an inter-oral scan is worth a billion words.” -Josh “Never be afraid to do a second appointment.” -Josh “Every challenge is going to be a series of steps, the most important one is the first one.” -Josh “You have to have a team of specialists that you work with.” -Josh Snippets 12:37-15:19- The importance of working towards comprehensive dentistry 20:31-20:47- The cost and value of continuing education such as the Seattle Study Club 24:24-28:55- Improving the level of your comprehensive exam 36:24-41:50- A practical way to get started doing comprehensive dentistry 42:01-46:05- The importance of having a team around you 46:53-49:50- The importance of being in a group like Symposium Bio of guest Dr. Joshua Austin is a...

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168|How to Engage Your Target Audience Through Your Story With Cliff Coelho

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 13, 2020 22:31

How to Engage Your Target Audience in 3 Minutes With Cliff Coelho Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land, we've got a special guest for you. We've got Cliff here from StoryDriven.Video. He's all about talking to you about how to make your message seen in three minutes, to be able to make sure that you're approaching your customers in a way that lets them know, like and trust you before you might even be picking up the phone. Get more tips on how to make your target audience engage at dorksdelivered.com.au So, Cliff, tell me, how do you make sure that you get the message across in three minutes? Is there some special magic to it? Or what's the process, run me through it. Cliff: Yeah, so one of the biggest problems right now that businesses are facing is that they're putting a lot of content, whether regardless of whether that's video or through blogs, or whatever it is. And a lot of that content is ending up blending into each other because they're doing the same type of videos. Like for example, if you go on LinkedIn, we watch a lot of stuff, it is about “how to” videos, how to improve your customers life, because that's what people think, that's what businesses think that the ideal customer needs. But unfortunately, all of it blends into each other. So the way to get someone's attention within the first few seconds is by identifying the story that they've already created about their pain point, first of all, in their own minds, and then putting your value proposition forward. So that would normally be what marketers call as the hook. And the key is and understanding your audience really well. And not just the physical pains that you solve for that, when I say physical, I mean, if you're running a B2B service, for example, you don't have to just understand the business impact of that problem that your audience is facing. Someone is struggling to get leads, and that's affecting their sales. That's not the only impact, there is another level of impact, which is the emotional level as well. And as humans, we are conditioned to think and make decisions emotionally. It's only after the decision has been made by emotion that the justification happens through logic. And that's where once you've done that, then you're able to put your value proposition forward, what your solution does for someone. And that's the flow that normally goes. So you start with the hook, you get their attention within the first 10 seconds, because that's how long you have to really get someone interested basically, to listen to the most stuff about what you do, and then go into the emotional engagement and then lead to the logical justification, if that makes sense. Josh: Yeah, that makes sense. So my understanding is like the first 10 seconds, as you said, is really critical. And that's where the reptilian brain as its called, like, jumps into gear and you have to go, okay, here's what you need to do is it wasn't although not meant to judge a book by their cover, you need to make sure you are dealing with exactly that problem. The same is like a newspaper, when you pick up a newspaper and it says, this big headline, Brisbane affected by a New South Wales or Victoria's COVID problems and we go, and then you start on folding, and then that then makes you sort of read through, not all of Queensland, all of Brisbane is just one little thing, which might be the retirement homes, for instance. So it's about making sure you've got that hook and you know your customer, is that fair to say? Cliff: 1 Yeah, no, that's absolutely spot on. It's basically understanding the hooks that work with different segments of your audience as well, because one hook that works with someone who's not aware what their problem is. So if you're selling weight loss, for example, and the person maybe you're selling a ketogenic diet or something like that, they might not know what is the thing that is causing them to gain weight, even though that that is, they don't overeat, still gaining weight. So for them to understand you cannot sell them a ketogenic diet straight away, you have to educate them first about the problem. Yeah, because they're not aware of, you know, what's causing it. But what someone who's already aware of, you know, what, ketogenic diets are, there's no need to waste time on talking about, you know, why you need to get into that kind of diet. You're selling, you're going to stay away from that point of the hoop used for someone who's already aware of that solution will be quite different from someone who doesn't know what's causing them that problem. And that's what this is, it’s about creating as many hooks are based on the impact on your target audience and the emotional response that is leading to. Josh: You put up a good point earlier where you said that it's not about necessarily generating loads of content and hoping for the best as much as it's about having a few core videos that allow for you to understand what that business is, what their sales process is like, how to become to know like, and trust them nearly as if you, I would liken it to some of the videos that I've seen like you're at a barbecue. And someone said, oh, you haven't heard about what, oh, Bluey over there has been doing with these business offices. He's bloody brilliant. And you've already got this warm lead, this warm face that starts to talk to you about what it is that they're doing, and I quite like the format. So if you do have different market segments, or different people that are at a different position in the buyer’s journey, maybe they're, as you said, they're using the ketogenic diet, the reference you made there, maybe they're fresh off, and they don't understand, they've just gone through a divorce, they've chat and a whole bunch of way they start, they know of keto, but they don't have their life in any sort of balance, it's obviously not going to work for them. If you're trying to attract different market segments, would you say it's better just to say, let's make sure you're focusing on the green field customers, the people that have never heard of your diet, never heard of what the keto diet is, and then using the videos there, or have several different funnels with several different videos, depending on who it is that you're talking to? Like if you do the same presentation at a nutrition conference, they're more likely to know of the ketogenic diet, and that video will seem like you're talking under their level, I guess. Like how do you make sure that you, you have the same quality message, but two different market segments? Cliff: What you said is absolutely spot on in terms of having different funnels for different markets and different stages and their understanding of the problem as well. But I think that is something that comes at a bit more of an advanced stage for a business where they've already created their core message, which is able to, you know, get people into the funnel better their cold audiences, people who don't understand their problem, and don't know who you are. Warm audiences, solutions are where basically, they know what the solution is, and hot audiences, which is basically, they know about the solution, and they know about you, which is basically just 3% of, you know, your total addressable market, as they call it. So initially, you need to have a message that resonates with these three audiences, at least. And the way we do for our clients is we start off with basically giving information upfront, giving value upfront, through what is called as an empowerment video. So the concept of the empowerment video is based on the fact that it's not just giving information for the sake of giving information, but it's around changing people's beliefs about something that giving them hope that there's a better way of doing things. Because when you start a business, the reason should be because you saw that the existing solutions were not working, or you had a vision for something better. Josh: Better, faster, cheaper, or whatever it is. Cliff: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, in one way or the other, you have to be able to identify that. So through the empowerment video, even though you're giving information, you're changing their perspectives in the sense that you're telling them. This is what you thought so far, that this was the only way. For example, with video, that's my empowerment video. Like I say that it's basically you don't need to always constantly make videos just to stay relevant. I've used practically just one video in my business right until a couple of months ago. And yeah, the more you create, obviously, you know, you've got a better chance of having more reach. But that reach doesn't necessarily mean conversion. So just because you can get your message in front of someone doesn't bring them any closer to doing business with you. So you need to create that change in mindset, in that perspective, in that belief. And that belief comes from that emotion that they have associated with their pain point or their aspiration, whatever it is. So once you're able to change that, then you can send them further down the funnel, where you're educating them more about your solution about your brand, creating that connection to your unique story. So then empowerment video does that. It educates the audience in a way with the intention of changing their perspective towards the problem or aspiration that they have. Josh: Let's say, I know that I've got a great business. And I started off in the garage of mom and dad's as a teenager with a bit more tummy than I have now, as a bit overweight. What I wanted to do is I saw ways that you could automate businesses better than what they've been done in the past, and in a way that would make businesses more efficient. And I started my best to start doing that. And I realised, I've got the cure to cancer, but I don't have the voice to tell anyone about it. And so there's no point even having the cure to cancer, obviously, as a metaphor. What I found is I said, okay, well I've got to be able to start Being able to talk to people and having the confidence to do that. And I said, I'm going to make a YouTube channel. So I went and bought two Sony 4k cameras, and like $8,000 worth of camera gear, and then five different lights and green screens and display monitors and cameras and microphones and all this gear. And it didn't film itself, it was crazy. I went well, I bought all this stuff, I still didn't have the confidence to be on video. I had to overcome my own belief, my own personal belief that I had to lose weight to be able to be set in stone online, so to speak. So I read a whole bunch of personal development books and setting in the gym 10, 12 hours a week and change my diet from having alcohol, meat and complex carbohydrates and cut and a lot of other stuff, but cut out all of that to just pretty much raw vegetables, and I haven't looked back. But obviously I had this belief system that I have to be skinny to be able to be on video. I have to be healthy to be able to be on video. If there's other business owners out there that are going okay, I know I have to have video, I know videos the way that's obviously the truth. Like as the adage goes, picture says 1000 words, and you have 25 frames per second. So you've got 25,000 pitches per second, and you're doing it for three minutes. So 180 seconds, that's a hell of a lot of work. So how do you make sure that people that don't have the confidence, don't put this one on the back burner? And they sort of jump up and say, Look, I'm gonna make this video, I know I need to do this my business. The way that I look is probably more of an internal reflection rather than what people thinking externally. How do you have people overcome their own belief systems? Cliff: So when it comes to firming the plans itself, like pretty much all of my clients have the same issue where they feel okay, I don't really feel ready for the camera yet. Even the professional public speakers where they feel ready when the camera turns on, it's like a different thing. They feel like they have to get everything right in one take. But that's not the case, because I'm capturing authentic conversations rather than putting a script in front of someone and making them read of it. That's not the case. It's pretty much like the conversation we're having right now. It's just that I know, the elements that I'm looking for in that particular video. This, depending on the sales process, obviously, that's obviously for the videos that I made. But for business owners to be making the videos themselves, what I would say is, you're, like, this is something that I struggled with, and still do, like to, you know, get in front of camera, you know, deliver really well. And it's still a struggle for me. But what I've accepted is that first of all, yes, that's what I'm selling, I need to work the platform. Secondly, video is no longer a nice to have, it's a necessity. When it comes to confidence, all I would say is that your first video is going to be bad. You know, it doesn't matter how good you are at video, videography or whatever. Even if you're a presenter, your first video is going to be bad, your first 10 videos are gonna be really bad. Josh: ` I went and re recorded the first 12 episodes of my podcast channels. I'm like, oh, that's terrible. So I removed them and re recorded them. I'm like, ooh, it was cringe worthy. I was like this is yuck, you've got that ability to do that. Cliff: Yeah, exactly. You can do that and just delete that stuff. But there is power and publishing. It's not about like looking good in front of camera, they have to get out of their own minds, basically, it's not of themselves. Think of the problem that the customer is facing, that their ideal customers facing. Will they benefit from what do you have to share with them? And then the emphasis is not on you anymore, you're just thinking of them. I can talk about technical ways of like some people put a picture of, you know, someone they know, in front of like in front of the lens, just off the side. And that kind of looks a bit strange, because you're like looking slightly off center, like, like a zoom call or something. Those are like tactical things that you learn over time as you do it. But the first step is actually doing it and publishing it. Even if you think you didn't come off, like amazing, but what you've delivered, the message is strong and powerful when you think it will solve a problem for a client, and possibly change their perspective on something. And you should publish it. Because once you do that, you're like letting go of control. That switches something in your mind. It's like, okay, the worst that I thought could happen has happened. I've put this out there. And you realise people are mostly very supportive. And when someone puts themselves out there, they'll be like nice video, thanks for sharing and stuff like that. That becomes like a self fulfilling feedback loop where, then your next video gets slightly better, you get more feedback. Sometimes you might not get feedback. It's like a lot of content doesn't really get anywhere, but at least you're learning through a process. Josh: Yeah. And it's just about that, just, as I said earlier on personal development, it's about the path that seems the hardest is always a path that you should be taking. If you're like, I don't want to be on video, and you freak out. That's exactly what you should be doing then. You definitely grow as a person. And it's weird. You said that click inside, like, I never really realised it until after I started putting content out there. And then more and more people I was talking to was saying, we could never do that. I said, my biggest regret was at school, not putting my hand up more asking questions. Not asking the girl that I had a crush on that I liked her, that telling her that I liked her. And all these things you just build up in your mind as a big thing. Now, if I put my hand up, maybe it would have looked stupid but I would have learned more, but I probably wouldn't have looked stupid. Maybe in your recorded video, you might look stupid, but you would have learned more. And that's what's important there. And it also shows the authenticity of the character that you are two other people. We're not all TV presenters. We don't all talk in a monotone voice. We try to make things fun. As I was saying earlier, I like to think of our podcasts and YouTube stuff. We try to sprinkle some sexy on it, but otherwise dry subject most of the time and it's about doing that and having fun with that. Some people are like I would never do that, it sounds so unprofessional. I said you don't want to sound like a safety video though, either. I said, you want to have some fun with it. If people aren't interested in, in your quirkiness or your approach or your sense of humor, you're probably not going to want to work with them a whole bunch anyway. So it's win-win, you can't go wrong with video at all, in my opinion. So you spoke briefly earlier about the three videos and what the three videos are. So is that for the cold, warm, and hot leads, or is that three videos through the journey in a more linear fashion as opposed to three groups of people? Cliff: The environment would be for cold and warm leads, so it covers a vast majority of the audience, it’s not segmented exactly like that. Because for hot leads, it's a retargeting video, for example, like a 30 second one, just showing the features of something that someone is just comparing prices or features or whatever they're comparing, you do a retargeting video, where you put an amazing offer in front of them, and they take it. So that's outside of these three videos. These three videos capture the bulk of your audience, which is the cold and the warm, I would say. That's not exactly how it's segmented. But that's how it works out. Josh: If someone came to you, and with the minimal understanding of video, and this is something that everyone should be really listening to right now. If someone comes with minimal understanding of video, you're able to hold their hand walk them through the entire process, they don't even know anything about microphones, what colours are going to reflect on their skin better, making sure that you've got the color and tones, exposures or anything else correct, you're just going to do the voodoo that you do, and they're going to cruise along and just be comfortable as if they're talking to a maid at a pub, is that pretty much the way the process works? Cliff: Pretty much it. So what I do is I do a deep dive with my clients like a week before, where I identify their message basically, I condensed that message into what it needs to be without telling them what it is. They are not creating expectations in their head, because I found that the more options I give them, of like, what they can do and what they can say, it's like the more confusion, the more they get inside their own heads. So it's a conversation like this during the deep dive where identify the things that draw people to do business with you, the things that people already like about you, and capture those things. And on the day of filming, it's again, a conversation like this, I give them very clear instructions on everything in terms of branding, clothing, and they just have to be that present and have a conversation with me. And I use basically multi angle camera. So you know, we can cut as many times as possible. And there's overlays which will hide all those things. The typical interviews last about an hour, which I condensed to three minute message basically. Josh: So that's something that is very important for everyone just to sort of make sure that you just let that sink in. Everyone knows have different places in line, you can go and get bits and pieces done. But you're not going to have that level of expertise and some of that's going to be out of be there with you through the process and talk to you. Pretty much if you're able to have a beer or a drink with a maid at a pub, you're able to have a professional video made telling your story about what it is you do in business condensed down to three minutes for all of your prospects and leads. If you're not comfortable having a beer at a pub, you might have a problem, but everyone should be pretty okay with that. And that's really important because some people might just go and you can't see what I'm doing here but get their phone out and start doing something themselves and they've got low light conditions, terrible shadows and it's not going to do your business justice. So don't just record yourself and chuck it up online and hope for the best. Have someone there that can take it and massage it into something that's going to be a masterpiece that you'll love for years to come. Cliff: Yeah, definitely. Josh: If anyone is looking for more information on how to book this in and getting their business in a position where they've got more visibility, I definitely suggest getting a discovery session booked. You can do that by jumping over to l.dorks.com/storydrivenvideo, you'll be able to jump across there and connecting with Cliff on LinkedIn and start seeing some of the cool work that you've been doing. You've got some cool stuff in your featured role there and get the wheels in motion to get these videos happening. Cliff: Yeah, sounds awesome. And I like to say that, like, this is an amazing thing that you are doing, this initiative of connecting local businesses, encouraging, you know, people to do business more locally. In times like this, where there's, you know, all that's happening, businesses are struggling, it's awesome that you're doing something like this. Josh: Absolutely, and all the podcasts, for anyone out there, that's not aware of how they get funded, it’s out of my back pocket, there's no sponsors, there's nothing else. I'm doing it purely out of the love of what I do, and to get to know more wonderful people around the area and make sure that their message is heard by other people so that we can build a better and a stronger community, and make sure that we'll be able to become better than we were yesterday and even better tomorrow. So that's what it's all about. Is there any other questions or bits and pieces that you'd like to leave before we finish off on the episode for today? Cliff: I would say just start making video yourselves. But do you think it'll work or not? Give it a try, do it yourself. And that's the first step and you know, like making progresses is actually trying and treat it as something that you need in your business rather than just a nice to have, because it's no longer nice to have. Josh: I agree. And I bought a gym membership, and had the card sitting in my wallet for four years didn't lose a kilo. How is that? Cliff: What a coincidence. Josh: Just making that one small change to go. Let's not sit down and watch another episode on Netflix. Let's jump to the gym for a little bit. Having a routine there that supports your ability to make more content for your business and become more confident in yourself is really important. And making one terrible video is better than making no video at all. And you're only going to get better from there, and you can always look back on and reflect on. Cliff: Absolutely Yeah, it's a journey like everyone's at different stages. So yeah. Josh: If anyone out there has any feedback would like to give us some love. Head over to iTunes and let us know what your thoughts are and stay good, stay healthy and start cracking out some videos.

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160|Buying a Business With Carl Allen

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 25, 2020 30:56

Buying a Business With Carl Allen Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land and welcome to Business Built Freedom where we build your business and you get to hear other businesses and how business owners have built their businesses up. So today we've got a cool guest on Carl Allen and he's going to be talking to you guys about how you can grow your empire through strategic acquisition and being able to finance your acquisitions without investing any of your own money. So Carl, tell me when is the right time? When's the right moments in your mind where you have that aha moment, I've got to invest and use other people's money? How do you have that mind shift from pulling dollarydos out of your own pocket to grabbing it from someone else's? Get more tips about buying a business at dorksdelivered.com.au Carl: Sure. So Josh, first of all, great to be on the show. Thanks for having me. So what's really interesting is most business owners, you know, don't know the process of what I'm going to talk about. So most business owners will start a company and then their only way to grow it is to do it organically. So more customers, more leads, more products and services. They might do some JVs or affiliate marketing with other people. But they typically don't go down the route of, you know, what can I double my business in a day by essentially acquiring another company. So if you've got a $500,000, or a million dollar business right now that's profitable, and it's taken you five years to get to that stage, it might take you another two years to double it. But if you go and find another business of the same size, you combine it with the business that you already have, and you use other people's money to close that deal, then you can effectively double the size of your business and save two to three years of your life by hustling to grow it organically. And the process is really simple. You know, there's tons of deals out there there's loads of businesses that are for sale for you know, for a lot of different reasons people want to retire, they get bored, frustrated, sick, in a burnt out, you know, run out of ideas. And they decide it's time to sell their business, the business that they've built, and they've made successful. But what's really interesting is people think if you want to buy a million-dollar business, you've got to cut a million-dollar check, and you don't. You can actually get that money from other people. So the first place you can get the money is from the seller. There are some sellers and you might find this strange, they will sell a business and let you pay for that business over time. It's called seller financing or vendor financing in some countries. So that million-dollar purchase, if the business is really profitable, you can pay for that business over time using the profits that the business is generating. The other methods you can use are those trillions of dollars globally of acquisition financing. So if you find a strong business that's got, you know, a healthy balance sheet and it's got great cash flows, then you can use those as leverage to go and get a bank or an investor to give you financing. So you can buy that business, and then you might pay for half of the business up front, the closing payment using that financing, and then pay for the other half of the business, paying the seller over time. Then there are in some instances where you can actually go and sell pieces of that deal to an investor, to an angel investor or a venture capital or private equity company, who will, they'll partner with you in the deal. They'll co own the business with you, but they'll give you a ton of cash flow so that you can go out and bolt these acquisitions on. Because the bigger you grow your business, obviously the more profitable it's going to be. Businesses, and for the most part are worth a multiple of their earnings. And that multiple increases, as the earnings increases, so it compounds. That's why a small business might be worth three times its earnings. Yet, a public company might be worth 30 times its earnings. The bigger the company, the bigger the profit, the bigger the multiple, the bigger the valuation. So the bigger you scale your business through acquisitions, the more it's going to be worth so that when you sell it, the higher your net worth and the more money that you put into your own bank account. Josh: So you've got a bunch of fantastic points, and I have been frantically writing notes here. So ultimately, I guess the metric everyone should be looking at isn't what is something worth its time, because you can have a $500,000 business send it to a million, a million to a 10 million, but it's do you want to have the old not able to use that money and be in a restricted into it in a sense? Well, you know, you're not skydiving or whatever it is that people enjoy doing nowadays. If you're not able to enjoy that wealth, what's the point if it's going to take that long and time, something you can't get back? So, in trying to find a new business, would you look to something that's a mirror business, something that's nearly exactly the same as yours. So you're pretty much buying into the database and staffing systems. Or a Ying Yang, so it's giving you opposing services where they're noncontradictory. But you kind of own the supply chain. What's the process? Carl Lewis: It is all of the above. So if you own a business, then there are three types of acquisition that you can do. So if you own a software company, for example, then you just go out and buy a competitor. So you can go out and buy a company that does very much the same as what you do. So what you're doing with that is you're just doubling down on your market share. And obviously, you're going to get economies of scale if you've gone from being a $5 million business to a $10 million business. There are a lot of economies of scale when you double. The other thing that you can do is you can buy into your supply chain as you've described. So let's say you own an engineering business and a big part of your cost base is acquiring raw materials and other components. You can go and buy that business because then you're doubling down on your margin. So rather than giving a huge part of your margin to a third party, you're keeping that within your own business. And then you can leverage off what that business is doing with its customers. But the smartest type of strategic acquisition is when you buy a complementary business, the yin and yang that you talked about. So let's say you own the software company, you could go out and acquire an IT services company. And then you can sell the software to your IT services customers you just acquired. You can sell the IT services that you just acquired to your existing software company. And then as you bring the two companies together, there's a boatload of financial synergies that you can generate. So you're saving probably on premises. So rent, property tax, utilities, maintenance insurance, all the administrative overhead. You only need one financial controller, one HR person, you can consolidate your marketing budgets. So what happens is when you do that combination, it's a one plus one equals three on the revenue side, because you've got the software revenue, the services revenue, plus the cross sell. And then it's on3 plus one equals five on the profit side, because as you're scaling the revenues on the top line, you're stripping out all this duplicate cost. So you can 5X the value of your company, just by doing one simple bolt on acquisition. Josh: Alright. So if I decided that, hypothetically, I've got an IT company that I'm running and I'm looking to grow this company, okay, hypothetically. Now, if that was to be the case, what would be the next step to using other people's finances to grab a bolt on? It sounds very much like If what you're saying is like a nearly like a joint venture type arrangement where there’s the same client base with his non competitive things that you're doing with each other. So if you were to be buying into the company, how do you go about having someone else say, you know what, that's a great idea. Here's some coin and what's the buyback period? Is that something that's just an overhead? Carl: Yes. So the first thing that you got to do, it's a three stage process, really. So the first thing that you've got to do is you've got to clearly articulate what the perfect business is going to be for you. Because in your situation, the type of business that's going to move the needle in your empire is gonna be very different to the type of business is going to move the needle in my empire. So you ask yourself those kind of high level questions, you know, what type of business strategically is going to make me do a big leap in terms of the size and scale of my business? Once you've determined that, then it's all about deal flow. It's all about deal origination. And there are four primary ways that you can originate deals. So the first one is you can go public with Business Brokers. Obviously, that's the easiest method on the one hand, because you know the business is for sale, they listed it with a broker. But it can often be the most challenging because Business Brokers tend to hype up the valuations of the businesses that they're trying to sell. But Business Brokers will get you a big strong source of deal flow. My personal favorite is to leverage one's network, whether it's via social media, or your human network, because what's interesting is only 20% of business owners that decide to sell a business, actually list it with a business broker, the other 80% it will get passed through their network. And when you're a business owner and you decide to sell, you tap into your inner circle. So you'll talk to your accountant, you'll talk to your lawyer, you'll talk to your wealth manager, you'll talk to your bank or an investor that's tapped into your business. So what I coach my business owner students is how to build those deal intermediary networks and how to leverage them. Get deal flow. And not only does it give you access to deals, you're building relationships with people that once you find a business can help you close that deal. The accountant can help you with the due diligence, for example, to make sure that the business is doing what it says it's doing, and it's in a good place in a good state. And then your lawyer is required to help you paper that deal, to create the legal documents that you need to sign to transfer the ownership of the business from the seller to you, the buyer as the new owner. So once you've got the deal flow, and you've obviously been to see the business, you've talked to the seller, you've got all the information, and you're confident that this business is going to do for you what you think it is, then it's all about financing the deal. So it's all about structuring the deal, so that it's a win for you and it's a win for the seller. And in most deals, you're looking to pay some of the money at closing and then some of the money over time in seller financing. And then once you know how that is basically going to work, then working with financiers to give you the capital to be able to do that. It's actually the easiest part of the process. There's billions of dollars even in Australia, there’s trillions of dollars in the US, but there's billions of dollars even in Australia, available from bank’s finances and investors to go into the right deals. And, you know, my simple message to people that want to do this is don't go and buy distressed businesses. Don't go and buy businesses that are instant trouble because you're just in inheriting somebody else's headaches. You want to buy a business that's cash flowing, that as soon as you buy it, and you integrate it to what you've already got, its earning’s accretive, its earning’s positive from that very first day. And what's interesting is, the more the profit, the stronger the business. Yeah, the more valuable it's going to be, but actually, the easier it is to raise the financing. Josh: Okay. So if you are the seller, I guess and you said is a seller financing or as you also described vendor financing what is short of the seller being distressed or getting out of this part of their life and moving into something else? What is the advantage to the seller and being a put into a seller financing position or selling the business? So why do you see people selling businesses? Or is there a plethora of businesses being sold? I know a lot of businesses, especially with the whole pandemic thing that's been happening, they haven't even considered a broker, they've just gone I don't have any value to sell here. And so they've just closed down and that also interests me, like how many businesses decide I don't think people want to do what I'm doing or I know I can do what I'm doing. I would rather just see it die rather than have someone else kill it, I guess. Carl: Yeah, it's crazy. There's always value in businesses. You know, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, isn't it? You know, there might be an IT company out there who thinks what you think that, you know, my business isn't worth anything, maybe I closed it down. But for you, you know, that could be an amazing source of new cash flow because you can integrate that into what you've already got. And you're right in what you said, the number one exit strategy for most small businesses is actually to close the door and turn off the lights. And it's such a shame, which is why we have other dealer origination methods outside of going to brokers. So one of the other methods that we teach our business buying students is the concept of a direct approach. So how you can leverage free business information databases, you know, generate a list of businesses that strategically are going to fit what you're looking to do. And then we approached them. So we approach them and we say, Hey, you know, here's, you know, I'm Josh, I own an IT company, and looking to scale my business through acquisitions. I've been studying the marketplace. You know, your business is very appealing to me and you tell them why, so you do a little bit of research or you can outsource that to a VA, you might like their customer base, they might have a really cool process, they might have won some awards, you know, whatever it is, whatever reason you like that business, and how it's gonna move the needle for you, you know, you'll bring that into the conversation, or you'll bring that into the email, or you'll bring that into the letter that you might send them. And then once you've done that, then you start to connect with them, you know, to build some rapport. So there's a really cool couple of hacks that we teach, where we go find them on Facebook, for example. And we look at who they are, do they have a family? What sports are they interested in? You know, do they drink beer? Do they drink wine? Whether they go out for dinner, whether they go on vacation, and then you drop some of that stuff into the conversation. And what you're doing is you're instantly building a relationship with somebody who once they know you like you and trust you, then they're going to be in a much stronger position to potentially want to sell their business to you. And they're thinking of it from the seller side, you'll sit there thinking, I've got this business, I don't really want to work in this business anymore. I don't think I can sell it because who would buy it, maybe I just close it down and liquidate my balance sheet, sell my assets, pay off my liabilities and then just take home the cash that's left, and then all of a sudden you contact them and say, hey, you know, I'm Josh and I'm looking to grow and I really liked your business and you're very complimentary about it. Feels like you know, you've got to know them and what's going on for them and what they do. You know, if I was that person, I'd be like, Dude, come see me. This is amazing. Come see me. I'd love you to have this business. Do you think it's going to really help you? Let's see we can work something out. And then what you find is the more distressed the seller, not in terms of their business, the more distressed they are in terms of their psychology, the bigger component of the deal that they are prepared to put into seller financing. And then, you know, the most common question we get asked about that is, well, what's the risk to the seller if you do the seller financing type deals? So you're not paying them much money at closing, you're just paying them over time. You know, you absorb their business and carry on and make trillions of dollars in profits. What's to say, you're not going to pay the seller? And what we do in most cases, is it's written into the legal agreements that if we don't pay the payments that we're contracted to make, then the seller just gets the business back. So it keeps the seller, you know, highly de risked in that deal process. Josh: Okay, and obviously the buyer very engaged to achieve the objectives. Carl: Yeah. And so it's very different if you're buying a business for the very first time. So if this was your first deal that you were doing and you had no leverage, then clearly, it's only the performance of the business you buy that's going to drive the cash flow for you to pay for the deal. When you own an existing business already, and when we talked before about all the cross selling that you can generate, and all the other cost saving, you know, you might buy a business that’s doing half a million dollars a year in cash flow and your deal as you're going to pay $250,000 of that to the seller over time. If you combine that business with what you're doing, you're able to multiply that where it's generating a million dollars a year of free cash flow, even $2 million a year of free cash flow. So the percentage of that money that you're paying to the seller is a fraction of what is now being internally generated. And sometimes in a deal, you might have to include a little bit of that upside, because the seller might think well, okay, you're buying my business for a million dollars, and you know, you're going to make $5 million dollars out of this if you do it right. And obviously you're gonna have to do all that work. You know, I want a little bit of that as a bonus, so I want 1,500,000 for the deal, not a million. But I'm prepared to take a lot of that money as an urn out, or as a bonus payment or as a contingency payment for how you're going to scale and really explode the value of my business once you've acquired it. So all that comes down to kind of creativity in your deal structure. And, you know, we've been talking for hours if I was to walk you through it in detail, which is, which is why we have some free training available for anyone who's really interested in this and wants to understand, you know, what are the eight steps one needs to go through from a blank piece of paper to closing a bolt on acquisition and combining it with what they already do. Josh: Okay, and I understand that if people did want some training and bits and pieces, you've got a link that people can go. It is trainwithcarl.com/bbfreedom, is that right? Carl: That's absolutely right. Yeah. Josh: You guys have heard it. So trainwithcarl.com/bbfreedom if you guys want to have some of that training to see, and I'm going to be jumping They're checking it out. I think it sounds awesome. And I think that hearing about the way that you can structure these deals to make sure that it's a win/win for both parties, some of them sort of feel like they're losing out is sounds really cool. One of the things you actually brought up earlier was an approach that I think a lot of businesses should do. You've got all this information available online. I'd call it stalking. But that sounds weird, but it's not stalking if people have publicly made the information available to everyone else. If you are researching and finding information and seeing are these the target customers or target acquisitions that you're looking for, what would you normally say is the timeline between picking up the pencil and doing the research to the hammer going down on the sale? Is that sort of a day, a week, a month, 10 years? Carl: So it depends, right? It depends on the size of the business, the complexity of the business, the amount of due diligence you need to do. I've done deals in a day. I've done deals that have taken me six months. So the average is typically about 90 days. If you look at the process of closing a deal, so first of all, you've got to decide what type of business you got to buy, then you've got to do some deal origination, then you've got to go and have meetings, then you've got to do a little bit of analysis about the numbers they'll give you, the type of business, then you've got to make an offer, then you've got to negotiate that offer and get to terms and deal points which are mutually agreeable and a win/win. And then you bring in your little micro deal team, your accountant and your solicitor, your lawyer, and they will kind of hammer out and fine tune the details. They'll do the due diligence, they'll draft the legals, as part of that, then you're raising the financing. And then you're putting together your integration plan. So that as soon as the deal documents are signed, you can get to work and integrating that business into the one you've already got. So bear in mind, most business owners, they've got other things going on that you know they're running their business already. They're probably looking at other deals. They've got families and all these different things. So on average, it's about a 90 day process, but it can be much faster. But again, that depends on the type of business, type of seller, and what else the buying business has got, you know, going on. If they're rolling out a brand new contract, or there's a whole ton of other things that they're doing in their business to grow organically, that can slow down the process, but on average, it's about 90 days. Josh: Okay, so with that being 90 days, I guess, like obviously, that that's if a business is about to is they ready to sort of hit the hammer already, sort of that's not a front from inception perspective, I guess you haven't sort of planted the seed and they've gone maybe I should sell the business or something like that. Or I guess something I hear all the time is every business is ready to sell. It just comes down to the finances and the dollerydoos. So is that you contacting cold calling, contracting a business out of the blue that has at that stage no interest in selling to 90 days and they're like where am I? Carl: It’s the numbers game. So it's like sales, you know, you got to build a pipeline of prospects, some of them are gonna be ready, some of them aren't. You might contact a business, who's had no interest in selling, but then you have the conversation with them. And you trigger various emotions in their mind whether thing, you know what? This has happened for a reason, maybe I should sell maybe I should go and do something else, or you'll be contacting people that are already having those conversations and, and, you know, they don't know where to start, you know, because most people that own businesses never sold a business. About 98% of people that own businesses have never gone through a sale of a previous business. So they don't understand the process or they don't understand the emotions of the process. Josh: Or its like they just entered in a divorce. Carl: Yeah, it's interesting, and it's really a game of psychology in a lot of cases because if you take the typical business owner, you know, they started a business say 20 years ago, and they've run that business for 20 years, they've spent more time in that business than they have with their own family. And often, it's like saying goodbye to your children. You know, I know when my son emigrated to your part of the world, my son, Ryan, he moved to Australia when he was 14, so nine years ago now and he's 23 now. You know, when he when I felt like the seller of a business, you know, my child was leaving me to go off to pastures new. And I was highly supportive of him making that move, and it turned out for him phenomenally. He's an Australian citizen now, by the way, and he lives near you in Brisbane. He's a great guy. When he left I have the same basket of emotions that most business owners feel when they sell a business. They want it to go to a good home, they want to know that it's going to be looked after. They want to know that it's going to grow and it's going to carry on, you know, being successful. So it really is an emotional relationship process. And, you know, sometimes you might find the perfect business and it might take six months for the seller to come round to the concept of selling it. But because it's a numbers game, if you have enough quality shots on goal, if you play in the hands of cards, then you know you're going to laser target those sellers that they are ready, they're just waiting for somebody to have that conversation with them. So it is a numbers game. Josh: I imagine like your training goes into how to as you said 98% of everyone has no idea what they're doing. Everyone had those butterflies in their stomach when they saw the hot girl or hot guy or whatever at school and they went, oh man, I'm going to go talk to them, and 98% of people didn't because they freaked out. And I guess my question is the training of people will freak out about potentially selling their business but as a training sort of put your mind at ease a bit there and put you into a spot that you can say okay, this is how I strategically go about doing this, or is it a helping hand to or getting you the confidence to do that? Carl: Yeah, so it's definitely not a helping hand. What I do is, it's an implementation system. So it's not a helping hand, it's not theory. It's not just a bunch of training videos, kind of a how to guide. It's an implementation system that's been tried and tested over thousands and thousands of deals in lots of different parts of the world. And you know, in Australia, you know, I've personally bought and sold multiple businesses in Australia. So that system, our deal maker, while society system is the implementation engine for any small business owner, or even any want to be business owner to go and buy a business using other people's money. And one of the other things that we didn't talk about yet is if you buy a company, you don't necessarily have to run it. I own nine different companies. I don't work in any of them. I spend about an hour a week, one hour per week in my businesses. I have general managers in my portfolio businesses running them for me. And yeah, I give them little pieces of ownership, they’re my partners. I want them to be incentivized to do the right thing. So I'm an owner/investor. I'm not an owner/operator. There's a really, really big difference. Yeah, I'd say about half of that. So I coach and mentor about 5500 people all over the world to do this. And they're all doing deals every day, in all different countries in all different sectors in all different sizes. And I'd say about half of those students are buying businesses to operate. And half of those students are buying those businesses to be owner/investors. And there's no right or wrong way. If you want to be an owner/investor. The benefits are, number one, you can buy businesses anywhere in the world. So I own businesses in Australia while I was living in the UK. It's a bit of a journey. So obviously, it takes two days to get there. So I'm not going to commute to that business every day. And it means you can own multiple businesses, you don't have to stick with one. If you own multiple businesses, then you don't have to work in every month. It's like getting an executive salary from every single position you own and you stack them. You know, there are benefits of, I guess, being an owner/operator or a business. Some people just like running a business. They like being there everyday. They like that tactical day to day, you know, working in the business. And then there's a hybrid, you know, you could still work in, you can still be in your business every day, but you know, but work on your business. Be the guy that sets up the strategy, be the guy that's all about the planning, be the guy that's all about building those high level, needle moving relationships, and then let your team do the day to day technical, tactical work that execute the plan and the vision that as the owner, you've set up. So there's no right or wrong way. But, yeah, it's all about doing deals. It's what the Wall Street guys do. That's where I grew up. You know, I spent the first 16 years of my career doing large mergers and acquisitions for Wall Street investment bank and for big corporates, and that's where I learned the process. And the mechanism we use, Josh, it's a fancy banking term, it's called an LBO leveraged buyout. So some of the largest companies in the world have been bought and sold through a leveraged buyout model. And a leveraged buyout is you find a business you like, and you just by using other people's money. One of the largest leveraged buyouts in history, massive American company called RJR Nabisco. It was bought for $25 billion in the 1980s. There's a great book about it called Barbarians At the Gate. A must read for any wannabe deal maker. That business was bought for $25 billion. The guy that bought it didn't spend $1 his own money. He’s packaged that model down for the small medium enterprise. It's the same process, just on a much smaller scale. Josh: You stole my final question, which was what would you suggest someone to read to further understand their knowledge of what you do and that's, you've explained it. So make sure to read barbarians at the gate. It’s fantastic. I've really enjoyed having you on the show. And if anyone does have any questions are the popping through on the reviews for us on iTunes, or otherwise jump across to trainwithcarl.com/bbfreedom for more information and to get some training underway. Before we close out there, Carl, has there been anything else you'd like to cover off on? Carl: No, I think we're good and I'm happy to come back. If you want to do a part two. I think there's a lot of extra stuff we didn't dive into. We've got some Australia connections between us. So, yeah, if the listeners really resonate with this. They want us to go deeper on some of the other issues, then I'm happy to come back, dude. Josh: Absolutely. Well, I'd definitely be interested to do that. As I said, like it, you've got a wealth of knowledge there. And I think a lot of people will be very interested in hearing this, especially around this time, where I think a lot of people might be sitting on the fence is what zombie businesses is the main goal coming out in the cracks around the place. So I think there's a really good time to be considering this with different people's mindsets shifting. It's kind of like if there was to be a new year's resolution. It's kind of like we've had three months to think about it instead of one night. So I think we're going to be seeing a lot of changes very, very good, good information. So if anyone is interested, make sure to jump across to trainwithcarl.com//bbfreedom. And yeah, otherwise, go over to iTunes. Leave us some feedback. Give us some love and everyone out there, stay healthy and stay good.

