Learning From Others

From a career teaching business in Jordan, to a colleague mentioning, "I work in the CIA," today's guest is an "accidental spy." Listen to her wild stories of espionage and how she transitioning into a career of consulting. Please welcome Gwen Cooper. Contact Info https://coopersolutionsllc.com   Gwen Cooper. How are you doing? Thanks for joining learning from others. Great. Thank you. Thanks for having me. What's going on in California. I miss my California trips. Well, it's, you know, even with a sheltering in place, I gotta say it's pretty great. Yeah. I don't mind that. Yeah. Usually I've talked on, on the podcast before about how I like to go to day trips. I'm in salt Lake city, Utah. So it's only about 90 minutes. And so I'll catch a 6:00 AM flight there and hang out at the beach for six or seven hours and then come back the same night. So, um, a few months. Yeah, but it's the Homeland show is for so many. So reason you'd come for a day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't blame you. Yeah. Well, cool. So you have an interesting background. Um, you've worked in international intelligence as a Sila. See if I pronounce this right. CIA directorate of operations. Is that correct? I worked in the CIA director of operations as a CIA officer. And then you've take, I want to dig in more into that. Um, but just to kind of give our listeners and understanding of, you know, what you do nowadays, I'll, I'll, I'll run down my usual two questions. So question number one is what are you good at? What's your area of expertise and what are we going to learn from you today? Yeah, I'm all about a leadership growth. So how do we get leaders to the next level? And I have a background in leadership, coaching and organizational development and teamwork. So I look at developing leaders from those three lenses. It's like, how do you develop the individual? How do you develop the team in the group? And then how do you do that? Within North sensational context? Perfect. All right. And then of course we all are not so good at something. What is your thing? Uh, I have no inherent sense of direction. Yeah. Ever. It's just so annoying. Other people, they could just shift naps in their mind and I'm like physically, you know, back in the day, or even with my it's like, It's just so annoying, especially working in the CIA. Yeah. That's funny, you know, you know what I didn't realize until I, um, you know, I've known it for a while, but you know, before I started traveling a lot in my early twenties, um, I didn't realize so being in Utah, I didn't realize how beneficial the mountain ranges are to your Cardinal direction as a guide. And then, and then I go to Florida and you just look in any direction and there's nothing it's just all flat and like, which I don't know which way is where. Exactly. I grew up in the Midwest and everything's flat just like, they're like, Oh, it's Northwest. What do you know? What are you referencing? All right. Well, let's kind of work our way, um, from the back, you know, your backstory into, to where you're at now. Um, CIA obviously sounds super sexy and, you know, Dramatic. And so it is, it is, it is, is it as stereotypical as it sounds it had its moments? Definitely. And then there were days where it was just sitting in the cubicle typing stuffs. Yeah. All right. So what did you do there? I entered directly into the director of operations, which is the clandestine wing of the CIA and I became a. What they call it? Uh, uh, C M Oh, so it's also a reports officer and that person is a collection management officer. That person is responsible for receiving raw intelligence from the officers who gathered it. We take the information and we assess the validity of it. We kind of look at where did this come from? Do we know the person this came from what's there? Background, what's their intention for sharing it. What's their access to this information. So we really look at the validity of it from a lot of different angles. Even if we deem it appropriate, we send it forward. We clean it up and send it forward. Um, because our part of our job is also to hide their identity. Certainly information and we send it on to our consumers and consumers who are different government agencies, the U S government agencies, not foreign. Um, and one of the, what are the big consumers was, is can be, uh, the president of the United States. Yeah. So it's interesting that you say, you know, we check the validity and who is this person in Western tent. So, so who, who just sends stuff to the CIA? Like, if I got a tip, like, I don't like that doesn't sound like something that I could just do. Like who, where do these people? Yeah. Well, that's a great question. Uh, so some of them are targeted. Some of our assets are people who are targeted and developed over time because. Of our understanding of what access they have. Some people, like you said, they can be, walk-ins some people just walk into a us embassy somewhere and say, I have this information. I want to share it. So it sounds like for the most part though, you've had some touch point with them in some way before though. Generally speaking. Yes. But some of the most amazing information has come from walk-ins. Yeah. So what kind of background gets you into position like that? Let's go back further than that. Uh, so I'm right now I'm writing a book about my experience and it's me. Yeah. It's, it's, it's overdue and I'm excited about it, but it's connecting. Lessons learned from the field of human intelligence, with leadership development that it's, it's, uh, it's pulling from my experiences and other colleagues experiences. So to answer your question, my, my first chapter is about how I got into the agency and it's called the accidental spy because they didn't grow up thinking. About espionage or reading spy novels or any of that? I was actually