are you optimizing for is an amazing question that most people don't think about they're just going to say the business growth right they're not going to have an actual deep question usually and that's the best thing that you've taught me was the first day in a mastermind which is answering that question because most people aren't even thinking about it my biggest problem with

the idea of a business for most people is default growth that the default idea and the default demand of capitalism is growth right and it's in entrepreneurship and small business and those things, it's growth at all costs in brackets because it's invisible. So the problem with the mindset of a business is the thing always needs to be growing on some metric, usually revenue and usually money. And people get away from like, why did you start this in the first place? Like, what are you doing? Oh, I started this so I didn't have to commute and spend more time with my family. But here you are chasing, here you are working 60 hours a week and chasing more money than you've ever had before. So what are you optimizing for? What are you coming back to? So we all, you know, get away from ourselves all the time. And that's why communities mentors coaches consultants sometimes you know extremely useful to ask us those questions because without without a lot of practice we rarely ask them ourselves because

if you think about the revenue metric on that like let's say if it's someone like yourself with children for someone like me who's like young the default is like oh if i just make more money then like i can like do less downstream or it helps downstream if i have kids it can help them or whatnot there's always like a it's the word for it there's always like a rationale or there's always like a way to make up for the extra bit of work whereas yourself and i've both just watched with this too being content with where you're at and then building around that is what most people never get to because they feel like they're never going to get it again and i'm even that position right it's like i have to keep the fucking ship alive just because i've never been here before so it's a new territory there is that element too right and

it's fear i'm surrounded i have wonderful amazing friends and i have i know people who make more money than me and i'm smarter than them right and i sit there and go why is he making so much money and i'm smart and i go maybe i should but and this is like you know monkey mind monkey mind and then nowadays i sit back and go, very content doing exactly what I'm on. I've got more money than I know what to do with, more money than I ever need, pouring into investments, you know, doing all the right things. But lots of time, I'm very happy, like don't play someone else's game. And so it is natural. It is really natural. And it's not something that people should feel guilty because part of drive is looking at options, looking at optionality. Part of drive is questioning like, what am I really capable of? And do I want that? But part of maturity is knowing what you don't want and knowing what you won't tolerate.

So how would you advise someone to build that stack that you have? Like what's the, what's the protocol you'd go under? To

build everything. Yeah.

Like, do you do it in segments? Do you strip it out? Like, I remember your advice to me, like we ran the agency for so long, all in and you just said to decouple it. Like, is there a, is there an element of like having to do the yards to get that offer really dialed in and then to strip it to be able to do it like how do you think about that yeah

yeah so growth is growth is a curve like that in terms of the effort curve right the when you're when you're starting and trying to grow something you are throwing spaghetti at the wall and then you're seeing what sticks, right? And this is the difference between the growth and scale phases that is hard for people to identify. When you're in a growth phase, you're just pushing. You're throwing whatever you need at the wall to see what gets results and what you get rewarded with, what comes back, what opportunities come back. Then you reach a stage where it's obvious that more energy and more effort into the thing will generate diminishing returns because that's what will happen. You'll see that in revenue plateaus, right? You will work in an agency, you'll get to 60 grand a month and then you'll work harder. You'll make more offers. You'll do more proposals. You'll do more calls, et cetera, and the calls get more expensive, but people are disappearing out the back door and you're still at 60 grand. Really common. Everybody's got fines this level. For some people it's $250,000 and $500,000, but everybody's got a level where diminishing returns set in. At that point, you need to grow by elimination. And that is what scale is. Scale is investing strategically in resources that enhance the bit that is proven to work. Okay, we're going to reduce down because 80% of our profits come from this product so we're going to kill the other 20 right or if you've got a big audience you realize that you've got an audience asset there like you did and say hey we've got you know excess assets here which is consulting training all the resources that you built up and we're going to sell that to that audience to to achieve scale because that we've generated another asset which is demand through the through the in the course of messaging and talking about those things we've in the in the agency space it's like there are people who can't afford your services so therefore there are people who will buy coaching and consulting below that right so the growth scale waves you know go like that they oscillate back and forth and then you will do that you'll reach the other ceiling the next ceiling wherever that may be it might be higher in revenue for me it was not higher in revenue it was just less hours like since we last sat down and talked my revenue stayed the same my profit stayed the same but the number of hours i worked has dropped a lot so my effective value rate has gone up because i've optimized for my own time