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159|What To Do In a Financial Downturn With Justine Lalla

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 18, 2020 19:27

What To Do In a Financial Downturn With Justine Lalla Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land! We've got a fantastic guest for you. We've got Justine from JPL FM, which is JPL Financial Management. They do some pretty cool stuff with books around the place here. And we're going to be talking about what to do with financial management in a downturn. So we're all experiencing a bit of stress, regardless of what industry you're in. There's only a few at the moment that are really thriving, and I have strong feelings that they may be seeing the downturn in the future a little bit further on. Justine, tell me what would be the one thing that you need to keep in mind when facing a downturn? Get more tips to overcome financial downturn at dorksdelivered.com Justine: I think you need to keep in mind your cash flow and your budgeting. During a financial downturn, you should always have a budget that's always a good idea and during a financial downturn. You should have some sort of contingency plan or contingency budget. Josh: That's very good advice. I know that we had a bit of a talk offline before we jumped into the episode. Without pointing fingers and saying names, you did say that some people need to have the fingers shaking at them saying what are you doing and get your books in order. That's a huge thing. We've got so many different opportunities are in a fantastic country here, where there's opportunities everywhere. And there's probably stacks of businesses that are not able to get them or they're definitely putting you under the pump because they don't have their bookkeeping in order. Justine: Yes, yes. So due to COVID-19 and all the grants that been offered by the government, the cash flow boost, and Job Keeper, we're finding a lot of small business coming to us trying to get the books in order now because they haven't done so in the past, which is quite surprising. Obviously, in order to manage a business well, you need good information. So you need the records in order. And the only way you can plan for financial downturn or any sort of planning is good information, good bookkeeping, information that you can rely on and make good decisions in the future. Josh: Yep. Well, I think it's all data in, data out. How far behind was the worst? And then how far behind is the average? Justine: I've seen some go as far as a year behind. I know there are more than that behind. Thankfully, they haven’t for me. But yeah, it could go to a year behind. Thankfully, none of our clients are in that situation. They're all up to date. So, everyone was able to benefit from all of the subsidies and grants. Josh: Cool. That's good news. Because Yeah, it's a this is it. There's a new one every week. There's one that just came out the other day for another $10,000 Justine: Yes, the Queensland Government grant. Josh: Yeah, that's right. And far out. I thought the wave was over. I thought everyone had caught the wave or not. Justine: Yeah, it's really good that there's so many out there. Obviously, you need to have everything in order. And you need to know what is out there. So you can benefit from all these things. So it's good to talk to a professional that can advise you what you can actually apply for because you don't want to miss out. Josh: Not at all. Exactly. And we just say the more waves coming in as time goes on. Justine: I would say with those grants, utilise it efficiently, you know, make the most out of it in your business. Josh: So, obviously, talking about financial management a downturn with these grants that come through there, what do you think their mindset should be like? For instance, some people will be like, okay, like, let's just use these grants. And this this will allow us to just ride the wave through and then everything will work but we don't know what's on the other side. Versus other people which will be like reduce everyone's hours, stand people down, remove any excessive expenses or expenses that we can absolutely that are not must have parts that absolutely run the business and then still get the grants so that you can ride the wave a little bit longer, even though it might have crippled your business for a longer period of time. What do you think is the best way to approach that? Justine: Yeah, good question. So in terms of these grants and these cash flow boosts and everything that you can get at the moment, I think that should be tied to your contingency budget or plan. And you should factor that in as to how you're going to boost your cash flow. How are you going to get your business back on track once everything starts opening, and how you can then put your stuff on to increase hours until your business is running back to normal and your sales are hitting the usual numbers that it should be. So those grants and subsidies should be factored into that contingency plan. You shouldn’t just get it and then squandered all in one go. Josh: Okay. That's good advice. I'd say like you said that a lot of it comes down to your team and the management of where your goals are with where you're going. We faced the problem internally, I can't say that we got away scot-free, we've had a downturn. And that's because the businesses we rely upon had a downturn, and sadly, two of them that were running 40, 50 people businesses, one of them the other ones 50, 60 people businesses went down to three and five and then another one that was also quite large went down to nothing. They've gone bankrupt officially now out of business, very happy to say that our team has stuck with us. And we've held together like a tight family. I've had even some of the staff say, look, although I know you're saying we should be at 80% they still have to work the full hundred. One staff member said, Look, what can we do here and he said, happy for you to not pay me for the next two months and we can just work something out after that. And the environment and the way that you bring up your team and you talk to your team will definitely help with the situation. Once you've got the grants, would you be saying hold on to them, hold on to the money or pivot your business or think about that idea or accelerate at some bit? Some people have been spending heaps of money on marketing to use it now to be able to put their business forward. Some people have been pulling back completely and saying, let's just remove every overhead and just sit here until something happens. Justine: Look, it's gonna be a little bit different for every business. And depending on where they are with sales, I know a lot of businesses have started doing a little bit of sales, which is good. A lot of people have this stuff only on job keeper, some of them have staff working a few days a week. So it really all depends on what your expenses are like, and what sort of revenue you are expecting. I think those are the factors that you should look at first before determining what you could potentially do with that extra boost of cash. It's great to be able to use that to increase your cash flow so that when something arises, you are able to pay for that. If a business is going to benefit more from increasing staff hours, like you said marketing that all comes down to the business and what kind of business that is Josh: Like it's just shifting risk really just working out what is the best thing that you can do with the money that's come in. Justine: Yes. And it's really important to utilise those funds efficiently. And during an economic downturn, you want to make sure you're using it in an area where you're going to see some sort of benefits, you know, it's gonna make a difference in your business. Josh: For us internally, we decided you know, everyone has those products and those things, they go, oh, that's nice. And you buy into it, and then God, we don't really need that. And so, we've trimmed the hedge, so to speak, we're now in main machine and although some of those things, that's a really nice report that we're getting once a month, and we went, is it worth $600 a month for that report? No. Get rid of that. Justine: Yeah. I think during this sort of time, you should look at your nice to have things or must have things and wait. Josh: Yes, absolutely and, and start cross checking everything. And this isn't just for business. This is in your own personal life. I looked across the properties that I have, all of the insurances, I looked across the insurances for the cars and made sure that I wasn't paying too much. And just making a few phone calls, I think was an hour total time on the phone. I saved $1,000 a year. And I thought that's pretty good. Justine: Yeah, that’s awesome, that's excellent. Even your electricity bill means companies that call and seek out the best rates. There's so many areas that you can decrease costs, if you spend some time analysing your numbers. Josh: Yeah. And if and as I said, it doesn't take that long to do like a some of the data center and expenses that we had, we rang them up and we went from, for one of them is $600 a month, which dropped down to $400 a month. Another one was 1400 dollars a month that was dropped down to $800 a month. Yeah, I thought, well, this is great. And it doesn't take long. And we've had customers come to us, and ask us and say, hey, look up, we're not doing not doing well, because of this situation, what can we do? And everyone's in the same boat. And we're all here to help, really. That's one of the great things about this, this beautiful country we're in. We're not full of arseholes. There's a few of them. But generally speaking, we're here to help everyone and we want only what's best for everyone. Justine: Yes, definitely the same with us. I mean, we've offered our clients some discounts to get through these tougher months because obviously, the flow on effect to everyone so when we can help with definitely trying to do that. Josh: You're in a fantastic position, I guess in where if they want help with some of these different grants, they get money. If they get money, you can get paid. So everyone wins. If they don't get it, it's kind of a free money you're getting paid for on the results really. You have a bit of a different way of billing people as well, which I very much like. Would you like to tell everyone about that? Justine: Yes. So we tend to charge our clients a fixed weekly or monthly rate, which entails a variety of services that they require for their business. So you can choose whether you want to pay for that weekly or monthly. And with that, there's no additional cause for any phone calls or emails or any questions that you may have. I don't think you generally contact your accountant if they are charging you per minute. We like our clients to, you know, ask questions, know their numbers, learn more, because if they don't learn any more, and ask the right questions, they're not going to do any better. So we want them to succeed, which is why we like them to ask questions. And most of our customers love that model, because they know there's no surprises in the cost, they can budget for it effectively. And there's nothing additional to that. Josh: I love it. And a model that we went to for it for the exact same reason you've just said that actually. So in 2011, we noticed a bit of a problem. So 2007 the business started out. 2010, we’re still charging people per hour. And then we noticed that as we were getting problems fixed faster and faster, and using better technology, we're getting paid less and less, and the business was less profitable, the more experienced the staff were. And I thought this doesn't make any sense. So there's these cowboys out there charging the same price. And in one instance, there's a job we got finished in 45 minutes that had someone else already work on it for 10 hours. And I thought, how didn’t they do this in 10 hours, it was a simple problem. And then I thought, we've got to change the model. It's the best thing we ever did, because it gives us a reliable income. And it makes sure that our customers have a known expense, as you said, and it means that when the receptionist calls up and says, hey, we've got a problem, this isn't happening. It gets looked at with the same level of detail than any of the C level people. Well, before the C level people call up and they don't have time to get that problem fixed with a receptionist even though it might be costing them a couple of hours a day or something because things are loading slowly or things aren't working as efficiently as they could. And that ultimately is costing the business heaps. If you're in this financial downturn, and you're looking at a way to change around how your business is working, this would be a great time to sort of brainstorm around that. You're there as a soundboard for different things like this, is that right? Justine: Yes, yes, definitely. We work on a range of things for our clients. And it all depends on the services you require. Our key focus is, you know, management of your business. So cash flow, budgeting, making sure you have good reports at the end of the month. So wherever they are variances from your actuals to your budget, you know, we sit down with the owners, and we go through, you know, the reasons why this may be occurring. And then we look at ways you know, like you said, where you can call up a few places like your insurance and reduce things. These are areas that we advise our clients on. Josh: There’s something I’d love to see and maybe you guys do this is if you have multiple people that are in the same industry and then you went, hmm why is Dorks Delivered spending, I don't know 30% of their income on marketing where other IT companies are only spending 10%. And why is Doc's delivered revenue X and Y when they've got this many customers? That'd be great. Justine: So we use a benchmarking for our clients. So our budgets are looked at against that benchmark. And then, at the end of every month, when we do your monthly reports, we look at your profit and loss against those benchmarks and try to work out why is there such a variance. So there definitely are benchmarks that you can use and use that for your budgeting so that you know what other businesses in your industry are doing in terms of their percentage for wages against sales, cost of goods, for example. So it's very, very good and efficient to use benchmarks, I think in your business. Josh: I don't know what other people are spending I don't know for 20 percent’s right or 50% is right or whatever else. Justine: Yeah, you need the industry benchmarks. Josh: I know that it's working. Justine: I think you get an idea of what the benchmark is around those spin. Just to give you an idea. Josh: Yeah, that'd be good. You have to send me across something for IT, and we'll see where we're at. So fixed fee for accounting. Did you start the business doing that? Or is that something that came about afterwards? Justine: We started the business doing that, because I know that's a little bit different from what other people are doing. And whenever I have worked before, prior to me joining the company, an accounting firm would have done the work. And when I saw the bills that these companies were receiving from these firms, it was quite shocking. So I thought that I'd like to do something different and my target market is small to medium sized businesses. And I think this is a much more affordable way for them to use our services. And every business needs to have good financial management. And so, this is an area that we love helping them in. And I think the fixed fees works well with small to medium businesses. Josh: I completely agree. If you know that you can ask the question whenever, you don't feel as uncomfortable about asking it. My first accountant, sorry for listening, Mr. First Accountant. I knew when I walked in, the clock was ticking. As soon as I went grab that mentos off his desk and we're talking, the clock is ticking. Justine: Don’t you feel stressed when you know that clock is ticking? Josh: When he's like, Josh, what do you do in your spare time? Justine: Oh, does it matter right now? Josh: I’m like nothing I do Nothing. I do absolutely nothing. I have the most boring life ever. Let's just talk about what I'm here for. Cos he’d be like oh, yeah. So how's the family? I got this new car. And I'm going I don't care so much. It stress me, because then I wasn't asking the right questions. I wasn't saying I should my business structure be like this, I would say, what is the fastest way that I can get away from you and stop talking to you. I didn't build a great relationship. I noticed that when I was talking to customers, and I talked to them and computers load, things load, things take time to download or whatever, and you're talking to them. And you can see them looking at their clock looking at the computer looking at the clock, and I'm going, ah, this isn't good. This isn't making them feel happy. And then that's when I'd say something, look why we're waiting for this. I'm not charging, I feel more comfortable. That's not a very good way to run a business, is it? Changing across to we call them continuity plans, because we want to keep their business continuity. And so a lot of people call a managed IT service plans. We thought what does that even mean? Continuity agreements where you guarantee their uptime, it's simple, you continue, you have a business continuity, and you guarantee that in your plan. The only problem that I found in changing to the model, two problems. The first one, if you ever see any of your clients at a pub, they're going to buy your beer, because you have built that fantastic relationship up. So that's a good problem to have. So I don't see any problem with that at all. The only other thing I would say, and this comes down to again, the position of where I was at in life, and how about outgoing I was at that stage. When things are working, customers would be like, what are we paying you for? And when things are broken, they ask what are we paying you for? And so that came down to making sure that you had the right reporting in place, and you had the right metrics, KPIs to make sure that everything was pulling everything in the same direction. But overall, as long as you've done that, it's a very, very good way to make sure that in a situation like now, if you are running a per hour ad hoc type business, you very well could be getting no hours and that could very well be giving you no money and that's a big problem to be in. Well, I've really enjoyed speaking with you. And is there anything else that you'd like to go through for any of our listeners that are out there to, in regards to JPL financial management? Justine: Oh, well, I think the piece of advice I could give businesses out there is to manage your cash flows, manage your budget, make sure you have numbers in place, you know, plan for this period of downtime. Make sure you know what your numbers are, you know what your expenses are, cut costs where you can. Talk to a professional, get the most out of your government grants and everything that the government's offering at the moment. So utilise that efficiently. And yeah, hopefully we'll all be back in business full swing pretty soon. Josh: I completely agree. And anyone out there that is listening and wants to have more advice, or wants to have Justine go through your numbers in your books, jump across the JPLFM.net or JPL financial management, we'll put a link in here so you can see where to go from there. And yeah, everyone just stay healthy. Stay on top of your books. Don't let things go behind. And I think, pay yourself don't not pay yourself and then not be able to get some of these grants and make sure you're talking to someone that can give you the right advice and set the right wind in your sails to guide you to where you want to be. If you have enjoyed this episode, make sure to jump across to iTunes, leave us some love. Give us some feedback. And yeah, stay healthy.

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157|Business Asset Protection with Jason Popelier

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 4, 2020 28:26

Business Asset Protection with Jason Popelier Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land. I've got a fantastic guest, he’s going to be talking about asset protection and how to change the model of your business to make sure that you are considering things you have between the items that are bringing you in money, the items that are costing you money are definitely separated, as well as not just from the accounting perspective, but also from a bit of a twist on it, bringing in insurance and all sorts of other things into it. So, I’ve have Jason here from FWO Chartered Accountants. So, Jason, what is the number one reason that you'd want to make sure that you are considering when reviewing the model of your business or making sure that you get a change? When do you go from sole trader to company to then having several companies or a Trust Company to make sure that you have asset protection? How do you know, when's that aha moment? Learn more about business asset protection at dorksdelivered.com.au Jason: Good question. The thing that I always start with any of my clients or new clients or potential clients are their goals. To start with, I don't really care what their structure is currently, I start with what they’re trying to achieve? And their current business structure (makeup) currently enable them to achieve that? I ignore what's been set up in the past because there's a lot of businesses out there who have the wrong entities, or have the right entities but they’ve structured it in the wrong way as well. Imagine a business that has higher risks, let's say the construction industry. Even though most of my clients are professional services, I have quite a few construction clients and they have millions of dollars' worth of equipment. There's a lot of businesses out there who look at the costs of setting up or maintaining two entities and decide to hold all assets all under the same entity, they want to save costs, technically the do but at a cost of increased risk. Realistically, it's not that much more to set up a new entity, especially when you consider the cost if you actually lose everything. These businesses have to maintain a minimum asset level for the licensing rules and the minimum assets are set on their turnover. But you can imagine that if something went wrong, and the business essentially got tanked, and it was out of their control, because they were a subcontractor to a bigger guy who deliberately withheld cash flow, it happens a lot, especially in the construction industry. if withheld for five months, they will essentially have to go into either voluntary liquidation or forced liquidation because they can't pay some of their subcontractors or staff as well. They will lose everything. And the other person just goes, great, one less creditor to pay. If they had structured the situation a little bit differently, let's just say they had a warehouse that held the equipment, they could have that in a separate entity, which is its own legal entity. Those separated assets can be protected in that sense. To cover costs and replacements, the trading entity can have, in normal terms, a cross charge for leasing of those assets and facilities. The difference now is those same assets are not subject to the same risks of the trading business, even if they’re ultimately still commonly owned. Looking at the types of structures, the reason you would have a proprietary limited (company) scenario versus a sole trader or partnership structure scenario is a sole trader (and partners) are liable to their share or the entire project, depending if they're partners default. Limited, by itself means that there's a limitation on liability. You automatically have less exposure than operating by yourself or in partnership. Then if you use multiple structures that are limited in their own rights, then there might be a further set of layers for protection. I went on a bit of a tangent around protection after what goals they're trying to achieve. Reviewing a client goals and objectives. If a client wants to retire at 50, actually let's go up to the new norm, retired at 60 because you probably realize the same as myself, by the time we get to retirement age, we'll probably be 75 or 80, so let's be realistic. Josh: If doctors can increase it, the amount of time we can live, the retirement age would just be 10 years prior to that. Pretty much. Jason: E xactly, and people will work longer, there's technology we can utilise as well in addition to medical advances. So, it might be a little bit later, but let's just say the goal instead of retiring at 50, is now 60. Because the 60 is the new 50 in terms of retirement age. To get there, we need to decide what that looks like and there is a combination of superannuation in there. We need to protect that in some sense, this may be around your investment strategy, to not be too aggressive or to have a balanced fund, depending, and the closer we get to retirement, the less risk we put into our investments. Talking about risk and protecting that, one of the greatest assets for business owner is the business itself. And it has the highest potential to create the most value out of any asset they are other than themselves, right? So why don’t business owners give more consideration to risks? We forget that we, as a person are our own greatest asset. No one else can replace us. And a lot of people forget that. You can actually insure that as well. But if you're in control of your own business (instead of being an employee), it's co-related. So there has to be an element of your business, essentially making up that retirement age, and that goal. And we look at that and go, okay, what is your business look like? And how can we de-risk that particular business or set of businesses, as people might have a portfolio of multiple. Referencing an example ... there was client I worked with a couple of years ago. They had about 26 entities that were trading, so you can imagine if they trade in over 26, we're talking the group that was 100 plus entities. Little bit complicated. We had to slice and dice and put appropriate levels of protection while grouping into pools because of those 26 trading entities, only about six or seven of them were actually making real decent money, but you got to look at each business in its own right, not as a big pool. Breaking down a business, you look as each and challenge, how can we achieve these goals? Start with an element that you've got to focus. Look at what products you have and how you have an advantage in the market, why people want to come and work with you. And this could be around branding and protecting that. Also consider elements through technology, and how do you protect those items or services? This is when cyber security would come into place. Josh: For me to understand, I guess any of our listeners, I guess that would mean like, if you have a house and you chuck security cameras on the house, and an alarm system is going to reduce your premiums. And similarly, if you have a business that has a bunch of IT equipment, and then you decided to make sure that you had someone else that was taking a level of accountability. Like for instance for us, we charge a set price per month, and then we guarantee their uptime. If they go down, we pay them while they're down. So we guarantee they're up. Now, so that in a sense kind of sounds like an insurance policy, but we make sure they have certain levels of protection, they have certain types of antivirus, they have certain types of networking monitoring. So if you have any of that sort of stuff, that would have to reduce the premium sound when you're looking at cyber insurance, is that right? Jason: Exactly, there's always an element. But yeah, it's a contributing factor. And if its contributing factor is significantly more, the more risks you have, and the more people you have in your business the change in risks you have to consider. So, you can imagine the risk that are reduced down for a 10-person practice or whatever it might be, versus 100 would be significantly less. And it also depends on the nature of the business and everything else as most insurances would factor in. Josh: If we look at like toll, toll recently, and in Australia was under a bit of heat with their hack and it came through a phishing email, for anyone out there that doesn't know what that is, is when someone sends an email pretending, they look like someone else. And then they asked for some coin and they sometimes do it, it might not be like, hey, send money to this Bitcoin address, I have your nudes. That's a very common one, but a lot of the time be more like, congratulations, you've just qualified for a business bonus, as long as you just fill out this form, and it comes from your director, your KPIs had being met appropriately, or whatever it is, and it looks quite legitimate if they've been doing something that's been a targeted attack. With toll hack, what could they have done differently? And what can we learn from that? From your perspective, what could they have done differently to remove the immediate problem as well as the overall not being hacked? Or at least having something there to fall back on? Jason: Good question, and what I’ll do is give you an example for part of that using what I do myself in my own business, because it's easy to explain how you've mitigated your own risks. A lot of businesses aren't taking cyber threats too seriously and that's just ridiculous. Australia is at a high risk in Cyber because of this. In my practice, we started with a quarterly, it's about biannual now, review of the cyber risks and everything that's involved. We've got a cyber risk manual and what's expected. And we also run systematic tests that we don't tell the staff. Josh: Phishing simulators and stuff like that? Jason: Exactly, phishing simulators. Exactly. We essentially have sporadic phishing emails sent to staff just to see what they do. And it's disappointing that I would say a high percentage maybe 10% - 20% would actually fail sent phishing but what that enables is a conversation with that person and identifies that they need further education around these risks. Josh: Do you give training and stuff like that after that's been found? Like you're obviously analyzing and have the data to be able to see this person could done whatever they didn't from there, yeah? Jason: Exactly. I might do part of the training myself. Some of my team will do part of it. I also educate my staff to obverse how I sound in my communication. If it doesn't sound like how I communicate in my words, isn’t logical in what I'm asking, is what I’m asking out of the business norm and if it is then don’t respond etc. Worst case, if they’re unsure, get on the phone and speak to me or speak to the Practice Manager. And it's about that education. It's about how many steps we can put in place to make sure it doesn't break or fail. So that's something that a larger organization definitely needs to do, they definitely need to assume that their staff will make mistakes because they are human, and test those mistakes to see who is making mistakes and at what levels and where you might need to educate. Because you can imagine a phishing simulator around cyber can globally be applied at a very low cost, at a very low cost compared to the impact. Josh: Sent to thousands of emails. Jason: Exactly, exactly. Compared to the impact that that one failure could potentially make. Using a recent example with TOLL. Their huge mistake cost millions upon millions upon millions of dollars. So that would be one of the key cyber takeaways that just gobsmacked me that, a dozen, a dozen major cyber hacks, right, it gobsmacked me actually that an organization like TOLL hasn't implemented something like that. But at the same time, it doesn't surprise me because the larger the organization, the more things get lost and the slower things move. There's also an element of embarrassment as well as it goes up the chain. This kind of embarrassment is actually not as bad as some of the Scandinavian countries which are very chain of command minded where they want to follow suit from the top, and they're not encouraged to identify errors and mistakes, which is why Volkswagen got themselves in a bit of a heat and it's also on. Josh: This is on the carbon monoxide output on the vehicles. Jason: Exactly. Which they actually knew about years ago but no one ever explained it because it was going against what the top dog wanted to do. You can even trace this type of mentality to why Nokia phones failed. Josh: I'm pissed off, I can't change my phone cover anymore. It sucks! Jason: T he good old Nokia phone that you could throw against the wall and pick it up and put it back together and it still works. Josh: And last five days on a battery. Jason: Exactly. But going back to the issues, there's an element that you have to address from a culture perspective. You have to encourage reporting if there are breakages to report. This means people don't get penalized for reporting, if they are then they won't report. that's a key thing. From a cultural perspective, TOLL could have done better. From a systems and operations, TOLL could have done better. How you handle the media, also TOLL could have done better. So, to de-risk a situation, there are specialists who organisations deal with and predominantly PR, but they might have a mix or organisations who help you identify risks of certain conversations and everything else. You know, one of the scenarios that we saw that was highly impacted in Queensland, especially southeast Queensland, was Dreamworld with the impact caused by a lack of maintenance and then everything else that followed. Josh: You're talking about like three years ago. Yeah, yep. Yep. So anyone else that's listening in overseas that happens to be here, Dreamworld, local theme park that had a bit of an issue with a lack of maintenance and some of the processes, it might have just been a few series of unfortunate events paired with lack of maintenance and lack of training, but there was a rough River Rapids ride that flipped over and it killed four parents, wasn't it? Is that right? Jason: Yeah, i t killed four people. There was a brother and sister you know, a mother or something and a father. It shouldn't have happened. The ride flip diver and essentially crushed them and it was a very tragic event. Looking back and reflecting from a risk point of view, there were risks everywhere in that scenario. We're talking about a listed company here too. There was a risk where the head of group was essentially bleeding cash out of the business from a daily basis that maintenace wasn’t allowed/maintained. They should have just cut off the couple of failed businesses. They weren't even treating the business itself as a separate business unit. In relation to the media, I know for a fact the PR company that they initially engaged resigned because they (Dreamworld) wouldn't follow their advice. And this is the same risk that TOLL made with the media. They actually engaged but they chose not to listen, and then their PR company decided to eject as fast as they possibly can, because it's a reflection on them as well. And there was a number of highly critical issues when speaking with the media about certain aspects. Giving themselves a bonus of millions of dollars a week later from the incident, just a bunch of really … really bad decision making. For you and me speaking, Joshua, and all the listeners would just go what? How stupid can you be … and this comes down to a bit of greed. So, there's a range of different factors. Josh: Do you think they had like a certain level of god-factor like they've put themselves above what they think is the rules and the law and they've sort of put them into god mode? Why do you think that they made the decisions? Because that way in our boat at some stage, if you at the theme part, I don’t know most of our listeners don't know the theme park, but they must have had some level of normalcy in their life, most people to go okay, how do I look at this and understand that it's going to turn to this. Surely, there's got to be a certain time or a spot where you think, okay, this is your shit decision. What happens? Like what do you think through that hit? Obviously, this isn't obviously what you do. You're not a psychologist, but like, what do you think happened? Jason: I could probably draw on some of my education as well as some of my consulting from corporate finance days where I actually put a value on who (people) to keep in the business from a culture perspective, and this comes back to the business norms. A culture is set by business norms. You (as an owner) might say this is our culture, these are our values, but if you don't practice them, then the people inside the business set business norms. And although we might be very highly surprised these sorts of decisions are made, to them (the culprits), it's only a little incremental difference compared to what their normal it might be. It can explain a lot of things with, you know, some of the famous collapses and really corrupt things in the finance world that occur, including Enron in the US. We kind of look at Enron and go ‘how the hell were these people able to essentially destroy people's lives’ and hold a state (in the USA) ransom for their electricity? This comes back to what their business norms are. If you get encouraged or rewarded for making decisions, that sets a new norm. Heading back to the Dreamworld accident and lack of any maintenance program. They cut the maintenance program to save some cash. The person who just created some extra cash as a reward, the board gives them some of that cash back and as an addition to this reward, they also get promoted. This now sets a shift in the expectations of the business. And the more this type of action occurs, the more normalised it becomes. And when something serious happens, the review the normal in their heads and say ... well, this is the normal, this is what is expected in my world. Everyone else is in my world. So, the impact is not going to be that great. And then they get surprised that the community essentially smashes them for their behavior. And they're like, but I'm just doing what I've been doing for the last however many years, and I'm entitled to that money. And it's just because these business norms that the culture is so disconnected from the community. Taking another slight side tangent, as business owners, we need to engage in the community. There's almost an element of obligation, not just for Australian owned businesses, but for businesses and across the globe as well. Businesses actually survive because we (the people) allow them to participate in the business community for particular cultures. We need to make sure that those types of cultures are engaged with the community and that they’re giving back to the community. The more that you (as a business) shut that window and just focus purely on a couple of variables around money and greed, and other things as well, the more disconnected you’re going to be and the higher risks that will bottle within the business. And that applies across the board. I've seen these issue sit in start-up businesses and they actually have a higher impact on culture and the community when compared to a larger business. If the culture is bad, is actually easier to transform larger businesses culture than a smaller business. And the mid-range businesses have the greatest impact because they're still somewhat nimble, but they can transform. This is just an element of risk in a business itself, and cybersecurity is just another component, while key person risk is another element. Josh: It’s a big one for me actually. When I first started my business, I was the key person, and getting key person insurance for yourself as a business owner as a fuzzy income, let's call it a fuzzy income. If you're reinvesting your money, you could be earning $10 or $10 million. But if you're reinvesting the whole load into your business, and you have no income, then what are you worth and where do you sit with your insurance, and so it becomes a bit of a fuzzy income. And the key person, you can't really get key person, you can correct me, but you can't really get key person for yourself when you're doing this with your income because you're investing into something that you can see as someone who's going to be working. Jason: You can actually insure the key person if they are the business owner; you just have to understand what impact they have and what price this equates to. It’s the same for anyone in a business, you can insure any key person … it’s just a matter of cost. Josh: Okay. So see if I ran a business and I was like a Pty Ltd registered and set up myself as the employee, and I'm just making up a scenario now, but let's say I earned $85,000 a year $80,000 a year just underneath the next tax, that’s $70,000-ish. I mean, I tell everyone, I don't know if that's exactly right now and if you're listening in the future, it might be changed. Anyway so $90,000, if I'm under the $90,000, I say I'm earning that, I'm paying the tax on that but I'm earning nothing, okay, I'm actually earning nothing I'm just able to pay the tax. And then I have some big issue where … and the key person in the business collapses. If the business never actually turned over but paid the tax what is the insurance yet? Jason: Well, you have essentially lied on your application. In this case you're not actually insured, even though you're paying for insurance, and best case they might just refund you. Josh: So the insurance is against the money that comes, not the money that you've paid tax on. Jason: No, no. You have to be truthful on an insurance policy. And if you're not truthful, they can deny the policy itself. if you're not actually earning that, and the business can't pay that about, then your key person insured amount and what you've actually said is a lie. There's an element that if you're taking out insurance, you got to be truthful, because if you're not truthful, they can deny the insurance, and there's no point of taking out insurance in the first place. That's a key thing for the listeners. Separate to that, you've got to define what type of insurance and what risks you're trying to alleviate. Josh: Yeah, of course. Jason: Looking at it, there's business disruption insurance, which is if something outside of the norm that disrupts the business, but you've still maintained all the key people, that's business disruption, noting this excludes pandemics. But that's when the government would step in. And we're lucky in Australia that we have a government that can support us versus other countries. . Josh: Bloody Oath, Mate. Jason: That's it. That's it. We're just lucky to be Australians. But separate to that, a key person insurance is if … let's just say, Josh, you run an IT business, right? You run at least at an IT business. You also have other businesses, but let's just focus on your IT business. Your family essentially owns that business with you, right? Josh: Yep. My emotions are impacted, and their emotions are impacted by my business. So absolutely, we're all together in this. Jason: That's correct. But there's an element that your family owns that business. What happens tomorrow if you were in a car crash, and you died, unfortunately, what would happen to your family? If you've got life insurance, they'll get the life insurance, but nothing else. That’s a risk in itself, right. Hopefully your insurance will cover everything your family needs to survive without you to some degree. They can't replace you, but they can at least financially survive without you. Josh: If I'm a workaholic. That's all I am, anyway. So, it's fine. Jason: Yeah, well that's it, that's it. Imagine now there are other people in the business, right. We’re now talking about other livelihoods, not just yourself, you're just the owner. You could be an employee, but you're the owner. What happens to them? They essentially lose their job. Josh: Our business right now have 12 employees, for instance. Jason: Exactly. So, all 12 employees are pretty much stuffed, right? Josh: Absolutely. Jason: To some degree, the business will just completely explode. If you had key person insurance, an element maybe protected depending on how its shaped. The business could survive because it’s protected. But then the issue shifts to who owns the business after. Does the executor of your estate get involved? if it's a sole owner situation, the insurance proceeds inject into the business may help the business survive until they are able to find someone who has similar skill sets. The business may not be able to survive in the same sense, but it has the ability to survive. Now, imagine the same situation but with two partners. So key person insurance is more to insure the person and business disruption is more to insure for the outside of norm that might happen that's not a pandemic or force of nature or something like that, right? Which is highly unlikely. Except in Australia, apparently, we've had floods, fires, droughts, and Corona Virus. Exactly. All in the last decade. Josh: Jump into the Old Testament and look at what's going next and read it forward. It's just crazy, isn't it? Jason: Exactly, exactly. Jason: I’ve seen in situations after the fact. Not in my case, because I always made sure my clients actually got these sorts of things lined up or else, they won't be clients for too long. And that's just, you know, you either want to follow my advice or you don't. Josh: You’re there for a reason. If no one's listening, what's the point? It's the same as me, like, people aren't listening to the advice we're giving. What's the point of having us here? Jason: I’m there for a reason. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So where I'm going to lead into is by selling insurance. Let's just say you're still in the business but you bring on another partner, and you are 50∕50. Something happened to that partner, and it's worth money in the business and they're 50%, but their estate essentially holds a 50 percent ownership of the business and you can't legally make decisions to some or some decisions because you need voting rights and there's an equal voting right to make a decision on some instances. Day to day you might be able to still operate, but you might be subject to being shackled for bigger decisions or essentially shaping the business where it needs to go or just continuing to operate. I've seen a scenario where an ex-wife from six years ago and I got involved after the fact of essentially- Josh: Divorced for six years, done, legally done. Jason: Legally done. I got involved to essentially sort it out. I'm sorry, I apologise to the listeners, the shit fight that essentially unfolded. An ex-wife who should have been removed from the estate, challenged the estate and essentially tried to control the business to get as much money as she could. If they had proper buy-sell agreements in place, what would happen is the business would be valued at arm's length, then a chunk of money would exit to the estate and the business would just operate without that partner as if they just got ejected from the business. In this scenario, the business could survive, and that is an element of risk when you have business partner, or multi partners. Think about whether something happened to your fellow partner/s, what would the impact be on the business, would it survive? This is your asset as well as their family's asset. Josh: I can say comfortably, my business has been running, when you pointed it out, it has been running for 13 years. And over the 13 years, I had a partner for a while and then not to my want, that all felt fell apart, as a lot of our listeners already know. And when that happened, did that impact the serviceability of our clients? Absolutely. Did it impact the quality of the return on work? Absolutely. Now, would I have been a better person had it then not happened? Absolutely. It all comes down to what are you doing in your life and how does your life affect the business and when you are a business owner, they can absolutely affect. If you guys have been interested in this and you've loved it, make sure to jump across to iTunes and leave us some reviews and we'll speak to you soon. Stay good.

united states australia pr giving australian bitcoin businesses old testament heading reviewing limited cyber separate queensland mate kpis volkswagen nokia toll scandinavian enron asset protection referencing dreamworld practice managers trust company pty ltd jason yeah jason you josh it josh yeah josh you jason t jason good josh so jason to josh do josh for

156| Staying Efficient in Business With Sarah Stein

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 28, 2020 27:11

Staying Efficient in Business With Sarah Stein Josh: Gday everyone out there in podcast world. We've got Sarah from Miss Efficiency. We're going to be talking today about how recession-proof your cash flow through efficiency in business. Sarah actually wrote a pretty cool white paper on how to remove paper from your business, which, I guess a bit of an interesting way of looking at it. So Sarah, in business, people are freaking out in business at the moment. If you're still in business, hopefully, what would you say is the number one way to stay efficient, and make sure that you keep your head on the right numbers? Get more tips on how to stay efficient in business at dorksdelivered.com Sarah: So Josh, I think it comes down to the systems that you put in place, and that is, a lot of the time it's the technology that you put in, but there are lots of other things outside of technology that you can do as well. So you know, there's so much technology out there, it can be very overwhelming and we can get overwhelmed with the choice. And then you can get overwhelmed with, you know, jumping at the next shiny thing all the time. So constantly, you're putting new things in place just because it's new and does some whiz-bang thing. But what you might have had already. I think we all are. And I have to pull myself back and think, hang on a second, do I actually need it? It's like anything like, do we need it? Do we need the new car is our current car doing exactly what we need it to do? And it's still safe and you know, it's the same with the technology in your business. So I think when thinking about the systems that you want to put in place in your business, go right back to basics, and map it out on paper. Map out what your objective is like what you actually want to get out of it. And then once you've got that mapped then you'll know which technology to put in place because your map is going to be your guide. So I think there are a few key ones. There's a lot of personal preference because a lot of technology does the same thing. You've got your MIB, Xero and QuickBooks, for example, like I prefer Xero. But there's pros and cons with all of them. So I think to have really good accounting software in place, and then something really good to keep track of your workflow depending on what your businesses and then something to keep track of your customers, and your leads, and, you know, CRM, if you like so that you can keep in front of everybody. So to answer your question, map it out, and then decide what you need. And then, you know, it can evolve and grow from there. It doesn't mean that because you've decided on this today, that's how it needs to stay forever. It just evolves as your business needs change. Josh: You're talking before about do you need this card? Do you need an upgraded car? Is this car fine? I'm guilty of being fooled, I'm going to use the term “fooled” into selling a perfectly good car to make sure that the image that I was representing was what was required by the business and it made no difference at all. No one cared about my car whatsoever. I dropped out a perfectly good car that was perfectly functional, the four-wheel-drive that I still have now is still perfectly fine and functional. But oh, man, what a ripoff. Just coming back to like what you need in your business. And what is the tech that would be good to check out. You told me the different accounting packages, obviously. You touched on some bits and bits about leads versus customers and stuff, which we'll talk about in a bit. But what is the good tech to check out? Sarah: I would say talk to your bookkeeper or your best agent, but you know, you've ruined that, you've ruined that. I think in this instance, cars aren't really our forte. But I think definitely talk to the people who are experts in using it. Do some research. Don't do too much research online because there's too much information. I know if I go online, yeah, there's just too much and it's too overwhelming. And it's like, that's all too hard. I'm not going to do it. Talk to other business owners that you know. So I had a phone call today from a client who was with a friend of theirs who is in a different business to them. So all my clients are on Xero and the friend of theirs was on MIB. And he was having trouble and he was thinking about converting over. So my client got me on the phone, we had a three-way conversation and you know, I could give them some information about MIB and Xero and a few other bits and pieces. So talk to other business owners that you know who are friends because they have a vested interest in it. So they are going to tell you the truth. And it's good to get in You know, other people's perspective, like how we would use Xero for my existing client would be different to how we would have used it for this other business owner. So definitely do your research. But I think, also come in prepared with the knowledge of what you need. So coming back to my scenario before about mapping out what you need. Think about what your current processes are, and evaluate what's manual, what's electronic, what's taking you the most time, what's the thing that you push around your desk the most before you realize, you know, you actually have to do it now. And then think about what your workflow is, what you would like it to be if there's something that you want to be able to do that your current systems don't allow you to do, to have a really good idea of what your needs are. So then when you talk to an advisor, they can say, okay, well based on that, this is what we would suggest to put in place, and based on what your needs are. We have a conversation with people to try and find out what they are currently doing what they would like to do and where they see their business in a few years’ time because maybe what's going to work for them. Now, that might not work in five years’ time. So if we don't think about the bigger picture, you might be doing the wrong thing. So do some research, educate yourself have a clear idea of what you want to get out of the system. And then you can have a really good conversation with an accountant or agent who can help you then put it into place. Josh: That makes a lot of sense. And I know that when I started the business, I decided I'm going to learn everything and I'm going to be the person who wears all the hats and develop the software that worked exactly as I wanted to. I hated the idea of bookkeeping myself, and so I learned everything I could about it, so that I could try and do it in an automated way. I ended up just spending too much time making this software instead of working in the business. Fast forward 12, 13 years we've got fantastic options out there like Xero, mostly online products that do 95% of the reconciliation. And as long as you've got the good bookkeepers in there that can make sure that when there is an anomaly, they're picking up on that and striking that out and making sure that they bring the attention to and fixing it. And we're in a better world now than when I first started building all this stuff out. One thing that I have found, though, is that we introduce into our software stack a better way to manage inbound leads and making sure that we were able to see if people were interested in our services. We’re making sure we're able to see what stage they are at, which is a very different kettle of fish to a lot of the managing an existing customer that's already spending money with you that you're making an invoice and doing service with. When it comes to that, do you differentiate? Or do you see a reason to differentiate between prospects leads and customers? Sarah: So when I first started my business, I was a very good bookkeeper. And I had to learn that I had to be a better business person, because it didn't matter how good I was at, you know, bookkeeping. If I was a crap business person, then I was going to have a crap business. So I had to learn all of these things very, very quickly, and it was a very steep learning curve. And I'm by no means the expert. So, I don't really differentiate leads and prospects. I just think that either clients or soon to be clients. And that's it. And I am quite, I don't know if basic is the right word, but I like to keep things simple. Because we were super busy and we're highly systematised and you know, there's a few of us in our team, we want to make sure it's easy for everybody to follow. And I think if you over complicate things, that's where, you know, cracks start to show. So we use a program called Active Campaign. I can't remember what the other is called. It's like the monkey is the logo. MailChimp. Yeah. So that was great. But all I did was send out the occasional newsletter, and it probably did a lot of things that I didn't do, but that was my failing rather than MailChimp’s failing. But then I moved into Active Campaign and I love Active Campaign. And as part of my onboarding process, like I have quite an extensive onboarding process, but Active Campaign drives a lot of that for me. So everybody goes into Active Campaign, I've got a download from my website. So once you download that, their information goes through. If people book online appointments with me, it goes through Calendly. Again, that automatically filters through to Active Campaign. So I think it's really important to capture a lot of this information, but it's really important to use the automation to do it for you, so that you can concentrate on the gold nuggets. But one of the things that I do so I send out regular communications and with the recent COVID events, I was sending out lots of information because I'm conscious of not bombarding people with too much information, but during that period, there was a lot of stuff to get out. So I was sending just about an update out every couple of days, just about, and I got so many messages back saying, this is amazing, thank you so much for sending it through, it's really nice to be able to have this information come through and we don't have to, you know, try and find it and work our way through. And these are comments from people that aren't even my clients, you know, so that was really great. Josh: The beautiful thing about that, like if you're producing that without like it, you're producing that and throwing bloody Aussie accent and I understand what you're blooming saying as opposed to some of the legislative legal crap you read on some of the government, nothing against the government websites, but you just read it you go, okay, why did Betty bend. Some of the examples I'm reading, this makes no sense. This is too hard. Sarah: I think they try to make it so simple. They actually overcomplicate it. Josh: Oh, absolutely. I had a look, and I read the sentence twice. And I thought, okay, I missed the comma on the first time, and it completely changed the meaning of the sentence. And I bought that to my account. And I said, How do you interpret this? And this was on one of the cash flow stimulus things. And he interpreted it in the polar opposite way that I did. And we ended up coming to a conclusion that yes, he'll do some more research and find out the answer for us like, you're exactly right. It can make it more complicated than what it would be helpful. Sarah: Yes, yeah. But one of the really cool things just coming back to Active Campaign, which is one of the things that I love about it, is when I get a new client. So in the old days, I would send them an email because I'm very much a word skill. I will always say the name up before I pick up the phone, although COVID has changed that slightly, but in the old days, I would send a new client an email that was, if they'd printed it out, it would have been 15 pages long with all of the information that I thought that they needed to know. And you know, realistically I know that they're not going to read that, because who has time to read a 15-page email seriously. So one of the things that I've done in Active Campaign is part of, you know, a few other programs that I've got linked together when a new client comes on board. I haven't onboarding automation that triggers through Active Campaign. So as soon as they get the tag on their contact, if you like that they are now a client. This automation automatically triggers and it's basically that 15-page email drip feed out over a number of weeks. So it's not too much information for this client to read. And, you know, the very first email is basically saying welcome. And that's it, you know, it's like a couple of paragraphs, and that's it. Then the next day, they'll get one saying, this is what you can expect next. And that's it. Just, you know, there's images in it and it's nice and pretty and easy to read. Then a couple of days later, they'll get one that introduces them to the team. How they should communicate with us. And then three days later, they'll get one that shows them how to set up receipt bank. Within this time period, I'm working in their file and have set up receipt bank. So it's all really nice and seamless. And so it gets the information to the client that I need them to see. It gets delivered to them in a format that's easy for them to read. And it's just keeping those touchpoints. So the I think there's about 10 emails that they get delivered out over the course of six weeks. And by the end of it, you know, we might have done the best, we've pulled everything together. It's just a really nice introduction. I think that's the way that I intend for the relationship to be so that's how it starts. And it's setting some really nice groundwork at the beginning of the relationship. Josh: Similar to what you said actually on this. I started off the same. I was fantastic at I could cure cancer for computers. But if that said on the show, it's not going to be any benefit to anyone. So I had to become better at marketing and better business in that sense. What you've said there, you've increased the amount of touchpoints, you've decreased the friction on them not reading the email saying I'll do that later, because it's too long. And I'll tell you right now, I've got two emails sitting there. He said, he's attached a Word document, he said, look on page four, section three, that's a bit of thing is going to be most interesting, but make sure to read the whole lot first. And I was like, ah, I've got other stuff to do. You've removed the friction, which is great. You've increased the touchpoints, which is great. You've built these all in an automated way, which means you're not sitting there having to do this or group it to them. Out of interest did you build it all out yourself? Sarah: I’m a bit of a control freak. So I did do it myself. But I'm super proud that I was pregnant and I've had the baby in the end of it. There was this baby. It's like, yeah, look what I did. So it was very, very cool. I really, really enjoyed doing it. and it was completely outside of my comfort zone, but Active Campaign is amazing. I mean, they're American based. I think they have some, some support people in Australia, but they were just awesome. I did have a couple of little triggering issues. But I got onto the support team, and they helped me and that was just, it works brilliantly. So I've done a few of those now. So yeah, and I love Active Campaign. Josh: You're preaching to the preacher, okay. Not a half years ago, and we started using Active Campaign thought it was absolutely the best thing since sliced bread. And it has just never ceased to amaze us. Every single part of it's amazing Sarah: But some of your listeners that might be thinking, ah, that's just too hard. Or they might jump in and think, oh, you know, it's really, really complicated. It's really not. I'm someone who deals with technology every day, but I have my little comfort bubble as well. And so when I first started with Active Campaign, it was way outside my comfort zone. The person that put me on to Active Campaign, I said, you know, I'm a bit of a technophobe. And he's like, what do you mean? You are the biggest propellerhead I know. And I'm like, so funny but he would say that. But I didn't know it. I just was a little bit patient with myself and kind to myself, you know, I can work this out. And there are hundreds of people that will do it for you. If you want someone to maybe just build the bones of it for you. And then you're good to run with it. Yeah, I did it myself because it's a bit of that control thing. I think it's great and like I said, this heaps more that I could do with it, but this is working for me at the moment. Josh: I think it's something everyone should be having in business. It is a lifesaver for us. My partner Sarah, her whole business is set up completely in Active Campaign. This podcast sounds like a commercial for Active Campaign. But her business, hair and makeup business from start to finish is completely Active Campaign. People come through on her website, she's able to see if they've clicked through from AdWords, she is able to see where their sources are, if they fill out a form, once they fill out the form and then sends them a welcome email and then a would you like to get a quote and then they fill out a few bits and pieces since them off a quote. She's asleep watching and then they've already got a quote they've already got a tentative date in mind, she has a quick phone call with them, make sure that they're all happy to understand what they want. And there's nothing out of the ordinary that they're looking to get to this special day. Then after that automatically sends across into her calendar takes all the payments and sends out for review emails in bits and pieces later. She's managing a team of five staff, the meat and gravy that the most of it is all Active Campaign. So I think it's great and it's definitely a tool that makes businesses more efficient. I'm really happy to hear you using it. Something that when we talk to businesses a lot of time they're like, oh, what's Active Campaign. Oh no, we use MailChimp. It's fine. And from your perspective, when you took the leap, how would you for someone who is using MailChimp without throwing dirt at them, like, how would you say the differences between the two products? They're both great products, but they’re both different products. Sarah: Okay, so I think it's like doing your accounts in Excel and then going to Xero. You know, they both give you the same outcome. They both do the same thing, you're tracking your expenses or whatever, but there's just, you know, it's just a lot prettier. It does an awesome job, it’s easier for you. There's less grunt work. And, I enjoyed it, I didn't mind MailChimp, it was easy for me to use, but literally, all I did was send newsletters, and I didn't do it very regularly. I was pretty useless at being regular. I didn't track any of the reporting. I'm pretty sure it does do some automation, but I didn't know about it and didn't know how to do it. And I was probably on the free version. So I didn't see the value in it, maybe if I was paying for it, I would have worked harder at it. So I don't think actually, it's an issue with MailChimp, it was a totally me issue. But then when I moved to Active Campaign, I just noticed all the bells and whistles that may or may not be in MailChimp. I think making the move to it, it had a mindset shift for me as well about okay, I've got to get serious and I've got to do this. So I've been in business 18 years, I moved to Active Campaign within the last five years. So it just goes to show that you don't have to have all of your ducks in a row within the first year or two. And, they're constantly moving anyway. You know, sometimes I'll make a big change to my business or you know, there'll be a big shift, and there often is at various times and I often referred to myself, as you know, a 15-year-old startup or an 18-year-old startup Because it seems so new now because we've made such a big change. And it doesn't mean that necessarily you were doing things wrong before. It just means your business has changed and you've evolved with the way that you do things. Josh: The Excel versus Xero analogy. I'm going to use again if that's okay with you, that's amazing, that's perfect. In my opinion, MailChimp is fantastic at making campaigns or newsletters. It's not fantastic at allowing for touchpoints and customer attention and interactions and seeing what they're doing on your website and how they're working with you and tagging and then integrating into other systems, and Active Campaign has its campaigns. And if you're comparing the two, Active Campaign’s campaign module versus MailChimp is what I'd say is about the same but it's just there's so much more in Active Campaign versus MailChimp. But if anyone is interested actually in checking out a little bit more on how some of this automation can work, Sarah has got a little gift for you. And that's if you jump across to Missefficiency.com/book, you can jump on there. She's got the ability for you to check out how to save up to five hours, is that right of your workweek? Sarah: Yes. So there's a free download on my website, which gives you the tools to be able to, say, five hours a week and your business. It basically comes back to systems and technology. And, that's all it is. I think you can be, anybody can build a great business that I think the fundamentals comes down to people, technology, and the systems that you put in place. I've actually written a book, and like, it's not a download. It's an actual book, and it's all about systematising your business. It's called “Wow, I'm in Business... Your Journey From Overwhelmed to Organised”, and I did write it based on an experience that I had with a client. So one of the other programs we use is Dropbox, which you there's lots of other programs that are similar to that. That's just the one that we use. But I had a client, that's still a client, they own a pub in Central Queensland. And they've had it for a while. And the client rang me one day during the week and said, You know, I'm completely overwhelmed. I need you to come and just sort things out. And we'd already put in place Xero and you know, a few other bits and pieces and I'm like, Oh, okay. She says, you just have to come. So she booked me on a flight. And the next Friday, I was heading up there, and I spent the weekend there. They live about an hour and a half from the airport. So she'd come and pick me up and I had known her for a long time. She came and picked me up from the airport, and we were driving out there. And I could tell that she was super, super stressed and just wasn't herself, because I would always see her in Brisbane and you know, she's bubbly and bright, and yeah, I could tell that she was really, really stressed and overwhelmed. And anyway, I spent four days out there, and I didn't do a great deal. So they've got a pub, a restaurant, a bottle shop and some cabin accommodation. We already had Receipt Bank and Xero. So I put in Dropbox so that she would have a place to store her information. I developed some forms for her staff so that she'd have employee packs. I developed some forms that could be used for bookings and accommodation. So we couldn’t put too much technology and because the internet up there is not always that great. So, I just did a few bits and pieces like that. I didn't think it was anything too major. It just seemed like common sense to me. But then when she was driving me back to the airport, she got out and she looked like a different person. It was literally like this huge weight had been lifted off her shoulder. And she told me, I'm so grateful to have you here and to do all of this stuff for me. I'm thinking, you know, I didn't really do a great deal but you know, and then as I was on the plane coming home, I'm thinking, you know, the transformation that I saw in her mindset and her presence and physically just within a few days of me doing something that I thought was kind of easy, got me thinking. By the end of my fight -it was about an hour and a half- I had basically written that book in my head. I was to take that overwhelm away and remember why you got into business in the first place, reignite that passion, because you can't put two systems and great things in place, if you are feeling burdened and bogged down. So the first thing that the book talks about is reigniting that passion. And then we can talk about putting systems in place. There's lots of templates and bits and pieces that you can download from the website. But it was kind of life-changing for me as well because I sort of took for granted how easy it is for me, but it's not always easy for other people. But it's the same effect if I turn it around if I go into some buddies business where I'm needing help, I'm completely overwhelmed, but it's really easy for them. So yeah, that's what the book is about. Josh: Well, I definitely think if anyone is interested in the book sounds like a great story that's I know I'm in the process of writing another book myself. One of my friends said, if you think reading books, try writing a book. What you said there is actually really, really good. Sometimes you have the knowledge and you take it for granted that everyone has that same knowledge and you've got these hidden gems that you help people out and they just overly grateful, and sometimes I felt I thought people were being like, taking the piss. If anyone is looking for a bookkeeper who goes above and beyond and is 100%, not your ordinary book make sure you contact Sarah, Miss Efficiency, she's going to be able to help you out. And as you can already hear from a wonderful knowledge, she's stubborn enough to stick in there and make sure that she's putting in the right solutions for you. Yeah. Is there anything else you'd like to go through before we finish off on the podcast? Sarah: We've probably touched on some really good stuff. Maybe we'll save this for another occasion. But I think cash flow would be the next conversation to have that can take your business to the next level. And particularly in times like these, you know, who would have thought there would ever be, you know, a pandemic in our lifetime. If that doesn't make you realise how important good financial literacy is, then nothing will. Josh: Probably save it for another time for the moment. It's own episode in its entirety, I think. But I really appreciate you coming on the episode and giving our listeners a bit of a view into the things that you do. Sarah: Thank you for having me. Josh: If anyone has any questions, make sure to jump across to miss efficiency.com.au, and leave us some love. If you have any comments and reviews for us, make sure to jump across iTunes. Leave us some love. Give us some feedback. And everyone, stay well out there with the COVID around the place and stay healthy.