overseas. I was living and working in Amman Jordan and I was working for us aid USA ID. And I was teaching business communications, two adults in Amman, Jordan, and I got to no people at the us embassy there. And I got to know them pretty well. And finally, one of them said, you know what? I do. I actually worked for the CIA. Yeah, by the way. And so that was my entry. And I said, and I thought that has literally never crossed my mind. My path was fairly unusual. I think a lot of people are interested in it. They studied political science, they study a lot of different things, but they're, they're preparing for that overseas life. They. They learn languages. I knew French at the time, but there are more targeted languages that are of interest to the agency now. Yeah. What was your immediate reaction to the opportunity? When the person said like, Hey, there might, there might be something here that we can do together. I like God risk taking. I like novelty. I like challenges. Check, check, check, check, travel. I like putting myself into situations where I don't know what I'm doing and I have a lot to learn. And. Yeah, they checked all the boxes, honestly. Yeah. How, how do you like, um, how do you like write in the book? The reason I ask is, is I just finished one and, uh, just was finally published, um, about a week and a half ago. And so I've, I've been in your shoes and it seems like the majority of the people that I asked that I wrote book, um, while they're in, it are not big fans of the process. Yeah. It's all the feelings. I mean, it's, it's a lot of enthusiasm and firstly. Yeah, I'm going to do this and then, then you're in it. Like, um, yeah, it's all the feelings. I mean, I equate it to going through school, you know, it's like college exams and so, um, I think what's helping me a lot is that it's not just about me writing. It's more social because I'm really interacting with a lot of folks that I've known well and where we can, and I'm getting stories from them. So that's helping to believe me and, and encourage me folks on it. Cause otherwise I think the ice, the isolation of it just here, right. A book would be. A tougher slog for me, who who's the ideal reader? Is this like a guide book or is this a story? Yeah, both. Um, so it's, it's lessons learned and I DIA's of, of things to take back as individuals like individuals, like at the manager level and people helping to develop manager development programs. It's that. Moving from individual contributor to leader, to manager and leader. Um, so it's the target audience and are leaders themselves, and they're also people helping to develop leaders. And so they are stories, but I'm also leaving in frameworks and ways to think about how to develop oneself as we tell the stories, who's the story, but, so what, here's a story, but. And we're all humans. And so many of the issues from. Our stories. It's all about human intelligence. So we're all people, we're all people interacting with people in some cases in extraordinary environments, but it's still about how, what lessons do we take from that? Yeah. Okay. So, so now you take all this experience and now you're doing your own consulting. How did you transition out of the CIA and into your own thing? So because I had the experience variance with learning and development prior to the agency, after I was a reports officer, I thought, how can I, that that was great. And that was interesting. And I enjoyed it, but I also wanted to take the skills that I had about development and leadership development and, and help help the agency with that because I'd been through a lot of training. Lots of, I mean, they give us lots of training, which is fantastic. And I also saw the opportunities to improve that and also improve how it met the needs of people in the field. And so, yeah. I moved into a position in one of the client destined training centers. And I started to see the organizational need. We had to bring some of the training into at that point, the 20th century. Um, but also the 21st, when, well, I was there during nine 11. So after nine 11, so much too changed about the way that we needed to be operating and so much changed in the world around security environments and the, the training and the preparation for officers to face those needs was still a gap. So I helped conduct the first research project into identifying what are these new security environments? What do they look like? How do we identify them? And then what are some ways to bridge the gaps in training our officers and preparing our officers for those environments? So that was a, a huge, uh, research project and also just a big, Mmm. That's the word I want to use. It was a real confirmation. It was a real confirmation of the work I would end up doing around the individual team and the organization. And so then after that I went into consulting cause there was really no career path for that. That was a huge contribution I was able to make. And I felt like here's the, here's the best of me and what I can give back to the agency, but there was no career path. So then after that, it made sense to go into consulting. So I worked in change consulting, learning, and development consulting for small firms. And then I've also worked most recently at a price Waterhouse. Coopers is one of their. Coaching leadership, coaching coaches in their leadership coaching center of excellence. And earlier you mentioned three lenses of development. Let's kind of go back and elaborate on that a little bit there. Um, so are you referring to the individual team and the organization? Yeah. So what I have seen in my experience, this is supported by a lot of research in and Robert Keegan being one of them is an adult developmental psychologist out of Harvard, looking at a developmental organization or a growth organization versus what was the learning organization. So learning