and because of maybe it's the constraints you have like the extra constraints but because you have more customers in your series of products and services do you not have to be like on more because showing up like let's say in the community or maybe dedicating more time that the workshops every week are like really dialed in like do you not have an inherent more stress because there's more people in there no how is that designed though me

not in the middle of it i

don't understand

in in client serving businesses often you'll have like a key person risk and it's not obvious right where everything needs to flow through a certain person like nothing happens without darren saying so or the episode don't go out until i've looked at them and those things after a certain point in scale the everything flowing through you isn't scale you are a bottleneck right and so both holistically in terms of a mindset, I don't put, I don't develop codependent relationships with clients. I coach them to coach themselves as much as they can because codependence is a great business model, but it's a terrible relationship model. Right. I want people to be in my world because they want to be there and they get value from being in that world. But I don't want people to be in my world because they need me because that is inherently limiting to their growth right you

must see that a lot that people have businesses that they buy i

see people perceive that that unless i tell them to do something that they're going to be a catastrophic failure but i disabuse them of that fact very very very quickly but

i mean like you must see businesses that are very predicated based on the fact that people buy into because of the founder most coaching businesses are like that most

modern coaching businesses the the coach is the center of the the universe and everything flows through them and they can't work out why they're not scaling and they're not scaling because they don't want it to because that means more responsibility that needs to flow through them and even less time and energy. So for me, the central point of the business is not me. It's that I'm available in these times, but if you can get different access to my ideas without me, right? You know, thousands of people have bought $100 to $1,000 courses from me that I've built as assets in some cases years ago. And I wasn't there. And I'm not there because I built assets and I'm not in the middle of them. Many of those people then say, I want you to help me customize this and customize that and do that. Just what you've demonstrated here. And I say, well, this is how it works. And this is how you get access to me. But again, I'm arming them with an asset that they go and then yield and understand them. But in the process, I've showed them how I've generated that and created that. I got on with a guy yesterday and he's got a big audience in a digital product space and he's got a passion project, right? And I'm like, this is how I create the offer. This is how we think about it this is how we do it etc in an hour i've given him the asset but i've more more valuably given him the insight on how to reproduce that asset and recreate it not just in this passion project but also in his business so the roi on that is is unlimited so

it's basically like teaching it's coaching people to think at the end of the day that's the biggest take home here is that you're you're able to take that information with permission so

one thing i do um you never come to calls but um one thing i do on calls is um is when i see someone stuck or when i see someone really trapped in their in the spinning or in a group environment, especially in a coaching environment, there's a social thing as well. They don't want to look silly. And if I see someone kind of trapped in that, I'll go, can I consult you? And that's, in my world, code word for can I tell you what to do? right because if I if I ask permission to do that then it shares some of the responsibility of the decision they make and the outcome that ultimately comes from it if I don't ask permission to that and tell them to do something then the outcome of that is much more my fault and the upside of it is also my fault as well so they will they will give me too much credit for it and then that the lesson will be missed but if i just simply ask for permission to consult to someone then the outcome is shared the ownership of the outcome is shared but the lesson is actually continued that they can they have permission to make that decision for themselves language

is important right

expectations are expect expectations are crafted by that language as well so the expectation of who owns something and who takes responsibility for it is um it's very delicate and relating

okay so you think people would buy often buy into coaching and then pass the expectation or responsibility on the coach or they would pass their their

i mean most people want to offload most responsibility for almost everything exactly

that's what i mean but you know in in a coaching setting it's like because in a done for you setting it's all that right it's all that do you get me it's on the service provider to get the result and to do everything and people will be an asshole to you because you're a service provider. So you're like an employee.

Yeah, I own you, do what I tell you.

Exactly. And I'll pay this retainer until I cancel on Stripe. However. Sounds like some bitter experience.