covid-19 american australia business talk staying aussie excel crm brisbane map efficient dropbox mailchimp quickbooks calendly adwords organised xero mib activecampaign central queensland sarah stein receipt bank josh you sarah yes sarah so sarah thank josh well josh oh sarah okay

155|The Business Data Revolution With Emily Ridley

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 21, 2020 24:00

The Business Data Revolution With Emily Ridley Josh: G’day everyone out there in podcast land. I've got Emily from Emerge Advisory and she's going to be talking today about the data revolution and is your business ready. And it's probably one of the more interesting times that we've been living for anyone that's alive, in the amount of things that have changed, with pandemics, and businesses closing down or accelerating and going all over the place. So I guess, Emily, tell me a bit about what you can do to make sure that your business is ready? Learn more about business data revolution at dorksdelivered.com Emily: Hi, Josh. So it's really all about using the tools that available already and using them to your best advantage. So having the right tech and having the right app stack is absolutely crucial. So it's about finding out how you want to do your business. And there will then be a system or a process or an ease to make that digital and bring it to a wider audience, and using remote circumstances that we've all, you know, enjoyed recently and making that happen, but making that work for you so that you're getting the best out of your business and your best business is going to your clients. Josh: Yeah, that makes sense. So like, I guess, I know myself when we started out in business, we're using QuickBooks, and I'm not going to say that any products better than another, it was an application that I wasn't comfortable using. And I'm in the IT field. I wasn't comfortable using SSL. There's too many bells and whistles and things that I can click in here that are going to do something that they shouldn't. And a lot of the time you have this stuff with it using for years and years and years. And now we're not using QuickBooks, we’re on Zero. But we used to suffer for years and years and you might not be using it properly or to the best of your ability. And I know that a couple of packages that were introduced to would be now 18 months ago, two years ago, Receipt Bank, I thought is an amazing way of speeding up your process for any of your bookkeeping stuff that people should be using if they're not aware of it, and then obviously making sure that you've set up their appropriate rules and reporting so that you have that information coming out of Zero, if that is the product you're using, or whatever the product you’re using. Tell people a bit about Receipt Bank and other tools that you know that might be useful for them to consider if they're not to make sure that they are embracing the data revolution as they should? Emily: Yeah, sure. So Receipt Bank, Hooked Up, Easy Bills. They're all very similar applications. It's a matter of finding the right user interface for you. Zero now owns hooked up. So it's now free in most business subscription. So it's that minute in itself is an amazing way of wanting to adopt a service. And basically what that does is it just takes all the legwork out of doing data entry, particularly for you spend money transactions or your accounts payable. You take a photo or you forward on an email. It goes into the system, the software I use is OCR, it actually reads that receipt. So it understands the day the tax implications, the vendors, and it will then on the first instance, it will ask you where to code that in your chart of accounts integrated with your accounting software. But it's machine learning, and it constantly wants to follow what you do and how you spend your money. So it will learn it. Caltex, for example, is always fuel and it will learn that. Telstra is always telephone and it will learn that. Aegon is always energy bills. And so as you take the photo, that seamless data entry then goes all the way through into your accounting software. You pay your bill. Now if your bank account and if you use an accounting software, my own Zero, QBL now, that's got live data bank feeds, it will just find a match that transaction. So your actual input into our case in that transaction where it needs to go is as in depth as taking a photograph and then pricing okay, at the other end of the software, it's quick, it's efficient, it's easy, and it gives you more time to spend on your business rather than in your business doing all the stuff that, you know, traders hate to do bookkeeping, that's essentially what this is. Josh: It’s digitising their shoebox of receipts that they given at the end of the month. I'm pretty pedantic with the way that I still do stuff. But I'd imagine that you have these half failure receipts in their car inside on their hot dashboard, and they're all stuffed, and it's easy just to jump onto it and take a photo of it. Emily: It really is, as you put in the keys in the ignition of your vehicle, snap that photo and it's as quick as that. And then you can throw that receipt either in gold box or even better, you can throw it in the bin and completely accept digital copies that don't fade and they don't get coffee spilt all over them and they don't get lost. Yeah, it's a really efficient way of having all year, and all your accounts in order, particularly at this time of year when people are getting everything together for the end of tax time. Josh: I completely agree and everyone should be jumping onto that. Emily: Actually, it's free if there's software's built in. There's some amazing services out there. And like I said managing your accounts payable is just one but there's also for managing job management. Again, for traders there's Tradify and service may, which will do your task management, your staff management, your time sheets, and your invoicing all in one place as well. So it means at the end of the day, all your jobs are done, and they're in your accounting software, you don't have to finish your day of work, and then come back and sit down and do your bookkeeping. You can actually sit there in the garden with a beer or watch the footy when it's back on TV. Josh: Perfect. Having that time to yourself should be time yourself and a lot of business owners when they jump in there, they think oh, I'll have to work 40 hours a week I could do this bit I'm going to be earning more money, and then then they realise that they have all list of administration stuff that is zero dollar tasks, they're sitting there doing an entering stuff and it just takes them a hell of a lot more time than what it would have otherwise. So these little hints and tips definitely helped. We've got a lot of clients using another product called sim Pro, which is a fantastic product, not that I'm plugging their brand, but I noticed that when you're going through the different ones, I was like, oh, that's one that we that we use quite a bit. With the data Revolution, the way that data moves between systems has changed a lot over the years. And I've noticed more and more now as people are using Zero, I can set it up so that that invoice automatically sends to Zero when they send it to my email so that way, it can be transcribed without even have to go through services such as hub dock. If you've got somebody sends you an invoice doesn't integrate with Zero directly, you can pretty much do anything with hub dock, even if it's a multi page invoice and whatnot. Is that right? Emily: That is correct. Yeah. So and it's a filing system. So unlike receipt bank, where the invoices come in, they're dealt with and then they go to archives which then becomes its own digital shoe box really, inside of a hub dock, every Telstra invoice will go to the Telstra folder, every origin invoice will go to the origin folder. Both systems have what they call a fetch service now. So if you have an online account for origins, Telstra, and some of the really big suppliers that you use on a regular basis, it will actually go and get those invoices and statements for you. So you don't need to upload them at all. Josh: I'm learning stuff everyone guys, that's awesome. I'm going to be making sure to set that up. Because sometimes, it's just … the time that you spend is taking it from one system to another and it can be quite frustrating. How does that work if your suppliers overseas or you've got a non-GST items, or what would be a good for instance, just a software subscription service for a company server in America, is that something you just set the rule up once? And they have to go through email or is the fetch service purely Australian Base. So how does that work? Emily: So the fetch service was actually started in Canada, hub dock was originally a Canadian company. And so there are a huge number of global enterprises on the firm that range from European base, to Asian base, to Australasian and yeah, and the Americas as well. So it's incredible the amount of scope that you do have, certainly all the big hitters that you'd expect around there the global entities because one it's machine learning and two, actually the OCR, they actually reads the receipt, it picks up whether or not it's GST, or whether it's nil value GST, so if you're in Australia and you've got an invoice that's got VAT on it or New Zealand GST, it will pick that up and bring that in as a nil balance, because it understands the difference between what's required in Australia and essentially what's not a GST code. Josh: That's cool. One of the tricky ones that I always know I end up doing manually is when I get the car. They have to break down this the stamp duties and offices instead of the CTP elements and everything else, does it deal okay with that sort of stuff? Emily: See, if you set the roll up once so that your department of Main Roads comes in and you want to separate that one line item into two line items. So you've got your GST component, your GST free component so that it adds up the amount payable. Once you set that at once then yeah, it will read it at rego but it is difficult for in the first instance because there's always two numbers on it. It's asking you do you want to be six months or 12 months? So generally, it would still flag up and say what exactly what do you want me to do with this but it will try and preempt that as much as possible. So essentially, you're just an answer it whether or not you want to split. So we will split the invoice into two components but because you've set the rules to do that, but it will ask you which figure is the final closing figure, which one's going to match your bank statement, essentially. Josh: Cool. Well, we're talking about integrations. Obviously, that's what we've been touching on a lot. And like the eight year has a whole bunch of different rules and regulations and bits and pieces. And they have built a few really cool integrations with Zero that has been helping out with a lot of like the job keeper stuff with some of their calculators just help make everyone's life a little bit easier. What have you seen that they've been doing lately that have really been helping with some of their integrations to the way that the systems work? Emily: With the ATO? [Yeah] As much of about the ATO on a regular basis. The ATO has done some amazing things, the unimaginable things. And in the last three months, it's system software programs that just did not exist and weren't on anybody's workflow to exist at any time. And now they’re here. So the job keeper lodgement process is about as simple as it can be in order to be effective. Today’s the first of June so we're now able to lodge our may declarations. I've already done 19 today, so I've sent them out, I've got them back signed using electronic signatures. And I've just digitally entered that into the ATO portal. So it's all launched and confirmed. Now my clients can expect to receive their payments in about four or five working days from there. That in itself is a long, long way from where we were just even seven weeks ago when we were trying to work out what the legislation around job keeper was. So the fact that they're they're taken on board advice from accounting software providers such as Zero and it also from you know, the taken advice as well from industry. So I know Matthew Addison, who is the director for the Institute Certified Bookkeepers, for example, the ICB had an awful lot of say, and an awful lot of to kind of relay messages from what it's like to be the end user trying to manage these workflows, trying to manage this legislation, trying to get this data from our clients to the ATO as quickly as possible to get this money move in and be where it needs to be. So yeah, what we considered was a luxury 12 or 13 weeks ago is now going to be, I feel, part of our everyday new normal. This just allows for a huge amount of new data, new business calculations, new information. Every business owner in Australia, I think this becomes the beginning of a new revolution. And like I said, for the new normal, and I think at some point, every business and every industry is going to benefit from it. I think the opposite here are amazing. What we can do in a tiny amount of space and how much data we've got available tools to do that. Josh: You hit the nail on the head there when you're pushed into a spot that you have no other place to go but forward. They've definitely done wonders with the time that they've had. And I think it’s shown a lot of people how they can work remotely and how they can achieve big things. Like I'd love to say that all businesses always keep their books up to date. But I think you would know better than me that that's a big fallacy. Emily: Yeah, it's not realistic at all. But it can be so much easier than some businesses allow themselves to believe. It can be so much by bringing in automation, by bringing in systems and services that help rather than hinder. By taking away a lot of data entry or duplication. A lot of businesses can be more up to date than they realise, and a lot faster. And they can use that information in ways they've never been able to use it before. I think it gives a huge amount of opportunity for now for businesses to explore things that they never thought that they wanted or needed, but what they're going to see is essential in a very short amount of time. Things like budgeting and cash flow forecasting and data management and making those decisions with that it's all possible without too much disruption to your day to day work in life. Josh: I think ultimately the big thing that's going to have changed with this is businesses that might have been getting everything in just by the deadline are now being rewarded. To make sure that as you pointed out on the on the first of each month, while job keeper is available, everything is ready to go reconciled and on point so that they're making better business decisions and with enough repetition over time, that should become conditioned to be ongoing past when the job keeper disappears, hopefully. Is that what you think's going to happen? Or do you think people will start to slip off afterwards? Emily: No, I don't think people will start to slip. I think because having this information in this real time data in this world today is knowledge, and I think knowledge is power, and it gives you the power to manage your business in a in a whole new light and a whole new way. I think that compliance is a sidestep, it's something that is going to be available to you to do much quicker. But for me, using that information to your advantage, not necessarily the ATO advantages you know it's data that's it's your business, it's your livelihood, it's your growth and your development. And you can absolutely do some amazing things if you have that knowledge and you have that power. Josh: We're going to make the right decisions and you're able to see how much am I buying of something? What am I doing with something? How efficient is the team? How efficient is my buying power and make better decisions? Is it a good idea to maybe set up an account I know myself? One of the things that have come to light for us over the last few months, we've had an account with two major IT suppliers in Australia, and I was looking through only because we changed bookkeepers and I was looking through, and I went, we've got a lot of transactions here, that's from the same company. And so we've made the decision to set up accounts with a few different companies. And that will now mean that there's less bookkeeping, less backwards and forwards, faster response times for our customers. But it's only after really having that data to be able to see that and be able to make that decision that will ultimately give a better customer experience for our customers because they're not waiting for credit cards to clear the audit things instead of the way out straight away. And it means less reconciliation, so better experience for bookcases and easier for us to sort of rummage through everything. So it can't be anything bad happening from this change. And it's just about everyone getting ready to do it. For a lot of people in through the state of depression, we've got businesses that we work with, they're at 450% at the moment versus when they went into COVID. Emily: That's an amazing story and quite an extreme perspective. But I do believe that though, I think that from a bookkeeper and accountant perspective, I'd, again, never been busy and never done so many hours on the phones with the ATO, catch up legislation, do the data entry that's needed for all the new compliance around shopkeeper and cash flow and boost and other stimulus packages. But, it's, yeah, so it certainly has given a rise to like a new normal. And what you were saying though about the data that you've got access to so with the date to the transactions that you've been able to see you can actually see there in real time what you're spending with those suppliers, which gives you, you know, power to negotiate terms. It can, you know, a five cent save and goes directly into your back pocket on your bottom line for your profits and that money is much better off in your pocket than in your supplier’s pocket. So it's huge what you can do with a tiny little bit of information and how far that can take you. It's an amazing concept that I hope to be able to offer to an awful lot of customers moving forward, to sit down with them and say, this is the data you have, and these are the opportunities that you have with that- Josh: It’s data in, data out as they say, you can't make a decision if you don't have good data going in. And you do an amazing job at making sure that people are having the best quality data going into they can make the best decisions with their budgeting, forecasting and making sure that they're doing the voodoo that they do well and are able to continue doing that and as you said. I can see some trends, one of the ones that my partner saw was, she has a hair makeup business, was if she was to purchase all the items that she purchased over 12 months, just the core items that she's purchasing quite regularly in one bulk amount and they're all things that don't have a shelf life, she would have been able to have a 15% advantage. I said well that sounds like a good idea. As long as they're not things that are going to sit on the shelf for 10 years, you're never going to use them but without data, you won’t be able to see that, you wouldn't be able to make that decision. So where do you think the data revolution is going? Where do you think businesses are going? We've always had these huge changes over the last three months, and there's going to be more changes. What are the things that businesses should have in place that already exist? And where do you think it's going? It’s the doozy question. Emily: It is, isn't it? I don't know, to be honest, I don't know where this is going. I don't know the end of this is, I cannot know what the end of the internet is, and I don't know, you know what the end of the universe is. I know that the opportunity is immense. And I think that there is a huge amount of opportunity for development, for growth, for profit increase for every industry out there based on the back of this. I think that the digital revolution is absolutely going to change permanently, the way that we work and the way that we interact, but what's going to be more important than any of this is then that human interaction at the end of it. We're going to want to talk and know the people that we're dealing with, rather than just having an ether of mindless data and send out things like you know, like your accountant will send you out your financial statements at the end of the year, which is just pages and pages of numbers. But without having a conversation about what that means and what you can do with that information, it's kind of lost its purpose. So, where do I think this is going, I think this is going to bring those closer together by making us work further apart. I honestly do believe that. But I also think that Australia is going to be a big player in the global economy on the back of this. I think that we've got more power than we realise. We don't really have the internet speeds that we need, but we're getting there slowly. And I just think that we've got more voice that we believe that we have, I think we just need to be a bit more confident, a bit louder about who we are and what we can do with the data that we have. I think we've got some amazing tech out there that might just be a little bit lost because we consider a small Big Island and a small fish in a big world. Josh: I think what you said there encapsulates it perfectly where automation does not mean not personalised, don't keep it robotic, keep the bits automated that you don't like doing and then the bits that you do like doing and making sure that you have that face to face time, you're able to use the data then see what people's numbers are doing. One of the things that we noticed in our business, so we do set price IT for everything and give unlimited support, and guaranteed uptime from that IT support each month. What we noticed when we started putting these in place was customers weren't having things break. So this was sort of what are we paying you for. And so you need to make sure that you're you had that relationship and you were still going and seeing them and you're making decisions with them on where the future of their business was going, and it let you have those better conversations because there wasn't fires that you're putting out. And that has definitely had the people that we're working with we've built better relationships with because they're also not look looking at the clock going, oh, man, you've got a pointing on my clock, anyone who's listening. He didn't, they're not worried about how much they're paying you per hour because they're able to sort of see the value that you're adding to them, and you're actually sitting down and listening. And so definitely, don't keep it robotic, just wish you've automated it, make sure you keep it personalised and keep that relationship because that's ultimately all we’re in business for is to work with people we like working with. Emily: Absolutely. And it's that makes a good business a great business. And also the same way we charge up front fixed fees on everything. We don't have an hourly rate for anything at all. We're very open and honest about what we charge and we base our charges on outcomes. So what is it that the client gets out of it is how we manage our pricing around that. Josh: That’s definitely a really good model. We're nearly at the end of the podcast here. Is there anything else that you'd like to cover off on? Emily: I don't think so. Just recapping what we've said, it's just a really good time as we're, you know, moving through the COVID process, I guess as to as to what the outcome of that is actually going to be and what the new normal, essentially it's going to like at the end of this, I think it's just a really good opportunity to look at systems of businesses or processes and look at the changes that you've already had to endure over the last seven to 12 weeks and see where that can take you in the future, which I think is a really exciting opportunity to do that. Josh: I think we're all walking in this game together and, and looking forward to see we get on the end. If anyone is looking for someone that's going to be able to give them some more advice, definitely reach out to Emily at Emerge Advisory. She's going to help you out and go through any of the details. Make sure you've got that data to make those decisions. If you have enjoyed this episode, jump across to iTunes, leave us some love. Give us some feedback, give us a review and stay healthy and stay good.

147|Improving Your Business Process Flow with Pip Meecham

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2020 23:59

Improving Your Business Process Flow with Pip Meecham Josh: Good day everyone out there in podcast land, I've got Pip here from ProjectBox. She is an absolute wiz-kid when it comes to any automation around your business and process flow, and making sure that your systems are working the way your systems are meant to be working. So Pip, tell me, how do you know when a system is broken and how do you know when to fix it, if you've always been using a broken system? Pip: That's a really good question. The way you know it's broken is customer complaints, frustrated staff. There could be a host of extra time issues, which then all comes back to frustrated staff as well, at the end of the day. Any kind of bottleneck, generally, you will notice things are starting to go wrong, but it can take some time to kind of pick up on that as well. Pip: Something could break and then six months later you'll finally pick up on it. It can take a lot of time without having someone come in and look at how you're actually doing things to pick up that things are any kind of different, if that makes sense. Josh: Yeah, that makes sense. For me, my big rule that I tell all of my staff is, "Have I asked you once?" Josh: They say, "Yes." Josh: I said "Have I asked you twice?" Josh: They go, "Yes." Josh: "Okay. Then I don't have to ask you a third time because you've already automated it." Josh: If you've had a problem come up more than once or you think that this situation is going to come up more than once, then template it out and automate it. You're saying, complimentary to that information, you would also make sure that the user experience, not just repetition more so the user experience isn't broken. Pip: Yep, and most people don't think like you. Most people don't have that trigger to go, "Hey, we've done this three times." Or, "Hey, this has gone wrong." Pip: Or anything like that, they just keep going with what they're doing, and there's nothing to really trigger that until something big happens, which could be a customer complaint or someone within the team saying something. It's a really tough one, if you're not systems tuned, most people don't pick up on it. Josh: It comes down to people continue doing what they think they're meant to be doing for an extended amount of time. Not knowing that what they're doing isn't what they should have been doing. Pip: It's rare to find people who have that kind of continuous improvement mentality to go and actively look for things. I actively try and break stuff all the time but that's my mentality. Josh: Yep. You're a hacker. That's exactly what a hacker does. Pip: I'm a breaker, not a hacker. I don't get in, I just break it. Josh: It can be both. You and I are very similar in that regard. We try our best to work out what is the best way to achieve something the fastest, most efficient way. Pip: Yeah. A to B. Josh: Yeah, and automation doesn't necessarily have to be a piece of code with loops and all sorts of other stuff that has an input and an output. It can be an input and output, but it can also be just a procedural document that allows for you to know when a staff is following something, very similar to how McDonald's work. Josh: They go through and they create an ice cream, a burger or whatever it is. And when you get it, whether it be in America, Canada, Australia, it's always the same crappy burger, but it's the same burger. And it's being made by a different 14 and nine month year old child or teenager, but it's the same burger, the same process. That's just come through repetition and the document that they've read, and knowing that this is the way that it works, this is the most efficient way. Pip: A lot of people don't think like that. Josh: No! Pip: There's so much decision fatigue in business where people wing it all the time, and they lose a lot of time because they're doing that. Whereas if you've got a straight out, set out processes. First do this, then do this, then do this. Automation kicks in to do some of that for you. It's so simple and it's so streamlined. Whereas other people are just weighed down because they're so overwhelmed on what to do next or how to do it. Josh: I'm going to talk on behalf of all the bloody Australians out there and say, this is the best time to be looking at your processes. Everyone's in lockdown. I'm sure everyone's working 120% of what they were before. That's why Bunnings is full of people, because no one's actually working. Pip: I can hear so many hammers and chainsaws around my neighbourhood. Josh: Me too. I'm like, "Yeah, everyone's really working hard guys. Are you all labourers at home?" Josh: Anyway, everyone's working at home and they're working on the house, which is great, but you should be working on yourself and on your business. This is the best time. When everyone goes, "I don't have enough time for that." Josh: Bang, this is enough time for that. You've got the time to do it now and this is the perfect time. They should be engaging in people like yourself and seeing what you can do to help them out. And as you said, there's always room for improvement and I'm not going to say what I do is right. But it's going to be better than not doing it at all. Pip: The problem is as well, is that people get so caught up in their own business that they can't see it, outside. What they're looking at- Josh: Can't see the forest for the trees. Pip: Yeah. They've got tunnel vision, like there's nothing else going on except what they, used to doing, what they know they need to do. Whereas I would come in and something that I kind of love doing and it's really wrong, but I love going in and pulling people's processes apart, and looking at the ripple effect that everything has on each other as well. Pip: Because everyone always talks about, a lot of people are changing technology at the moment because of everything that's going on, they're going, "Right. We're going to use this. We're going to implement new tools to do this. We're going to do this and blah, blah, blah." Pip: They look at that as a single element and they're not thinking about what's happening before and what's happening afterwards. So people are putting these new things in place and they think it's fantastic, but stuff is still falling over because they're not taking into account what's going on around it. The ripple effect. Josh: Yeah, exactly. The butterfly effect, ripple effect. It comes down to a big thing that people don't do enough. I started doing it 13 years ago, 14 years ago and then didn't realise how much of an impact it's had, but business plans. Why are you in business? Why do you exist here? What do you want to achieve? What are you going to achieve in one month, one year, five years, we've all heard it. Pip: Hate it. Josh: I started writing them. I'm like, "Uh, this is stupid." Josh: Then I wrote it and then thought, okay, let's see how this goes. Then I've looked back on some of them and I thought, wow, I've got so much more maturity, growth, direction. And some of the things that I thought were really important then, are no longer important and some of the things that are important now, I would never have thought I was even going to be doing. Josh: But being able to look back on what you've been able to achieve, lets you see the growth that you've done. That's the same, when you create these processes that sit there and can run autonomously or be running by someone else that's not you. You're able to have these processes running and then look at them from a distance to go "Hmm, how else can I tweak that?" Josh: While you're not sitting there being the driver. If you're always driving around, you're never going to be able to really see the sites out the window. Pip: It's being able to remove that connection. Josh: That's right. Pip: Cut the heartstrings. Josh: Absolutely, as long as that's what you want to do in business. I will say, straight away when I started my first business, I was the main driving cog and I was the person that did all the things in business, and I earned all the money and I earned all the debt. it was interesting, and good and bad. But overall, I didn't want to be the cog. I wanted to own the cogs. I wanted to have the systems, have the process to be able to step back. Josh: That's not for everyone, if you read any book on business or any masterclass, that's what everyone apparently wants, but there's businesses that we work with. One in particular, he's a cartoonist and he's big driving motivator is he just loves drawing. He said, "It's a lifestyle business." Now, to be fair, his wife's in a lovely position where she's earning enough money that he could have that decision. So, lucky boy. Pip: Yeah, but I get it. People always ask me what I want to do with ProjectBox. I don't ever want to stop actively getting into people's businesses and looking at their processes. I legitimately love that stuff, as geeky as it sounds, and people look at me like I am just stupid and crazy, and I'm off with the fairies, but I love it. I get this sense of, it's like a thrill with huge endorphin rush. When you go in and you help people piece this stuff together. I don't want to lose that, but I also want to be able to grow the company. Josh: Yeah. It's always about the balance. You need to make sure that you've got that interest. As I said, why did you get into business? Work at why you're in business, and this is, you brought this up earlier, probably not everyone's mentality, but when I first started Dorks Delivered in 2007, I thought, okay, I want to do this right. I've now got a trust and I've got a company, I've got all this stuff and all these structures. Josh: Let's make sure that I'm getting rid of any of the tasks that I don't like doing. And I thought, what do I like doing? Hate doing bookkeeping, hate doing invoicing, hate doing the car logbook. I thought, this sucks, so I created a process. I created an app back then, or was it a web based app. It worked on the Symbian mobile system for anyone that's out there that cares. Josh: It allowed for you to jump in there and see, as a technician, I had contractors working with me, they'd be able to enter where they're going and would work out their home address to where they're going, the amount of kilometres, how much to charge and how much to put on that invoice. Josh: They'd then get there and they'd type any prices and it'd automatically work everything out and then click submit or come up with a PayPal and they could get credit card details straight through their phone, right then and there, and this is 2007. Josh: So I built all that out and it was because I hated all the invoicing stuff. You could take photos and attach invoices and attach expense records, all sorts of things like that. You could do all that. I built this because I hated doing it. Now, not everyone's capable of building it and totally understand that, but that's why you bring in professionals that can help you out. Josh: The actual process of building it took me several hundred hours. Now, if I looked back and thought, would it have been more beneficial for me to have just learned how to do the invoicing and just done that and in a repetitious way? Possibly, but it wouldn't have been as fun, would it? Josh: And I've learned so many more skills and that's kind of what you're getting at. You get to learn. You're always growing, expanding and being in business is about being able to delegate. Whether that be in a digital sense through scripting and automation, or through staffing and process documentation, it's being able to delegate to grow your business. Josh: If you had to pick the top three things that a business owner should be considering with the way their business is set up and what they should change, what would you say they should be? And how can they achieve those for, let's say we're in lock down 'til September, yeah? Pip: Yeah. Josh: I think that that's probably likely. So what would you say, how can they do those between now and September? Pip: Yep. The biggest one is how information is flowing from one system to another. So no double data entry, too many people, literally they'll get it in one format and then be copying and pasting it into other programs. Stupidly time consuming and massive room for human error as well, because someone has to do that. That's a really big one. Josh: Yep. If you're using a pen, remove it. Stop using a pen. Stop having customers fill out forms with a pen. Pip: Definitely another one, try and go digital where possible. Josh: Absolutely. Pip: The number of people who are still doing it, there is a place for pen and paper. As much as I'm very much a digital person, when I am holding process mapping sessions or the brainstorming creative stuff, I have a roll of butcher's paper. It ends up running down my hallway and I'm literally dragging my computer down the hallway on my hands and knees filling out this paper because that's how I work there. It's really quick for me to draw arrows and then it gets turned into obviously digital [inaudible 00:00:12:31], the paper goes away. Sounds like a waste but I know that that is how I work best. Josh: I love that because I'm on computers for hours and hours, not because I have to, because I want to. I could spend 18 hours a day on a computer just working because I love doing it. You have people like Gary Vee say, "Work harder, work smarter." Josh: Well now what? I'm like, "Well, just do what you love doing." And I genuinely love doing it, but I also love the feeling of paper in my hands. And I've got a big whiteboard inside the house, like a four and a half metre by three by two metre whiteboard. I'll write up with my partner, Sarah, any of the new processes that we're going to be going through, any of the if-then statements we're going to be popping into any of the automations and make sure that we've written that out because it's easy to modify it and it changes your perspective. And get this everyone, it removes all those, how many times have you had a push notification from Facebook while you were dealing with butcher's paper? You don't have any of that. Pip: It's no distractions. Josh: No distractions. How good is that? It's great. Pip: Yeah. But it brings out the creativity as well. It's like going back to that cave person thing where we're drawing on walls. Obviously, there are some people that entirely a hundred percent digital is going to work for them. Most people, that's not the case. I know people who will still take their to do list and then send it to a VA to transcribe it into a project management tool because that's how they work. Pip: They just can't get on and do it, so they've delegated it to somebody. Yeah, get digital where possible. The next big one, and this sounds really stupid, but clean out your computer filing systems. I'm generalising here, but a lot of people it's like going to the supermarket where all the shelves have been knocked over and everything's been stirred together and trying to find fish in the fruit and veggie aisle. It is, looking for medicine and it's down in the freezer. Josh: And after a while the whole process stinks. Pip: Yeah. So it's taking time to sort out where everything is stored so that if a client rings, same with like your CRMs and project management tools, give everything like a cleaning over. It's a really good time to be doing that now, so that you should be able to find anything within about 10 seconds. No longer. Josh: Yep. I did a podcast a few months ago on defragging your filing cabinet and then your computer, or something like that. That's probably a cooler name than what I called it. But people do, we go into people's systems, I'm not going to say who it was, but I went into someone's system, they had two monitors and they had about 500 icons now. Pip: On their desktop? Josh: On the desktop. Anyone that has two monitors, if you've ever tried to put 500 icons on the desktops, you'll notice they don't fit on two desktops. So he had icons that he couldn't even see, they were on his two desktops. And you can't scroll up and down on a desktop, so they were just in the abyss. Pip: And for a lot of people, those computers die and all of that is gone. Josh: Gone, and they use these obscure systems where they go, "Okay, let's have this cloud of files that store on the right hand side of the desktop." Josh: Then you do a Windows update and then everything rearranges to automatic, and then you go, "Oh no! This is going to take me days to fix up my icons." Josh: Just fix it up now, you've got this great opportunity. That's great advice. That's a really good one actually. Pip: Yeah, nothing should be on the desktop. Josh: No. Well, you haven't seen my computers yet but I've got eight icons and it's the things that I use commonly, and use all the time. Pip: And there's shortcuts. So the original files have safety elsewhere. Josh: Somewhere else. Pip: Stored properly, with just shortcuts. And shortcuts is a great thing too, because most people will just copy the file, so there's two copies. So I update one and then they'll go to move it and not realise what's going on and go, "What file do I use now?" Pip: And end up with three, four, five, six or 10 different copies. So creating shortcuts, it's something that not a lot of people take advantage of. Josh: Shortcuts are great and I'm not going to get into heaps of detail on shortcuts, symbolic links and other bits and pieces of IT, but shortcuts are great. People should be using shortcuts. And in a filing cabinet, traditionally, you have things sectioned and it could be A to Z, but most of the time it's warranty information, ATO letters, bank statements, all that. Pip: Categories, yeah. Josh: Your computer systems, it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. The way that I like to do it is, what would you share with your mum? What would you share with your partner? What would you share with your business partner? What would you share with your staff? What would you share with your nana and what would you share with the world? And then make sure your hierarchy has things in those categories and then from there then have projects inside those. Josh: For me, I've got family, personal, business, the three main ones. Then inside personal, it then stems off into different year categories for photos and things that used to go into your personal, it goes to photos. And then it has different years that these photos were taken inside each year, it then has different events for each of those years. And so if someone said, "Ah, do you have any photos from my 21st from way back when?" Josh: You'd be able to go, "Yeah, no worries." Josh: Click, click, bang, done. I had someone actually, and I've been a bit of a stickler for organisation for quite a while. I had someone say, "Oh, remember we did that school assignment on moths?" Josh: And I said, "Yeah." Josh: Said, "Oh man, if only I could see what my assignment looked like then." Josh: Anyone who knows me knows I'm a bit of a tricky dude. I happened to have acquired his assignment through the school systems back then, so I gave him a copy of his assignment. Pip: Wow. Josh: He's like, "What the hell? How'd you do that?" Josh: And I'm like, "Yeah, no, it's pretty weird, eh?" Josh: Having a hierarchy that works for you and the reason I say that those different categories to start off with, like the personal, and then the things you'd share with your nana or your mum and things like that is because if you are using different tools like Dropbox, you can then say, share this folder out to whoever, and it doesn't matter. And you know it's not going to have personal stuff. Pip: It gives people a great place to start because half the problem with this stuff is just getting started instead of looking at it going, "Oh my God, I've got like 10,000 files I need to sort out because they're all sitting in my downloads folder." Josh: Yep. The first five minutes is the hardest. Pip: Setting up that initial structure and then just, yep. Josh: Setting up the initial structure, and this is something I would've done on butcher's paper or would have done on the whiteboard. You just write it down and go, "Okay, that makes sense. Okay, that's sensible." Josh: And then you look at and go, "Okay, who's going to have access to what? If I give access to this folder, everyone has access to that." Josh: Obviously I'm talking a bit into the security stuff as well as just the organisation, but I just find if you start with security first and then organise around that, it'll make your life very easy and harder for people to break into your stuff. Pip: Definitely. Josh: As things become harder and harder. Pip: I guess my final one would be reviewing the tools and the software that you're using. Use the time to go in and look at all the individual platforms and work out if there's any overlap, because quite often we sign up to things or people recommend things and we don't really do a lot of research around it. So more often than not, the tools are capable of doing more than what you think and you can actually condense those down, or you can start to get them to talk which brings us back to first point. Josh: Yep. I would agree completely that and tools evolve even after you build them, they evolve over time and you look at some of the things and you go, "Man, that never did that before." Pip: It's really knowing and understanding exactly what that tool is capable of doing. Josh: It's going through it, having a look. Pip: Hey, you can't break stuff. Josh: Exactly. Just have a muck around then. That's great advice, especially as I said, while everyone's at home, hopefully with a beer in your hand, hypothetically we are having a beer, possibly, unless you listen to this at 7:30 in the morning, then we're definitely not. But it's a great time to be doing that and be jumping in and making sure that your systems are ready to go gangbusters. Pip: Exactly. So that as soon as things take back off again, you're ready to go. Holes have been plugged, you know what's what, you know what's happening by when, by who and how. Josh: Yep. And the cutovers, if there are programmes that you don't have to get rid of, you can't get rid of it because one thing does something really well and then another thing. We use ActiveCampaign internally. We're using another IT programme called ConnectWise, up until recently and ConnectWise did email marketing very poorly, but it did ticketing and invoicing really well, which ActiveCampaign didn't. Pip: That's like I said to you before, I use ClickUp for my sales dashboards because I couldn't get the data out of ActiveCampaign, But it's knowing that I could do that and understanding that. Josh: Yep. And that's where having a document on what the cutovers are, at least let you know where data is meant to be stored. The flow of data is very important. Knowing where your master, your primary, your truth data I guess, where you'd say this is where everything is pure. And then if people have entered dodgy records or transcribe things incorrectly somewhere else, then you can start to work out where the other stuff is. Pip: Go back. Josh: The last thing you want is if you've got five systems that you're running, as I've heard, or in a lot of American talks, "the silos of chaos." Josh: You have all these silos and you just can't control them and can't manage them and just everything gets out of sync, and then it gets out of whack. This is a great time to be bringing in people, especially like people from ProjectBox, that's able to look at your systems, integrate your systems and make sure that your data is staying the same between all of them, and you don't have any overlaps with your processes, and you're running an efficient shop because ultimately you don't know what you don't know until you know it. Pip: Yeah, exactly. The number of people that I've met or that I've done work with, who you ask the question, "How is this bit happening?" Pip: And they look at you and they're like "What do you mean? I know how that's happening." Pip: I'm like, "Cool. Lay it out for me. Tell me what's supposed to be happening at every step." Pip: And they either can't or we start talking, they're like, "Oh, well that should be happening." Or "I wish it could do this." Or, "Someone's supposed to do this." Pip: What they think is happening in their head is completely different to what is actually happening. Now a really good time to be looking at that stuff as well. And for the businesses who is super busy right now, this is the time where they will probably start to notice where those holes are. Josh: Yep, absolutely. It's interesting times, businesses are either crazy or quiet, or crazily quiet. I think there's a lot of good take-homes there. People need to be jumping in, making sure their systems are good. Their filing processes are good, and that you are engaging in people services. So if people did want to jump in and get a hand throughout South East Brisbane, or what is your reach with ProjectBox? Pip: So South East Queensland, Northern New South Wales, but because of what I do, I can do it remotely. So realistically, anywhere around Australia and New Zealand as well, I've got quite a few clients over there too. Josh: We're going to chuck a link down there to ProjectBox so you can check it out. Is there anything else you'd like to cover off, other questions that we haven't gone through? Pip: No, I'm pretty sure we got it. Josh: Yeah, cool. I've loved having you on the show and if anyone else has any feedback or bits and pieces, I'd like to say jump across to iTunes, leave us some love, give us some comments or a review and everyone out there stay healthy, stay well and start automating. Catch you later.