organizations, relevant teaming and collaboration. Great things. Big fan. It was also about, um, development and big focus was on development in organizations of high potentials. It's like great. But there was a lot of development of other people that that would go on unattended to. And so that was, that's a real loss for an organization because perhaps potentials are being defined is very limiting, limiting. To the individuals limiting to the organization. So the developmental organization is looking at growth organization is looking at what are everybody's strengths and what are everybody's areas of development. And how do we create a safe, psychologically safe organization that allows everybody to be themselves and allows everybody to acknowledge that it's not always about constant performance, but it's about development. And how do we look at individuals and teams as. Opportunities to develop and create a growth opportunity, not an, a growth organization, not an organization where it's all about performance and you have to hide your weaknesses for fear that someone finds out. God forbid, someone find out I can't read a map properly. I can kinda relate to that because I'm actually hiring some more team members right now. And one thing that I've always focused on is when I go through qualifying the talent is I like to. Ask them directly. Okay. You know, obviously what are you good at? But then I ask them, ask them, what do you like to do? Because what you like to do may be very different than what you are good at. Maybe you don't like doing that thing that you're good at. So is that kind of a concept that you apply or you experienced that as well? Absolutely. Because right there, you're talking about, I mean, I love that question because right there, you're talking about growth. It's like, what are you good at? Well, this is what I've already kind of achieved. And I'm really good at it. And there are other opportunities to grow. I mean, in some ways the person who says I'm good at this, and I only want to do this and I just want to stay here. That's a little bit of a red flag. Yeah.   and I want to grow into this area as well. It. Yeah, it's interesting. Sometimes I get a little kind of like you're implying, I get a little nervous or not nervous, but sometimes it's interesting to see the light bulb go off when you ask them and they go, wait, I can do something else. Yeah. Right. I've never, yeah. Maybe sometimes people haven't even entertained it or it's just this subconscious thing that, well, I have to make. Money. And it will be all have to make money, but I have to make money. And, and it's a false narrative around, I have to stay in this lane to do it. And it, it's not necessarily beneficial to the individual, nor is it beneficial at times to the organization? Yeah, exactly. All right. Off, off topic question or our listeners, can't see what's going on, but you got all these PostIt notes in the back. Tell me about that. Ah, I like it. So that's like how you're organizing things. Yeah. Yeah. I have a big, a glass board behind me and I have posted notes, IDEO design thinking style. Um, yeah, those are the chapters. It was just, it was so helpful for me to visually put it on my wall versus new document. Cause I just need to see it all the time. Yeah, I can move things around. Cause I'm also working with other people who are submitting stories and so I can move things around. Yeah. That's like finder to get back to work. Yeah. It's like a, it's like an analog version of Trello. Are you familiar? You use Joe I'm kicking it. It works for me. Yeah, well, I didn't close. And then I walk away when I was doing my book, I'd have to do something similar. I would, you know, make the edits on the digital copy, but then when I'd have to want to have to prove it, I'd print it and then I'd scribble on it and then I'd go back and re input it because it's just something about, you know, seeing it, like you said, and, and. You know, rearranging chapters and like in a physical touchable format. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. And I have a, I have a writing coach who's helping me as well, which I find a really inspiring part of the process and also the accountant from an accountability perspective. Cause I have to know, I promise that I'm going to have X. Chapters or whatever done by a certain date. Is it, was that part of your process? Um, so at the beginning I worked with the lady that helped me just for a little bit. Um, and so what I did is I just vomited on her and then I said, here, the things I want to talk about, can you clean up that mess? And then she kind of said, all right, I think this is kind of the structure that you can follow. And then I took it from there because you know, my things. SEO. And so it's like super technical. And so it's not necessarily something I can just have translated into like a, uh, you know, somebody from a non SEO background, but it definitely did help a ton. And the, the, the writing process in general was interesting. It was a total new learning experience. And during it, it's just, like you said, at first, you're like, this is exciting. And then you get a little bit into it and you're like, I'm really tired. And then, and then, uh, I probably would hesitate if somebody asked me if I would do another one. While I was doing it, but then now that I've recovered a little bit, I'm like, yeah, that was cool. Maybe, maybe later, let me recover a little. But she, you know, she, when she started out with me, she asked exactly what you were asking from the very beginning from a marketing perspective is whose, okay, so you want to write a book, who's your ideal paying client. It's going to pay for it. And I thought that was. That was a really good starting prototype. It was already so bogged down with all these ideas and I want to share them. It's like with anybody in particular. Yeah. Cause you get stuck in your own. Yeah. You get stuck in your mindset as, as an expert. And then, uh, you know, you're in your own little bubble and you don't realize that you need to translate that because nobody else is at your level. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think that was just something I. I think it's just so important for anybody or any businesses con constantly, whenever I'm making a decision about things, it's like my ideal paying client, they care about this. I find it interesting, but yeah. You know what I find it. Interesting. What's the point? My it's funny you say that because when I mentioned earlier, by my little day trips, right? Where I go ahead to California for a couple of hours, that's why I like it. Cause I get there and like, nobody gives a damn about SEL right now. I collect them. Like, I guess there's more to life. Like there's somebody on the beach doing nothing. I should do that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Definitely with the white writing process as well. Like I know there are some people with like, Oh, you should do a little every day. Now. There are just some days I can't. Yeah. I get tired of myself. I mean, I'm so sick of myself. I think that's healthy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one thing you talked about offline was helping people find a, you know, manage the end. You put it kind of in quotes the gray in their lives. So what, what is the gray that we're dealing with? Yeah, so. There's so much uncertainty in life. And I think now with the pandemic, that's really come to the fore. There's so much that we can't anticipate fully and we can try and I think. There's so much when it, when people move up in leadership levels, it becomes more and more about that, about being comfortable with complexity and uncertainty and making the best decisions you can when you don't have complete information. And I find a lot of leaders struggle to acknowledge that. That is the reality. And that's a lot of the gray and that's a lot of the gray that came from working in the agency. I mean, there were a lot of preparations. We get a lot of intelligence, but it's always imperfect and we do the best we can and we plan things and we hope that they go to plan, but we always have to be ready for it to go sideways and be ready to pivot. Did you have like that one guy that everybody in the CIA was like, Oh, this guy is coming forward again. Like the, did you just have like the repeat customers that just regular app? I mean, we have regular assets, so yeah. I mean, I'd say there were some assets that, yeah, it could be in an organization though. A little challenging to handle a little hard to. Manage, they can get information, but they. They didn't like to be controlled. They don't even like the perception of it. So yeah. Those people. Yeah. So when, when you work with these leaders nowadays, um, you talking about how leaders come to find out, that's just the way it is that some things you don't have all the right answers for, and, and as you talk to different leaders or help them grow, is there like an X factor that you see in some leaders? Is there some that are. Born with it and others need, you know, more grooming and education. Uh, I think, yeah, I think there are, there are definitely personalities, styles and values that play into the ability to, to embrace ambiguity and flexibility more than others. Um, But I also say that it's moving from like an individual contributor to a leader it's also really digging into self-awareness and that is the biggest piece to me is, is providing opportunities for people to become self aware and understand their own motivations. And what's driving them. So for example, with a lot of coaching clients I work with in particular and, um, manager development programs, we tend to start out with just values. Like what are your own individual values? Because for people to actually. Come up with like, what are your top three values? What are they, how do you define it? Is there are a lot of instruments that, where it comes defined. I don't care about that. I don't care how somebody who wrote a psychometric test defines it. I want to know how that individual defines it. That is what's driving behaviors and mindsets. And so quite often it's. It's the way we define the world, that's driving our actions. And so there are opportunities for people to grow and. And expand on those definitions that will then in turn, change behaviors and mindsets, the, the concept of, you know, what are your values at face value? That sounds like the most simple question. And then the more I sit here, that's an impossible question to answer. It's probably, you probably have some, so many people that are just, they just hit a wall. Like it's, it's there, but how do you get it out and how you verbalize that? And that process is huge. So a lot of people I'd say going back to your initial question, a lot of people can get really stuck on the ability to think in terms of Gregg because black and white is so comfortable in that that can tie to values around justice or equality. And it's like, this is how it should be. It's either right or wrong. It's like, well, There are times where things are a little bit right. And a little bit wrong. And I'm not saying that we'll need to shift their integrity at all, but it's just, it's exploding. Those does yeah. Analogies for people and what they think of them. And then how do you make decisions based on those things? When things aren't so black and white, and I see a lot of we'll go from individual contributor where. Everything can be pretty straightforward. Like here's my performance. Here are the expectations. I met all of these expectations and not I'm a high potential and then great. You're, you're great at what you do now. We want you to become a manager. Totally different. Yeah. Well fighting