However, in a

coaching setting though, you're passing that responsibility. You're putting, they have the belief in them. You're putting a belief in them that they can go get the result coach coaching

is showing somebody that they already have it inside them to do it consulting is telling them what to do mentorship mentorship is showing them how you would do it yeah

and i think i'm just early in my journey in that coaching element which is, I just want everyone to fucking get really good results. So I'm, I'm very close to it. Not like very close, but like, you know, like a message wouldn't come in and I wouldn't, and it's not that I'd miss it, put it that way. And I get back to people straight away. Does that make sense? Because I want to see people succeed. And sometimes I feel like I don't have to control because we're not physically doing it. That's the best thing about an agency, right? It's like, you want that result? We'll just fucking do what we need to, to get there. And that's, that's the beauty of it, right? Because we have a system that goes with doing it. We're coaching people, miss the steps. They can miss the steps.

Why do you, why do you want people to succeed?

Because they put their trust in me, you know? So like, they think that I'm the person, I can get them the result. And we have, the big thing for me is the fact that we've made it so repeatable for so many people that in like a done for you setting, that it's like, I want to show people that it actually is so repeatable. You know, again, as you said, people have different results over different time horizons. We have some B2B podcasts that are very quiet and small, but they are small because they're going to be small. So it's like this model works in different industries, different niches. And it's like, you can also just do it yourself. Do you get me? So that's why for me, I kind of have that like a little bit of kind of fear or like lack of control. If I see someone not doing the steps they need to do, they jump to step seven. And it's common. It's common because they're looking at the thing they're trying to solve, but they have to go all the way back. And that's why sometimes we've an unsexy offer because we always say that the first part is strategy. The strategy is like, everyone, fuck me. It's a business plan. It's not, but it's the fact that if it's a house in carrots, if it's not fucking done all the rest of the shit doesn't matter uh about people jump into the end zone so who defines success who defines success um it's a good point what do you mean who defines success because like i would define it in the beginning i guess but are you saying like who would come to the end point and be like no we've hit the success mode i've noticed the danger in

coaching is that the coach defines success for other people because they they define that unless you meet this criteria often in business coaching which is revenue or profit or something like that, not actually it's usually revenue, not profit. No one talks about profit apart from me, that the coach defines success, which is unless you make a hundred K a month, this hasn't worked. Right. And in my life, in my experience, everybody defines success differently. And in the course of coaching, for many people, the act of allowing them to invest in themselves is success. For some people, the act of being part of a group is success. The fact that they can be part of the group and also say they're part of the group for some people the act of clearing out half a day of their calendar is to find success because of what they can do with that time because they can go and visit their grandma in hospital right and so the danger for coaches happens when they have a limited definition of success and they put that on people which produces failure because it it's it essentially creates people feeling unsuccessful because they're not allowed to define their own one they're not all right not to find that like

if the promise if you're giving someone a promise you're holding them to that promise and that's why that's why i said i was like oh i'm not too sure am i putting that on because everyone is different like some guys are just getting started some guys are 100 episodes in some guys just want to build a business in the back and so success is different for everyone and they've picked their own journey right because some guys have hit their first 10,000 views on a single video, which is a success to them. And then other people are super stuck and they just want to be get on stock. And so guys want to get monitors. It could be publishing an episode. For

some people publishing one episode of a podcast is math is more, generates more feelings of success in that person than someone who's published 100,000 and, you know, publishes 100,000 in one. Yeah.

Right?

So all I've observed is that people, if given the space and the tools and the care and the access and consideration, will define their own success. Like I have a number of people who are in my world who just love learning. Right. And they would be judged as financially unsuccessful by, by the coaching and consulting space. Right. They do, they have a living and they do okay. And they've been like that for a long period of time. And, but they are very, happy with where they are and they are very happy by getting new insight and learning and my way of thinking and me going what what did you take of this what what do you care about like the learning is success for them and i don't judge that. And then I've got, you know, some of them, I've got absolute killers who are like, where's the next 100K a month coming from? Because until I'm there, it's just like it's all dark and it's not worth it. Right? And again, it's like, okay, let's go. Because I've got both in the toolkit. I'll teach you as long as you want to be taught, you know, and you give me energy back because you give me insight and ideas and feedback on those things. And also, you know, push you up to the top of the mountain. If you, if you really, really want to go there, you know, and I've got people with massive goals and it's like, I believe in that goal more than they do. Yeah. You can get to 5 million a year. They're like, I think I want to. And I'm like, you can. Borrow my belief in that. I'll show you how.