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146|Enhancing Your Business With Madeline Clift

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 8, 2020 22:49

Enhancing Your Business With Madeline Clift Josh: G'day everyone out there in podcast land. We've got a guest here from Level Up Chartered Accountants called Madeline Clift, and she's going to be going through some awesome ways that you can enhance your business methods and processes with the help of technology. So Madeline, a quick question for you. What would you say is the number one thing that businesses can implement to make sure that they are able to enhance their processes? Learn more about enhancing your business at dorksdelivered.com.au Madeline: It's real listening. It's a weird one, but that's probably the best one that you can do, make sure you're listening to your staff and your clients. The first thing we've done was making sure that the business runs smoothly for ourselves internally as a company ourselves, even though we're accountants helping other businesses, is we ask our staff what they want. We make sure that they can do their job to the best of their abilities, and it's really paid off for us, especially during this scary pandemic time. Josh: Yeah, it is definitely a time of unknowing, isn't it? And I think you're on the right page there, where you say invest in your staff is very, very important. We were given two ears and one mouth, so use them in that ratio. Listen twice as hard as you're talking. Madeline: Exactly. Josh: That's very, very good advice. So start by listening and making sure that you've got the processes in place to get rid of the deadwood, I guess, would you say? How would you go about making sure that you do have a team of unicorns? Madeline: Team of unicorns, that's a funny way of putting it. We call them wizards actually, funnily enough. Josh: Oh, wizards. Madeline: Yeah. We'll have to tell them that they were referred to as unicorns. Josh: Yeah. Or ninjas. Sometimes I call them ninjas as well, but yeah. Madeline: That'll work too. Yeah, so our internal wizards, the first thing that they said to us was that they actually love how simple it is to work away from home if they need to. A lot of the guys have kids. This was long before pandemic time, but the guys were like, "Oh, I'm really glad you guys just gave me a laptop that sits on a desk with two monitors, because I can go home and work if I need to, if my kid gets sick for the afternoon," things like that. And because we invested in them right from the get-go, that wasn't an initial cost for us when everyone had to start working from home. Everyone was already ready to go. They took their laptops home and they even stole, basically, half of the monitors that we had floating around the office, so that they were even more set up at home. Everyone's working with two screens. Everyone's super comfortable. And that was just from that simple thing of listening. It's really already paid off for us when it comes to the stressful times. We know our IT provider, again, was really stressed out just trying to provide laptops for the week to get other businesses sorted. Josh: Being ahead of the curve there's really important, and it'll pay off in significant quantities, I think you'll find over next few months and years. Because it means that your commercial overheads from a commercial real estate perspective can be kept a bit lower. Which means that your footprint, that you're putting your carbon footprint, if people are working from home, is lower. Your time wasted between traveling is lower, which means people have time to spend with their family. They're spending less time and money on maintenance for cars. It's by far the most sensible way to go. Josh: And we started the business 13 years ago in mum and dad's garage, where all tech startups start. Went from there to a bricks-and-mortar building a couple of years later and had the staff coming in there. And then, same as you guys, have gone and went, "This is stupid. What am I doing? We're going to other people. We're very, very rarely having anyone come to us." And I thought, if they want to come to us then they're probably close enough to have them come to the house and have a beer on a Friday afternoon anyway. So that's the approach that we went, and I think a lot of businesses are going to be adapting that. Josh: And one of the things that I found, actually, after we started going through the remote workforce, this is probably now 2013 or so, we found it took a little bit of refining and adjustments for people that were used to coming into work. And we put in systems and practices to make sure that we had different KPIs, that we're able to manage around that. What would you say would be a method that you guys are using to be able to monitor and manage your staff to make sure that they're not having a few sneaky looks at Facebook? Or maybe they are. Maybe you've got that written in their agreement. Madeline: Technology-wise, we've actually already got a monitoring system in place. The guys know that they've got ActivTrak on their laptops. So if they're ever doing something they shouldn't be, like installing Bitcoin to try and make money, it flags our IT subsidiaries. There's one method, I suppose. We make that clear so the guys know that they can't be stuffing around. Madeline: Second one, which we're quite lucky for because in our industry, we have to report billable hours. So everyone has to put in a time sheet for what they're working on. It can be done simplistically, like you can say, "All right, for the first three hours this morning, I'm going to be working on this client's data. So I won't be free, don't talk to me." But then we've actually got the time sheet logged in there and saying, "Okay, well, they've actually done all of the work papers. They've done the end of financial year job for the entire client and all the individuals." Things like that. Madeline: Even for our admin staff at the moment, them working remotely, they're doing time sheets per hour. They're much smaller slots, but they're still actually putting in, "Okay, well, I actually spoke to this client for half an hour on the phone." It may or may not be billable, but they've at least put that time sheet in. So at the end of the week or the fortnight in the pay period, the director and myself are able to go through those time sheets and double check, "Okay, well, actually, you've worked a 12-hour day." Funnily enough, I find that more of the staff are spending more time, realising, because they're not doing anything at home, they're actually doing more work, which is really funny. But we're really lucky. Madeline: Yeah. Time sheets and actually the software tracking systems are probably the best bet, I would say, for most business. Josh: Cool. And so I guess we have two different models of clients. The majority of them, we charge a set rate per month where we just give them unlimited support, which works great for the clients. And then we guarantee their uptime to make sure that they're not. If they have downtime, in fact, we pay them. So we don't want them to have downtime. So we make sure they don't have downtime. So we're fighting for them to be up as much as possible and to be as efficient and utilised as possible. So that's the model of payment that we have for our customers. Josh: But for our staff, we have a similar model where we have hours that are measured, and then KPIs, which are normally on the efficiency of the work that was accomplished. Josh: So say if you have a client that's bringing in $2,000 a month, for instance, and that client calls up 10 times and the hourly rate, or the amount of time that client is spent on, if that was say a thousand dollars worth of time, the staff pool bonus is 10% of the difference. So they'd only get 10% of the money remaining. So it's in everyone's interest to make sure then it works, don't go down, and they stay up as much as possible. Josh: Then that's a sort of the big metric that we found because we put in place a program assistant called ObserveIT, which lets you see all the screenshots and keyboard logs and activity and things like that. And then we built a couple of other bits and pieces ourselves so that we can see if the sort of traffic and how utilised each PC is and if one's running slightly slower and all that sort of stuff. But when it came back to it, we just needed to make sure that the staff and the business were steering in the same direction, was the big thing of making sure that the reasons why businesses are working with you are bred into the culture of your business. So then it sounds like you guys are doing pretty well the same thing, which means you're a step ahead of a lot of accounting firms out there. Hats off to you. Madeline: Yeah. I don't like to toot my own horn, but we think we've really taken it to a different approach, I suppose, than a lot of the boutique accounting firms in the past. And then even at the moment, we've found other firms that are roughly the same size as us, the way they approach, I suppose, how they treat their staff, the hierarchy in the office, they're all 50-year-old practices. They've upgraded maybe the technology. They know how to use Xero now, which is great, but all of the rest of their systems and their processes are just stuck in the last century. Josh: We were using QuickBooks. It was about 1,000, $1,500 or whatever it was, back in 2007 to 2013. I hated it. I hated it so much, but it was the only system that our ERP solution integrated into, and smile from ear to ear the moment we moved across to Xero. You guys would use XPM as well, I'd imagine because you're a practice manager? Madeline: Yes, we do. We use both. Then again, a third system, monday.com as well, just for tasks and scheduling. Yeah, that was even simpler to use for our staff. Pretty much all of our systems are cloud-based. We don't want anything not to be on the cloud because we actually feel that that's more secure for us. So there's nothing wasted and paying for installing systems. I think the only thing that we pay for a subscription for is a PDF-editing software system. Josh: That's not too bad. As long as you've got the security behind it. I'm a big advocate for the cloud as long as it's been set up correctly. And that's another thing, a lot of people sort of just hear lots about it on the internet and read about it. And then Yellow Pages, even we're doing big campaigns about it, saying, "Everyone needs to move to the cloud," and I'm like, "Yeah, okay. That's cool." As long as you know your data is secure, encrypted, and isn't going to be attacked. Josh: My goodness, the number of solicitors and accounting firms that we've seen that have vulnerable data that's out there that we've been able to find, show them and they've just gone, "Oh my goodness, how'd you get access to that?" Or, "You shouldn't have access to that." And I'm like, "I know I shouldn't." I said, "And there's other people in there that wouldn't be telling you that they've got access to it." I said, "We're one of the good guys to help you guys out." Madeline: Our biggest expenses as a business actually are the people we employ to do our IT and I'm happy to speak their name, which Connected Platforms, and our actual staff. Those are the biggest costs for us as a business. Staff that we employ and how much we pay our IT company to manage everything that we're doing on the cloud. So those are our two biggest investments that I think are the biggest payoff, really. Josh: Absolutely. That's a differentiator with a lot of businesses. Some businesses look at staff and some of the other required services, such as IT, as a liability and an expense, where really it should be an investment. It should be something that you're sitting there and your Connected Platforms hopefully sits there with you on there, as like a virtual CIO or CTO to talk about how they can leverage new technologies, and what's your exit strategies for the business, and how are you going to be going along with that to make sure that your practices have built up around that? I would completely disagree with what I just said if it was 50 years ago, but nowadays, you can't run a business. It's kind of like saying, you want to run a business without electricity. It's like, yes, it can be done. Is it the most efficient, easiest way to do it? Absolutely not. IT is definitely where people need to be investing their time and money. IT automation and marketing would be our biggest expenses internally. Madeline: I think it will change, depending on industries. For example, we have a lot of clients, where their IT isn't obviously their biggest investment. It might be the equipment that they're using. Because they might be that kind of industry, where they're actually like earth moving or something like that, that's quite a big investment, earthmoving machinery and things like that. Madeline: Then secondary to that. It's always the people that they employ. They need to trust their staff. They're moving those million dollar machines around and things like that. So I think those two are pretty integral, regardless of the industry that you're in. Josh: I agree, obviously you have set up costs and bits and pieces. If you've got, as you said, earthmoving equipment or any sort of industry-specific equipment, it's going to have a big cost. But the good news is, I guess it's also equity sitting there in the business that if shit hit the fan and they had to start getting rid of staff, the equipment they could sell and it's going to give them something back, hopefully, unless it's completely depreciated. What have you guys found that are things that many businesses or accounting businesses can put in place that removes staff overheads and things like that? Madeline: Training in those systems, I think. The biggest problem with accounting, I suppose, is you've got a lot of young people coming out of university who, a hundred times work and study, then you're really trusted and really, really knowledgeable accountants in their forties and fifties. There's a definite gap there where you've got people who are incredibly tech savvy and just want something done and know that they can get it done quickly. And then you've got people who are used to looking at the Tax Agent Master Guide, which is a book bigger than any Harry Potter novel. They're going, "Check this index against this," and they're going, "Well, I could just Google it, mate," where like, what's the term or phrase kind of thing, like, just so we can make sure that we've got the ruling right if we want to make changes. So training and investing in those staff is the biggest thing that's kind of, I suppose, saved us, especially during this pandemic. Madeline: I know that other businesses that we engage personally have just absolutely had to shut down, apart from their few youngest employees who have to run the show at this point because they can work remotely. They figured out how to use the laptop and remote login to the systems. Things like that. Their older employees are just like, "Well, what do I do? I sit at home and do nothing?" It's like, "Well, I can teach you how to, I don't know, use Slack or something like that." Like a direct messaging system, that like, if you're struggling with Facebook Messenger, going to be a problem. Josh: A degree in Google is what I refer to that as. People just need to know how to search for what they need to find. You don't need to know absolutely everything. You just need to know how to use the tools that you've got to be able to find the answers, and the tools can be people or it can be your search engines or documentation systems and the like. Josh: And documenting your processes is great because it allows for you to level up. It lets you level up. You can easily chuck in more accountants and they can read through the on boarding documents. If you have a new business that you're working with, there can be on boarding documents for them as well. And off boarding documents, if you are downsizing or a business is no longer working with you, it makes everything more straightforward. Josh: And the way I would relate it is the biggest business that's operating or one of the biggest businesses is McDonald's and it's run by 14 and nine month year olds. Madeline: Yes, step one, step two, step three, press the button. It's all automated. Yeah. Josh: Exactly. And so getting those processes in place is super important. What do you normally use to create the documentation? Is that something that you're doing with the likes of video recordings or text-based things or both, or situationally, are you putting people into a situation where you can have them learn to become the teacher? Madeline: Yeah, actually funny, you just said that, just last learn to become the teacher. That's probably pretty much the best thing, we want to level up the staff that've spent years in the office because once they can write their own processes and teach someone how to do it, it's... I have two 18 year olds in the administration team, reception and administrative assistant. They're sitting there telling the 40 year olds, "Okay, this is how we're going to use this process." Madeline: It gets rid of that hierarchy as well, because you've got an 18 year old teaching a 35 year old how to use a program, but we're not using kind of like recording processes because everyone's an individual in how they teach. Everyone's, I suppose, an individual on how they learn. So there's no one set way of learning. I think we've discovered that a lot, just through focusing on the individuals in the office. It's one-on-one, 100%, but we document what needs to be done. Madeline: We use another program called MyGlue. So that one's again, referred to from our IT company. They use it for a lot of their internal processes and you can step out what you have to do for on boarding a client, like the step-by-step processes with that. We document the basics, but it's really a one-on-one experience. Yeah. That's why the business has basically quadrupled in size over the last year and a half. Just on that one-on-one mentoring, it's just that keeping to the basics in a PDF document. Josh: Talking about MyGlue, that's a, I think it's a part of another product called IT Glue. Madeline: Yes, it is, sorry, yeah. Josh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So when you said MyGlue, I'm thinking, I'm pretty sure it's IT Glue. It's a fantastic tool. We have the same family of tools that we use internally, and having that documentation there, as you said, not everyone learns the same way. We've spent a lot of money to have multiple ways for people to learn, videos of onboarding of new staff, as well as then screen captures, as well as then videos that they can watch from a screen recording, as well as in the text document. So you can then have your own internal research to be able to look it up and find out something. Josh: The biggest thing is to start with something. Having something's better than nothing. Having a process there and being able to write yourself out of the business is really important. You don't want to be sitting there working day in, day out, as the business owner. You want to make sure that as long as you're not in a position where you can become redundant, you want to be able to make yourself redundant. Madeline: Exactly. It's funny. Bring it back to you were mentioning the DISC profile before. And a lot of accountants being just one type. We used to do the DISC profile on all new employees coming in, but I no longer bother with that because I want that personality that's able to speak to clients and isn't just really process-based. It's just like, "Well, no, I just follow the process." We go, "Well, that's not being an innovative creative accountant." We don't want you to absolutely defraud the tax office or anything like that. But there is ways that you can be innovative and help the client in that business advisory way as well. So if it leads back into that we don't want to be that typical accounting firm where you're just following a step-by-step process and individualising it to every person and employee, making sure that they fit in. Josh: I think it's important to be personable and not be like what the industry says. Like I'm a, as I said, I started in mom and dad's garage, but that doesn't mean that I'm not the guy that jumps up on stage and talks to everyone about how they can better their business. It's about making sure that you are the thorn in the bush, if everyone else is the bush. So be the one that stands out and be refreshing. Madeline: Yeah. We're definitely not your typical accounting firm. Really accounting is a secondary, I suppose, skill that we want you to have if we're hiring you as an accountant, we actually want you to be able to talk to us and have a meeting with us and want to work for the company because I'll tell you what, the amount of offices or typical, even real estate agents I've worked in too where you walk in and it's sort of funeral tone to it. Because there's no sound. It's just a quiet receptionist sitting there that goes, "Hello. How are you?" And speaks very professionally. Madeline: In our office, when it's open, when there's not a pandemic on, we've actually got a dog. Usually in the office, there's always music playing. People are welcome to come and go as they please, if they've got appointments with work and stuff like that, the office is just where they can come to work. But there's definitely an open-door policy as well. No one has their own office except the director. If they need a private space, we've got those areas. But we're basically a big team where you can yell out across the room and go with someone, so and so, about this, "Who's handling that?" So it's definitely not your typical accounting firm. We don't want that. That's what we're trying to avoid. Josh: Well, it sounds like you're the Google of accounting firms. If anyone out there in podcast land's looking to level up the way that their business is running and make sure that they've got someone there that they can give you advice as much as they can give you without being a financial advisor, I'd definitely suggest checking out Level Up Chartered Accountants. Is there anything else that you'd like to cover off on, Madeline, before we finish the podcast? Madeline: Don't be surprised at how young some of us are. If you are interested in coming into the office and seeing how things go. We do have people that are experts, been in the industry for 20, 30 years. But Drew himself is in his early thirties, me myself only just turned 30, I'm pretty much the captain of the ship. So yeah, we've got a lot of young wizards in there, and that can be scary, I think, for some businesses where they they've known their industry, it's been the same way for 20, 30 years. And we don't disregard that. We know that it's your business kind of thing. We're just going to make sure one part of it runs smoother because we've taped up, we've leveled up so we can hopefully level up at least one part of your business and maybe it'll flow through to the rest. Josh: You heard it from the head wizard's mouth. And I think that's absolutely appropriate because when I started in business, we were dealing with much bigger businesses. When I was in mom and dad's garage 13 years ago, as a... Far out, was I, 19 years old at that stage. I was talking to these businesses and they're looking at me going, "What could you possibly know?" But people just, at the moment, anyone gave you the... Open up their ears, and that's circling back to what you were saying earlier. People need to listen more than they're talking. The moment they were able to listen and they went, "Oh geez, this person knows what they're talking about." Josh: I know myself, I was a few years ago, sent over to Vegas to do a presentation in front of three and a half thousand IT businesses about how we automate some of our internal processes. And I was freaking out because I'm thinking, Oh no, I'm like nearly 30-ish. And these people, when I'm looking in the audience are like you said, 50s, 60s, 70s. And I'm going, they are going to think just I'm a wally. They're probably still talking about punch cards. Anyway, I get up there and I start talking. And first minute, you see people's eyes sort of like not really paying attention. Second minute, everyone's there taking notes and writing down things and you could see their attention. I went, "Awesome." Josh: It just takes a couple of minutes for people to see the change and the benefit that you can have. And it's refreshing, I think, not doing things the same way that people have been doing it for decades. It's good to have some fresh blood in a business, to be able to push that along and have that experience, have some of the nomads in there, the grey-haired nomads, but also have some of the younger whippersnappers that are going to be able to break out, change, a difference. Madeline: Definitely. Yeah. We've found a happy medium, I think. Josh: Sounds good. Sounds exciting. And yeah, if anyone out there does want to have a discussion with Madeline, definitely jump across to levelupca.com.au That's levelupca.com.au, and you can check out what they've got on their page there, and probably even be able to book in a session to jump in there and meet the team and pat their dog. Madeline: Yeah. He's Chewy, he's lovely. Josh: Chewy. Awesome. Well, I've loved having you on the show and look forward to seeing how everything goes after this COVID situation. If anyone has any questions or has any reviews or feedback, make sure to jump across to iTunes and leave us a review, give us some love. Everyone out there, stay healthy and stay good.

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138|Covid Created Customers With Julie Bannister

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2020 25:06

Covid Created Customers With Julie Bannister Josh: All right. Everyone out there in podcast land, I've got a cool guest for us today. We've got Julie Bannister from BforB, and she's been doing some special stuff with businesses for a number of years and several different flavours, and overall, she helps businesses grow and thrive. And who wouldn't want to grow and thrive at a time like now? So Julie, tell me, how would you say we could best take advantage of the current pandemic? Learn more about Covid created customers at dorksdelivered.com.au Julie Bannister: Hi Josh. Well thank you and thank you for having me on the podcast today. I think obviously we all are online because we cannot meet face to face and that was the whole part of our business. It was face to face business networking. So we had to pivot. I think that's a trendy word just at the moment. Josh: Isn't it? Julie Bannister: It is. I feel a little bit bad saying it, but we have had to change and we've had to go online. So that is our only option. That's everyone's option is to be online and really to support each other. But I think we all have to realise that it's not the end, it's not that we won't come out the other side of this pandemic, and it's not that we can't also grow in this time. Julie Bannister: So I think that is one thing that we really need to be aware of and for everybody to be aware of, and for us to think of ways that we can, and I've seen many of our members of BforB, and other business people just looking at how they can maybe take things online and sell their product online or doing other things so that they can stay afloat in this time and then come out the other side and thrive. Julie Bannister: So we've got lots of things that we're doing. That's one thing that I think we all need to be looking at, at this present point of time. Josh: Absolutely. Changing around the way that you do business is incredibly important and making sure that you're ready for the boom. And I think this is for some businesses, has come as a complete shock, to other businesses, they've seen this as a bit of a kick in the butt to start doing things a little bit differently. And it's all about just making sure that you're ready. And there's just been a breakneck speed that we've seen people do some of these changes. Josh: I guess what you're saying and I'll bring it to an analogy I'm very fond of which is comparing success to a Chinese bamboo tree. So the Chinese bamboo tree you can plant and for the first five years, it grows only very, very small amounts. And then on the fifth year, in six weeks, it grows 80 feet. Julie Bannister: Oh my goodness! Josh: I know. Julie Bannister: We've got bamboo in our backyard and it's been there for about four years. Josh: And using what you said as an analogy, I think all of us have some bamboo in their own backyard and one way or another. Julie Bannister: Yes. Josh: It's about working that out now and harvesting that and planting the seeds now because people right now isn't the time to bury your head in the sand. It's the time to be building relationships and helping people out and making sure that when things come good, you already have that groundwork done. You already know who you know, like and trust and you've already built those relationships up. Josh: So that you can then move forward and move onwards and upwards. Julie Bannister: Definitely. Josh: So anyone that's looking to start a business, this is the most ideal time. And I can say that with a lot of confidence, knowing that Dorks Delivered would start in 2007 as a bit of a side hustle, another one of those words that everyone overuses. Josh: And it was 2009 that we had the, I guess, mini-recession in Australia and the global financial crisis. And that was our time that we absolutely boomed. I gave up my day job, turned that into my full-time gig and I've never looked back. Julie Bannister: Wow. I didn't know that Josh. I've talked to you a lot, but I didn't know that. Yes, interesting. Josh: Yeah, and I think this is the best time that people should be growing businesses. People shouldn't be closing and they should be pivoting them wherever they can and making sure they're taking advantage of the huge amounts of time that people have available. Julie Bannister: Yes, definitely. Josh: So an example I'll use, my podcast has been running now for a bit of time and the YouTube channel has been running for a bit of time. Josh: We have over 100 videos in the YouTube channel published, I think about 120 podcasts and about 180 recorded. But I was only looking this morning at the dashboard for where we're sitting. So the podcast, just looking at it right now, the podcast, the difference in traffic between February and March increased to 30% more listeners. Julie Bannister: Wow. Josh: If we have a look at the YouTube channel, it's increased. The watch time has gone up by 47%. Julie Bannister: That is amazing. Josh: 47% for the month, just ridiculous. And the view count's gone up by 10% and so I think what we can take home from that is, going up by 10% means that I've got 10% more viewers or customers, but the current customers having watched 47% more of my content has shown that they have enjoyed what we're doing, but they just haven't had the time to look at it in the past. Josh: That's where you've got people with more time and what you guys are offering, which I'd love to make sure everyone else knows a bit more about that, but what you guys are offering is going to mean that they can build those relationships with that available time. If they have available time to watch my stupid videos, they definitely have available time to build relationships. Julie Bannister: I must say that videos, very entertaining. They're not stupid, they're entertaining. Sometimes I'm not quite sure why you said that, and why you say some things, but they are definitely very entertaining. Josh: I'm going to say something I'd normally never say, but I was told many years ago, you can have something that's boring. You can have a boring topic or something that people don't give a crap about and someone said, "They can give a crap about, you just have to roll it in glitter." And I'm like, "Okay, no worries." Josh: So you take a boring subject like IT and stuff like that, and you roll it in glitter and that's what the YouTube channel and podcast is all about. Julie Bannister: That's what you definitely do. Josh: That's right. So you've been running something called BforB in one form or another for quite a while and BforB connects people together and builds those relationships up. Julie Bannister: Yes. Josh: So tell me about what you're doing now for people that are looking to grow their business. Julie Bannister: Yes. Okay. So just to go back a step, you mentioned when you were talking Josh, that building the relationships and that's the core essence of networking and business because you need to build those relationships to actually get, as everybody says, the know, like and trust, so that people will want to do business with you. Julie Bannister: And that's what we do in networking. So now that we can't meet face to face, what we're doing is, we've gone online and obviously, the meetings are free to join in, and we're actually launching in a number of different areas. So we're launching in regional Queensland, we're launching in New South Wales in Sydney, and building extra groups near where we are here in Brisbane and Adelaide, and the Gold Coast. Julie Bannister: So allowing people to join in, in the already established network with our formatted meeting structure, it's formatted and it's professional, but it's friendly and casual if you can have that all in one. And you've attended some Josh and you understand that that's what it is. We like people to have fun when they're there. So currently, we're allowing people to take advantage of that and we're offering free membership, well we're saying three months at the moment, but that may have to be extended. Julie Bannister: We're saying the hopeful, three months, this nightmare, we'll be out of this nightmare and we'll be back to life. But that may need to be extended. So that free membership will be extended for however long we're in this situation and allowing people to join in with our network. And we have some larger meetings where all of the members all over Australia connects. Julie Bannister: So that would be people's opportunity to connect with everyone. But it's allowing people to build the relationships now and when we've got the time, as you mentioned, then when we come out of this, those relationships will still be there. And from that, hopefully, referral business can start happening for many, many people. Wonderful, I'm just so excited about it. Julie Bannister: I was sharing with my coach the other day and we got so excited about what we can do for businesses at the moment. And as you mentioned, Josh, people who are not even in business, it's a great time for people to start thinking about that. Josh: Absolutely. We've got an abundance of time. Julie Bannister: Yes, yes. Everybody's got a lot of time. And there's such an opportunity for everyone in this situation and this is the way that we feel that we can help people, help our current members as well because they get connected with other people and we're all hurting at the moment in one way or another. We're all coping in one way or another and all differently. But this is, I believe, a great opportunity for people to be building those relationships now for the future. Josh: Fully agree, as you've pointed out in different words, but your network is your net worth. Julie Bannister: Yes, definitely. Josh: And creating a good network and talking to people right now is the best thing you can do. Those without a voice, won't be heard. And if you're going to just sit there in your sorrows, it's not going to build your business or your mindset, or grow yourself personally. So jumping into a group, as you've very, very generously pushed a free reason. There's no reason, there's nothing to lose, if they just want to spend a bit of time building up their relationships with people now. Josh: When everyone comes back, as I was saying with the bamboo tree, as soon as everyone kicks back into gear, things will be striving through and thriving for them and their business. So it's sensible to set the groundwork now. Sow the seeds, put them in the ground, even if it's not five years, if it's five months that we're in this a pandemic for, it would mean that in five months' time you've hit the gas pedal and you're absolutely cracking out goals. So we'll make sure to put a link towards that because I think that's very, very important and that people do jump onto that. Julie Bannister: There's one thing else that you touched on is that, some of us, and I know even in the last couple of weeks, I've wanted to put my head in the sand or go back to bed and put the pillow over my head and forget that anybody even exists. Josh: I had a talk to my mate, Jack Daniels. We're sweet. We were pretty close. Julie Bannister: My challenge is that if I get too stressed, alcohol doesn't do me good at all. So that's not my answer. But I think we have to not be tough on ourselves because realising that some moments in the day will feel a bit like that and other moments will feel, no, I can do this. So we really do need to acknowledge that and get connected with people so that we can all pull each other through all of this and not be too hard on ourselves, I believe. Josh: Absolutely. Being able to sit down and just, if you want to do it with me right now, Julie, I think it'd be good. Just take a deep breath, and take a breathe in, and breathe out. And then just know, and recollect yourself, and recollect your thoughts and your position. Feel comfortable about where you've come from and this is something that I always try reflecting on every three months, every year, every five years, I go back and look at each of the different business plans that I've made either from the start of the year and go, okay, what have I achieved? Josh: What have I been able to achieve? What have I been able to climb out of? What's been the driving motivator and those things and go, I can do lots. I can't believe how much I've done and be excited about those things and then go, okay, how can I, in a time like now where people are thinking we don't have the resources to do things, we don't have the ability to go and see people. Josh: It's a time where you just need to pivot your mindset and think about how resourceful we have the world at the moment. Being able to do things such as Zoom. We have the ozone layer that's clearing itself up at the moment. We have a huge amount of benefits that are coming from this. Now there's going to be a whole bunch of fallout from that as well and what the world looked like when we went in is not going to be what it looks like when we come back out. Josh: But knowing that you're still here fighting the fight and you have a game plan and way to position your business, it gives you something to drive towards and thrive towards. Like your kids at Christmas time when you tell them to be good and then say Santa's coming. Like, "Oh, I'll be good then." You just got to have something to work towards and know that you can create that sparkle in your eye and your family's. Julie Bannister: Yes. I think the gem in that is, or the key point in that is being connected with other people, whether it's your family, but I think business people, we are a little bit different and we can't always talk to our family members about the challenges or the stress that we're feeling in business. So being connected with business people, is really important in any way you at the moment, I think. Yes. Josh: Absolutely. You're exactly right Julie, and we need to have people being connected with their businesses and what they're doing and also understand that your business and your personal life are two separate things and building relationships in business can help you out personally as well as in business. That's very, very important to make sure you differentiate the health of your business and the health of yourself. Josh: I paused everything to do with Dorks Delivered and I paused it for three days as I went through the personal approach and game plan as to what we would be doing and how we'd be making sure we're okay personally. And then once I was confident with the results, I then started looking at the vehicle that brings us the success that we've got in our lives. Julie Bannister: That's very interesting. I didn't know that. That's another point I didn't know, but I also didn't even think of doing that. So that's a very good point Josh. Josh: Well I think it's knowing that your family is going to be healthy. I'm a bit of a forward thinker and I'll plan for the worst and hope for the best and that's what everyone should do. Nothing out of the ordinary. I didn't go do some bulk buying or anything like that. I don't have a room full of toilet paper. Julie Bannister: I hope you've got enough though. Josh: I've got a mango tree at the back. Julie Bannister: Ooh. Josh: But yeah, just the normal amount that fits under our sink and that we'd normally buy and just knowing that we've got our water bottles filled up. I've got CB radio set up to mum and dad if something was to go wrong with the phone networks or internet or something like that. Just knowing if we have a complete blackout type situation, that you can still talk to your loved ones and where you're at with your mindset and your finances and that. Josh: That's something that I'd definitely suggest everyone doing is just having a look at what the government is putting on the line for businesses. There is quite a number of things we went through and we could see that if you were to be in an 800,000 to $10 million turnover business, you'd be pretty comfortably able to find about $350,000 worth of advantages from the government at the moment. Julie Bannister: I haven't added that up. That's interesting. Josh: Yeah. So that's the numbers that we've got too and we've been talking to any other businesses, and this was something that I went through and spent a couple of days just looking at all the different literature that's available online to see what any of the different stimulus packages include and don't include, and make sure that you're aware of them before you start stressing out thinking customers are leaving and this is happening and that's happening. Josh: Just take a moment to collect yourself, see where you're at and see what is actually available out there and you'd be surprised at what businesses are happy to help out with and in a time like now, as I said, it's about building relationships. One business, we spoke to them, someone that we buy things from, so a vendor for us and we said, "Look, we need to know, are you relaxing any of your terms? You've pretty much presented us with a bill for $3,000." Josh: And he said, "No, if you don't like it, you don't have to stay with us." And I said, "Well, at the moment we would love to stay with you, but it's an auxiliary product that we weren't using with many customers." And we said, No, we're going to have to cut you out." And he goes, "We've had 30 cancellations this month. I don't know what's going on." And I thought, "Well you're an idiot then." Julie Bannister: He needs to open his eyes and ears. Definitely, wow. Josh: I said to him, "We'd be more than happy to utilise your products more than what we have been. We definitely see value in your product. If you give us some marketing material, we're happy to promote your product to help us help you out with this situation." Josh: And he said, "Oh no, I don't have time for that." I went, "Ah well, if you're not going to invest in your customers, you're not going to invest in your relationships. You're not going to invest in your business." It's fair that businesses with that mindset will collapse. And that's again, another thing that I found in going to the BforBs was, it's not just about the business, but you have a whole bunch of other advantages where you have keynote speakers and you have people come to these groups and they talk about the importance of doing certain things in business. Josh: Whether that be setting up your business in a certain way from an accounting perspective or creating videos for promoting your business or whatever the case may be. Automating and bringing back your life, which I'm a big fan of. Julie Bannister: We do have our guest speakers and that is a great value add. And just recently, we've been having a lot of speakers talking about the different packages that the government is offering and a lot of people are doing this, but we're still giving support around your mental health and things like that. But overall, we have guest speakers who talk about marketing, sales, IT, accounting, mindset, all different topics that can help people in their business. Julie Bannister: So yes, definitely, that is a great value add. And as you mentioned, it's not just about business, the friendships people make in BforB is just, it's so valuable, you can't put a price on it. And another value add that a lot of people receive from being a member of BforB is the confidence that you build because little by little, so you might be asked to do a one-minute infomercial and that's very frightening to a lot of people. Josh: Absolutely. Julie Bannister: Yes. And then we'll ask you to do a five minute, and then a 10 minute, and many of our members who've joined and was so scared to do a one-minute infomercial, are actually doing 25-minute presentations now. So it's a confidence-building and within a very, very, very supportive environment. Yes. So that's one of the biggest benefits I believe. Josh: You were talking about some things, new things that you learned about me today. One of the things, I can't remember if I've told you this or not, but I was severely bullied at school to a spot that I wasn't able to walk and I was very introverted. I was the guy that, I'm going to call myself wicked awesome at chess. No one challenged me to that because if you're challenging me, you're probably better, but I was the guy in the library playing chess. Josh: That was my hangout. I was not confident to talk to people. I was not confident to be in the spotlight whatsoever. I was overweight and it was a battle and it was a time where something clicked and I realised that if I have developed the cure for cancer from a computer standpoint in managing and automating businesses, but I'll have that sitting in my garage. Josh: No one has the advantage from that. I'm sure someone has got a cure for cancer and it's just sitting in their garage and they don't have the voice to be able to speak, and speak and talk to people about it. And things like BforB, and being able to come outside of your comfort circle. Josh: Proud of me knowing about BforB was put onto a roadshow to talk to people about IT. It was a five-day roadshow. The first day that I did that roadshow, I recorded it because I was going to put it up on the web for people to have a look at. I watched it. I nearly threw up. I was like, oh my goodness, that's terrible. I can't believe I've done that. I've got four more days of this with no audience engagement and I've gone, oh this is terrible. This is so terrible. I was going to call in sick. I've never wanted my mum to write me a letter to say I can't come to school so much as a grown adult. Josh: I was thinking, I'm freaking out. I watched that same 30 minute video, maybe 10 times that night and I'm writing down what did I do wrong? How did I move my hands? I didn't like that. I look really nervous. How can I fix this? And I wrote down and critiqued everything. The Tuesday, I did the presentation and everyone loved it. They stood up and clapped. They gave me a standing ovation. Josh: I thought, oh, this makes Wednesday a lot easier. That's not to say I didn't watch it still, but BforB gives you exactly that power to be able to... It doesn't matter if you're a scared little mouse and you sit down. It gives you the growth to be able to talk and to know that other people are in the same boat as you. You're not just the only person that's feeling that way. Julie Bannister: That's exactly right. Yes, and that's actually the thing that rocks my boat in BforB is watching people grow and getting that confidence. The referrals, yes, because we need a return on our investment. That is still very important. But that confidence building, it's grows the person and the business. So that's so important. Josh: Yeah, well, Julie it's been great speaking with you and is there anything else you'd like to talk about before we finish this one up? Julie Bannister: We have some online meetings. As I mentioned before, we have our BforB regular meetings at the same time that we used to have our regular face to face meetings. We've got monthly networking, which is open to everyone to come on and we have a guest speaker with that one and I can share the link with you, Josh if you feel that's appropriate. Josh: That'd be perfect. Absolutely, that'd be great. Julie Bannister: Yes. And we do have our daily business, every business day from 10 o'clock till 11:30 where people can just come in and chat with us. No formal meeting, just connecting with people. So yeah. Josh: Cool. Well Julie, I'll make sure to make sure that all of our listeners out there in podcast land get those links and are able to really have a compounding growth for their business over the next few, hopefully only weeks, probably months, but likely, several months. But we'll see how they go. Julie Bannister: Definitely. Thanks for having me. Josh: No worries. And if anyone has enjoyed this, make sure to jump across to iTunes, give us a review, and everyone out there, stay good.

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137|Helping Yourself With Bob Burg

Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2020 37:56

Helping Yourself With Bob Burg Josh: So we've got Bob Burg here today, and he's an absolute legend in his field. He's changed the way that I do business, he's changed my life. He was one of the first self-help books that I read. And ultimately it's something that I always talk to, a massive influencer for me. And I talk to all my clients and make sure that they go and read, number one The Go-Giver. They need to jump into that, that changes the way you do business. So Bob, tell me a bit about The Go-Giver. Get more tips from Bob Burg at dorksdelivered.com.au Watch this episode on Youtube: https://youtu.be/GS2jTHebvHA Bob Burg: Well it's a business parable. So it's a fictional story based on all tried and proven principles. And there's a lot of stories within the story that actually happen. But the actual work is a work of fiction. It's co-authored by John David Mann who's a fantastic storyteller and writer. I'm much more of a how-to guy. And it's a story of a guy named Joe who's a young up-and-coming, ambitious, aggressive salesperson. He's a good guy and he has good intent, but he's very frustrated because he hasn't reached the kind of success he believes he should have by this point. But he really comes to learn that the big problem, his focus is really on himself when it comes right down to it as opposed to others. And what he learns through the story, is that when you can shift your focus off of yourself and onto others. Being focused on creating or what we call getting exceptional value to everyone you meet, you realise that not only is that a more pleasant way of conducting business, it's actually the most financially profitable way as well. Josh: I have to say I completely agree. Having read your book, it would have been now, I couldn't even say how many years ago. It was many, many years ago I read. I started off with The Go-Giver and I thought, this is amazing. Jumped onto The Go-Giver Leader, jumped onto Sell me More, and then Endless Referrals, and The Success Formula. I nearly have the library. Bob Burg: Wow, thank you. That's a great compliment. Josh: I can say your teachings are amazing. And the way that that was done in The Go-Giver was a very light, easy read in my opinion. It related to lots of people and it wasn't something that you... You pick it up and you just wanted to read, you didn't want to put it down. It wasn't something that was hard to read. Bob Burg: And that goes to John, that's his writing skills. Josh: It helped. And especially in my naivety when I was first starting out in business, being able to read something like that and go, okay this sounds good. And knowing that there is good ways and great ways to do business, as opposed to the ruthless cutthroat methods that seem to be fictionalised in movies. Bob Burg: Yeah. And I think that's one of the reasons there was appeal for the book, for the message. Because most human beings, they want to feel like they're making a positive difference in people's lives. And so I think what the book said is basically, yeah you can do business that way. Not only is it can you focus on bringing value to others, and not only is it going to have you feel good about yourself, not only are you going to make money doing that, but that's actually the more effective way of doing it than focusing on yourself. Because you think about this, and I often will say this in a joking manner when I speak at a sales conference. One of the first things I'll say is, "Nobody's going to buy from you because you have a quota to me." Josh: Yeah, exactly. Bob Burg: Right? They're not going to buy from you, right and we all laugh because we all know that's true. No one's going to buy from us because we need the sale, right? They're not going to buy from you because you need the money. And they're not even going to buy from you because you're a nice person. They're going to buy from you because they believe that they will be better off by doing so than by not doing so. And that's perfect, it's the only reason why anyone should buy from you, or from me, or from anyone else. And the neat thing about that is what it does is it makes it so that sales person or entrepreneur who can place their focus on that other person, placing that other person's interest first, doing what's in the best interest of that other person and being able to communicate that. That's the person who's going to be more successful both in the short-term and the longer sustainable term. Josh: Well I can say, the proof is in the pudding and I've made my business on the pudding that you gave me. Bob Burg: Oh, okay. Josh: So yeah, it worked out really well. And as you said, it should be straight-forward but it just doesn't seem to come by nature. And I know, I myself I'm very technical. My background's technical, my skill set's technical and I was the technician that decided I've got something better to give to the world. And excuse the French, but scared shitless when it came to trying to sell or talk to people about it. And your books described it perfectly, don't sell. Just show people what you've got to offer- Bob Burg: Well, here's what it is. It's not that you're not selling, but we define selling differently right? Josh: Yeah, exactly. Bob Burg: Because when you think about it a lot of people say, well what's selling? Selling is trying to convince someone to buy something they don't want or need. Well that's not selling, that's called being a thief. So what is selling? Well selling, by definition selling is simply discovering what that other person does want, does need, does desire and helping them to get it. The Old English root of the word sell was sellan, which literally meant to give. So, when you're selling you're literally giving. No, someone might say, well wait a second isn't that semantics? And I say, well I don't think so and here's why. Let's say you have a prospective customer in front of you and they want to know why. Why they should do business with you, why you're the solution to their problem, why that... Well, so you're in a sales situation, you are selling. So my question would be, when you're selling what are you giving? I suggest you're giving that person time, attention, counsel, education, empathy and ultimately extreme value. So when we look at selling that way, now we see that it's really something good that we're doing. Josh: You're helping everyone ultimately, unless you're being a thief as you said. Bob Burg: Oh yeah, sure. And that's not selling, that's being a thief. Josh: That's right. As long as you've got a good product, a good mindset, and you believe in what you're doing, and what you're selling, and what your message is I find that your customers become your best salespeople. Bob Burg: Oh, absolutely. They become your personal walking ambassadors. Josh: Correct, yeah. And it's an amazing concept, so anyone that hasn't read The Go-Giver definitely needs to jump into it. It's a must-read, it needs to sit on there on the shelf as one of the first books that you read next to E-Myth and other classics. And in fact when I first met my partner Sarah, she'd started a first business as the first set of... Backstory, met her on Tinder. I would have rather met her in a nicer way, but we live in the age that we live in. So, met her on Tinder, and the first time we caught up together she had her folder there and I caught up with her. She didn't know if it was a business meeting or a date. And I was talking to her about different ways that she could better her business. And if I don't say so myself, quite the gentleman opening the door and so on and so forth for her. And I said one of the first things you need to do is read The Go-Getter, and this copy that I've actually got here now that we've been together for a while is signed by me saying, To all your success, Love Josh. Bob Burg: That's great. Josh: So this is actually the book that I had for myself and I gifted to her. And it's come straight back, although that sounds a bit corny it's exactly the message that you're giving, you give, and it comes back to you. And it comes back to you in... I gave her a book and I got a life partner. How good's that? So it comes back to you significantly more than what you give out. Bob Burg: Well that's awesome. And I never thought of my book going along on a Tinder date, or business opportunity or what have you but I'm glad it did. Josh: So here you are. You're obviously an invite to the wedding. Bob Burg: Definitely, exactly. Josh: Yeah, just a little thank you on that one. And the opportunities don't stop when you turn off your sales cap. It's always on if you're passionate about it good things always come your way. Bob Burg: Yep. Josh: So tell me about what happens after the book, when someone's read the book what's the next steps they can do to find out how to better themselves and adventure onwards past he one-way literature. Bob Burg: Well application is always really key. And that's why in the story itself Pindar, the main mentor told Joe there was really only one condition for his mentorship. And that is that he applied those laws. Every day, that every time he learned a new law he would apply the law that day. It didn't have to be done perfectly and it wasn't a matter of figuring out exactly why or why it wouldn't work or what have you. Just do the thing, right? Just take action on it. And so we find the feedback that we received from a lot of people, bless you, a lot of people do that. A lot of people will take one law and say, okay how do I apply this? How do I do this? And then they'll work on that. I always think that's a great way to start. So you ask yourself, how do I bring value to another human being? And when you think about it we have to really understand what value is, what it means. A lot of times I think people maybe confuse price and value, and those are actually two different terms. For example the law of value says your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment. But you think about it, that sounds like a recipe for bankruptcy. Give more in value than I take in payment, aren't I going to go out of business? And so we simply have to understand the difference between price and value. So what we know is that price is a dollar amount, it's a dollar figure, it's finite. It simply is wat it is, it's the price. Value on the other hand is the relative worth or desirability of a thing, of something to the end user or beholder. In other words, what is it about this thing, this product, this service, this concept, this idea that bring with it so much worth or value to another human being that they will willingly exchange their money for this. And be glad, be ecstatic that they did while you make a very healthy profit. And so when you automate for example somebody's business, and do this in a way that... What's the value you're providing? You're saving them time, you're saving them energy, you're saving them from making needless mistakes, you're making it so that they're going to make more money in their business. So I guarantee you that whatever it is you charge that person, they're getting much more in value than what they're paying. But you're making a very healthy profit because obviously with your cost of goods sold, and rent and everything else you're selling the service for much, much more than what you're having to pay to support it. And that's why in a market-based economy with every sale there should be two profits. The buyer profits and the seller profits because each of them come away better off afterwards than they were beforehand. So, that's the law of value. It's not a matter of, some people might think The Go-Giver, does that mean you're giving away your products or services? No. Does it mean you're not making a profit? Of course not. As a Go-Giver you're going to make a much higher profit because your focus is going to be on the value, the experience, everything you proved that other person, right? Not low-price, when you sell them low-price you're a commodity. When you sell on high-value you're a resource. Josh: Well that's it. Too many people, there's a podcast we did a few weeks ago on apples versus oranges, how could they possible be the same price? When people are comparing apples with apples, and as soon as you are comparing apples with apples you commoditize your business, and then the only thing you can fight on is price. And that's where you need to be able to bring that value, bring that change. So you've got value, price and cost. Bob Burg: Yeah. And here's the thing. So when you look at the price, and I think the cost is pretty self-explanatory. The price is self-explanatory, right? But when we talk about value, that can be both concrete in terms of when someone saves a certain amount of money, when you help someone make a certain amount that's fine. But there's so much more to the experience itself even, that's conceptual in nature. But here's what we've got to really understand, that value is always in the eyes of the beholder. Josh: Yes. Bob Burg: So what that other person feels is valuable about your product, or service, or doing business with you or what have you. Not what you think is of value, or what you think they should think is of value. It's about what they do. So if we're going to say to somebody, okay so how do you practise the law of value, right? Well the first thing you do is ask questions, and make sure you discover what other people find to be of value and then you go from there. Because it's not a matter of just doing things that you think are of value to others, that's fine. But what you feel is of value may not be what they feel is. Josh: Right. And then there's this disparity between your service offerings not being seen as valuable. Bob Burg: Stand-by, right? Josh: Yeah. So it's a very valuable lesson. And I know that you're big on authority building and influence, and I think that is something that could bring out a lot of value to people. Something that can show people your worth in mass without having to necessarily having to spend time as a commodity. You're able to put a resource in front of people or it's able to come about in front of them where they can see the things that can benefit their business and benefit their life. How would you go about starting off becoming an influencer? Bob Burg: So I think it's always a good thing, I'm always a big believer in defining terms so that we're all facing the same direction. So when you think about what influence even is, on a very basic level influence can be defined as simply the ability to move a person or persons to a desired action, usually within the context of a specific goal. So by definitely that's [inaudible 00:24:47]. Now that's the definitely, but I don't believe that's the essence of influence. The essence of influence is pull. Pull as opposed to push, as in the saying how far can you push a rook? And the answer's not very, at least not very fast or very effectively. Which is why great influencers don't push, right? You never hear people saying, wow that Tom or that Nancy, she is so influential. She has a lot of push with people. No, she's influential she has a lot of pull with people. That's what influence is. It's pull, it's an attraction. Great influencers first attract people to themselves, and only then to their idea. So how do we do that? So the law of influence says, in the book the law of influence says your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first. Well what does that mean? We're not talking about being self-sacrificial, or being a martyr, or being a doormat. But no, here's what we mean. Like this person who utilises pull in order to influence. That person's always asking themselves questions such as, how does what I am asking this other person do, how does it align with their goals, their wants, their needs, their desires? How does what I want this other person to do, how does it align with their values? How am I making their life better? What is a problem of theirs I am helping them to solve. And see Josh, when we ask ourselves these questions thoughtfully, intelligently, genuinely, authentically, not as a way to manipulate another human being into doing our will, but as a way of building everyone in the process. Now we've come a lot closer to earning that person's commitment as opposed to trying to depend on some type of compliance which is push, right? That's pushing ourselves or pushing our will and so forth. Josh: So say you're a small business, you've just started out and you've got just yourself. You've just read The Go-Giver and you're thinking about how can you change your methodology from being a push. I'm sure you've seen some of the pyramid schemes that are out there that have generally more push than pull from a sales perspective and they're trying to get you to on sale certain products without mentioning brands and bits and pieces. There's lots of them out there and that's always a very push, and their sales training has all been very push. How would you change someone from a push mentality into a pull mentality? And how would you change around their processes to allow for that to come to fruition and be noticed by, either their existing customers that have come about probably through getting sick of saying no, and they've finally said yes. Or how would you then change the mentality of their customer base or do you think it would be a bit more of a situation where you'd refresh the customer base? Or I guess how would you change your mindset from the 1980s this is how I'm going to be pushing something onto someone, to the 2020s soon to be. How would you change their process? Bob Burg: So I would say regardless of the field, if it's sales there are certain people who do it through push, and the good ones, the sustainably successful ones do it through pull. The ones who do it through push, and have been successful, and have been successful for a long time. They have to continue repeating the process over, and over, and over again with new people all the time. It's exhausting, it's very, very dificult. You can do it but it's very dificult to build a sustainable business that way. The ones who do it through pull regardless of the business, regardless of the industry. These are the people who typically are able to really develop a wonderful referral base, and as you were mentioning earlier people who are out there singing your praises, right? What we call personal walking ambassadors. So I think it beginning with the initial conversation. And let's say you meet someone somewhere and you're at a business social function. And you just say hello, and you say your name, and they say their name. And you ask them what they do and they tell you what they do. And they're going to probably give you some elevator speech, right? I send high-end copying machines to business that need to blah, blah, blah, right? And so forth because that's what most people have been taught to do. So you want to listen respectfully when they do it, but then when they ask you what you do which they'll probably do. My suggestion is to rather than do some elevator speech, because remember right now when this person first meets you they really don't care about you, and don't care about what you do. They care about themselves. So my feeling is just say the name, say whatever your company is, whatever you do. I'm an accountant with so-and-so or whatever. But then you're going to go right back to asking that person questions about themselves and about their business. So I have questions I call feel good questions. And those are questions that are not salesy, they're not prospecty, they're not intrusive, they're not invasive. They just make this person feel genuinely good about themselves, about the situation, and about you. And remember when you're focusing on them you're taking the pressure off yourself. You don't have to be that person who has that clever pushy line and so forth. So the first feel good question that you could ask is simply, how did you get your start or how did you get started in the copying machine business? Or selling copying machines or what have you. Or you may say, how did you get your start in the office products profession? For a little bit more elegant. Whatever it is that person does, asking them how they got their start is a fantastic way to immediately communicate value to them. Because again, value is much more than just money. It's making the person feel important, feel good about themselves. And how many people ever ask this person how they got started in their business. I guarantee no one, their own family probably doesn't ask that person. And here's you who they just met, and you're asking them basically to tell you their story, and they're going to appreciate that. I would follow that up probably with another fielded question such as, what do you enjoy most about what you do? You'll probably segue into it by saying, wow you must have had some fascination experiences. What do you enjoy most about your work? Or what do you enjoy most about what you do? Again, it's a feel good question. There's no pressure attached to it. Now when you've begun to develop a little bit of a rapport with that person, I would then suggest asking what I call the one key question that will set you apart from practically everyone else that person has ever met, and that question sound something like this. Gary, how can I know if someone I'm speaking with is a good prospective customer for you? And think about what you've done when asking that question, right? Unlike other people who are just again trying to sell their product or service right away, what have you. You have actually said to this person, not in so many words, but what you've communicated is I want to help you. I want to add value to your life. I want to make your life better. Josh: You give something to them, yeah. Bob Burg: Yeah. And they're going to really appreciate that. Now, at the end of the conversation you've got their business card, you can follow up with a personalised hand-written note which is so much better than a text or an email. Even though those are always good, but after you first meet someone there's nothing like a personalised note or card to send hand-written just saying it was great meeting you. If I can ever refer business your way I certainly will. And you've not established a connection, you've now established a relationship with this person that you can then begin to build on however you do it. Whether it's by, then you connect with that person on social media. Whenever you can refer that person to someone else, or if you know that person has an interest in antiques and you find an article on antiques. And you print it out and you send it to them and say, hey I came across this and I remember you love antiques, thought you might find... All these things you're doing, you're just creating that relationship with that person. And this does not have to take a long time, it doesn't. And what happens is when you do this consistently, okay. And you do this over time with new people on an every day basis you start developing so many people within your new sphere of influence that you've always got someone who's at that point where it's ready for you to approach them about either doing business with them directly and/or referrals. Josh: What you're saying there you need to make sure that you are genuinely listening to people. You're not just hearing them, you need to be, lack of a better word, involved emotionally in what they're saying, and listening to what they're saying, and actually action from that information. You don't want to be just hearing them and then, oh yeah, yeah. Cool, cool. You like remote control racing. That's cool. Okay, moving on. You need to be ready and engaged to build that relationship if that's what's important. And ultimately in business it is the currency that is the most important, building relationships. All ships rise in high tide, especially relationships. Bob Burg: Yep, sure. Yeah. As we say, and several of the mentors told Joe in the story, the golden rule of business, of sales, of networking what have you is simply that all things being equal, people will do business with, and refer business to those people they know, like and trust. There's no faster, more powerful or more effective way to elicit these feelings towards you from others than by, and again as you said genuinely, right? Genuinely and authentically, and moving from that I focus, or me focus to that other focus where you're really looking to, as Sam one of the mentors advised Joe, make your win all about that other person's win. Josh: Yeah, 100%. It is all about the other person, and it should always be about the other person. And when people say... All the things that salesmen say. I'm not closing enough, it's all a numbers game. All this other stuff, there's always someone out there as you said that's ready to build a relationship, ready to be heard, and ready to have their story heard. And building those relationships when the time comes will come. If you're being a pushy person it's all about the numbers, and you're trying to change your three percent conversion to a five percent, or a five percent to a 10 percent when you're calling up. It's a yuckier game with a lot more negativity. It's a game that you have a lot of friction towards building the relationships, as opposed to genuinely building relationships. Bob Burg: Oh yeah, it always comes back to how you do it. If you're doing it with the, how do I serve this person? You're going to have a lot more success than if you were saying I'm going to talk at this person and try to get them to buy. Again, it's not that doing it the Go-Giver way is self-sacrificial. No. It's more practical doing it that way. Because again, are they more likely or less likely to buy from you when they can tell that you're focused on them as opposed to being focused on getting their money. Josh: And I've got to say that the solutions that you're putting in place, you've been listening to them. You understand their problems, you understand their stresses, you understand their pain points. You're able to then focus on that and make sure that you're removing those problems, not just explaining that moving to this solution is better for your business. You're hearing their problems and saying, well maybe this isn't better for your business. Bob Burg: Right. Josh: And that's fine as well. Bob Burg: Absolutely, when that happens that happens. Josh: If you've still got a perfect person there that you've been talking to, building a relationship with. They know the solutions that they offer, they know the things that it does, the things that it doesn't, the bells and whistles. And that then allows for them to then refer other businesses on when they see that there is a better fit for you, and they hear other people's problems. Bob Burg: That's right. Josh: And that's where you have your compounding effect of growth and it's really a beaut feeling. So I've been very excited. As I said, The Go-Getter changed my life. Changed the direction, and not just from a personal relationship perspective that I brought up earlier, much before that. So yeah, again thank you for that one. Bob Burg: My pleasure. Josh: I've read different books. There's one, I hope I'm not quoting the wrong name here. If I am I'll correct it with the title. I think it's called Sapiens, and it talks about how many relationships a single person can have in their life and build out from that. And they talk around the magic number of... That's weird. Bob Burg: That's Sapiens. Josh: That's the one. Bob Burg: Yeah. And he talked about the tribes back in the hunter-gatherer days were typically about 150. And that's the number, David Burkus writes about that too in his book. And yeah, I'm just trying to think of the person... Durham's or Dunham's, I can't think of what law it is. But it's that he's the person that came up and he documented that 150 per person. Josh: For anyone that's watching this, that wasn't staged there. You've got hundreds of books behind you, what are the chances the one on your desk- Bob Burg: Well the funny thing is, a good friend of mine had referred Sapiens to me about two years ago. And I always have so many books on the list to read, finally I was speaking in I think Colorado maybe a couple of weeks ago and I got that at the book store, I saw it at the book store. And I was looking for it, I was hoping to pick it up. And I started reading it and I really haven't been able to put it down. I'm about three quarters of the way through now, it's fascinating Josh: It's a fantastic book. With building relationships, and obviously all different businesses have... I guess you brought home exactly what I was bringing up in the book. And that's the rule of 150, maybe 200 people. And if you are in the business of selling items that... If you're in a business where you need to sell more items and not say a B2B business and profession industry like myself. If I have 50-70 businesses that I'm working with I'm happy as Larry, and I can comfortable have those 70 relationships. But if you're selling something that is a lower priced item you need to have a significantly higher ratio. Maybe it's 500 to 1 or something like that, and you still want to have those relationships built. And you want to have the authenticity with the relationships, but knowing that you can't necessarily have the closeness, and as they talk about the different circles of relationships that you have. You have your close intimate relationships and then it goes out from there. How do you make sure, how do you keep the authenticity? Would you suggest people using different databasing programmes to write down notes on people. To make sure if you don't talk to them for two years and then they come back to you and they said, Larry I really loved the talk that we had at the business conferencing meeting from two years ago that you can barely remember because there was too many beers flying around. And what would be the best method to make sure you are bing authentic. Would you say, Larry I'm glad we had a good chat but don't remember, what'd you say? As soon as you get home, as soon as you get back to the office write down what you remember about Larry and make sure that you can have a refresh? Bob Burg: Well I think the key with technology is to always use it to help with your authenticity, you know what I'm saying? So in other words it shouldn't be that it's about the technology, it's not. It's about the human relationship when you can utilise technology to do that. So I do want to write down what I talked about with someone and review it every so often because I do want to know, okay? But if something comes up where I happen to see that person or what have and they bring that up, and it's really not something that I do remember. No, again it depends on the contexts. Usually I'm going to say, you know what my gosh. I love you, love talking with you but I don't remember exactly what we talked about in that conversation. If you have that kind of relationship you can do that. But if it's going to hurt that person's feelings because that person maybe whatever. Well no, I'd probably just say, always love talking to you and that was great. Again, sometimes I think we go too overboard with being literal in some ways. You always want to be honest, but you also always want to be kind and tactful as well. So when technology can help you to authentically keep in touch with another person, absolutely. Totally we utilise that. Josh: Cool. That's perfect. So that's something that I know that myself, I write down as many things as I can remember about as many conversations that I had with people. And that could be whether or not they liked Chivas Regal or a dog named whatever the dogs name is. Bob Burg: Well then that's good. Because if they like Chivas Regal, and that might be something you mights end them sometimes on a special occasion. If their dog's name is Checkers and you want to be able to remember that their dog's name is Checkers when you speak. If you can remember it just because you remember it, that's great. I love animals so I tend to remember people's pets names. But that's not everybody, and there's other things about people I don't remember. And in that case you need that reminder. So no, I think all of that is great when it helps to further a relationship and it's authentic and genuine, of course. Utilise the technology. Josh: As I said, I think technology is perfect to be able to help people out. But as you said, do not overcome the personal touch. Don't use technology to be personal, use technology to get rid of the repetition. But use yourself and your power that you have, your voice that you use to build those personal relationships. Bob Burg: Exactly. Josh: And that's what it's about. The cavemen had different tools that they used to achieve their objectives. And the time has changed, the chairs we sit in are different, the offices have air con in them, but we use a different set of tools to achieve the same objectives which is awesome. Bob Burg: They're just tools, exactly. Josh: Well we're getting very close to the end here. I wanted to ask, is there any speaking events or things that you do either around the states, or within Australia or down under that are coming up anytime soon? Bob Burg: Typically at this point I travel a lot less than I used to. At 61, I just don't want to be travelling all over the place, so I limit my out of state engagements to about 20 a year now. And I try to now keep it within the states. And those are my corporate programmes that I do, but we also have public seminars that we do usually in Orlando because it's easier for people from Australia, and Singapore, and South Africa, and London and so forth to get there. And so we hold them in Orlando, which is really only a couple of hours drive for me up the road. But Orlando because it's Disney World it's easier for people to get into. So our next one is actually in late January, it's called Endless Referrals: The Go-Giver Way. We limit those to about 50 people, so it's over two days and it's very hands on. So those are the ones that will be the public ones that we'll be doing from now on. And I have so many great mates in Australia, and if I could beam myself there I would do that in a minute. But the long flight, I just don't travel well anymore, so. Josh: Well I've [crosstalk 00:46:15]. Bob Burg: I stay pretty close to home. Josh: It took me two weeks to get over the jet lag when I last entered The States. I know this is pretty bad, but give me your favourite Aussie accent. Your best Aussie accent. Bob Burg: Oh, let's see. Hey mate, lovely to see you. Love all my mates down there, and we'll have a good time no worries, no worries. Josh: That sound pretty good. I don't mind that, that's good. Bob Burg: We love Australians, we love our Aussie mates so it's always a neat thing, and it's always a joy to connect with any of my friends from the beautiful land down under. Josh: Well I had the opportunity to head over for three months last year so I was travelling all around the place. And I'd have to say it's like you're travelling to different countries with each state that you go to. Bob Burg: Oh, it's amazing I know. Josh: Where Australia is in my opinion more so not as diverse. You have parts that are definitely greener and parts that are more tropical, but overall the accent doesn't vary a whole bunch. The people mentality, that doesn't change a whole bunch. Except for obviously things such as you go into the middle of the city in New York, and you go to Sydney and there's the hustle and bustle. People aren't as friendly, but that's just the nature of the beast. And for anyone who does want to head to any of your opportunities that you've got either in-person or any of the content that you have, you've got the Go-Giver movement, is that right? Bob Burg: Yeah. General website is Burg B-U-R-G.com. The two day workshop is Endlessreferrals.com, and we also have Thegogiver.com. So we've got content all over the place there. Josh: We'll chuck some links down below, all the appropriate places depending on where this gets seen. You can jump across there and have a bit of a look. And I'd like to thank you for coming along and talking with me. And we've got this beautiful summer day in paradise here, that's why I thought I'd head outside. Is there anything else that you'd like to cover off on before we jump? Bob Burg: No, this has been a lot of fun, very enjoyable. And I wish everybody who is watching and listening, I just wish you a fantastic 2020, may it be your best year yet. Josh: Thank you very much Bob, and I appreciate you coming along. Bob Burg: Thank you.

love new york australia french colorado australian south africa selling states tinder singapore b2b disney world aussie durham backstory changed jumped sapiens bob burg go giver checkers dunham e myth go getters utilise old english success formula john david mann david burkus endless referrals pindar chivas regal thegogiver josh it josh yeah josh you josh well josh so josh for josh cool

133 |Running the Numbers With Drue from 4Front

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 22, 2020 37:56

Running the Numbers With Drue from 4Front Josh: Good day everyone out there in podcast world. We've got a special guest here, Drue, and he does some pretty cool stuff. And actually, you know what? I'm going to get you to tell me what you do, the voodoo that you do, and how that's impacting businesses around Southeast Queensland? Get more tips from Drue Schofield at dorksdelivered.com.au Drue: Yeah, thanks Josh. Nice intro. I don't know that we're that exciting. Josh: Aww, come on. Drue: But that was a very exciting introduction. We're accountants. Look, no, all jokes aside, we think we're quite personable people. Yeah, we're accountants. We're a full-service accounting and advisory taxation business or service. We deal mainly in the small to medium business space. We do self-managed super fund administration and advisory with our SMSF clients, whether they are still working, building businesses, contributing to super or they're self-funded retirees, and we also do quite a bit of work with property investors and developers, making sure they're structured well and giving them advice along the way, whilst being in a position to help our clients leverage our network. I spend a lot of time, personally, networking with allied professionals and pretty much anyone. I just like to be a conduit for business and people that are doing things and have ambition, and if I can connect you, or one of my clients, or someone with someone else that they need to talk to, to solve their problem, then that makes me really happy. Josh: Cool. Okay. So I guess you covered a couple of things there that spiked my interest. One of them was the podcast worldwide audience, in Australia, we call a small to medium business, I would have said, five to 200 employees. Yeah? Would you agree? About that? Drue: Yeah, about that. Yeah. Josh: Yeah. Where in America, anything less than 200 is small, it's backyard mom and dad shop, isn't it? Drue: Yeah, they seem to have a different view on business over there. Unless you're over 250 employees or whatever, they don't really even count. Josh: A blimp. Nothing. Drue: To a degree. I mean, I had some association with businesses and professionals over there when clients needed to utilise services in the U.S. and Europe as well. But yeah, certainly, everything's bigger and better in America. Sometimes. Josh: So one of the things that I've noticed when I've been talking with you versus other accountants, in bits and pieces that we've spoken with is, you seem down to earth, to the point, and humanable. Drue: Oh, thanks. Josh: If that makes sense. Drue: Yeah, yeah. Josh: Less robotic. Drue: Yeah, yeah. Look, accountants have a bad stereotype. Look, I like to think I'm the new wave or part of the new wave or the new age of accountants. Josh: I'm not helping the IT look! Drue: No, you look very trendy, except for the glasses that have no lenses by the way, for people out there. But no, they look really good. I was offered to wear some, but I chose not to. I'm a contact lens wearer, anyway. Drue: Look, we are. We're approachable. I don't know if fun loving is the right word, but we enjoy what we do. That said, we're serious. We give serious advice and sophisticated advice to people when they need it. We're succinct, we're to the point, we remove jargon. If a client doesn't understand what we're doing, we just go over it again and again until they do. Hopefully, not too many times, and usually not too many times. We usually get it on the first or second go, but we're not here to preach to people, we're not here to talk down to people, we're here to educate people. And if clients don't understand what they're doing and getting themselves into, you can bet your bottom dollar, that's where there's going to be problems, so we want to avoid that at all costs. We have those full and frank conversations without fear or favour. The clients know what they're doing, why they want to do it. We get a good understanding of that, and then we give the advice tailored to that particular situation. Josh: I think you listed four F's then. And I guess if everything's going right, you don't hear a fifth one. Drue: No, that's right. We won't talk about the fifth one. There's enough doom and gloom out there today and we don't need to feed any more panic or doom and gloom, I don't think. Josh: Not at all. So I can see a lot of similarities in what you guys do and what we do. We try to simplify technical problems. We try to make sure that people are able to understand and assimilate with what their end goal is. And we use technology as the fulcrum to achieve that. And in a non technical, gobbledygook, terahertz and gigaflops type words, we try and make sure it's all human understandable, readable stuff. It doesn't matter if you're a mechanic or a doctor or whatever it is, or anything in between, you're able to work out. You know there's a problem, we can see that there's a solution, and we use, as I said, technology for that. Josh: So one of the things, I know, when I first started out in business, was I was scared shitless about doing the accounting thing and doing it wrong. So I went and bought a bunch of a bunch of books and got any of the different government books that I could get on GST, and I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to read those, their ... Drue: I've read them all. Josh: They're exciting, aren't they? Drue: No, they're not. Josh: No they're not. So I'm reading all this stuff, and at that stage I was at uni reading all these books on GST and BAS, and everything else, when I'm on the train to uni. It wasn't fun and it didn't make me feel any better off, because I guess it's kind of like me trying to pretend I'm a doctor or pretend I'm a mechanic, when I'm not. Drue: Sometimes it's good to just eat the sausage, Josh, and not know what gone into it. Josh: Exactly. I agree. Drue: If you use that as an analogy. Not that we don't explain what goes into it. Josh: I like that. That's good. I've always said, "You can teach a man to fish and he'll have food for life, but some people just don't like fishing." Drue: That's right. Josh: They just don't. Drue: Some people don't like fish either. Josh: Exactly. So that's getting a professional to do the voodoo that they do, is better than you trying to do everything and wear another hat. Drue: Yeah, it's crucial. I can't underline, underscore, bold, italic, asterisk enough that it's crucial to get really good advice. Whether you're just starting out in business, or starting out doing a development, or considering setting up a self-managed super fund, or whatever the case may be. Or you've been in business for two, three years and things are going well, or you're an established business, I can't stress enough how important it is to get accurate, timely advice, from someone that wants to be a key partner in your business. I mean that's our tagline. "Your key partner in business," that's who we aim to be. I believe we achieve that all the time with all of our clients. We want to see businesses survive and thrive, and grow and flourish, and do really well. And if we can be a part of that journey and connect them to good people and give good advice, then again, as I said before, that makes us really happy. Josh: Cool, cool, cool. And I think that's important there. Key. Good advice. And knowing what's out there, one of the things that I found out about years into business, was the R&D grants in bits and pieces. Drue: Yeah, sure. Josh: Do you guys work with those? Drue: We do a little bit in that space. Those things become more technical and more specialised. What I'd rather do more so than try to do it, is we've got people we work with, people we will then refer our clients to that are specialists in that area. And then I guess that's another thing that is a benefit of myself and 4Front Accountants. If we don't know something, we're not afraid to put our hand up and say, "Hey, we've got a rough idea about this, we know enough to be dangerous, but it's now time to go and talk to a professional." Josh: Yep. Drue: And the other thing we'll do there in that situation, is rather than just push the boat out and say, "See you later, hopefully, you hit land," we'll make the connection with that person, and if needs be, we'll attend the meeting and facilitate the process. So again, we want to be your key partner, our client's key partner in business. We'll really hold their hand through that process. Drue: And R&D is a really good example. Whilst we know enough about it, again, to be dangerous and how it all comes together, there's specialists that we work with and that's all they do. R&D in grant work. So R&D is research and development. Sorry, I'm using an acronym and I should explain it. Josh: I should have as well. Drue: That's all right. Not a problem. It's easy when you're a professional and you're working with ABCs and one, two, threes, and EFDs, and ATOs, and ELDs, to just rattle things off. But yeah, R&D, research and development. And whilst I'm there, a little plug for the current government and preceding governments, that someone had the foresight to bring that sort of thing in, because that's helped a lot of our clients tremendously. And I'm not even joking, millions of dollars. Josh: Absolutely. It was a game changer for us. Drue: In real cash. Josh: We've already been developing products, already been developing integrations into LinkedIn that can speed up the process to find new clients. We've developed these different processes within businesses to be able to integrate phones in bits and pieces, and we were already doing all this stuff, and then someone told me about it and I went, "Oh shit, this exists? This is a thing? Why isn't this spoken about more?" Drue: It's an often overlooked or ill-considered thing, it feels like the ATO and the government's always here to do things to you, but when you're a small business person, within reason, it does do things for you as well. I mean, we'll probably touch on it later, but the government's just neutered some stimulus package that's aimed mainly at business and it's actually really good, and it should get things going and hopefully quell some of the fear and panic out there that business owners have. God, I've had three phone calls today and two emails last night about it already. So we're actually sending out a communication and a newsletter form that summaries things clearly, succinctly, no jargon, so that clients have one source. So 4Front Accountants clients have one source to go to, look at, and say, "Okay, great, now I understand it." And we'll get more phone calls and that's fine, we'll explain it. Drue: But going back to what I was talking about, things like the R&D concessions and grants, and those sorts of things, governments are there to do things for business, not always to business. Josh: Yeah. And that's something that I was a big mindset shift that I had around 2016, 2015, 2016, when I started going for the R&D concession. I didn't know it existed, already been in business at that stage since 2007, so I'd been around for long enough that I should have heard something out there, but I hadn't. That was kind of a, "Oh I mean all this wasted money," but I went, "Well, I'm not going out of business." All this potential. And it's only one of the things that I've seen out there. Like there's advantages to employing, there's digital business grants and bits and pieces out there. There's a whole bunch of different things where the government is giving out a whole bunch of money. Josh: There was a programe which I was involved with a little while ago that would subsidise the hourly rates of IT staff, and all sorts of things like that. And I just went, "Wow, this is this cool stuff. How didn't I know about this?" And it's just everyone has that predefined thought, belief system that they're out there to take and not give. Drue: Look, it's a symptom that we see with clients all the time. They're too busy doing it, doing it, doing it. They're stuck working in their business and not on it. And that's the sort of focus that we try to shift, and a mindset we try to change with clients that, "Hey, you need to work on your business and not in it." We've got the tools, the expertise, and the advice and products to actually help clients work more on their business and not in it. And things like that come up all the time. Drue: Now it's quite possible that your accountant that you're working with at the time knew about it and didn't tell you or may not have known about it at all. But I can assure people listening that at 4Front Accountants, there are the sorts of things that we've got a finger on the pulse with. Again, we're not experts, we don't understand those things, but we're certainly aware of them. We find out enough about it. I certainly do read about it, and I know my people at 4Front Accountants do as well. We read about it enough and know enough about it to be dangerous, and then to know who to hand that on to, so that we can explain that situation to that particular expert, and then guide our client in the right path, with the right person, so that they get the result that they want. Josh: And that's what you want to get with anyone in the professional services industry. You don't necessarily want them to be the one stop shop. You want to them to know the shops you can go to Drue: You can't be all things to all people. And when you do, you will fail, immediately. Josh: Yep. Drue: And you shouldn't be. I mean, there's specialists in every field. I mean if you've got a problem with your knee, you might start at the GP, but you'll soon be referred to, potentially, an orthopedic surgeon. The GP isn't going to be there, but he's developed a relationship with that person to know that's the best orthopedic surgeon for your particular problem. I mean, we're the same. We're not solicitors, we're not finance brokers, we're not financial advisors yet. We're not R&D grant specialists or whatever the case might be, but we've got a really good network and we spend a lot of time building relationships with the people that will help our clients, so that we can continually prove our mantra or our motto, tagline, that we are your key partner in business. Josh: That's really important. Just knowing that you've got that one point of contact and that- Drue: It's terrific when people come to you and they say, "Drue, I need this," or my business partner, Carmine Decorso, they might go to Carmine and say, "Hey Carmine, we need this," and we'd say, "Yep, sure. We know someone. We'll give them a call now. We'll connect you. If you want us to come to the meeting, we can do that as well." Josh: Yep. So where would you say you sit with businesses? Do you start at anything from bookkeepers and all the way up, like a CFO type level? Drue: Yeah, we do a lot, I mean I guess our core competency is compliance work. When people think of accountants, they think of people that will do financial statements and tax returns to a solid, accurate level. They'll complete those income tax returns to a point where they're not paying a dollar more or less tax than they should. And if they're lucky, they might get a little bit of business advice. Drue: Now, we kind of turn that on its head a little bit, insofar that we recognise and realise the compliance is important, and certainly we feel our clients don't pay a dollar more or less tax than they should. And we work really hard to make sure that things are done properly, correctly, and legally. You certainly don't want to do anything that's illegal, nor do we. Where our point difference is, we do sort of act in that external CFO type arrangement, where we like to work with our clients more often than once or twice a year. We do that through something we've termed our Board of Advice programe, where we sit down with our clients quarterly, and I like to call them 90 day success cycles, which I believe is a McKinsey & Co term, the management consultants. So again, shows you the literature that people at 4Front Accountants are reading. We're not just reading the boring textbooks. Whilst they are important, they're not terribly exciting, but we've got to go through them. I'm more interested in things that are going to help our business clients survive, grow, and thrive. But yeah, we run our Board of Advice program with most of our business clients or as many as we can. They see a lot of value in that. Drue: So what is the Board of Advice program? As I alluded to, we work in quarterly cycles with our clients. We run to an agenda. We focus on the financial performance of the business and we do some business analysis around that on quarterly numbers, usually comparing the current quarter to the same quarter this time last year. And then the December quarter that we've just finished with our Board of Advice clients now, it's really interesting, because you've got six months of data this year, and you've got six months of data from the previous year, so you can really have a really good snapshot of where the business is at. Sometimes just comparing this quarter this year to this quarter last year isn't enough. Likewise, comparing the 2019 year, we've just finished it, to the 2018 year, doesn't really tell you a lot. It's a little bit too far in the past. I always tease clients that we're not here to write history with them, we're here to make history, and that's what we really try to do. Josh: I guess one of the things that I've always thought is, "Man, okay, you'll have a good quarter, you have an awesome quarter, and then you'll have a bad quarter." And when you've been in business long enough, they can't all be home runs, can they? Drue: Sadly, not. Josh: No. Well I think you can't enjoy the good without the bad, so it really lets you appreciate the good. Drue: Your sweet and savoury. Josh: Yeah, that's right. So I think and I see a lot of people around the place that are, "Oh my goodness, you wouldn't believe what happened, the line was so long at the shops." Well, there's kids starving in Africa and you're worried about the line at the shops. Drue: They're probably buying toilet paper. Josh: That's exactly right. So you have a look at these things and you think, "Okay, you need to get a bit of reality check." And I think the best thing to do is to have the bad times so that you can appreciate the good times. And not necessarily, I'm not wishing anything upon anyone that complains about mundane and first world problems, but yeah, you definitely need to have the bad ones. But if you have a bad one, sometimes that could be something that's spread further than just your business, and a lot of people are worried about a recession and things. Nevertheless, the data that you have, that you can help businesses out with, you mentioned forecasting. Are you able to see trends across the businesses that you work with? Drue: Absolutely. We see stuff all the time. Josh: So if someone said, "Oh, I've had a bad quarter," and you go, "Look, I understand. We've got five other businesses that are in the same sector as you that are also feeling the pressure." Is that something- Drue: Yeah, it is. I mean, we're growing, we're growing all the time. And we want to keep growing. We've got fairly big aspirations as to where 4Front Accountants will land in my lifetime as a business, so the more clients we have, the more data we have. Now, obviously everything's confidential so we don't share other people's information, but we can talk about things generally. Drue: So we're seeing that with particular trade's clients, or we're seeing that with medical professional clients, or we're seeing that with Josh: Retails. Drue: Clients in, yeah, retail, whatever the case may be. You get a general feel, you work with enough clients, you just end up with, as an accounting firm, you end up with a natural cluster, because if you've got an accounting business like we do, you're dealing with a lot of different businesses all the time, and we're almost solely business these days, which is the path we want to keep going on. So you see little clusters. Drue: It's really important, though, to not have a five week view of things. You need to have a quarterly, that 90 day success cycle view of things, or that six monthly, one year, three years, five years. Now, the further you stretch out, the harder it is to plan. Josh: Otherwise, it gets a bit wonky, but at least you're walking it. Drue: You can, but you've got to have a plan. You've got to have a plan. So one of the things that's really important, I think, for clients is to do some forecasting, and then you give yourself some measurements or some numbers to measure your current performance against. Like you said, Josh, you're going to have bad quarters, and that's just how things are. It might be because of seasonality, it might be because there's a hereto incurable virus sweeping across the world, who knows? But it's important to take a longer term view of things and look at your business and say, "Okay, is there anything that's fundamentally wrong with the business now?" Most business people will have a gut feeling, that's why they are entrepreneurs and that's why they are business people, they tend to go with their gut. Perhaps more. It's sort of an intuitive thing, but I think probably harking right back to the advice piece I was talking about before, you can't underestimate the power and the value of good, succinct, solid, financial advice, sitting down with your accountant or your advisor. We're becoming more advisors than accountants these days because of the number of clients that are starting to take up our Board of Advice program. Drue: And if you do it in a logical, methodical way, with some structure, I mean all our Board of Advice program meetings that we have each quarter run to an agenda. We talk about the financial analysis of the business, sure, but there are other things that come up as well. They become a bit open slather, we like to look at whatever clients are comfortable talking about, and that sway into personal issues as well, which means you've got to have a whole subset of other networks available to you. That might be psychologists and psychiatrists or other healthcare professional people. Josh: You're offering counselling, nearly. Drue: Well not quite. Josh: You're not wanting to but Drue: Well, look, unless you're in business, you really don't understand and appreciate how much it really becomes part of your psyche, and it becomes your identity. Josh: Absolutely. Drue: And we've had clients, unfortunately, that have had businesses go under, where we haven't been appointed as advisors quick enough, and we haven't been able to make changes early enough. And it's really sad. And sometimes these aren't young people, sometimes these are well established people in their 30's or 40's or 50's where industries have changed and they've been left behind. And that's really, really sad. Drue: Now in some instances, there's probably not much you can do, but I think if you had the chance to get to them early, maybe run this Board of Advice program that's quite structured, which is almost like a mini board of directors, the way we run it, given its got an agenda, and it really does add a bit of corporate governance and accountability, which is important. It's something that I think is lacking more generally in the small business world. People sort of get their hammer and level, and off they go, and they're a builder, or they take their- Josh: All the cowboys out there. They try their best- Drue: Yeah, they are. I guess there are Cowboys out there and they do try their best, but they may not have appreciated the advice that they could get off a good accountant and business advisor. And I like to think that if our clients, and future clients, start to work with us closer with this Board of Advice program, the amount of accountability adds is tremendous. And it's going to get good results, because we're spending that time to sit with our clients and we're their professional sounding board. They can throw anything they like at us. We'll have our own insights and our own observations, which we can give advice around and make changes. And I've done that with clients recently. Drue: I had a plumbing client recently that is new to the firm, and he reported a $20,000 loss last year, and he couldn't work out why. I sat down with- Josh: I bet he pulled that coin from out of his house or something like that, or a personal asset, or that's, I guess, advice that you'd be giving. Drue: Yeah, so I've sat down with him, looked at the numbers, and he said, "Okay, well there's a $20,000 loss here." Yeah. And the businesses is now in lost territory again for the last two quarters. On a quick analysis, I've worked out that his GP, his gross profit line is wrong. So he didn't have the right numbers in there. Once I put the right numbers in there, whilst it was still bad, it made the data more realistic, and it told a better story. Josh: So gutter in, gutter out. Drue: That's right. So the issue in this particular, and this is a real life example here, in this particular client situation, he was having an over reliance on subcontractors and labour hire, and we feel he wasn't marking up the materials he was buying enough. So we did just a quick little "for example" calculation of if he replaced this person with this person and this with that and perhaps got rid of some of the labour hire and some of subcontractor at work, and replace that with a more permanent workforce, and then changed the markup he was putting on the cost of sales, we were able to turn it into an $86,000 profit. Josh: Yep. Huge. Drue: Massive turnaround. That's a $106,000 turn around. Now it's easy to say, "Oh yeah, that's great, Drue, but that's all theory. You may not get that immediately." But if you change your mindset, and you're working with your advisor or your accountant each quarter, and you're looking at those things and making that the most important thing, I always say that which is measured is that which is achieved, you're going to get somewhere near it. You might not get to the $86,000 profit the first year, but gosh, you might get $20,000 profit or $30,000. Going to be better than a $20,000 loss, surely. Josh: You can't turn a ship on a dime. Drue: No. Josh: It takes time. Drue: It takes time. And I guess the Board of Advice programe we're running, it's really helping clients to see the power of accountability and meeting and taking advice and acting on it. Josh: I agree. It's something that people need to have. And this is something ... I was talking to someone else earlier on today- Drue: And if you haven't worked out, I'm pretty passionate about it. Josh: I've noticed. Yeah, yeah. Drue: Well, I want to see people do well. I mean my parents were small business owners and- Josh: Yeah, what did they do? Drue: Builder. Dad's a builder. Had some really good success over the years, but I think he could have done better if he'd had, perhaps better advice, more frequently. And I really think any business, whether you're really successful or you're moderately successful or you're doing okay, will benefit from better quality advice more frequently. Josh: Well, I found, when I first started out in business, my uncle at a company that he was running for many years, and engineers or teachers is pretty much everyone else. So I always thought you can do anything you put your mind to, but that was misinterpreted as you do everything that you can and you put your mind to. And so that then meant when I became a business, started, I'll put in my prepubescent voice, "Let's start a business. I'm really excited to see where this goes." And then I went, "Shit, there's a lot to do." And so I had to become the marketer, the salesperson, the manager, the entrepreneur. Drue: Chief cook and bottle washer. Josh: Exactly. Exactly. All and everything of the above. So I slowly, slowly worked out that this isn't for me. And then went, "Let's stop this and start employing the right people and having the right people do what they enjoy doing," and do what brings you the money in. So that was a great shift and I've never looked back. Having the right people there to give you the advice though, and make sure you are making the right decisions is important. Drue: I think it's critical. It's critical to the success of success or failure of a particular business or enterprise. It just really is. Josh: It doesn't matter the size of your business either. I think it's critical straightaway. We go into people's networks a lot and we see problems and problems and we go, "Oh, why is it set up like that?" Or, "Why is it done like that?" And it's just because the advice that they were given was they thought they know, liked, and trusted that person, trusted the advice, and it was just poor advice. And so for all of our clients that we work with, we say, "Look, we want you, every six months or however often you feel necessary, get another IT company in here and see if we're doing the best job for you." And that gives them the full input and knowledge that we're fully transparent, we're very confident in what we're doing, and we know we're doing right for businesses. Drue: The fact that you're prepared to frank your ability with that, I'd imagine no clients do that, because they know that you back yourself. Josh: Very few. And one of them said, "Oh, who would you suggest?" And I said, "That kind of takes away from the point of it, doesn't it?" Drue: Yeah, that's not independent. If you're suggesting someone, it's not really independent. Josh: Any professional services that they have that they're employing in their business, whether it be financial advisors, accountants, solicitors, IT people, anyone that is doing something that you can't touch and feel and know that the product is good and the outcome is good. Drue: Intangible. Josh: Yeah, intangible products or intangible services, you need to be able to have someone go in there and make sure that Oz behind the curtain is pulling the right strings and doing the right thing for you. Josh: So we had someone come to us about a month ago and they were asking us if we could help them out with some of their LinkedIn marketing stuff. And I said, "Yeah, we can definitely do that. We can go through the process and do the voodoo that we do." And I bought the pricing, he goes, "Oh. Okay, we'll have a think about it." And I thought, "Oh, 'have a think about it' means you're probably going to check out someone else. That doesn't matter. Josh: Anyway, he called us back a month later. So just the Monday just gone. And said, "Josh, I need you to review what's going on with my LinkedIn." I had a look and he went with this company to go through and market him on LinkedIn. And I thought, "All right." And I had a look and they were doing nothing. They bought a $50 product. They took his scripts, and they were using this $50 product to automate the messages that were being sent out, and then charging them $1,500 a month to try and make new connections on LinkedIn. And I said, "You are absolutely been being taken for a run mate." I said, "This is terrible." I said, "The product they're using is this ... " and pointed it out here. And I said, "This is what they're using. It's $50." And that's $50 U.S. I said, "But that's $50. And then you've shown me what you've given me and all of this information, they've just entered that, copied it out of your document into these fields. Then they've just set the days of when they're going to send these messages to people." I said, This is terrible. You're really spending $1,500?" He goes, "I feel sick." I said, "Maybe $500 if they're managing everything and they're doing a phone call." For what they're doing, I said, "They're on selling a product with 30 times mark up, 3000% mark up." I'm like, "That's ridiculous." Drue: Vaporware. Josh: Yeah. And anyway, what I'm getting at is it's always important to have someone there check out what's going on. I myself have had only a couple of bookkeepers over the 13 years we've been in business, and when I got the second bookkeeper, she went, "Oh man, look what the first bookkeeper's been doing," and I thought, "Oh, well that's probably what you're going to say anyway," but it's good just to have people double check, just to make sure that your work is aligned. Drue: Yeah. It can't hurt. Josh: Right. What's the hurt in it? Nothing, yeah. Drue: Look, very rarely do we have clients do that, because they're confident in what we do and how we do it. Now, I will say often I have meetings with prospective clients. It probably starts out as a second opinion meeting, but once I start talking about what we're going to do and demonstrate that, it soon becomes a first opinion meeting, because they've become clients, which is nice. Josh: Yeah. But that's what you want. Drue: Absolutely. Josh: And that just shows when you think, obviously without knowing the relationship- Drue: And it doesn't mean their advisors aren't good, it just means they're not as good as us. Josh: Yeah. Not on the ball enough or not keeping in contact enough. And that's imperative, like relationships. We're all about automation and everything that we produce is all around automation and uptime for businesses, but we'd never suggest to automate the human touch. Now we're sitting here having a podcast together, doing an interview together. Drue: In the same room. Josh: In the same room. Drue: As humans. Josh: We can high five. Drue: Yep. Josh: That was terrible, let's try one that makes a noise. There we go. And when you look at, we could have done this over Zoom, we could have used technology, we could have done all these other different things, but that's a start and end, and then there's nothing there. And I think the world is becoming too digitised in ways that they should be humanised. Drue: Yeah. It's not as organic. Our Board of Advice meetings, we have a handful, occasionally, that are done on a Zoom or a Skype call, but for the most part, I like to do them face to face, either in our office or in our boardroom, which is all kitted out and nice and comfortable and easy to have the meetings there, or at the client's premises, more than happy to do that. But I prefer and okay, yeah, it would be quicker, it would save me half an hour, 45 minutes each way in a car. It would save the client half an hour, 45 minutes each way in the car. So okay, you'd pick up an hour, an hour and a half. Big deal. In the overall scheme of things, more than happy to go to a client's premises and meet with them or their home, if that's where they're comfortable doing it. I don't mind. Drue: But the important thing is they're in the flesh, eyeballing each other. It's seeing body language, seeing expression. Josh: You can feel the emotion. Drue: And they can see, I hope, sometimes our passion or my passion for what I'm trying to do and where I'm trying to help them get with their business. And I can see their passion or their frustration or their concern or fear or panic or jubilation that they've .... We've had an action list that we set last time and they've done it all and they'll say, "See Drue, I did it all. You didn't think I would, did you?" I'm like, "No, no, I never said that." Or where the labour a point, they look at something and they say, "Well look, we didn't get this action point and here's why." And we can sit there and we can talk about it. I don't think we will ever, ever technologize, digitise, or supersede, the human to human interaction. Drue: No. Josh: If we did, the UN would be done completely via video link, and there would be no need for everyone to fly into Brussels or wherever they do, and have a face to face meeting. Drue: No G20s, none of that stuff. Josh: It'll be all gone. Drue: If you think about bigger businesses with business deals, they still fly to Japan or to China or to the U.S. or to London, wherever it is, and they sit down. They might break bread and have a meal together, but they sit in the room and they sign the papers. And there's no need to do that usually, but there's a real human need or craving to be in the company of other human beings. Josh: There's something there that you can't feel otherwise. Drue: Yeah. Josh: When you do it over the phone, you can hear tonalities in voices, but you can't really feel the impact of that person being there. It generally doesn't go longer than the, "Okay. We've started, we've had a small amount of banter. We've spoken about it. We've concluded. We've said bye." There's not that, let's get to know the real you moments that you get when you talk and catch up with people. Drue: It's like a 5D factor, I think, I call it. So not 3D because 3D's easy on the video, and we all know about 4D now, but 5D's you're in their presence, without trying to get too spiritual, you can feel their being. And it's really good. And that's what we want with our clients. We want them to see our passion and feel our passion, and we like to see theirs and feel their passion for their business as well, because that's their livelihood, that's their thing. And as I said, toward the start, that's their identity sometimes. So they're really proud of that and we want to bask in that pride as well. Josh: Well, I guess we've been going through a few bits and pieces here, and I'd like to finish up and ask how would people go about contacting you and make sure that their business is going in the right direction and they're not freaking out, their numbers are doing things wrong. How can they get that second opinion that might turn into the first opinion? Drue: Look, the best way is to send me an email or give me a call. If you go to 4Front.net dot.as, or to Drue, and that's D-R-U-E.schofield@4front.net.au, or find me on LinkedIn. More than happy to have a conversation, cost and obligation free. We can sit down, we can talk about what you're doing, how you're doing it, what your expectations are, where you think there might be some potential gaps in the advice you're getting now, and we can give you the cut of edge, and then you can see whether you think that's something that appeals to you and that you might see value in. So yeah. Josh: A yachting term, I love that. I love that. I'm a bit of a keen yachtie myself. Is there any questions that you'd like me to ask or that you'd like to ask of me? Drue: No, I think we've covered some great ground there. Don't ask me to repeat all that, because I don't necessarily know what I said, but I just hope that people listening can get a good feel and a good sense for the passion that we have. Yes, we're accountants, and we've got a bad stereotype of being boring and maybe a bit mundane, but I hope, Josh can attest to me not being like that. Josh: Absolutely. No, no, no, not at all. I'd say you'd go and have a beer with me if I offered it after the podcast. Drue: Absolutely. Or two. Josh: Perfect, it's done. Or two. Drue: But yeah, just to finish up, we are passionate about being your key partner in business. Josh: That definitely sounds like you're on a really good business and its got legs and it's going places. I'd like to ask anyone out there, if you have enjoyed this episode, to make sure to jump across to iTunes, leave us a review, give us some love, and make sure to stay good. Drue: Thanks Josh.

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130|Finance Alternatives with Paul Boyd-Skinner

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2020 29:33

Finance Alternatives with Paul Boyd-Skinner Josh: Everyone out there in podcast land, we've got a great guest for you today. We've got Paul here from NoBNK, and he is a bit of a wizard when it comes to looking at a different way that you can do finance. This is especially critical in today's financial climate. So Paul, tell me a bit about what it is that you do with NoBNK. Learn more about finance alternatives at dorksdelivered.com.au Paul: So NoBNK is predominantly a non-bank business and commercial finance solutionist. I've been involved in nonbank lending for around about 16 years. So I've done all sorts of finance. I've done everything from home loans to commercial development, construction equipment, finance, factoring, all that sort of thing. And I'm proud to say that I've never ever put anybody in a loan with the bank. Josh: High five! Paul: Look, you know, my adversity towards banks. Back in the 80s, back in the day when I got my first home, which was in late 1988, 89. You know we will be excited about getting our first home and interest rates at that time were around about 12% when we went and got our loan. The way it sort of worked back then was you go to the bank. And you're begged for a loan and they'd say, ‘Yes, yes, we'll give you a loan.’ And it was usually, you know, like about 70% or something that they give you, but they will do on a bit of a special, at the time for first home buyers where they give you 100% at interest only. We were living in a caravan when we first got married, so that was a pretty good option to get our own homes. Josh: Absolutely! And upgrading it’s pretty low friction option, I guess. Paul: The only thing was the in-laws had to go as guarantors. So I now know that today is like a parental guarantor. Really wasn't heard of back then. So it was a little bit of a product for first home buyers. So we did that. We jumped in and we got the house and everything was going along nicely. And then we had to have the recession that we had to have. And our interest rates went from 12% to a 7%, 8.5% in the space of about six months. And just to give you an idea, the loan was $105,000. My repayment was $1,560 a month. Yep. And I was on $33,000 a year. So when you take tax out, 80% of my income was going towards paying my mortgage. Josh: Yeah. Far out. Paul: And it wasn't knocking 1 cent off it. Josh: Yeah. Just sitting there as interest only. And that is a scary spot to be in, because you're not sure if it's going to go up or down or left or right, or what it's going to do. Somersaults. Paul: That happened with a lot of first home buyers over the years. Eventually, you know, it just got too heavy. I had to do up to 30 hours a week overtime to make ends meet, I was a fitter-machiner at the time,and you know, we ended up losing it. It's just the way it was. There were a lot of people losing their properties. Josh: You weren't the anomaly. I don't think so. Paul: I sort of didn't understand what happened to me. I didn't like the banks at all when I worked it out. I've done a lot of study on the banks since then, or the banking system, and, you know, my thoughts on the global financial system is, I believe it's a world's biggest Ponzi scam. I've been open and honest about this for quite a long time, about how I feel about the banking system and I'm a bit like the disruptor.. I'm all about wanting to make the change so that it's a benefit for us, not so much just for them. Josh: Yeah, well, I guess like I've done a bit of research into things such as the fractional reserve system and how that works. Paul: Does it work? Josh: Well, how it works doesn't mean it works. No, you're exactly right. It's not a very good system, which is based on, now, nothing really. It's just based on numbers in a computer. It's not weighted against any real thing of intrinsic value. Paul: Well, have a think about that. So what a lot of people don't understand is that when you deposit money into a bank, you're actually lending them that money. It's a loan. You become an unsecured creditor, yet there is no security for that loan to that bank. Josh: Yep. Paul: It's a promise that they give you. We'll promise that we'll give you your money back. Josh: After changing you bank fees or having it in there. Paul: Well, what a great deal for them, isn't it? They say, ‘Joshua, can you lend me your $100,000?’ Josh: Yeah, no problem at all. Paul: Now would you want to say, ‘Oh, I need a contract with that?’ Josh: Well, normally you would. Yeah. You hope so. Paul: No. So what's going to happen, Joshua, on the bank is you're going to lend me $100,000. You're the bank, though. Not as a contract, but I do promise that I'll give you your money back and I'll dictate the terms. Right? So you might want 10% interest, but I'm happy to give you 1 ½. And you'll say, ‘Yep, I'm happy to do that.’ That's really what you've done when you put money in the bank, and just remember that one critical part. You're an unsecured creditor. Meaning that secure creditors, in the event of the bank collapse or whatever, secured credit is paid first and then unsecured credits. Josh: Yup. So in the situation where shit hits the fan hypothetically, we can all feel the recession, we can all hear it being spoken about, we can also feel some pressures around the place. If shit hits the fan and everyone starts frantically pulling money out of the bank, they've already planned for that, and that's what's been going through at the moment. Am I right? Paul: Yeah, correct. Josh: Tell me a bit about that for our listeners. Paul: Well, long story short is that there's three generations of savers, so you've got you've got your builders, you've got your boomers, and then you've got generation X, which is me. We've all been bought up as a generation of ‘get yourself a good job, save for retirement.’ It was all about saving money. Okay. The other thing too is that we had our children quite young, so you know, I've been married 31 years and I've got married to my wife she was 19, and I was 23. And, we had our children when she was 21. So we had our kids young, and if you think about my father, he was one of 17 children, so they had big families. So they were called boomers, you know. Josh: Huge families, but small houses. Paul: Can you imagine having 17 children? And the house, there were three bedrooms, one bathroom, right? Josh: One bathroom, 17 people. 17 children! 19 people. Paul: It's 28 years from youngest to oldest. You know what I mean? Like it's just a constant flow of, you know, at least seven, eight, nine people in a 3-bedroom house. Josh: Should have bought a TV, so that there's something else to do. Paul: Didn’t have TV back in the day, so what they did was they went out into the world and started the businesses and all that sort of thing and created quite a lot of wealth. And they stored that wealth in the bank because that's what they were told to do, you know? And they'll get great returns. So when I had those interest rates of 18% of my home, you would get 16% return on money that you had sitting in the bank and you know that's a fantastic return. But look what's happened over the years. You know, that was 30 years ago. Now we're down to zero negative rates in other countries. Japan has been at negative rates for 20 years. Josh: How much money have they reprinted over there? Paul: Does anyone know why? Does anyone really know why? Or is it just like it's a bad economy and all this sort of stuff? So what makes the bad economy? When people stopped spending! If you're not buying things at the shop, then retail starts to drop off. I want to spend the money. So they're trying to force you to get your money out to spend. Banks don't make money out of people saving and make money out of people borrowing. So they don't want you having money sitting in the bank anymore. Their fractional reserve system, that doesn't matter anymore because they're reprinting money off loans. They make more money out of loans than they do early use saving. So the idea is to try to get that money out of the system and into risky investments or to just get you out there spending. But when you have the majority of the world's population over 45 years old, that's when our spending curve drops right off. We're not out there buying. We're not down to supermarkets every week, three times a week, or whatever at the big shops. I'd be lucky to go to near Robina. I'd be lucky to go there once a month. Josh: Yup. For those listeners that didn't hear you. You were saying the GFC is a light rain comparative to what could be happening. And I always say if it's been 30 years since a major recession and it doesn't hit right now, all that means is we're going to be getting a slightly bigger downfall before we're getting absolutely torrential rain in 7 or 11 years time from now. Would that be fair to say? Paul: It could be any time. When you think about in Australia, we've had 28, 29 years without a recession. What has stopped that recession from happening? So back in the 90s when it happened, like 1990, 91, we had the recession we had to have, but they didn't do anything to try to stop it. You know, and as I said, the interest rates are at 18% so what they've done to stave it off every year, you know, because the next government that comes in needs to be leaving it in a good place. They don't want to be the government that caused the recession. Right. Josh: The inevitable recession. Paul: The inevitable recession. And when you look at what the US in particular, they've had about seven or eight in that amount of time. Australia have had none. So every time that you look at the interest rate table and you look at different things that's happened, like the 9/11, the GFC, they've dropped rates 3% to 6% in order to stave off that recession. Probably the other recession that we had to have. And now we're getting down to zero. We will be at zero. We're 100% going to zero. Where do they go? Where do they go if we had some major problem, like a GFC or whatever again or a reset? How do they fix that? Josh: I don't know. How do they reset that? They can’t. Paul: They can't! There was a paper written 18 months ago by the IMF, and in that paper, they said that they are working on models to make -4% to -5% feasible. Josh: All right. Paul: So try to get your head around that. Josh: I get paid to have a house. Is that right? Paul: That's already happening overseas. Josh: I have read up about that. So that would mean that the more debt you've got. Go and buy a house now, ladies and gentlemen. Paul: Why would they want to do that? Why would they want to get down to -4% to -5%? Josh: Well, I always say if they're getting down to those numbers, it's going to mean that people are going to be more wanting to get loans and get things like that. Paul: I think it's about getting rid of cash because if they could get rid of cash and move it into a digital world, get rid of the physical cash, then they've got complete control. Josh: Well, see, the problem that I, and this is something that's come about over the last 10, 12 years. When cryptocurrency started coming around, if you're comparing apples with apples, and I'm not going to say that they're both exactly the same, obviously. But when you have a digital currency being compared to a digital currency, which is, if they're getting rid of all paper and all money becomes more frictionless to be able to move from the AUD to a Bitcoin or any of the other cryptocurrencies that are out there without it being is in the power of the banks or anyone else. How do you think they are going to overcome? Paul: Well, I believe cryptocurrency is a red herring. I believe that it's just been set up for you to play with while they build their real money system. And there's a little bit of a showing of that last week. So in this IMF paper, what they actually said is that they would introduce e-money. They call it e-money. And basically what that means is that that item there is $100. They say, ‘Joshua, you know, that's $100 if you pay cash or $95 if you use e-money.’ And you go, ‘Well, I'll use e-money.’ So that's how they destroy cash. So they make it worth less than what it is. That's how they get rid of it. There's a bank in Sweden, and the currency in Sweden is krona. The central bank in Sweden has announced the e-krona and they're in the second phase of testing e-krona. Josh: The timing of it's great. Paul: And of course, it runs on blockchain because blockchain is a great technology. But yeah, it's a decentralized system? I don't believe so. I think it'll be a very centralised system, but it'll definitely be electronic or digital. Josh: Yeah. Okay. So I guess the recession at this stage, you're saying, is inevitable. It's going to happen. Got a beautiful way to at least have people that are struggling a little bit in their business, whether that be because they need to have more finances bought into it. Or maybe you've got people on the other side of the coin that have liquid assets or liquid cash where they want to be able to use that and invest into something that's going to be giving them a bit of a better return without having to put it into the big nasty banks. How do you go about? How does NoBNK work? Paul: So the way that NoBNK came around is that many years ago, I looked at many of the managed funds and different places like that where they would collapse. There were quite a few here on the Gold Coast where a lot of those managed funds collapsed and the person who lost that was the investor every single time. And it's only because the managed funds, number one, they think like a bank. And number two, they take their fees and everything out first. I'm not saying that all managed funds are like this. I'm just saying that when you get that real control freak at the helm, that's when there's a problem. So I designed a system where there is no control freak. So it's all about putting the control, the choices, the security back in the hands of the investor. And the number one thing is the trust. You know, because I think that we put a lot of trust in these organisations, in the corporate side, the banks and a lot of these managed funds. That's what we were told. You know, this is what you do. And I think they’ve broken our trust. I think they've broken our trust big time. You know? The way that NoBNK is set up is that we make our number one product service. You know, everybody wants service. Well, the banking model can't give you service. It's impossible because of the way that their pecking order is designed. So their pecking order is profits first, shareholders second, then clients, then employees, that's the pecking order. They can't give you service. They don't make money out of service. We're not about that. We're about, if we create that service for you, where you're having a great experience and you feel that you've got the trust and you will have to trust because what I say to people is, who's the one person that you trust more than anybody else in the world? To make the right finance decision for you. It's yourself, right? You trust yourself more than anybody else. So why are we giving that away? Why are we giving that trust away to the banks? So what we've done with this platform is that we're going to make you the bank. Josh: Okay. Paul: If I want to borrow money from you, why do I have to go to a bank to do that? You put your money in the bank and then I go and borrow the money from the bank. That's your money that's in the bank. That's not theirs. So why not just borrow directly from you? So the platform is set up where we facilitate accurate information between somebody who wants to borrow money and someone who wants to lend it. So the terms are all worked out, and if the borrower is happy to go, and the lender is happy to go, we just put those two together. That's all we do. And they've paid monthly returns in events on their investment. I don't know how many other investments you get paid monthly in advance, and it's direct in the security goes into the investor's name. Josh: Okay. So let's say I'm new to the idea and I'm going, ‘Okay. Yeah. Stuff the banks. They've stuffed me over too many times.’ Without saying the bank that I'm with, I can see the interest rates that I could be getting just changing to another bank, I could be saving $11,000 a year in mortgage repayments, and I had to look and I thought, ‘Ah, it's too hard.’ How hard is it? Or how would I go about moving a lot like a house? Paul: The area that we're not going after at the moment is the consumer market. It's very regulated. There are a lot of rules around that market. We'll get to that. We'll get to that market. But the area that we want to look after, first of all, is the business and commercial arena. I think that if you look after the business side of things first and the business owner, they're gonna have to worry about their day-to-day things rather than worrying about when the next dollars, you know, how they're gonna pay their bills, if the bank's going to foreclose on them and the house is tied to that loan and all that sort of stuff. So we look at things a lot more commercially and it won't always need to be property initially. There’s a lot of lending that happens out there that a lot of people don't know about, where you might have some text it or you need to, you want to jump on an opportunity pretty quickly and all this sort of stuff. So they use private, short-term lending and that short-term lending could be a loan that's anything from 3 months to 3 years. It’s not a 30-year loan and all that sort of stuff, and it's just about jumping onto an opportunity or it could be getting out of trouble. You know, ‘We're in a bit of trouble over here. We need to pay back the bank and get some cash flow into our business as well so that we can stay afloat.’ So really, we're more targeting that area there at first, which is perfect. Yeah. Well, I think it's an area that's very under-serviced. And the other area that we're targeting, and this, as I said before, is those people all around the world, those high net worth investors all around the world that's got money sitting in the bank and it's getting them no return or very low returns. We want you to be able to negotiate the term between what sort of return you want. So really you get to choose the return you want. And the client gets to choose whether to accept it or not. The way this platform is designed is that as an investor, we don't touch your money. So we never touch your money. We're not a managed fund. It's not a pooled investment. It's not a, you know, sort of property trust. It's not a contributory fund, none of that sort of stuff. It's just one loan, one investor, one loan, one investor, one loan, one investor. So someone wants to borrow $1 million, the investor's gonna put up the whole $1 million, and we're just going to put those two directly. Josh: So it sounds like obviously it's a lot of advantages for both parties in regards to the returns that they're going to be getting, as well as the rates that they're going to be paying because you're cutting out the bank in the middle. What would be some of the, I guess, risks? Or does it take the same amount of time to process through if you wanted to get an equipment finance loan for $50,000 for a new digital printer or something like that. Paul: The process is quick, it all happens within 24 to 48 hours. You'll know how many people So as a borrower, you'll know how many people are interested in doing your loan and you'll get offered the lowest interest rate that they offer. Josh: Is this a global thing or is this just Australia? Paul: This will be a global thing. Initially, it's Australia, but we do want to take it globally because the problems that started in the world, the reason why I've talked a lot about Japan is because the reason why they've already experienced all this, what we're going through, is they’re the oldest population in the world, you know? So it all adds up to me. Their ages crossed over and over that 45-year mark, they're average age crossed over 15 or 20 years ago. So it comes in a lot sooner than what it has to us. Josh: And their workforce is diminishing because of that. Paul: That's exactly right. And the wages aren't going up. All the problems that we're starting to have here in Australia, you know, property prices are going through the roof, but wages aren't going up. So the next step is how does somebody that's on 60 grand a year buy a million dollar property in Sydney? Well, I'll have to have a 70-year mortgage just like they have in Japan. You can see it. You're watching the pattern globally. It's happening all through Europe. You know, there are 30 countries in the Eurozone now that are on zero and negative rates and the lowest is -0.75. Josh: All right. That's nuts. It's nuts when you think about it, and as you were saying, like it was only 30 years ago, we had the last recession, and so for Japan to be at the position... Paul: 20% 30 years ago. Now the -0.5. Josh: And that all comes down to the workforce and the economy, and that's where we're, as you said, we're heading towards the potential issue here. If someone wants to jump in and jump onto NoBNK or hear any more information, how do they go about sort of doing that? Paul: The good thing about us is we can look after you no matter where you are in Australia and then as I said, that eventually, New Zealand will be pretty quick, but then we'll be going into places like the UK and America and things like that as well. This is something that can go global and that's the whole idea is that we're about like, you know, if you're going to disrupt your models and make it worthwhile. Josh: Absolutely. If you’re going to kick the big in the head you may as well do it globally. Paul: They had their place and as I said, we're not going to manage, we're not going to take your money and just go and do a hope and pray thing like many do. Your money stays in the bank under your control, so nothing changes, right? The only thing that changes is you get the opportunity to be able to have a crack at one of these deals and become the bank. And your worst case scenario is you're sitting there with a security in your name and you're getting a return. Whereas what's your security in the bank? There isn't any, but if you don't win the deal, because it's going to be like an auction type system where you make a bid on what sort of return you want, then nothing's changed in your life. You still get your money sitting in the bank, you know? No one's touching it. No one's taking any fees off you or any of that sort of thing. We're all about mitigating risks. We've got to mitigate the risk for the borrower, the lender, and for ourselves. So it's about everybody having this happy equilibrium, you know? That's how we're going to structure this thing. We've got a whole website there. It’s NoBNK.com.au. And the reason why we got B N K is because ASIC won't let us use the word ‘bank’. It's a swear word. So we call ourselves NoBNK and we advertise as NoBNK does that, which has a double meaning. NoBNK does that. Josh: Perfect. As an investor and a borrower, what's the starting and ending amounts you can go for. Paul: Because we're starting with the property component of it first of all, the minimum line would probably be around the $50,000 mark. This is why we're up to sophisticated investors. So this is some for your institutional versus, or you know, like your mum and dad's and things like that. You must be a high net worth. You know, I know people out there, they have tens of millions just sitting in the bank. Josh: Yep. Paul: Globally. So you might have somebody, you might have a deal here in Australia. There might be somebody in Japan that makes a bid on the deal and all of a sudden they're getting a return of 4%, 5%, 6%, 7%, whatever it is, whatever that agreed return is, where they're getting nothing over there, but they've actually got to pay to put their money in the bank over there. So it's a really good outcome because, you know, we just let the market set itself dynamically. There is no ‘ring Paul up and say, “Mate, what interest rate can I get?”’ There's none of that anymore. It's just like, well, it's whatever anyone's prepared to bid and whatever you're prepared to pay. Josh: Yep. So it's win-win. Paul: And look, there's rules for the investors. I've got a pretty good record. We're doing this sort of thing. Josh: You've been doing it for more than 10 years? Paul: Yeah, about 10, about 12 years now. I've been doing these sorts of loans for some high net worth. And in that amount of time, we've had no foreclosures and the investors haven’t lost money in the capital. And it's just about managing it. Josh: That's a good run. Paul: Yeah. It's just about managing. You don't smash people when they're down. You help them. You don't have to be all hard about it. You know, you're a day late or two days late with your payment. It's about managing it. Nobody gets hurt. You know what I mean? Josh: So how do you guys come into it? Do they just clip the ticket on the way through? Paul: You have a gross line amount. You have a net loan amount. You got to add that first month's interest. There's lawyers involved, there's all sorts of things, which for the investors, it's great for them. It's their lawyer. So it's a lawyer of their choice. And you know, usually there's brokers involved in all the research, so there's nothing under the table. So there's no hidden fees and charges and all that sort of stuff. In our letter of offer, it's like, say for example, you want half a million dollars and it might cost $520,000 you know, like when you add everything up. So you say, okay, so your gross loan amount is 520, that's what it is. You'll see all the costs that are involved, all the rest of it, and you get the choice to say, ‘Yeah. I'm happy with that.’ ‘Well, no, thank you.’ Josh: Fair enough. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. I think there's going to be a big help for a lot of people that are feeling a bit of pressure, whether that'd be as an investor or they're looking potentially down the barrel of a gun for a business. They might not be going as well as it was. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Paul: There's lots of businesses out there that need lots of help in different ways. It's not just about, you know, finance and properties and all that sort of stuff. It's just about knowing that there are people out there that, you know, we'll have a chat about it first. I mean, whether you've been rejected by a bank, don't want to go to their bank or can't go to a bank, that's why we're here. So pretty well covers everybody. When you do those things, we tell them, you don't go to the bank, come to NoBNK. Josh: I guess back in the day, there was like no-doc loans and things like this. This is from a business owner's perspective. Paul: It's a very, very simple process. So you know, the information that we asked from you is not onerous. It's really quite simple. It's a very quick application process. This platform that we've built that we'll be releasing in the next couple of weeks, it'll be automated. It's just a quick, you know, fill in the application process type of thing and you'll get SMS and emails and all that sort of stuff, and then so will the investors and they'll be able to start bidding on your deals straight away. Josh: Sweet. Paul: It's a little bit of a game changer, come to the market. Josh: Absolutely. Yeah. Paul: That's what it's about, isn't it? It's about changing things up and seeing if we can do it better and make a change, you know, a different change for the better for once rather than just doing the same as everybody else. Josh: Really enjoyed talking to you and is there anything else you'd like to add before we jump off? Paul: No, mate, I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. I'd like to wish everybody out there that, you know, there is hope. It costs you nothing to apply with us or to have a chat with us or anything like that. So, you know, your people wanting to, you know, they're welcome to have a chat anytime they like. Josh: Cool. Only advantages and as I said, a very welcome time for me to be talking to you about this sort of stuff for a lot of people out there. Paul: Appreciate it, mate. Thank you very much. Josh: If you have any questions and bits and pieces, we'll put a link down to NoBNK as well as Paul's details. If you've enjoyed this episode, jump across to iTunes, leave us a review, give us some love and stay good.

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Keep Your Work Life in Perspective and Pair Curiosity with Generosity with Josh Clark

IT Career Energizer

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 19, 2020 33:23

Phil’s guest on this episode of the IT Career Energizer podcast is Josh Clark. He is a UX designer and design leader who helps organisations build products for what’s next. Josh is the founder of Big Medium, a New York design studio specialising in future-friendly interfaces for artificial intelligence, connected devices and responsive websites. He is the author of several books and he speaks around the world about what’s next for digital interfaces. In this episode, Phil and Josh Clark talk about the need to advocate for the end-user as well as meet the needs of the business you are working for. Josh discusses the need to be persistent, but to also recognise when it is time to move on. They discuss why the next wave of I.T. innovation is going to impact the very fabric of our lives. The culture, and how vital it is for developers to make the right decisions. KEY TAKEAWAYS: (5.38) TOP CAREER TIP It is important to create a separation between you and your work. You are not your work. Remembering this helps you to cope if something you have created is not well received. The truth is that success doesn’t make you a better person, nor does failure make you a worse one. (9.00) WORST CAREER MOMENT Nearly 20 years ago, Josh created a low-cost CMS system. Around the same time, blog platforms and WordPress began to offer something very similar at no cost. That was bad enough. But, what was worse was that Josh did not let go of his project and move on. He failed to recognise that there was no longer a need or market for his paid product. As a result, he wasted a lot of time and energy and ended up damaging his sense of self. Sticking with it too long had really held him back. (13.13) CAREER HIGHLIGHT Josh´s career highlight was landing Time Inc. as his first big client. They liked the fact that, at the pitch stage, he was able to present the team to them. Being a small agency without many employees that worked by pulling together a contractor team that was tailored to each project, enabled him to do this. Time Inc. liked knowing who the team would be and the fact that every person on it had said yes because they specifically wanted to work on their project. (18.05) THE FUTURE OF CAREERS IN I.T The focus is now moving away from mobile. Now what we can do with data is more important. Machine learning is going to unleash huge change. But. It is also a risky time for society. It would be easy to get the management of all that data wrong. To a large extent, developers are the gatekeepers. (22.32) THE REVEAL What first attracted you to a career in I.T.? – Josh felt constrained, especially, creatively in his filmmaking role. So, the idea that in I.T. you could create anything really appealed. What’s the best career advice you received? – Look ahead, but make sure that you also draw satisfaction from what you are working on today. What’s the worst career advice you received? – Do what you love. If you turn the thing that you love into work, there is a risk that you will sully it. What would you do if you started your career now? – Josh is not sure where he would start. He would probably focus on honing his research and problem-solving skills, rather than on a specific tech. What are your current career objectives? – Understanding machine learning as a design material. What’s your number one non-technical skill? Being an active listener and at ease with working collaboratively. How do you keep your own career energized? – By exploring the creative process and getting to know what other people are doing. What do you do away from technology? – Josh loves going to museums. He is also passionate about running. He is the creator of Couch to 5K. (30.47) FINAL CAREER TIP Be proud of what you do, but also show humility. Share with others and ask lots of questions. Pairing together curiosity with generosity yields great rewards. BEST MOMENTS (2.09) – Josh - “Try to understand what customer needs are as well as what the business needs and find a way to stitch the two together.” (6.56) – Josh - “Keep things in perspective. Success doesn’t make you a better person, nor does failure make you a worse one.” (12.31) – Josh - “Failure is, okay, it can be a learning experience. But, fail fast. Don’t cling on too long to a failing project.” (23.30) – Josh - “You never arrive, every time you meet a goal there is something new that is beyond your reach, for you to strive for” (27.46) – Josh - “Learn how to collaborate with other people. Active listening is an important part of this.” (20.48) – Josh - “Remember that software shapes behavior. So, be intentional about the values you put into what you create.” ABOUT THE HOST – PHIL BURGESS Phil Burgess is an independent IT consultant who has spent the last 20 years helping organisations to design, develop and implement software solutions. Phil has always had an interest in helping others to develop and advance their careers. And in 2017 Phil started the I.T. Career Energizer podcast to try to help as many people as possible to learn from the career advice and experiences of those that have been, and still are, on that same career journey. CONTACT THE HOST – PHIL BURGESS Phil can be contacted through the following Social Media platforms: Twitter: https://twitter.com/philtechcareer LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/philburgess Facebook: https://facebook.com/philtechcareer Instagram: https://instagram.com/philtechcareer Website: https://itcareerenergizer.com/contact Phil is also reachable by email at phil@itcareerenergizer.com and via the podcast’s website, https://itcareerenergizer.com Join the I.T. Career Energizer Community on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/ITCareerEnergizer ABOUT THE GUEST – JOSH CLARK Josh Clark is a UX designer and design leader who helps organisations build products for what’s next. Josh is the founder of Big Medium, a New York design studio specialising in future-friendly interfaces for artificial intelligence, connected devices and responsive websites. He is the author of several books and he speaks around the world about what’s next for digital interfaces. CONTACT THE GUEST – JOSH CLARK Josh Clark can be contacted through the following Social Media platforms: Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigmediumjosh LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshclark/ Website: https://bigmedium.com/

124|Tips for Automating Your Business With Chatbots

Social Confidence For Life

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 14, 2020 11:56

Tips for Automating Your Business With Chatbots Josh: So I've got Mike here from Chatbot Agency, and as everyone knows, I'm all about automation. The one thing that everyone needs to do in their business is automate, automate, automate, and he's got a fantastic product, a fantastic system, that allows for you to create something that you would never have been able to do 20, 30 years ago. He's able to create the human conversation in a digital world. Now tell me Mike, why did you get into this? Get more tips for automating your business with chatbots at dorksdelivered.com.au Mike: Well Josh, great question. I was a Facebook Ads dude. And we used to drive a lot of traffic from Facebook into landing pages, and based on the analytics and the backend material that we were looking at, at least 50% who were clicking on the ad weren't actually making it to the landing page. Obviously, because they load too slow and when they get there they're going to have to put their details in. So capturing leads meant that out of the 50% that was left there, we might end up, luckily, and this is being conservative, we might end up with 15 or 20% that might actually put their email address in. Now, back in the late 90s while mucking around with automation WeChat, we built a platform whereby we were going to put chat in there. We left that on the back burner, and then as soon as Mark Zuckerberg opened up the API for Facebook Messenger, we thought, "Wow, I wonder if this could respond the same way SMS marketing works," because we were all mobile marketers. So we mucked around for about a week and we actually got Messenger to respond back to us and we thought, "Hey shit, we're on a winner. How cool is that?" So getting back to the initial bit, Facebook Ads played a big part. So now we're able to take them from Ads into Messenger and actually start having a conversation with people and find out exactly what they really want from that business. Josh: Cool. So I guess your end goal is to turn someone without a face, that doesn't know your business into giving someone a face around your business and their business and making sure they start doing business with your business. So that'd be right? Mike: That would be absolutely spot on. Remember Josh, every transaction starts with a conversation. That's in the real world. Josh: You don't want to remove that personal touch. And that's something that I think is really, really good with the way that you've actually created your application because you're able to get the details, get the nitty gritties, the bits and pieces they need to get in a very, very human way. Would you agree? Mike: Totally, absolutely. You still have to remember, it's still machines talking, so we don't want it to make it too human. But at the end of the day, mate, if we can start bringing in tomorrow's prospects overnight, so when you start work first thing in the morning, you've got a nice bag of prospects sitting in there you just have to convert and then you can go knock off and go home at 10 o'clock. Josh: And that's ultimately what it's all about. If you've got a money-making engine that's just driving income, if you've got the ability to have a 24-hour salesperson, the ability to make sure that when you've created something and you've created a process, people are able to follow that process and you've got people falling through and into your funnel, filling up your funnel and you're removing any of the friction such as, as you said, like slow landing pages, you're removing those, you're making sure they have the least friction, a frictionless transaction, you're going to be having conversions go through the roof and as you said, like a 20% conversion on landing page is pretty good. A bad landing page, two to 6% in my experience and you're going up to 20, 22% in a very, very good landing page. So what are you finding your conversions currently? Mike: So we look at from the ad, we measure the click on the ad and we're effectively converting into the funnel between 20 to 50% of those. So if we have a hundred people click on the ad, we can put 20 to 50 those into my funnel. Josh: Okay. So that's pretty good. That's definitely much, much better. And the research that I've done and I'm going to be honest to everyone here listening in podcast land, I am a novice when it comes to this, but I will say straight away they are very good conversions. Now, if we rewind 20 years and as Mike was saying, he was here in the SMS boom and using some mobile marketing stuff. If we rewind 20 years, the effectiveness of email marketing, I would say, is on parity now with what you'd be having with Facebook Messenger marketing. Would you say I'm talking out my arse? Or where are you at? Mike: Yeah, I would say you're talking out your arse. Messenger is a new beast. So especially when we're talking mixing with Ads, putting the bot inside your website, all that kind of stuff. Obviously it's going to be a bit higher. Messenger, actually, we're getting a higher rate with Messenger that we were with SMS. Josh: Sweet. Mike: Especially when you're pushing messages back out. The read rate is somewhere between the 90 to 95% mark. So the strategies we're educating our clients on is getting them into your list, and then use Facebook sponsored messaging from Messenger to pull them back in. And that's where it's going to become a little bit different down the track because that's the way Facebook wants us to go. We believe that that's going to be way out the way what your gang did to get from SMS. Josh: All right. So hold on. You're saying that not only can you attract them through Facebook using their APIs, you're able to push them into your CRM system from the CRM system, then able to enable any other automated marketing systems that whether it be through email or anything else, is that right? Mike: Oh, absolutely. No, no. If you can pull the data in you can use any CRM you like. What I'm suggesting here is if it's in Messenger, purely Messenger in your inbox, what we're able to do is push back out to those Messenger users through Messenger. Mike: So we're getting a higher conversion rate there. So what we're able to do inside Messenger is, imagine this. You can build the best email newsletter along with the best website pushing it out through SMS. That's what Messenger is all about. Josh: And it's on an engaging platform that everyone's on. Mike: That's right. And the more you push through it as an engagement, Facebook's AI algorithm was learning. So Facebook now knows where to point the rest of the people who are thinking and talking about the same thing. Josh: So that's pretty awesome. And I'd say everyone knows what the bell curve is. There's the adoption cycle and then the replication cycle. And then the people that finally jump on at the last stage there. I would say this is something that isn't like a wait until you hear your friend about doing it. Do it now, because you want to be at the start of the adoption cycle. Mike: Absolutely. Right now, Josh, mate, the number is out. Less than 1% of all business pages have an automated chatbot. There's a lot of business pages out there. There's about 600 million, I think that's the last wacko number they've come up with. They're telephone book numbers of course. But this means there's a lot of opportunities for small business to actually stake their client the same way if you were able to state your claim in 1995 on the internet. Josh: Well, I think that that that speaks worlds of words. If you're able to get on board now and have this done for your business, you're going to be seeing huge advantages. You're going to be seeing massive, massive lead generation. Your lead funnel's going to be full, really. Mike: Oh, mate, this is the simplest lead funnel ever invented for mankind. Josh: I don't need you to go through process and bits and pieces because as everything that lives on the internet lives forever, but my understanding is at the moment it's got a reasonably affordable entry price. Is that right? Mike: Yeah. I think he used a really good number there. 2020. If you want someone to professionally build it for you, you're looking at 2020. If you want to do it yourself, you can get on there for about 20 bucks and try and build it yourself. Knock yourself out. Anyone can do it. It all depends on, okay, what's your end goal? Do you want to actually turn it into a tool and generate leads and make money and do it the right way, or do you want to try and suffer and do it yourself? Mate, the videos are there, you can do it yourself. We'll provide all those videos. You just value your time, brother. Josh: I guess that comes down to one of the other episodes we've had there on money and being frugal. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not. It depends on what you charge yourself out at and making sure that you work out that's an acceptable rate. What I can say is if you check out Chatbot Agency, you're going to be able to see an amazing result with the professionalism as well as the speed to delivery, to be honest. And when you get that up, tell me, what have you seen? What's the fastest time you've seen a lead generated after you've had one of your bots be thrown up? Mike: Mate, I love telling this story. I do training for marketing people and it's basically a three or four-hour process, where we go through, we train them how to build the chatbot. So here we are teaching marketing people how to actually set up Facebook Ads and do their targeting. I assisted this young lady with putting together a real estate listing ad for her client. She must've been charging the guy three grand, but she only paid me 900 bucks. Josh: The story of my life. Mike: Yeah. So I trained her how to do it all herself and by the time she left my office and she was on the City Cat heading home, this is within an hour of running it, she had a phone call from the real estate agent going, "What is going on? My inbox is killing me. What am I meant to do now?" So that was within an hour. Josh: So there's no reason why you don't want to grow your business. You've got to jump on this. It's 2020. This is a new technology. You've got to be jumping onto it. Do you have anything else that you'd like to add before we round up this episode for today? Mike: Mate, I reckon, look, if you're a small business right now and you're not on Facebook, I suggest you do it, because it's going to be hanging around for a while now. There are so many people on the platform. Josh: It's no longer Myspace, is it? Mike: No. This has gone way past Myspace and it's probably the best platform where you can target to the right audience from interest-based, and it's actually pretty good fun. Josh: Cool. So everyone hear that? If you'd like chat bots, chat bot automation or anything like that, makes sure to jump onto Chatbot Agency and you'll be able to get some really, really cool deals thrown through there. I might even be able to get a link here, a specialised link that you'll be able to jump across and check out. It may maybe a cool deal from Dorks Delivered across to you guys. If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure to jump across to iTunes, leave us some love and stay good. Enjoy 2020.

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How To Speak Up For Yourself

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2019 13:00

Do you feel fearful, hesitant, or unsure about saying what you really want to? Do you struggle to speak up powerfully, clearly and directly for your desires so people know your real self whether that’s in your social life, dating life, or career life? Back when I was held back from speaking up, I was at lunch one time with some friends and Brandon who was the leader of our crew because he was the most outspoken, boisterous, and charismatic, turned to me and said, “You know what, Josh? You don’t say much, but everyone needs someone like you as a friend.” That really annoyed me because he was pointing out that I didn’t contribute much to conversations, and I was only really useful because I was quiet and always there to listen to him talk. Yuck! That is not what I want to be known for! I was also held back from speaking up in my dating life. I struggled to communicate clearly, powerfully, and directly my more intimate thoughts. As a consequence, I always eventually ended up becoming a really good friend to women I found attractive. By not directly communicating I was into them, I never allowed a conversation about whether they might like me back. So stuck in the friend zone I was :( Reflecting on my days of not speaking up for my desires, I’ve identified 2 obstacles that got in my way of speaking up boldly and being authentic with others. 1) Not knowing what I wanted, not self-aware. I realized that a major reason for why I didn’t speak up in conversations was I didn’t know myself very well. I didn’t know what I wanted to talk about, I didn’t know what I found interesting in my life that I could share, and I didn’t know how I wanted to steer or add to a conversation. In short, I didn’t really have an opinion on much. So I just floated around in conversations, being quiet, which probably made people who liked to hear themselves talk like me haha. And, of course, that’s not why we want to be liked because it’s not our most authentic and powerful selves! 2) Even if I did identify something I wanted to bring up, I was too hesitant to speak up because of a fear of what others might think of me. I was too scared and unwilling to face people judging me as weird or embarrassing. So, I ended up not saying much so I didn’t have to face the possibility of getting rejected. I played it safe. And that was super unfulfilling. The Solution To Not Speaking Up For Yourself 1) Repeatedly ask what do I want? If I was being completely authentic right now, what would I say or do? What do I want to share? By asking yourself these questions, you are giving yourself a chance to determine what you want to doin a conversation. You also form your own opinions based off your wants. For example, identifying you want to go to a certain Mexican restaurant because you think it’s the best in town. And when you share that, you get to show people that you know what you want and people can connect with you authentically. 2) Before conversations, play a different movie in your mind of how you want to show up in a social interaction that isn’t getting rejected and staying quiet and not speaking up. Anxious and shy people tend to play on repeat the movie of how they will get rejected, and that keeps them stuck in anxiety and they end up not speaking up. Our thoughts dictate our feelings, and our feelings dictate our actions. By imagining, visualizing, and playing on repeat the movie of how you will step up, be bold, and share what’s on your mind, you influence yourself to take that action. Overtime, this energy will grow so that it becomes your new way of interacting. 3) Work through the guilty, bad, selfish, wrong feelings of overly nice programming you may get when you speak up, take the spotlight for a moment, and say what you want. You may experience a backlash of “it’s not okay to say what you want because it’s selfish and rude. You should be nice and let others talk and get what they want.” This overly nice conditioning dates back to parenting, schools, and other organizations that ingrained this doctrine that we need to place so much emphasis on being nice and not be rude or show any sign of acting negatively. In short, they influenced us to disregard our negative feelings. As a result, most of the time, we didn’t get good instructions on how to deal with negative feelings, so we learned overtime to ignore them, shut them out, and stuff them– all in the name of being nice. Find those shameful, guilty, and otherwise uncomfortable feelings in your body and feel into them. If you send them love and lean into those feelings, they will get let go over time. Another way to let those feelings go is to repeatedly speak up and face the guilty and shameful backlash until you no longer feel it. By applying these 3 steps, you’ll gain a sense of power to boldly speak up for yourself in any social setting. You’ll feel confident that no matter who you are talking to, you can have fun and add value with many interesting and engaging things to talk about. This will make you more decisive and opinionated. And, you’ll get more of what you want for speaking up clearly, powerfully, and directly. People will know you authentically, and consequently feel connected to you. More people will want to hang out with you, you’ll get more dates, and bosses and supervisors will want to help you accelerate your career. Best of all, you’ll feel good in conversations, knowing you are showing up as your real self and not holding back. This means you won’t feel resentment from not expressing enough of yourself. Awesome work. Until we speak again, you were born to be real, not to be perfect. So go out there and be who you are. To maximize confidence in every area of your life at rocket speed, get your (FREE) ebook, "5 Steps To Break The Anxiety Barrier" here.

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Episode 62: How To Handle Emotional Eating With Josh Hillis

Balance365 Life Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 16, 2019 46:55

Emotional eating can be a real challenge in finding balance. Sometimes there is a sense of helplessness to it. In today’s podcast, Josh Hillis shares his emotional eating coaching strategy to help our listeners find new ways to cope with stress that doesn’t always revolve around food. What you’ll hear in this episode: How effective are cravings control strategies when you have emotional eating issues? Is the answer to emotional eating more control? The emotional release effect when you emotionally eat after tight control The role of acceptance in emotional eating Normalizing the existence of uncomfortable emotions. Diffusing uncomfortable emotions - what does that mean? Gaining perspective around the perceived urgency of feelings The role of mindfulness in managing negative emotions Defining emotional or disinhibited eating Learning to let the monsters ride the bus Being in the driver's seat of how you deal with feelings Introducing a waiting period to delay emotional eating The value of taking time to identify feelings Ways to scale and create distance between you and your feelings Three ways to feel comfortable with your feelings without using food Managing expectations of emotional eating - moving past all or nothing Psychological flexibility as a goal, defined. Identifying and being aware of your “monsters” Thought suppression and the health and wellness industry sales tactics Frequency and emotional eating Rules vs Self-Loving Guidelines Tracking progress - things you can track Resources: Josh’s Blog Fat Loss Happens On Monday Everything You Know About Emotional Eating is Wrong - blog post Annie quotes Mothers, Daughters and Body Image - Hillary McBride’s book Getting Older: Hillary Mcbride On Women And Aging Episode 13: How Your Body Image Impacts Your Children With Hillary Mcbride Learn more about Balance365 Life here Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or Android so you never miss a new episode! Visit us on Facebook| Follow us on Instagram| Check us out on Pinterest Join our free Facebook group with over 40k women just like you! Did you enjoy the podcast? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Google Play! It helps us get in front of new listeners so we can keep making great content. Transcript Annie: Welcome to Balance365 Life Radio, a podcast that delivers honest conversations about food, fitness, weight, and wellness. I'm your host Annie Brees along with Jennifer Campbell and Lauren Koski. We are personal trainers, nutritionists and founders of Balance365. Together we have coached thousands of women each day and are on a mission to help them feel healthy, happy, and confident in their bodies on their own terms. Join us here every week as we discuss hot topics pertaining to our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing with amazing guests. Enjoy. Annie: Welcome to Balance365 Life Radio. I am so excited for today's guest because today's incredibly smart and talented guest goes way back with Balance365, so far back in fact that he knew Lauren, Jen and I before we were even a business. Josh Hillis has been a longtime friend and mentor to the three of us and I'm so excited for you to hear his wisdom on today's episode. Josh helps people beat emotional eating using a skill-based not diet-based approach that allows people to create a new relationship with their bodies and food and get results that have previously never been possible. Josh is the author of Fat Loss Happens on Monday and the upcoming lean and strong and yet untitled emotional eating book coming out in 2020. Josh has been writing for his blog losestubbornfat.com since 2004 and he currently attends MSU Denver and is doing his thesis on contextual behavioral science and emotional eating. He's the perfect guest for this topic. The current standard answer to emotional eating and the health and fitness industry encourages individuals to just have more control, more control over their diet, over their thoughts, over their emotions, more control over your cravings. But on today's episode, Josh shares why that advice usually doesn't work. For those who struggle with emotional eating and provides multiple practical tools to help you overcome it, I think you're going to love it and joy. Annie: Josh, welcome to Balance365 Life Radio. We're so happy to have you. You go way back with our team like way, way back. How are you? Josh: I'm good. How are you guys? It's so cool to see you guys again. Annie: I know, like, we're still, like, we're still together. The last time we were Facetiming was under a little bit different context. We were Healthy Habits Happy Moms then and we were, you've kind of helped us mentor us as far as like habits and skills and philosophies and you're just a really great coach. Just flat out really great. Josh: Thank you. From you guys, that's awesome. Annie: So we're so happy to have you and Jen and Lauren are here too. How are you guys? Jen: Hi- Lauren: Good. Josh goes way back to like before we were even a thing. Jen: We met Josh the same time we met each other. Lauren: Yeah. Josh: Wow. Jen: Years ago. Annie: Yeah. Josh: Oh Wow. That's awesome. That's amazing. Annie: So you're kind of a big deal to us, are we making you uncomfortable yet? Josh: That's awesome. Jen: When our book comes out we're going to have a page for acknowledgements and I was just telling the girls last week, like Josh Hillis is going to be my number one acknowledgement. Josh: Are you serious? Jen: Yeah, just like all your work and your blog, like it's been so insanely helpful to me. And even just watching you in conversation with people, like, as creepy as that sounds, but just how you handle people, how it's just and you're just so objective and, and really what we try to embody at Balance365 as far as there's no right one right way for every single person and just being open to tools and helping people build a, just a more varied toolbox and they currently have for their health and wellness. Jen: And also the other big thing that we come up against is that, because we're all about self acceptance and embracing oneself, we also often get lumped into a segment of this industry that we all know about, which is basically the anti weight loss movement, which is like weight loss is so bad. Why? Like nobody better talk about this. And a lot of dietitians are on that train as well as psychologists. And so it's just, it's like frightening for me at times. And I found myself questioning, you know, cause you go to the, you see these other professionals and you're like, "Oh man, like, she makes a good point, like what's?" And you've question your own values and what, but ultimately we have risen as like, look, we're just, we're just trying to take a messy middle approach. And there is really nothing inherently wrong with weight loss, changing your behaviors. Jen: And I so appreciate that and you, because I see you as a real leader and professional, not just in the health and wellness industry. Well the health and fitness industry I should say, but you are now a part of the psychology industry. Lauren: Say, "Hey, this is okay. Come on" Annie: And you're not a jerk. Like you're not, like you're not out there shaming people and you're like still able to like help them achieve the goals that they have in a really like compassionate, positive way, which is awesome. Jen: Yeah. And you've got a couple of clients I was reading yesterday on your page that you have a couple of clients that have lost over a hundred pounds. That's like, that's a, that's a life changing, values altering like those clients, like you've totally changed their lives. Josh: Yeah. Yeah. Annie: So now are you uncomfortable? Josh: No, this is like the coolest, most thoughtful, most wonderful compliments I could ever get because you guys are acknowledging me for the things that I've worked the hardest at and that mean the most to me, like in the world. So I totally appreciate it. I totally, totally, totally appreciate it. Annie: Yay. Well, we're like, we can just be your ultimate hype women when you're having a bad day. You can give us a call. Okay. Josh: Can you guys introduce me on every podcast? Annie: We can. But peaking of podcasts, we should probably talk about the topic that I, that you actually wanted to talk about because we've been trying to get you on the show for a while and you're a busy guy. So, when I said, are there any topics that you wanted to jam on and you were like emotional eating, like top on your list. So what is it about emotional eating that you love so much? Josh: I think, so a couple of different things, on like the bigger, like zoomed out level, I think it's access to making the kind of difference that I want to make with people. If they can get, what's really neat is if someone really struggles with emotional eating and they can get that under control it tends to spiral out into other areas of their lives and they have like better relationships and do better at work. I mean like it's, it's really like I don't coach any of that stuff and that kind of thing shows up. The other thing that I like about it is I think it's a place where people feel so out of control and they feel like they can't be this kind of person that they want to be and like they're like, they're being driven by this other thing. And so I like it cause I want to put them back in the driver's seat. and then also the framework that I study, which is contextual behavioral science is just really good for that. And so that's- Annie: I think it's great because I, you have, you have an incredible blog. One of the blog posts you shared with me, you noted that the typical response in the fitness industry to emotional eating is like control, like just control more things and then like, you'll be fine. And,in order to control emotional eating, individuals just they need to control their diet, then control their thoughts, their emotions, their cravings, and you think that that's pretty much crap. Josh: Yeah. Annie: So tell us why, why do you think it's crap? Tell us more. I mean, we agree. Josh: Yeah. So, one thing I just want to preface this with, because it's the most surprising cause I do think it's totally crap and I've gone that way for a while, but I was really surprised this year that I found some studies where they separated out people that had a high degree of emotional eating and cravings, eating and external eating, which is like, you see food and you want it versus people that scored really low on that. And for the people that scored really low on that control was actually fine. Control actually totally worked just just fine. But that's not the clients that I get, you know, they don't hear me. So, the flip side is that control, if you do have issues with cravings or emotional eating, tired eating or and you're procrastinating or any of those things, then control will have an opposite effect. If it works, it always rebounds and the rebound is always, pretty un-fun. Like people really feel like a really, really bad loss of loss of control and they feel kind of gross and they don't feel good about themselves. Jen: So it's sort of that the more tightly wound you are, the faster, harder you'll spin out. And applied to eating, I think people get that release, like they're so tightly wound around food trying to control everything then getting out of control, they just, I mean in the moment it's like a release, right? Josh: Yeah. So you bring up these two really big points. Oh man, it's so cool. So on one hand you've got this like rule based way of living and the problem with having a totally rule based way of living is you break the rule and you're like, I'm off. I'm like explode. Like do it all because this is the last time ever. So, there's that huge like explosion release thing there. And then the other side is that, like, food really does work temporarily for numbing emotions. So, those two things kind of spiral together where people, like, break the rule and they're like, "Oh no, I'm, I'm off my diet and I'm going to go into all the things." And then they start to feel guilty about it. And then they actually are eating to numb the guilty feelings they have about breaking the rules. It's like- Jen: layer one and layer two. Lauren: Wow. The plot thickens. Josh: Totally. Annie: So I understand if you have emotional eating issues or cravings control strategies backfire, like they aren't helpful. What does work? Josh: Great question. So, it kind of all fits in the world of like acceptance based strategies and I get, I like, I have some clients to kind of freak out when I say, like, "acceptance", you know, cause they're like, "I don't want to accept." But that's just kind of like a family of strategies. And what kind of falls inside of that is, the first thing is actually normalizing. It's just recognizing every single time that you have uncomfortable thoughts and uncomfortable emotions, that it's normal to have uncomfortable thoughts, uncomfortable emotions and, like, the foundation is people, like, believe that that's not okay. You know, cause they've heard so much about, like, positive thinking or controlling their thoughts or all of these things or they were, maybe it wasn't cool growing up for them to have emotions or whatever. Josh: But for whatever reason, they think they're supposed to be a shiny, happy person. And just recognizing it's normal to feel sad sometimes. And the number of coaching calls I get on where something really bad happens to someone and I have to say like, "It's okay. It's okay to feel to feel bad. It's okay to feel sad. It's okay. It's okay to have all these feelings." So recognize that it's okay and normal and healthy. Sometimes we can even pair with, well, that's jumping to the next thing. So the next thing is getting a little bit of distance from uncomfortable thoughts and emotions, in act and acceptance commitment training they call it diffusion or fusion. So if you're fused with your thoughts, you feel like they're coming from you, you feel like they're true or true or false, and you feel like there are a command, you feel like there like something that like urgently needs to be fixed. Josh: Diffusion is getting enough enough distance from your thoughts. You can see that like these thoughts might have come from my parents or the media or magazines or whatever. But like, my automatic thoughts aren't me. Right. They aren't true or not true. They're just thoughts. They aren't an urgent problem that needs to be fixed, right? It's normal to have these thoughts and feeling and so diffusion is a matter of, if people have done any kind of like meditation or mindfulness and like, noticing your thoughts and like not so that's where people get caught up. A lot of people have done, I've tried to meditate or do mindfulness in such a way that they were trying to change their thoughts and not have thoughts. So, it's not that, but it's like being able to notice like, "Oh, here are these thoughts and these emotions." Josh: And it could be as simple as saying, "I notice I'm having the thought that blank" versus just treating the thought like it's true. Or probably a little later we'll get to, there's a metaphor for all this called, let the monsters ride the bus and it will kind of pull this together, but, basically get it, get enough distance from those thoughts that you can be with them and that they're not driving and then the third thing is you've got to drive. Like you're the bus driver, but like you can have these thoughts and still take actions that fit your values in your life. And then the last thing is that requires having actually, like, clarified your values. Jen: Right? Right. Annie: This is like my therapy. This is what I discuss with my therapist. Josh: Do you have an acts therapist? Annie: I don't know. But there's, it does feel very similar into that, like just acknowledging like, these are my thoughts. These are my emotions. What is this? Where did this come from? I don't have to act on them. I can just acknowledge them and, and then sitting with them, not like trying to numb them, not trying to run away from them or like avoid them. Yeah. Lauren: I've realized recently that my, I'm very prone to, what did you say? Fusion? Josh: Yeah. Lauren: Where I'm like, this is my thought and I have to fix it right now. Josh: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jen: We know that about you. Annie: We could've told you that, Lauren. Jen: She's doing that thing again. Lauren: Well, I recently found this about myself. Jen: This is like my inner Spock. Like when my inner Spock is like, "Halt." You know what I mean? When we have to, "Let's analyze this." Yeah. Annie: So, okay, so Josh, what does this, what does this look like? So people have stress, they have an emotion. They have like, I mean, it could be emotional eating, it can be a wide continuum of emotions. It could be happy. It could be- Jen: We didn't define emotional eating either at the beginning. Annie: Yeah. Do you have a definition, Josh, that you, or a way to define emotional eating? Josh: So most of what I'm looking at is disinhibited eating. So that's, like, a feeling of loss of control with food related to strong emotions, good or bad? Good, good or bad. Wanted or unwanted would probably be more accurate, external, like, seeing things and cravings and so it'd be eating in response to any of those things. With my clients I also lump in, to me it's all the same thing. I also lump in procrastination eating, tiredness eating. Those are the other two. Yeah. Annie: Tiredness eating being that you eat when you're tired. Josh: Yeah. Annie: That's me. Annie: I do that I think. Yeah. Okay, so you experience these emotions, any of them. And then you have a behavior around food. Is that- Josh: Yeah. Annie: Any behavior or it could be a wider range of behaviors? Josh: Oh, it's typically like feeling some degree of loss of control. Like you're not, you don't feel like you're choosing to eat the Brownie, like, I woke up and there was brownies everywhere. Jen: It would be different than happy eating cause we had someone in Balance365. I feel like her emotional eating was out of control. She ate when she was sad, but she also ate when she was happy. But it's more of a loss of control aspect to it. Not a, "Oh, I'm so happy. Let's grab a cake. Celebrate." It's right. Josh: Yeah. It's not, "Let's have a bottle of wine at on date night." It's not, "It's my grandma's hundredth birthday. I'm going to have a chocolate cake." It's not that at all. Should I get into stuff like what, what we do about it? Annie: Yeah. Go for it. Jen: If you want to. Josh: So the simplest thing to do is to put in a waiting period. Right. Could be waiting. 10 minutes, could be waiting a minute. Does it matter? All we're trying to do is they've got this really, really ingrained pattern of have an emotion, eat and if we can separate that, we're good. So that means, like, if I've got clients with pretty legit emotional eating problems, we'll start off with, they have an emotion. They wait 10 minutes, they eat the thing anyway, almost every time. That's fine. We can totally start there. Jen: Progress being the waiting period. Josh: Yeah. Yeah. So, the progress is it's not automatic, they might have to like struggle with it for that 10 minutes or they might have to think about it for that 10 minutes, but at some point, but they've got enough time, they get to choose in that case where they're having it all the time, they don't, they don't have a lot of choice. But it's at least we're breaking that pattern where it's automatic, where they might not even know what they're feeling. They might not even know what they're thinking. Which is actually really common, which is really, which is why, another really, so things you can put in that 10 minutes, you can put it in like looking at a feelings wheel and being able to just like pick out this is what I'm feeling, which actually creates some diffusion that creates some separation. And there's something really magical about people being able to figure out like going from, "I feel bad" to "Oh, I'm sad. I'm sad because this the, you know, my boss yelled at me and that sucks." Right? Maybe it's normal to feel sad when my boss yells at me or whatever. Jen: I do this with my kids like they, but Brene Brown talks about how she has some research that shows, she's done research on college age students and they can only, they only identify three emotions and that's like- Josh: Really? which ones? Jen: Happy, mad and sad. And so she talks about how, you know, in order to be in touch with our emotions, we need to be able to identify emotions and we just aren't taught how to identify. I do this with my kids and we, like, talk about all these different range of emotions outside of mad, sad and happy because you can feel so many different things. But it's so interesting for you to talk about this because I also see so much child psychology stuff that actually applies to two grown ass adults as well. Like we need, you know what I mean, because we weren't taught in childhood. So it, yeah. So it needs to be brought in. Josh: All of the emotion regulation stuff for kids I use with adults. It's awesome. Annie: There's Josh Hillis' coaching secret. Kid psychology. Jen: Go grab your feelings wheel. Annie: Where are you on the spectrum? Jen: Next time Lauren has a meltdown I'm going to say "Go grab your feelings wheel." Annie: All of our slack community, our corporate communication is now going to be, "I feel because" statements, so Josh, you, so you create some distance, you identify some feelings or what your feelings, you get really clear on what that is and then you can eat the thing if you want to still, right? Josh: Yeah. And so they're sort of like these, like, kind of guideline-y things, like waiting 10 minutes. Another like guideline-y thing that I'll start off with, like, either don't do it, do whatever you want. If someone is eating the thing every time then we'll add in like a 50% guideline where 50% of the time they'll eat the thing and 50% of the time they'll find something else. And again, that's just sort of like some training wheels to have to like think about it and choose and be like, you know what, I ate the thing three days in a row. Maybe today I should try going for a walk. Jen: Right, right. Annie: And the point is to really just disrupt the autopilot, right? Josh: Yeah, yeah. Jen: Yes. Right. And also sounds like scaling a little bit. Josh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jen: Rather than, again, what we see big, big, big problem is people try to go from zero to 60 and it never works. It never works. And Lauren had a really good idea for bridging the emotional eating gap. She said if eating a piece of cake is your coping mechanism, try pair it with a bath, go eat your cake in the bath, and then eventually your association can be more, can become about the bath and then remove the cake and then have it be about the bath, right? It's about scaling that towards a healthier coping mechanism. Josh: That's awesome. Jen: Yes. Go Lauren. Annie: Are there, Josh, do you have any other ways to create distance or to even just feel comfortable feeling your feelings without food? Josh: Yeah. So there's always going to be three different things that you can do, three different effective things. One is you can create distance and just sit with it. Like, just accept this is normal. Right? And a lot of times that's really cool. If you're in a situation where you can't do something else, right, Like maybe you're at work and you've got to keep working, and so what you do is you notice those feelings and you come back to being present with your work or your family or whatever's going on around you. Like, you actually get present with that. The other thing would be to have a menu of different self care things that you can do. And so you notice you have those feelings and then you take a walk or do some deep breathing or take a bath or read a book or whatever. At this point I think I've got a list of like 70 different things in like 15 categories. Jen: I want to just say one thing for the moms who listen and the dads, when I find myself emotionally eating, my kids are often a trigger and alternative forms of self care are not available to me. Right? Like I can't go take, I can't check out of parenting and go take a bath or even go meditate or whatever. And so sometimes I'm just freaking eat a bowl of chips. One thing I would say is that I've scaled it from diving headfirst into a bag of chips to like getting out a little bowl and putting some chips in there and then just eating them and going, "Yeah." So I would say like, I mean my emotional eating skills are not, but they have greatly improved over the years. Josh: Well look at that. So there's a couple of great things about what you just said, right. Number one, parenting is a great context for, like, being able to just, like, accept it and be there. Also, you, you did look at, like, separating out the chips and, like, having a certain amount versus just, like, grabbing from the bag, which works for all kinds of treats all across the board. And then the third thing that that brings up is, it's actually, and this is another thing that's such an important thing. It's normal to eat to chill out your emotions sometimes. Jen: I totally agree. I don't think the goal is like 0% emotional eating. It's like, really, how often are you doing it and how, what is the loss of control there, right? Rather than- Josh: Yeah. Jen: Like emotional eating isn't all bad and it's like, really? Is it? Josh: Yeah. Jen: A couple of chips when my kids are losing it? Is that so bad. Annie: Is it problematic for you? Josh: Oh, and it's one those things where like, like the goal is psychological flexibility. So psychological flexibility is the ability to make different choices. Right. It's just an ability to make different choices. Jen: Right. Right. Josh: Like, never emotionally eating is rigid. Jen: Totally. Josh: Always having to, like, where most of my clients had is they've got like a rule, they don't, they don't say it as a rule, but like they've got a rule that if they have emotions they eat, totally rigid. Jen: Right. Josh: If we can get in the middle we're rocking. Jen: Totally. Yes. Annie: That sounds so familiar, Jen. Jen: The messy middle, yes. That's where we like to hang. Josh: I loved that so much. That is like the best phrase in the world. Jen: Brene Brown, I've brought her up a few times now. You can see I really like her. Josh: I like her too. Annie: But- Jen: Yeah, she talks about being in the messy middle, but when you're in the messy middle you get arrows from both sides, which we have also experienced as well. Being in the messy middle between hardcore health and fitness and hardcore body positive anti weight loss. Hanging out in the middle is can be quite lonely and you can get arrows from both sides. But- Josh: I get that. Annie: Okay. So say you're finding yourself, like, face deep in, like, cake or chips or whatever it is and you're, like, you have this, like, moment of, like, "Whoa, what am I doing?" Josh: Yeah. Annie: Like you're like in this middle, like an emotional eating extravaganza. Josh: Yeah. Annie: What do you do? Do the same thing, like, create some distance still or are there different rules? Josh: Oh no, that's, you nailed it already. It's the exact same rules. So, you notice you're in the middle, you separate yourself from it geographically. You give yourself some time to think about it. You do some sort of diffusion exercise. Whether that's, well, where I talked about, like, a feelings wheel, but also I've got some clients that will journal, they'll write out everything that they're feeling and just writing it out gives them a lot of distance. The biggest thing my clients use actually a metaphor called "let the monsters ride the bus" so we might as well dive into that now. So, it's a really, really common act metaphor and the metaphor is, you're a driving a bus and sometimes you get really cool passengers that get on the bus and they're like, "hey, you're great and we love you and high five!" Like that. Josh: And they get on and off when they want. And sometimes they get monsters, they get on the bus, they're like, "Hey, you're ugly and stupid and you always do it wrong" and they get on and off when they want. And your job as the bus driver is to drive the bus and you could always make a left turn towards, like, numbing and controlling, or you can make a right turn towards your valued actions. And what this allows people to do is allows people to realize like, "Hey, I've got these monsters that will get on, will ride along with me and I can still take a right turn towards my values. Even with the monsters on the bus. Like, my job isn't to get rid of the monsters. It's not to not have monsters. It's to let the monsters ride the bus." Josh: And my clients have identified, they almost always have identified, like, what their most common monsters are. And my clients get to a point where they have identified the monsters that they have in the middle of emotional eating. I've got a lot of clients that have a monster that's like, "One more will be fine, one more will be fine, one more will be fine." Or they might have a monster that's like, "You've already ruined it. Might as well go for broke. Let's start again Monday." And so when they have those feelings, again, they don't treat them as true. They don't treat them as, like, them. They're like, "Oh, there's that monster again. And that guy can ride along the bus. And I know that when I'm in, when I catch myself in the middle, my monsters are super loud." Annie: Are you familiar with Pema Chodron's work? She's a Buddhist nun. Josh: No. Annie: This is feels very similar because you have in that blog post, and I think, I think I pulled this quote from your blog posts it said, "The irony is that when people accept cravings as being normal" or I'm assuming these uncomfortable emotions, "they have an increased capacity to tolerate cravings" and that's just very similar to her work. That's like you actually, by just acknowledging the feelings and emotions you suffer less, like, and that's, like, instead of trying to avoid it or like do all these things like this contortionists, like, "I'm going to avoid it in any way possible. I'm going to do all these things so I don't have to feel the thing that I'm trying to avoid feeling." If you just like feel it and like acknowledge it, like, "I see you, monster, you're on the bus, I hear you, but I'm not going to listen or I'm not, you know, whatever." Josh: Yeah. Annie: It's like you can still take action as you notice, what did you, how did you say, that aligns with your values? Josh: Yeah. Annie: Yeah. Even though you hear them, even though they're on the bus- Josh: You nail. Yeah. Yes. The same. And that's a really, really, really big. So, here's the paradox there. You're 1000% right. The paradox is that when you allow the monsters to be there, it is a lot less painful and it's a lot less intense. The paradox is that you don't want to approach it as, "I'm going to allow the monsters" to like force it to be less intense because then it doesn't work. And so that's not actually doing it. But what you're talking about, which is really cool, it's really, really cool, is that there's two kinds of pain. There is normal human pain, which is like the feelings and an uncomfortable thoughts that we all have. And then there's like the added pain that comes from trying to, like, control and fore and not, you know, and so, you do get to avoid all of the added pain and you're not the first person to be, like, you know, there's this Buddhist that kind of sounds a lot like these acceptance and commitment training people. Annie: Well I think it's, I think it's, I don't know if it's just the universe, like, I've been doing kind of this emotional work to like make these messages become really clear to me. But it seems like I've been trying to, and I've talked about this on other podcasts, outsource feeling good or feeling great all the time. Like you said, like we get this message that like, "Maybe I shouldn't be feeling these things" or like "Everyone else feels great all the time and they never have bad days" or "They never have self-doubt" or they never have body image issues. And it's like, "That's actually just not the case. Like, just acknowledging that like you get to feel all the things and you still live, we're going to be okay," like that. It's like, that feels really powerful to me. But I like that you say like, I love that analogy of let the monsters ride the bus. I could see that becoming a big phrase in our community. Can't you Jen? Jen: Yeah, I was already picturing it as a hashtag soon. Josh: That's awesome. Jen: The other thing is I think when I was hearing you say, Josh, is because we have this other guests, she's been on twice now. Her name is Hillary McBride. We have to, we're going to call her Doctor Hillary McBride soon cause she's almost done her Phd and she is also psychologist and she works in body image and she has a book called Mothers, Daughters and Body Image. And so she has sort of encouraged the same process as far as thoughts about your body, like kind of stepping outside of it. But, and then I think her version of monsters on the bus is to acknowledge the monsters on the bus. But to say, is this really true? Just that simple question, is this really true? And I just sort of have this vision of being a driver on a bus hearing all the monsters in the back, but being able to say, "Is that true? Like, do I have to do that? Am I, you know, am I helpless to this? Is that true?" And you know, the answer is often, like, "No, it's not actually true." And then you can kind of just, yeah. Keep doing what you were doing. Josh: Yeah. Jen: Yeah. Josh: Just to, like, it's, like, notice. Jen: Yeah, just notice. Yeah. Josh: Like it's, it doesn't, yeah. Cause we, it is so normal for us to treat it like it's true. Like it's, like, it's so true. Jen: Right. It feels true. Right? Josh: That's awesome. Annie: Okay. So Josh, we discussed, being aware, creating distance, normalizing the experiencing of different emotions. Is there anything else that comes to mind when I'm addressing emotional eating? And again, I do want to recap that this is like as you, as you said at the beginning, that those are tools that work for people that have emotional eating issues. If you don't have emotional eating issues then, like- Josh: You probably don't have to- Annie: Then it doesn't apply. Or what was the difference that you said? That thought control or thought suppression would work for people that,- Josh: yeah. So, here's where it gets really funny. Cause I got really spun whenever the research that thought suppression worked for cravings and emotional eating for people that don't have cravings and emotional eating issues. And but, like, at first I was like, "thought suppression is always bad. Like how does that work?" And so I actually talked to my friend, Amy Evans, who's this brilliant behavioral analyst and she's like, "Well, of course not because the function is different, right? So if the function of that controllers is trying to like push away these uncomfortable emotions and cravings, then it's like an avoidance strategy. But if you don't have issues with those, then it's actually kind of like, maybe it's just like conscientiousness, right? Like it's a totally different thing." And I'm like, "Oh!" So it's good to have genius friends. Jen: Right? So can you give us an example in context? So person A doesn't have ongoing emotional eating issues, so we're talking about, but then something, a craving pops up or, or they're feeling emotional and they're feeling some kind of urge to eat if they don't struggle with ongoing emotional eating issues, then suppression works. Josh: Apparently. Yeah. I mean I don't coach that, but in the, in the research, yeah. Jen: So what would suppression look like for them? Josh: Yes. So, I'm guessing if they didn't score very highly than it's just a simple guideline that they're just like, "Oh, I don't, I don't eat between meals." I don't eat from the, you know, which is, which is totally fine. Jen: Right? Yeah. We call these self-loving guidelines in Balance365. They're not rules. They're flexible guidelines that keep you in a place of self care kind of thing. Josh: Yeah. So like- Annie: Oh, sorry, go ahead, Josh. Josh: I was just going to say if someone doesn't score really high on cravings and they have a little craving, it's pretty easy for them to go like, "Oh, I'm not going to do that." Jen: Right. Josh: "If someone scores really high on cravings- Jen: Then it's a bigger deal to say, "No, I'm not doing that." Yeah. Okay. Annie: I think it's important to note though, as you noted, as we noted in the beginning of the podcast is that that can work for some people, but right now the majority of the health and fitness industry are selling thought suppression. Josh: Yeah. Annie: To everyone. Like, that is, like, the widely accepted common answer versus, "Hey, like, maybe this is normal." Jen: They're also selling emotional eating at any point as as unacceptable. And so, you know, a person who is has an emotional eating episode one day, that's, you know, we're trying to say in this podcast that that's not wrong. And really, if you don't struggle with emotional eating, whether you do or don't engage in emotional eating is not a make or break for anyone's life. Right. It's not, whether you choose the chips or don't, it's just not really an issue. Like it's really a small, tiny little rock that really, you know what I mean? Like we're talking about, there's people that have real loss of control that going on, you know, sometimes daily for them around emotional eating. So, and it comes down to the frequency. How often are you engaging in these behaviors and ultimately what does that end up? What does that look like for you? After three months, 12 months, three years, 20 years, right? Josh: Frequency's everything. Jen: Right. Annie: Josh, you're so much fun to have on our podcast. Do you have more? Josh: Can I throw one other thing out there? The other thing that, the biggest misconception that I've gotten when I've talked to people about this and I've got it so much that I want to make sure not to miss it. This is still a behavioral approach, right? Like they're like, "Oh, you're like deal with your thoughts and like that" but you still, like, you still have to clarify your values and attach behaviors to that. But it's like, so self love guidelines was that? Jen: Self loving guidelines. Josh: Self loving guidelines, or like kind of like more, more intuitive skills or like, all these different things. The whole point of all this is to be able to do those things more frequently. Jen: Right? Josh: Right. So, all of my clients, I shouldn't say all of my clients. The majority of my clients track behaviors, right? So they track how often they have like a mostly balanced meal or how often they have vegetables or how often they, you know, snacked between meals or how often they noticed their hunger before they ate or how, you know, like how often they were full and stopped and like, they track actual behaviors and things that we can count the real world. Monsters on the bus is another thing that they track and count how often they use it. They also track if they didn't need it, like, "Oh, I didn't need it today," but- Jen: Oh interesting. Josh: If they're like, "Oh, I didn't need it and I used it" or "I didn't need it and I didn't use it." Those would be different things and it seems really weird maybe to use like a metaphor as a behavior to track, but it works really well. Jen: So ultimately you're tracking, the behavior change that you have people track is not necessarily emotional eating episodes, but how they dealt with those, whether they dealt with it in a manner that is more healthy than bingeing. Josh: Yeah. Jen: Right. Okay. Josh: Yeah. And so that could look really differently for a lot of different people, but it's like how often did you use this metaphor? How often would you use a diffusion technique? How often did you use your menu of things you can do? Jen: Right, right, right. Annie: Great. So, so you're putting behaviors with it. That's great. Josh: That's what grounds it in the real world. Annie: Yeah. Josh: Otherwise it goes way. Jen: Josh had a thread on his page, several months ago where you said, "sometimes I think" as far as your weight loss clients, you said "If we changed nothing at all except working on stress reduction methods, people would lose weight without changing anything at all." And then I had mentioned or just sleep, like, just a sleep habit, which is, you know, kind of goes hand in hand with stress- Josh: So good. Jen: Isn't it? So it just sort of like, yeah. So imagine if people just, so what we find is people hyperfocus on food, like they just are hyper focused on it and if you zoom out and you get back, if you just laid your foundations for say stress reduction, better sleep hygiene, anything you identify that helps your wellness wheel go, the food just doesn't matter. People will kind of eat until they're satisfied. Do you know what I mean? Like it's often these, the overeating tendencies we have are often a result of these high stress, sleep deprived, poor coping mechanism, lifestyles that we're living, the rest of the overeating issue. You don't have to be so hyper focused on the food or crank the wheel to the right and jump on the Keto wagon or cause you're really never getting to the underlying issues of why you're overeating in the first place. Right? Josh: Yeah. With my most successful clients, all these things we're doing show up as self care. Jen: Right. Totally. Josh: And it's like, and then the people that struggle are the ones that keep trying to do it as punishment. Jen: The food, the food. Yeah, totally. Josh: And the thing about sleep is no one makes phenomenally great food decisions when they're exhausted. Jen: Nobody. That's right. Yeah. Josh: I will throw out there in case there's any people that work like swing shifts or anything like that out there. For a while I had a ton of clients that were nurses that worked overnight and so for them, a lot of it was just acceptance of every time their schedule shifted they were going to be like unusually hungry. And so that is workable. But for everyone else, if we can just turn off screens like an hour earlier, like, man, this all gets easier. Jen: Totally. We just interviewed a sleep doctor before we interviewed you. Josh: Oh really? Annie: Yeah. He said the same thing. Jen: Same thing. Our podcast is the best. Josh: Your podcast is the best. This was so much fun. Annie: Are you always this energetic? I mean, every time, I've talked to you twice in five years, like you always have such great energy about you- Jen: And smiling. You're always smiling. Josh: You're super great. It's fun hanging out with you guys. Annie: You are welcome back here anytime. Josh: Also, this is, like, my favorite stuff to talk about. Annie: So yeah, you are, you're welcome back here. Anytime. Anything, any projects you're working on that you want to tell us about or where can we, where can our listeners find you or keep up with your work? Jen: You're working on a million books. Josh: I am working on a million books, so, losestomachfat.com is still my blog. I still do celebrity workout stuff and emotionally eating research, which is now a weird combination. I've got two books coming out. Lean Is Strong is coming out at the end of this year. And then the untitled emotional eating book is coming out next year. And that's my big stuff right now. It's top secret. Annie: Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Alright, well thank you so much, Josh. Josh: Thank you. Annie: We will talk soon, hopefully. Josh: Okay, cool. Thanks guys. Annie: Thanks. This episode is brought to you by the Balance365 program. If you're ready to say goodbye to quick fixes and false promises and yes to building healthy habits and a life you're 100% in love with, then checkout Balance365.co to learn more.

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MAG 07: Being Good And Faithful Stewards With Our Finances - Interview w/ Josh + Priscilla Millsap

Marriage After God

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2019 34:32

Join the marriage movement and order our new book today. Marriage After God. https://marriageaftergod.com Today we interview some old friends of ours who have been on a faithful journey with money and business together. They even host Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University groups at their home to help others join their journey. Quote From Chapter 7 Of Marriage After God "The goal for every marriage after God is to build a healthy and biblical financial foundation so as to be good stewards and good servants with everything God entrusts to us." Quote from Marriage After God... “This may seem elementary, but often the simplest things produce the most powerful impact over a lifetime, and it is those very things that often get neglected.” *Dear Lord, Thank you for giving us the resources we need to accomplish the mission you have for us. Thank you for showing us in your word how to be good stewards with what we have. We pray that as Christian husbands and wives we would walk in wisdom when it comes to our finances. May we be on the same page in marriage, and may we communicate well with each other as we submit to you. We pray that we would not waste the things that you have given to us but instead we pray we would invest them for your kingdom. We pray that we would see everything that we have, our marriages, our children, our assets, our time, all of it, as gifts you have given us to steward well. Please help us to be an example in this world of how to live righteously. Help us to be an example to our children and to teach them your ways. Lord, help us to steward this life well for your namesake. In Jesus’ name, amen!* READ TRANSCRIPT [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today, we're in part seven of the Marriage After God series. And we're gonna be talking with Josh and Priscilla Millsap about being good stewards with our finances. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as UnveiledWife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as HusbandRevolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life, [Aaron] love, [Jennifer] and power [Aaron] that can only be found by chasing after God [Jennifer] together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. Thank you guys so much for joining us this week. We just wanted to take a moment and just encourage you to leave us a review on the Marriage After God podcast. This is just a great way to get the message out there that the podcast is live and that this message is for every marriage. So we just wanted to ask you to go to the bottom of the app and just leave a star-rating review or a comment review. [Aaron] And also, we want to invite you, the whole reason were doing this 16-part series and all these interviews, is to talk about the Marriage After God book that we wrote together. It's how you can support this podcast, and we'd just love to get a copy in your hands. It's called Marriage After God, and you can go to shop.marriageaftergod.com and pick up a copy today. We'd love for you to get a copy. [Jennifer] So today we have Josh and Priscilla Millsap. Thank you guys so much for being with us today. Hi, you're welcome. Hey! Thanks for having us. [Jennifer] Would you just take a moment and just let everyone know who you are, how long you've been married, how many kids you have, what you do for work, that kind of thing? [Josh] Well, we are Josh and Priscilla Millsap. We are, let's see, it's gonna be 14 years here in June. We have four kids aging from 13 to four-- [Aaron] Wow, awesome. [Josh] And we do quite a few things when it comes to work, everything from our own business that is Pristine Solutions, where we do window cleaning, screen repairs, and few other little odd-end things as well, and then also I have an outside sales position with a company called Hunter Engineering. [Aaron] Awesome. [Priscilla] And I stay home, and I home school, and I help run the business, the window cleaning business as well. [Aaron] Awesome, so you guys work together and have some other side work. We love that because that's kind of our story a little bit too. Awesome, so how do we know you guys? How do you know us? Where did we meet? [Priscilla] I met Jen through my sisterhood Bible study. I think she came with a friend one time, and so we met through then and kinda connected and just via social media have kinda stayed in touch. [Jennifer] Yep, I've been following you for a while. You have such great encouragement too. I always get refreshed when I see your stories up, so I appreciate that. [Priscilla] Oh, praise God, thank you. [Aaron] Yeah, and one of the reasons we wanted to interview you guys is because we see you guys as a marriage after God, and that you guys use your talents and resources in many different ways to serve God, so we're excited to kinda dig into some of those things. But before we do that, we have an icebreaker question. [Jennifer] A fun question. [Aaron] Yeah, and since we thought of a question that was around money because we're gonna be talking about being stewards, and this is a funny one because this has nothing to do with stewardship But if you were given, and both of you gotta answer this, if you were given $100 today, and there's not gonna be any shame or guilt in what you spent it on-- [Jennifer] No strings attached. [Aaron] What would you spend it on? [Priscilla] Oh, well, easily either date night, but selfishly, probably just more Lululemon. [Aaron] I love that story. [Jennifer] That's awesome. [Priscilla] But go ahead, babe. [Aaron] They have the best gym shorts. [Josh] Yeah, it would definitely be a date night. We have one of our favorite restaurants that we haven't been to in quite a while that we would, that I would definitely use that for. [Priscilla] Yeah, that'd be fun. [Jennifer] That's so awesome, you guys. I love that. Okay, so we're gonna move on to the quote from Marriage After God from chapter seven. It says, the goal for every marriage after God is to build a healthy and biblical financial foundation so as to be good stewards and good servants with everything God entrusts to us. [Aaron] Yeah, so how does that, just real quick, when you hear that, do you feel like that is something that is encompassed in your guys' marriage and life, something you guys are striving towards? What do you guys think? [Josh] Yes, yeah it is, absolutely. Being a good servant towards God as well as stewards of everything He's given us is a huge calling as a Christian husband, but also as we grow closer to God, that is definitely what He's calling us all to do. [Priscilla] Yeah, and I would say it doesn't really matter what place you're in, whether you're struggling or you're maybe more, your foundation is a little more secure financially or you're prospering, whatever you have can be used to help build up the kingdom. I mean, whether your house is big or small, you can still use that. I think sometimes we think we have to have so much more to be a good steward, but technically, whatever you have, and so, no matter where we've been at in our process of getting out of debt or whatever, we try to use what we have to benefit others or bless others or build up the local church or stuff like that. [Aaron] I love that perspective, and it's exactly what we're trying to get across in this chapter of the book, being a good and faithful steward is. We sometimes, and I remember, there's been times in our life, Jennifer, that we would say, well, if we had a little bit more, then we'd give more. If we had a little bit more, we'd save better, or we'd be able to do that one thing that we know that we've been desiring to do for God, but you're right. As long as it's something out there, we'll never do it, but if it's something that we have now, we can be a steward with it and be faithful with the little, or whatever it is now. I love that. [Jennifer] Yeah, I remember that we were tempted to think that way, but it didn't take very long for God to kind of prick your heart and get you to lead in a way that encouraged us to be good stewards with even the little bit that we had. [Aaron] I remember the spirit just saying, hey, if you're not gonna do it now, why do you think you'll do it later? [Priscilla] Exactly, yes, that. [Jennifer] And Priscilla, I really liked what you said about it doesn't matter what you've been given, whether you're prosperous or not, because that right there is so relatable to everybody listening right now. So everybody's accountable and responsible for what they have today, so I just love that we're starting out the episode with that. [Priscilla] Yeah. Yeah, 'cause we've definitely had-- [Aaron] So-- [Priscilla] Oh, sorry, go ahead. [Aaron] No, you go ahead. [Priscilla] Oh, I was just gonna say we've definitely had times where it's like, we're living out of boxes, and we're living in someone else's house, but still even having community with people. I don't know. We kinda make excuses sometimes for why we don't jump out there and do more. But that's a huge encouragement. You don't have to have a lot to really just bless someone or reach out or have community. [Jennifer] Yep. [Aaron] Yeah, you just have to have what God's given you and then steward it well. Use it for Him, use it for your family, and not squander it. So how would you define being a good and faithful steward over what God has given you guys? We've mentioned some of it, but how do you define that in your life? [Josh] Well, being a good and faithful steward, if we look at Matthew chapter 25, when he actually talks about the talents, the story of the talents, it really has to deal with resources, not necessarily a monetary thing, so learning how to use everything that God has given us in a proper perspective of a Christian not owning anything but being in charge of what everything God has given us in total resources, family, friends, influence, whatever it may be, understanding that our role is not to own but to simply manage on God's behalf is a huge thing for me. [Priscilla] Yeah. I think just using that perspective-- [Aaron] That was a really good quote real quick. [Priscilla] With all of our, it's easy to grip on tight to what you have, but stuff comes and goes, right? [Josh] Yeah. [Aaron] Yeah, always. I love that quote you said, what was it? I almost forgot it. Oh, we don't own things, we manage things. [Josh] Yeah. [Aaron] And I love that. [Jennifer] So how does our stewardship affect what God is inviting us to do, whether that's good or bad? [Aaron] If we steward well or steward poorly, how does those actions affect, how when we're being invited by God to do something, when we're chasing after God, does it matter? [Josh] Yes, it does. [Priscilla] Yeah. [Josh] Especially in that Matthew 25 section is, while you can see that God honors and blesses the good and faithful stewards with more, and yet the one who decided he was not going to do anything with it and basically be a sloth with it or lazy with it was punished. So he really does value those that make sure that they have a proper mindset about how God has blessed their life versus those who just sit on it and take advantage of it and not use it to bless God. [Jennifer] Was there a point in your guys' marriage when you guys looked at your finances and said, we have to change? It wasn't going in the direction that you wanted it to go, it wasn't lining up biblically, and you just knew? [Priscilla] Oh, girl. [Josh] Yes, yes, yes, yes. [Priscilla] Let me tell you. [Aaron] Tell us, tell us, yeah. [Priscilla] Yeah, we struggled. I mean, I think we just kinda saw the way our parents lived, but obviously, they're 25 years or so ahead of us, but we're seeing the way they live, and we're trying to match that with making nothing-burger amounts of money an hour. And so we really got into a lot of debt, including like he already had student-loan debt before I came in the picture, so when we got married, we were already about $100,000 in debt, which is crazy 'cause I was 19, and he was 23. So that's how we started off our marriage. Also, not to mention, I was pregnant, so that's a story for another day. So there is already just so much going on there, and it just made it really stressful, so we really limped along for about two-and-a-half years, and had someone not stepped in and gave us some resources, we probably would be divorced. But my dad actually gave us The Total Money Makeover for Christmas. [Aaron] From Dave Ramsey? [Priscilla] Yes, yes, Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover, and we literally sat and read it on New Year's Eve, and then that new year we just decided to change our life. And we were what he would call gazelle-intense, and sell everything but the kids, have garage sales. So that was like, okay, this is a real plan and a real hope for us, 'cause I think we knew the direction we wanted to go. We just felt like we couldn't get there or didn't really know what to do or have a steady plan in place. So that was a real game-changer for us. [Josh] Yep. [Jennifer] Awesome. So, when you started to make those changes in your life, did you have little victories that encouraged you and motivated you? Can you share a little bit about that? [Josh] Yeah, those were kind of fun because when we were in that so much debt, there was so much tension built around just about every aspect of life because, as a husband, my wife was so stressed about the money and the bills were coming in, and as a husband you kind of feel like a failure when your wife is in such a stressful position in something that you should be able to handle, finances with work. And so it was, when we finally got on the same page and saw a future in the direction that we wanted to move in, when we would pay off those off little bills and we would get those things out from underneath us, the weight that was lifted off was just huge, and we could finally feel victory and direction in a way that we knew was God-honoring as well. [Priscilla] I think I remember-- [Jennifer] That's so awesome. [Priscilla] Yeah, like our first garage sale we had, we made $500, which was so exciting, but we were trying to get that first step of get a little $1,000 emergency fund, so that was even a very real, tangible victory there. And yeah, our whole life shifted pretty fast. So there was a lot of things. Obviously, the tension between us lifted, like you said, and we actually went back to church 'cause we hadn't been to church in a while, and we started giving. So there was lots of little shifts that happened very quickly. [Aaron] So you guys started giving during this season of, this gazelle-like sprint? [Priscilla] Oh, right away, right away. Now, I wouldn't say it was high. We hadn't even been in church regularly, and so we were like, oh, well this is telling us we need to give, so I guess we should go back to church if we're gonna do that. [Jennifer] That's awesome. [Aaron] Go, Dave Ramsey. [Priscilla] We go back to church, and we just were like, okay, Lord, we're gonna just step out in faith and do $25 a week, which was a lot for us at the time, 'cause we were drowning in debt. And then, I think probably a few months in we went to $50 a week, and probably six months into this journey we were at a full-blown tithe, but yeah, God really just honored even that little bit of just stepping out in faith. [Jennifer] Wow, that's so awesome, you guys. I think I said "awesome" already so many times already in this episode, but I really appreciate your guys' transparency, and I think that the first thing that comes to my mind as you were sharing is that a lot of people are gonna understand that weight that you felt underneath that debt, and there's probably even people, couples listening who are under that weight of debt. But how encouraging it is to hear that even something like a garage sale and getting your feet, jumping in or running like a gazelle, like you said, toward that to accomplish it, those little victories matter so much. So I just wanted that to be a note and an encouragement for them to hear. So I just appreciate you sharing that, because I think that if they, hopefully, this excites them so that they start making action steps toward their debt and getting free. [Priscilla] Yeah, that's so, so important, yeah, little victories to motivate you. [Aaron] So, I got a question. Are you guys debt-free? We are not Not yet. [Priscilla] currently debt-free, no. [Aaron] Okay, which is totally fine, but my second question to this is do you guys live now in a, what we call in the book, a debt-free mentality? [Josh] Yes. [Priscilla] Yeah, so just to be totally transparent, we got very, very close on our journey. We did pay off all those student loans. We paid off all our credit-card debt. We were driving paid-for cars. [Aaron] Awesome. [Priscilla] So we got there. Last year, we made some career changes that did, we did make the decision together to take on a little bit of debt. That was really, really hard for us to do because of the journey that we've been on, but we really felt like this was the path forward. And there's been so many crazy, cool things since making that shift 'cause we really had to, yeah, we had give up some things. There was a lot of sacrifice there, so but it's been really cool to see what the Lord's doing with that. So but now, yes, we're back on that track, so it kinda feels like we've gone back to square one, but we've done it before, and we're gonna do it again. [Josh] Yep. [Jennifer] That's so awesome to hear. [Aaron] So I love that 'cause I want everyone listening, 'cause most of the country is in debt-- [Millsaps] Yeah. [Aaron] And our heart in this chapter in this part of the book is to say just because everyone's doing it doesn't mean we should do it. [Priscilla] Exactly, totally. [Aaron] And so, that debt-free mentality is, whether you're in debt or not, that you begin to act like you would be when you're out of debt. Right. Yes. [Aaron] Meaning you don't overspend, which is Dave Ramsey's model anyway. It's like, spend within your means, save, pay off your debt. But I wanna ask you guys, the getting out of debt is awesome, and I don't wanna over-spiritualize getting out of debt, but why does it matter that we get out of debt? Why does it matter that you guys are faithful and good stewards with your money? It's not just for the sake of being debt-free and, oh, good for us, we're debt-free now. Why is it? What's the big deal? [Priscilla] Oh man, okay, so I don't know where this verse is in the Bible. Maybe someone can find it later. But the one where it talks about running the race and laying aside every weight, you know what I mean? Being in debt isn't necessarily a sin. I mean, there's sin at the core of that, and that's how you got there or whatever, but it's just running the race for the Lord and having a healthy marriage and a healthy family, it just creates so much stress, and you kinda have, if a lot of your focus is there, and it could be an indicator of where your heart is at, and it's different for each person, I suppose. But if your focus is on your financial woes, and oftentimes, seven to eight out of 10 people are living paycheck to paycheck. That's stressful, and a lot of that is because we have gotten ourselves in these monumental piles of debt, and we can't think straight. We can't focus on other things, or you're having to work so much to pay all this off. When you're mentally spent, and you're physically spent on just trying to pay for your lifestyle, you can't really focus on the things that are the most important, like discipling your kids, and building up the local church, and loving on people around you. And you're also, there's a lot of opportunities you're gonna have to say no to because financially you just don't have the means, or things you want to support, so it just becomes a weight, really, like a noose around your neck that you can't, you have very limited freedom on the opportunities and things you're able to do. [Josh] Yeah. I was gonna, to piggyback on that, that we are the example to our kids that, as we deal with money, as we deal with stress, as we deal with debt, our kids are watching how we behave, how we deal with, how do we overcome the struggles of something may not go our way for a month or something. How do we deal with that, and are we faithful to God in prayer? Are we understanding that He provides everything for us and that ultimately we're gonna trust in what He has planned for us? Or are we gonna sit there and blame each other, blame the world? How are we gonna deal with things that don't go our way? And our kids are always watching, so as we have a proper perspective of our role as Christians within the confines of what God gives us, they are watching, and they are learning. [Jennifer] Gosh, Josh, that is so good, and I just love that you went there because we all, as parents, need to be reminded about the impact we're having in our children's lives and the foundation that we're setting them up for, and I just, that is so good and so right on, which kind of leads me into this next question. Because I follow Priscilla on social media, I saw a picture of her daughter recently with a bunch of bottles in front of her, baby bottles filled with money. So I want you guys to explain that and explain kind of that example that you're setting for your kids and how you're incorporating them into what you guys are doing. [Priscilla] Yeah, so, I mean, we really try to keep it super simple for them. That actually was our Bible study got together and collected some money for a local organization here called Corona Life Services, which is basically a pregnancy crisis clinic, and so that was really cool. But they actually were the ones, my kids actually were the ones that even went around our neighborhood, just talking to people about Corona Life Services. And I think-- [Aaron] That is so cool. [Priscilla] Yeah, it was really, really cool. And who's gonna say no to kids? So that's a great way-So, I mean, it's like, some money, send your kids. No, I'm just kidding. But, so we-- [Aaron] It's good strategy. [Priscilla] Yeah No, but it's funny, actually, because we just got, you get, at the end of the year you get your giving statement from your church or whatever, and each of our kids actually had one because they go and they put their money in, they fill out the little envelope. [Aaron] That's really cool. [Priscilla] But we had just basically taught them spend, save, give, like, what you're earning, 'cause our kids are hustlers, man. They've seen us just hustle for the last few years, and they're like, we want to hustle. What could we do? So they've done all kinds of things. And so, they have their own bank accounts, and we go to the bank, they fill out their own thing, and so, once they have so much in a little stockpile, it's like, okay, this you get to spend, this we're gonna take to the bank, and this you're taking to church on Sunday. So we just keep it simple and just hopefully forming those good habits now 'cause I mean, I literally remember getting my first paycheck, and I'm like, I'm going straight to Guess and buying a pair of jeans. But already our kids are like, I'm not spending that kind of money. They're very frugal. Well, one of them is not, but we won't put her on blast. So But for the most part, yes. [Aaron] But those skills are amazing for them to learn now. Like you said, you're building habits that we necessarily didn't have growing up. I'm sure maybe our parents tried in some ways, but just the intentionality of saying it's not just money and that we use it for ourselves, but this is actually something that's God's giving us, and how are we gonna manage it? [Priscilla] And they're learning to hold it loosely at a young age, you know what I mean? [Men] Yes. [Priscilla] I actually saw my son do something that sort of blew my hair back, and then I was convicted that it blew my hair back 'cause I'm like, that should be everyone. But we were doing a gift for someone, and we were kinda pulling some money together. We made this cute little thing with it, and just for a family we wanted to love on, and a bunch of people came together and did this. And I'm like, hey, I asked my kids, I'm like, you guys wanna participate in this? And it's not like, hey, we've got some money, and you have to participate, but I want them to want to? And my son, I was like, just a couple bucks we could tie on there or five bucks. And my son comes in with a $20 bill, and I'm like, baby, you know what I mean, it's fine, just grab a five or something. This sounds horrible, right? Maybe we should make this podcast anonymous, but-- [Aaron] Yeah. [Priscilla] He's all, well, I don't need it. He's like-- [Smiths] Aww! [Priscilla] And I was like, oh my gosh. Why did I just try to talk my son out of giving? What's wrong with me? But it just blessed me so much. [Aaron] Are you sure you want to give that much? [Priscilla] How much do we have? And it's like, we have stuff we don't really need, but anyways, it's cool to see them forming those habits and holding it loosely and not being. I think it's easy to just want to hold onto everything you have, but and you just don't know, what the seasons come and go, and so. [Jennifer] Well, good for you guys. We commend you for teaching your children rightly and righteously, and I just hope that this is an encouragement for all of us parents today to be leading our children the way the Bible calls us to. [Aaron] Yeah, and I have another question for you guys. We're getting down to the end. But again, going back to what we were talking about. The whole purpose of all this is we're not just good stewards for the sake of good stewardship. We're not just savers for the sake of having more money. We're not just debt-free mentality just for the sake of getting out of debt. God's got something for us to do. He's got a ministry for his body to be working in, and we're a part of that body. And I noticed in your Instagram feed that you guys, I don't know if you guys are still doing this, but you've hosted Financial Peace University classes at your home for other people. What motivated you guys to do that, not just for yourselves, but now you're like, hey, let's bring other people into this? [Priscilla] That's exactly it. We just wanted to see people have victory in their financial lives. I mean, really for us, it turned our whole life around. [Josh] Yeah. [Priscilla] It wasn't just turned our bank account around. [Josh] No. [Priscilla] Our marriage was struggling. Our finances were struggling. We were just struggling, all of it, spiritually, we were struggling big time. So it really just, it was a catalyst to get us on the right track. And not everybody's in that dire of a circumstance, but for sure-- [Aaron] But many are, financially. [Priscilla] Yeah, and really, accountability for us, continuing to do that, and then just yeah, really wanting to see people's eyes open to the possibilities of when we're giving like we should, when we're saving like we should, and when we're managing our money like we should, there's opportunity there. [Josh] Yeah, but I mean, and you kind of alluded to it a little while earlier. In high school and in school we're not taught how to deal with money for the most part. We go to school, we learn what we need to learn, but we're not really instructed on how this world works around money, and so going these Financial Peace or the Dave Ramsey, we actually got an understanding of how money works. And so we saw frustration and stress on a lot of other couple's faces, and it wasn't that they were struggling with anything necessarily huge, but you could just see that desire to want to get beyond where they were at, but not have the knowledge or the ability to really understand what they needed to do. And so, we would kinda just make the suggestion, like, hey, well, this really helped not only our marriage, but an understanding of a direction that God really wanted us to go with our money. [Aaron] I love that, and it's you guys ministering to other couples and helping them mature, helping them grow, walking with them as you are also walking in these things. And what's funny is that, or not funny, but what's amazing is when we walk in obedience in little areas, and I see money as a little area, even though it feels so big, but it's a little area because, once we figure it out and get control of it and start walking rightly in it, it just starts happening, making more sense and working better. It doesn't mean we're gonna be wealthy, but if we're out of debt, we're already wealthier than 90% of the country, right? [Millsaps] Yeah. [Aaron] Just because you're out of debt, even if you only made a minimum-wage job. [Priscilla] Totally. [Aaron] But I just love that we serve God in those little things, and it makes it easier for us to serve God in bigger things. And I'm sure as you guys do this it's easier for you to open your homes for other things. It's easier for you to go, and like you said, you gave a little bit each week, and then you gave more. That's a perfect example of us walking in faith, being faithful with a little, and being able to be faithful with much. [Jennifer] Yeah, and what I think is cool is that in your obedience to managing your finances well, you experienced those mini-victories-- [Aaron] Yeah, those little wins. [Jennifer] or large victories, and that motivated you to say you can do it too, and you reached out to other people. [Millsaps] Yeah. [Jennifer] And that's a large part of the message of Marriage After God. The book is to inspire couples to say, what have we experienced, what have we walked through that we can then encourage other people with? [Aaron] You can do it too. [Jennifer] And say you can do it too. So I just, I think that's so awesome that you guys have done that and are still continuing to do ministry together as a team for God in even other ways. So, super awesome. [Aaron] So I got two more questions for you. The second-to-last one is this. If you can encourage our listeners right now with two things that they can do that'll help them gain victory in the area of finances and just being good stewards, what would you say? [Priscilla] Oh, gosh, two things. Well, one, get on a budget. Get on a budget. Get on, write down a budget. That would be, you need to start there, knowing how much you're even spending and what you've got coming in, going out. We can't just walk around in the dark. [Josh] Yeah, it's hard to imagine, but there are couples out there that either one or both really have no idea how much comes in and how much is going out. [Priscilla]Yeah. And then, gosh, I would just say start giving. I think that stepping out in faith is so important, and really just trusting the Lord to, just trusting the Lord with that. It's so tempting, especially when you're in a tough spot, to want to hold on to what you have. And like I said, you don't have to be like, okay, 10% right away. Start with just something that you're gonna be committed to and yeah, I would say give. [Aaron] Right, which is practicing generosity, practicing obedience of giving to those that are teaching you and maturing you. I love that. [Josh] Yeah, it also feels literally intuitive. [Jennifer] Awesome, guys. [Josh] You want to, in the moment when you're trying to save and pay off debt, it doesn't make sense to give something away in that kind of a setting. But as we're obedient to what God's word calls us to do, and that's something that he puts a great importance on, then he sees that as that step of faith, and that's a good thing. [Aaron] I love that. I think of, when you just said the world obedience, and I think of the story of the rich young ruler going to Jesus and saying, Jesus, how do I get to heaven? And He says, follow the commands, and he's, I've done all these commands. And He says, one thing you lack. And He says, go and sell all that you have, give to the poor, and follow me. And I think a lot of people have taken that, the poverty gospel, and saying, oh, if you have things, you're not holy. If you things, you're not, but that's not what's actually happening. [Josh] No. [Aaron] Jesus has given a command to this man, and he disobeyed it. [Priscilla] Yeah. [Josh] Yeah. [Aaron] So, the problem, He says, the thing you lack is obedience to me. He says, sell all you have, give it to the poor, and follow me. And he walks away sad because he's got much wealth. He would rather enamored and enveloped in his wealth than be obedient to Christ. [Josh] Well, and his wealth-- [Aaron] And so, like you said, that obedience-- [Josh] His wealth had given him a comfort level that he was really used to, and he was fine with attaining righteousness along with his wealth, but he didn't understand what that cost was really going to be, and it was hard. He didn't want to do it. [Aaron] Yeah. And the cost is, like I was getting at, is obedience. Christ wants obedience. And so, like you said, you practice that obedience. It may be counterintuitive-- [Priscilla] Yes, exactly. [Aaron] But He wants generous hearts in His body. He wants generous givers. He wants people that trust Him, and I just love that. Thank you for that. [Jennifer] Okay, you guys, we're moving on to the last question, and it is this. In your own words, what is a marriage after God? [Josh] In our words, a marriage after God. It's really understanding your role as a Christian, as a husband, as a wife, to know that we are servants. We are, again, we don't control, we don't own anything, that God has put us here as servants to manage what He has given us, and as we are found faithful with what He's given us, He can trust us then with more, day in and day out, not only with money, finances, but resources, what we have at our disposal to do things to influence our friends, to bear each other's burdens, to really be able to dive into people's lives and be able to help and lift in a way that's practical as well as spiritually helpful. [Aaron] Mm, I love that. Amen, wow. Yeah. [Aaron] Yeah, go ahead, 'cause-- [Priscilla] Oh, I was just, my word for the year is surrender, and so, really just, I mean, me personally, but just really surrendering, kind of our ideas of what our life should look like, and we've, man, we've had a rollercoaster of a year, and we just couldn't even have anticipated what all that was gonna look like, but really, just continue to press into the Lord and press into each other and keeping short account, staying vulnerable, really challenging ourselves to really be praying together often. So just really seeking the Lord together and being on the same page. [Jennifer] Mm, that's good. [Aaron] Praise God. Well, Josh, Priscilla, we are so happy to have interviewed you guys, and we thank you for your guys' honesty and openness in sharing your guys' journey, because that's where, I mean, everyone's on a journey. And the goal is, as marriages after God, that we're all chasing after God, and it doesn't mean that we're all at the same place in our walks, but that we're all going the same direction. [Priscilla] Yeah. [Aaron] And we say this throughout the book, unity, one mind, one heart, one spirit, with one mission, and so I just, I thank you guys, I commend you guys, and I pray that you guys would continue on that journey of getting out of debt so that you guys can just continue to serve more and more and give more and more, and we love that, so thank you. And so, what we're gonna do is we're gonna end in prayer, and then I'm gonna close us out, so join us. Dear Lord, thank you for giving us the resources we need to accomplish the mission you have for us. Thank you for showing us in your word how to be good stewards with what we have. We pray that as Christian husbands and wives we would walk in wisdom when it comes to our finances. May we be on the same page in marriage, and may we communicate with each other as we submit to you. We pray that we would not waste the things that you have given us, but instead, we pray we would invest them for your kingdom. We pray that we would see everything that we have, our marriage, our children, our assets, our time, all of it, as gifts you have given to us to steward well. Please help us to be an example in the world of how to live righteously. Help us to be an example to our children and to teach them your ways. Lord, help us to steward this life well for your name's sake. In Jesus' name, amen. [Jennifer] Amen. [Millsaps] Amen. [Aaron] All right, so hey, we just thank everyone that's been listening to this interview. We hope you were blessed by it. We pray that you have some things to talk about as a couple, and this is episode seven in our 16-part series, and so we look forward to having you over the next episodes. See you next week. [Aaron] Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

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102 Podcast – S4E01 – Freak FM by Sasha Mayday

102podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2018 59:12

"Всем доброго вечера! Вы находитесь на волнах freak fm radio и сегодня мы на время возвратимся в лето. Ноты и звуки, закручивающие в танце теплых дней, расслабляют и позволяют взглянуть на мир под немного другим углом. На протяжении часа Вас ожидает поток ярких звуковых образов хаус музыки, так что включаемся и настраиваемся на позитивную волну" После небольшого перерыва #102podcast возвращается в уже привычное русло еженедельного вещания. Как и раньше мы поочередно будем прогуливаться по основным жанрам электронной музыки, показывая их тонкости любителям, ценителям и тем, кому интересно открывать для себя что-то новое. HOUSE | TECHNO | TRANCE | BASS Именно эти направления максимально охватывают современную электронную сцену, а каждое из них вмещает в себя жанры, поджанры и стили, которые, в свою очередь, имеют своё настроение, оттенки и динамику и будут интересны в самых различных ситуациях, ведь для любой электронной музыки есть своё время и своё место. Открывать сезон выпала честь нашему другу из Белоруссии #sashamayday с отличной #house подборкой - #freakfm Включаем и наслаждаемся. Так же напоминаем, что на сайте 102podcasts.com можно послушать выпуски предыдущего сезона Всем #бодроговечера и #сто2 Tracklist: 01. Natural Rhythm - Freak FM (Spettro & Thomas Sahs Remix) 02. Neville Watson - No Fussin (Original Mix) 03. Andrade - Face De Bouc (Original Mix) 04. Goiko & Josh - You & Me (Original Mix) 05. Biro - Second Hand Funk (Original Mix) 06. Phonic.Lab - One Kiss (Original Mix) 07. Daso & Franklin De Costa - Cato's Hideout (Original Mix) 08. Nick Dare - Dub People (Original Mix) 09. Markus Enochson - Awa (Original Mix) 10. Liquid Light & Mikele - Contact (Original Mix) 11. Hannah Wants & Chris Lorenzo - Teardrop On The Fire Total Time -59:13 min

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#056: Why Every Brick and Mortar Business Needs a Construction Manager – NEXGEN Building Group

Behind The Smoke

Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2018

Josh Kueber - President & CEO of NEXGEN Building- NexGenBuilding.com - San Diego, California *Podcast recorded above the butcher shop at Valley Farm Market in Spring Valley, California. Summary Josh is the president and CEO of NEXGEN Building Group and Derek Marso’s lifelong best friend and neighbor. Josh following his gut and turning down an established positions and large offer to establish NEXGEN Building Group with the a core team of people he is able to trust. Tackling the digital landscape and utilizing technology as a resource in any industry, especially construction. Adopting the advancements in technology: Dubai 3D printing an office and Google Maps Distance Tool allowing projects to measured remotely. “Get it done now” vs. “Get it done right” and how valuable a general contractor is to properly execute projects based on the effective foundation building Offering and asking for help from your Community. Overcoming the misconception that people aren’t welling help you. Links Mentioned in this Episode: NEXGEN Building Group Website Instagram Facebook Linkedin Shawn’s Business Book Recommendation - “McDonald’s: Behind The Arches RestaurantOwner.com @BBQWarStories Weekly Social Shout Out: @hootennannybbq Winner of a sexy new #BehindTheSmoke Mug. Be sure to tag @bbqwarstories in all your #behindthesmoke photos and interact with the podcast on social for your chance to win. Remember...if we can’t tag you then we can’t pimp you. Shareable Quotes From This Podcast: “If you’re not gonna start now, when are you gonna start?” {13:30} - Shawn “We know less and less every single day but we have to rely on people that we trust that have experience.” {17:44} - Shawn “It’s not so much the successes as it is the failures. It’s when you fall on your face and your team members are there, your brothers and sisters are there, to pick you up. {21:43} - Shawn “Implementing something may impact efficiency and productivity immediately.” {29:55} - Josh “You’re in that ‘all in jumping off the cliff moment’. This is time to make the right decisions. Don’t try to do it by yourself. Reach out!” {40:19} - Shawn “Preparation in terms of clarity of scope of work allows for cost effective pricing, planning, sequencing of work [...] that leads to timely completion.” {44:17} - Josh “‘We’ve been kicking and screaming for 10 years and finally they are taking notice. Not in the way that we want but it’s a step.” {51:40} - Shawn “For me it’s the transparency. I just feel so much better about life when it’s that way.” {53:30} - Derek Get in Touch: Derek Marso - https://twitter.com/MarsoDerek Shawn Walchef - https://twitter.com/shawnpwalchef Cory Wagner - www.twitter.com/TheFifthPofmkt Behind The Smoke Media www.BehindTheSmokeMedia.com behindthesmoke@calicomfortbbq.com Facebook Page Behind The Smoke (Live Videos of the Podcast Recordings) Instagram - @bbqwarstories Twitter @bbqwarstories Valley Farm Market www.valleyfarmmarkets.com derek@valleyfarmmarkets.com Instagram @valleyfarmmarket Twitter @valleyfarmarket Facebook Page Valley Farm Market Cali Comfort BBQ www.calicomfortbbq.com shawn@calicomfortbbq.com Instagram @calicomfortbbq Twitter @calicomfort Facebook Page Cali Comfort BBQ YouTube Channel Cali Comfort BBQ Connect with Shawn P. Walchef on LinkedIn Honorable Mentions & BBQ Business Resources: Behind The Smoke Media BBQ Business Resources 3rd Annual Turf & Surf BBQ Championship @DelMarRacing #BETonBBQ Sunday, August 19, 2018 Kansas City Barbecue Society Sanctioned State Championship Event Limited to 70 BBQ Comp Teams Request our Sponsorship Deck: BETonBBQ@calicomfortbbq.com 9th Annual Spring Valley Tailgate & BBQ Festival #SVBBQFest California’s Largest Annual Amatuer Tailgate & BBQ Competition Date: Sunday, October 28, 2018

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PC Perspective Podcast 467 - 9/14/17

PC Perspective Podcast Video

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2017 87:20

PC Perspective Podcast #467 - 09/13/17 Join us for discussion on NVIDIA WhisperMode, HyperX Mechanical Keyboards, iPhone 8/X and more! You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE. The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends! iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store (audio only) Video version on iTunes Google Play - Subscribe to our audio podcast directly through Google Play! RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader (audio only) Video version RSS feed MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Jeremy Hellstrom, Josh Walrath, Allyn Malventano Peanut Gallery: Ken Addison, Alex Lustenberg Program length: 1:27:20 Podcast topics of discussion: Join our spam list to get notified when we go live! Patreon PCPer Mailbag #8 - 9/8/2017 Week in Review: 0:07:00 NVIDIA WhisperMode Tested - Quieter Gaming for Notebooks 0:22:00 HyperX Alloy FPS and FPS Pro Mechanical Gaming Keyboard Review 0:25:30 Seasonic FOCUS Plus Platinum 550W PSU Review News items of interest: 0:29:55 AMD Radeon Technologies Group Raja Koduri Goes on Sabbatical 0:38:25 A wild GTX 1070 Ti appears? 0:43:15 Apple Announces iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X 0:52:30 Samsung Announces 11nm LPP and 7nm LPP Processes 1:02:50 Intel Releases Dawson Canyon NUCs With 15W Kaby Lake CPUs 1:06:10 ASUS Launches the ZenFone 4 Max Smartphone 1:09:30 Intel goes WiGiggy for VR Hardware/Software Picks of the Week 1:12:20 Ryan: Logitech MX Ergo 1:17:15 Jeremy: Macchina is shipping 1:21:10 Josh: You may have missed this classic! 1:22:45 Allyn: Alternative black air cooler? (be quiet Shadow Rock 2) 1:23:45 Alex: Cities: Skylines http://pcper.com/podcast http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper Closing/outro Subscribe to the PC Perspective YouTube Channel for more videos, reviews and podcasts!!

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Episode 181 “Just Ninja Side Kick That @$#!@$”

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 22, 2017 79:32

0:15 Technical issues with video and sound. John talks about a scam with trying to buy a sim card and getting internet access. 5:00 Chuck talks about his experience with data and cell phones in Italy some 20 years ago. Chuck says get away form the airports. John and Chuck talks about their experiences in Italy. John talks about trying to find a gym. John also talks about making the effort to speaking Italian only. 10:00 John talks about wanting to hire to tutor for speaking Italian. Chuck talks about his crash course with Italian. John mentions their travel plans until the 17th of September. Chuck talks about the time he staying Italy and everything he explored. 15:00 John mentions liking the cornettos. John ask what he has to try while he is in Italy. Chuck says to ask he locals. More talk about the similarities today with European culture and American culture. 21:00 John and Josh talks about who is in charge at Simple Programmer. Josh talks about his recent family adventure to The Great Wolfs Lodge. Josh further describes his adventure with his kids. 30:00 John and Josh talk about how they hate to responding to loads of emails after vacation. John says some opportunities and more emails with Blue Host and such. 32:00 Chuck talks about his getaway to get some work done and relax. Now Chuck has been planing and doing the 12 week year. Chuck says he is going to have to miss the podcast movement. 35:00 Chuck talks about this sponsorship workflow with Asana, but he may need to change how that is setup. Chuck says he is getting sponsors, but that can't pay until a month away. 41:00 Johns makes some suggestions and help Chuck think about things to think about. John talks about ways Chuck can line up new sponsors. 45:00 Chuck talks about planning to going to the Build conference. Josh ask what Chuck’s plan is for the 12 week year. Chuck explains some steps and strategy for the next 12 years. 49:00 Chuck talks about his plans for the sponsorship on some of his podcasts. Chuck has need talking to Wes Boss and Dave Thomas. 51:00 Chuck asks how to get hooked up with Plural Sight as a sponsor. John says he might be able to do an intro email for Chuck. John and Josh talks about the sponsors or affiliates that have been working for them. 55:00 John talks about interview Cake. Josh again talks about how helpful PluralSight will be as an affiliate for Chuck. 1:01:00 Chuck talks about what he did after his short getaway, from small steps and following the plan. Entreprogrammers talks about which numbers to care about. 1:05:00 EntreProgrammers talk about testing an debugging and thinking they are going to use the data. Josh talks about the wrap up of the book launch and what is next. Plural Sight and sponsorships. Thoughts for the Week John - If someone is not a challenge… Josh - You have to take risk… Chuck - You inner world creates your outer world.

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Episode 167 “Turning Sh!t Into Shitake!”

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Play Episode Listen Later May 16, 2017 76:36

Episode 167 “Turning Sh!t Into Shitake!” 0:15 We’re live and there are 4 of us! John tells us about a strange phenomenon and his video responses. Crazy stuff. John talks about receiving his Apple Air Pods in another strange event. 6:28 Derick tells a story about about a double from amazon. Derick talks about his strange coincidence. Derick asks about a tale about at Simple Programmer. John shares about working with someone to create a course for Simple Programmer. John talks about a mistake on the video. Josh and John talk about trying to salvage the video. 15:00 Josh talks about the uncertainty of the quality of the course. John goes on to explains being accused of stealing the course, and going on to verify the content on UDemy . Come to find out… it was stolen by the hired person. 22:00 John talks about trying to turn this around, by using the actual author’s course to replace the stolen material. Tony the author agrees and launch the course through Simple Programmer. Bubba gets called out publicly. John talks about confronting Bubba. 32:00 John talks about how he learn from his mistakes of not check Bubba’s background. Josh talks about his mistakes as well and cognizing the warning signs. 40:00 Stressfully week at Simple Programmer. Chuck is in Seattle at Microsoft Build. Chuck asks Josh about how he using LinkedIn. Josh gives some pointers on how to use LinkedIn to reach people in a more professional connection. Chuck talks about using BlueTick. 48:00 Chuck talks about looking for sponsors at the conference, and doing in person meetings. Derick talks about his webinar, replacing floors and washing machine. Derick talks about camping with ADHD kids. 52:00 Derick says the webinar went well, and sold 58 spots for the webinar. Derick describes this email sequence. Derick talks about the different JS language he is offer in the videos. Derick talks about what he is offering with his Docker videos. 1:00:00 Derick talks about his survey, and what he learn from it to create the webinar and sales page. Derick is not going to do webinars in May, but plans to get bak to the e-book. 1:03:00 Josh talks about Micro Conf. and a story about a 2 Star review. Josh talks about catching flak about doing a review in the course. Josh and John talk about the out coming and down votes on this review. Thoughts of the Week Derick - Do the Copy Hour Course. John - Turn shit into shiitake. Josh - You don't know anything. Chuck - Reaching out to people…

Episode 137 “We Just Need to Clone Ourselves…”

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 11, 2016 117:30

Episode 137 “We Just Need to Clone Ourselves…” 2:00 John suggests changing up the EntreProgrammers theme song to a dumpster theme song. Derick talks about his parents visiting and introducing them to new technology. 5:00 John mentions visiting Wendy’s in Kansas. John also so shares finishing his half marathon and 5K runs. John talks about how he cannot help dominating anything. 10:00 Derick mentions that Watch Me Code is having a great week since he did a pricing experiment. Derick says its a combination of new prices and new content. Derick says his website now visual fits his business, services and programs. 15:00 John says Derick’s dumpster in not on fire anymore. John says he likes the new framing. Josh ask about how Derick is using RayGun. Derick talks about about his referrals are coming along. 20:00 Derick shares how he is getting a lot of traffic and things are growing for his business. Josh talks about nailing your position in your USP, and how the sky just opens up. Derick talks about his strategy to make things work out for his site. 27:00 Derick continues to talk about how he is formatting products on his Watch Me Code website. John says this is what Derick is meant to find for helping create solid direction for his business. 30:00 Josh looks into the analytics of Derick’s Watch Me Code website, and gives some insight on the clicks what people are gravitating too. Josh and John have the same idea on creating a streamlined shopping cart software. 38:00 John talks about the processes he and Josh are using in the Simple Programmer. Derick talks about how he uses Stripe to take payments by credit card. Josh ask about how PayPal do their payment process. 45:00 Josh rants about a service he is using on Simple Programmer that is broken. John talks about creating a SAS product for tracking. John talks about Drip cookies for tracking. Derick says that is how every re-targeting system works. 50:00 Chuck says that he as an internet entrepreneur is finally getting into the marketing tools side of his business. John rants on the tracking tool idea for marketing. 58:00 Derick says he will not be impress until the software works. So just build it!. John says they are rocking it at Simple Programmer. John mentions that Josh is close to his Mile Stone! John says that picked up hired.com as a sponsor. 1:04:00 John just mentioned that Simple Programmers’ baseline revenue is 20K. Josh is about to reach his milestone. John says he is on chapter 39 on his next book. John shares the revenue report on his first book on all platforms. 1:10:00 Josh says that Amazon will be another traffic source after John’s new book is launched. Chuck says there is no more Bubba on the team. Chuck says at this rate he has fired a person every month. Chuck shares about the work load of his current employees. 1:15:00 Chuck is talking about using UpWork to hire a bunch of people for one job, and pick one of them. Chuck had to new panelist for the Ruby Rouges podcast. Chuck says he is building the panel slowly to get the right people inline. Chuck reads some feedback and emails about Ruby Rouges. 1:20:00 Chuck asks about the sales opportunities during and after a webinar. Hopeful he has some sales twinkle in. John mention how he would never promote someone else’s product again, because of the conversion rates. 1:32:00 Chuck is buckling down to finish off the book he is writing. Chuck thinks that a redesign, similar to Derick’s project would be good for Dev Chat TV. Josh suggests, just building in Thrive to test the pages out. Chuck talks about inviting people to the conferences. 1:42:00 Chuck tell us that he sign up for Patreon for some of the account at Dev Chat TV. Chuck talks about how updates for his backend website. Chuck is reading about how to do 12 week years. 1:47:00 Chuck says he has his sponsorship stuff all figured out. Thoughts of the Week Derick - Forward Always, alway forward. Chuck - The things that are really worth doing, are the things that are not easy to do. John - Learn to love the fight! Josh - You are never done with the basics.

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Episode 122 "Veiny Bastard"

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 21, 2016 129:05

Episode 122 “Veiny Bastard!” 2:00 We’re Live! Derick says he hired his first person on UpWork. Derick shares that he had to revamp the first posting of the job, with Josh’s help to get more people to apply for the job. 5:00 John talks about the changes in UpWork’s contracts with their Freelancers. Josh talks about the changes in the amount of people that apply for the jobs posted, as well. 10:00 Josh suggests to Derick to do an email blast to possibly find people in their audience, before using a freelance service to hire people. 15:00 Derick is now going to be working with a developer/market who moved to Waco, in the same town where Derick lives. Derick mentions a possible joint venture if things start pick up. 21:00 Derick shares his penthouse letter story with the team about a ink pen incident. Derick shares that he found out he had a friend that had went to school with Ryan Deiss. 27:40 Josh shares that he wrote some Java Script over the week, and work on their Simple Programmer stores. 32:00 John gives an update that they hit just over a thousand dollars with people pledging of the Patreon launch. The EntreProgarmmers talk about the inner workings of the Patreon system. 40:00 John talks about mindset and being able to overcome the societal limitations. John gives examples of the armless archer. “Figure out what it is, and use it!” 50:00 John talks about listening to Lest Brown, motivational speaker. John talks about being prepared to become whatever it is that they want at any given time. John says the people sometime don’t realize how important mindset is to the mastermind. 57:00 John says he is doing a Simple Programmer redesign. Also some talk about tuning their children into young entrepreneurs and having them help with selling products for the business. 1:00:00 Then EntreProgrammers talks about learning to design and taking idea from others. John shares that he is being recognize randomly by people around him. 1:09:00 John talks about his Simple Programmer workout program, and dropped to a substantial low body fat. John talks about interviewing Dr. Testosterone, and discussing a workout program for developers. John talks about creating two different diet programmers called Simply Cut or Simple Shredded. 1:15:00 John shares his ideas for creating a marketing program for the new Simple Programmer product. Derick thinks John should change or differentiate the names of the programs further. 1:22:00 Josh says he will do the exercise and learn the science of the workout program. Josh gives pointers about the step by step changes one has to make throughout the training plan. 1:30:00 Derick mentions he wants to be a guinea pig for the workout program and building good habits. Derick mentions he learns quick when he has to make drastic changes when it come to diet. Derick makes a good point about how the program will appeal to the common developer. 1:40:00 John plans around shooting video for the exercise program after coming back from China. John, comes back talking about mindset and understanding specific results for the exercise program. 1:45:00 Chuck talks about getting back into the swing of things after a vacation in Oklahoma. Chuck talks about hitting the newbie market, as a new product. 1:50:00 Chuck talks about getting some ideas from another podcasters in area of sponsorship. Chuck mentions before hand, people were paying per quarter. But now he will be going to a per episode sponsorship program. Chuck is looking into a CRM for the quick email turnaround and sell podcast sponsorships. 1:59:00 Chuck talks about the exposures and press kit number, to get the price of a sponsorship. Thoughts of the Week Derick - Do the thing s that make you uncomfortable, or you will not grow… Chuck - Just get some time and turn it all off.. John - Subject yourself to that, that imposes on your life. Josh - You have a lot more to offer, then you realize.

Episode 120 “Crabs In A Bucket”

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2016 125:19

Episode 120 “Crabs In A Bucket” 2:00 John is having some modem troubles and Derick is excited about his new couch. Derick talks about rediscovering some forgotten toys under an old couch. Derick talks about how an old subscriber had renew their subscription with Watch Me Code. Derick also share some update information on his refund plan. 7:00 EntreProgrammers discuss their refund tactics and how to go about using the trail window before getting a refund. Derick continues on about customers looking for a specific series on his Watch Me Code website. Derick talks about how feedback from his customers are giving him new ideas about products, bundles, and marketing strategies. 11:00 Chuck mentions trying a walk through of the product for the customer. Derick talks about the community on Slack. Derick says that there are a few people joining slowly. Derick is still working on the marketing on the JS Jabber project, and is now see the light at the end of the tunnel. 18:00 Derick talks about a story he is using for his marketing strategy. John mentions his desk is finally coming, but only in pieces. John asks for some advice for a patronage project for Simple Programmer. Josh asks what would be the cost for the patronage to get rid of ads, but provide the value without interruption from ads. 28:00 Chuck asks if the project is worth the work involved. John talks about checking out others projects to see the possibilities. Chuck ask if John considered a membership rather then using patronage. Derick talks about how he rather have a once a month charge for the patronage. 38:00 John talks more about his random bachelorette party encounters on his beach runs. Chuck shares that he lined up a new sponsor, and he is taking Josh’s advice on booking sponsorship base on the quarters. Chuck ask what they think about mid roll sponsorships. The EntreProgrammers talk about when they think Chuck should send out the invoice. 47:00 Josh shares a Dan Kennedy strategy. Derick ask about a particular strategy for buying sponsorships. John makes a great point about doing a non refundable deposit, maybe a 20-30 percent deposit. Chuck asks again about mid-roll sponsorships and getting conversions. Chuck shares a bit about the sponsorship show-clock on the podcasts. John talks about conversions on mid-roll sponsorships. 1:00:00 Chuck talks about growing a following on podcast and emailing lists. Chuck also talks about getting his webinar stuff setup. But he needs help with the support stuff, but ask if he should have Mandy take care of that stuff. Derick thinks this is a great opportunity for her to get experience with something new. 1:05:00 Chuck mentions being introduce to Gale Laakmann McDowell, author of “Cracking The Coding Interview”. Chuck is thinking that he wants to get her on-board for a webinar. Chuck talks about what Gales does and what the marketing company does for her. 1:10:00 John ask how Chuck’s book is coming along. Chuck says he has a couple of chapters and is a rough state at this time. John mentions Chuck needs to find what appeals to Gale, because she already has great success with her book. 1:15:00 John says he has 11,000 words on his next book, and most are going to be blog posts. Josh says to watch out because his content is going to already be out before the book publishing. Derick recommends talking to a few people who have already done the blog post and self publishing. 1:22:00 John talks about being on the up tick of the roller coaster ride of their sales. Josh explains his projects with sublime and sumo me. Josh shares more on his attempt to optimize his content and ads. John talks about the promotion with Dan Martell. Josh says he is not going to mess with SSL… 1:30:00 Chuck ask about blogging and where he should setup his blogs. Derick talks about his experience with splitting the sites up. Derick has 368 people signed for a webinar. 1:45:00 John talks about pissing people off about ADHD on Reddit and getting a few unsubscribes. Derick talks about limiting beliefs, and the reality of the things you can actually do. Chuck talks about what is fair and entitlement. Thoughts for the Week Derick - Stop saying I Can’t… Chuck - Why do yo do what you do… Josh - You don't know anything until you teach it John - Before you say I can’t, check your effort level.

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Episode 115 “Pike or Pipe?”