with each other. You've got people doing things that are very much in the grade that have to be addressed and it's. Very challenging for them. I think those soft skills are the wild card that are so important, but our little, you know, you can't put those on paper. Like you have to be able to do those things. You talked about being able to negotiate and discuss and, and, you know, be the middle person between others. Yeah. And so part of what I'm writing the book is what are some of these circumstances that people faced in the field, uh, in, in the agency. And highlight a lot of that gray, but then it's also very relatable. It means a high stakes, exciting thing to read about, but the interaction between people is very relatable. Yeah. Well, so what's it like when you work with people, where do you start? What's day one. If I'm working with, uh, an individual one on one a day, one in coaching, it's all about the individual driving the agenda. Like I can't tell somebody else what they need. It's the ethics of coaching is that they come to me and start talking about some of their goals and then I help them. I ask questions and help to flesh that out. So a lot of the process is helping me is. Is allowing me to help the person develop self awareness around what the issue actually is separating root cause from symptoms. And then also helping them identify what are the things that you need to do to get from this point to this point. And so that's where a lot of the adult development, uh, comes into play. Um, a lot of the growth, like what is a, a mindset that might be limiting them. What really matters to them. That's why we work on values. Because a lot of people get stuck on trying something new because they think it conflicts with their values. And so we look at, does that actually conflict? In what way does that conflict with your values? Is that, is that the reality? Is that a story you're telling yourself? So it's, it's a lot of that self awareness and finding new ways to look at things, allow people to try new behaviors and grow into the goals. It sounds like how I talk to my kids just similar. Um, except when we're working with adults, it's, it's the idea like adults actually know what they need. They ha they know what they need, and it's just like, I'm helping make it easier to get there. Yeah. They think they know, but yeah. Yeah. Just exposing them to it. Yeah. Well, it's super cool. Um, Gwen, I appreciate your time. This has been a fun chat. I want to give you the last few moments to share your contact information or let us know how we can find out more about you. Great. Thank you so much. Really enjoyed it. Yeah. Do you have any, uh, I have coopersolutionsllc.com. Is that the best place for people to find more? Okay. Gwen Cooper, Cooper solutions. Thanks so much for your time. Thank you. Thanks, David.

Today's guest spent 10 years in the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force before starting his business in the middle of the 2008 recession. After great success for about six years, working with professional Aston Martin racers, he walked away from it again to find his next success online. Why did he walk away from two stable careers? Because he was exhausted, drinking, and unhealthy and wanted to be the best version of himself. Learn why he says, "change is required to facilitate what you want." Please welcome Stefan Taylor. Contact Info https://www.vincitprofitness.co.uk/ https://www.facebook.com/itonlytakes60days2success/   Stefan Taylor, Hey, thanks for jumping on. You're welcome. Great to be here at diamond. Fantastic to be. Yeah, I appreciate you jumping on, um, kind of end of day for you. You're over in the UK. Um, I like to start with two questions, right? Question number one is what is your area of expertise and what are we going to learn from you today? So my expertise is I'm in the health and fitness industry. I've been in this industry for 20 years. I'm specializing now in the over forties. I'm over 40 myself. Yeah. And a lot of things happen to them, to the body past the age of 13 in terms of hormonal changes. So I found it really important for me to improve my own health and wellbeing by understanding how my body works best. And I think that resonates with my clients. They come to me because. They are going through some of the things I went through, I'm struggling with weight gain, struggling with anxiety and stress, um, finding the right solution because they're generally driven individuals. And when a driven individual is given the right message and the right information. They, uh, the, the doors to success are open and they can, uh, see and feel that health and wellness success within them. So I've worked specifically with people over the age of 40 building your health and wellbeing. Um, I'll be 39 this year. Um, I, I know, I know where this conversation is had and before we get in there, question number two is what are you not so good at? Um, I'm not so good with remembering birthdays. That's a, that's really bad at that. Um, in fact, This is probably the worst. One of the mole X, my mum's birthday tomorrow. So it's in my diary. I see my phone is really and down in other places. Um, I know it's coming, um, but I must admit I haven't or a card. So on tomorrow on a FaceTime call and I know what's coming, my dad will say, where's the card. Because I'm just so bad at remembering to send calls. You know what? You gotta do. You, you said it in your reminder. I like, I live by my calendar, my little task management thing, so I set it like a week early. And so, yeah. So it's like, Hey, so, and so's birthday is next week. And then I got time to send in whatever I gotta send. So well. Yeah. Um, you know, like I said, so, uh, I'll be 39 soon. And it's actually something that I've talked about with other people that I mentor, especially younger groups, you know, one, one young gentleman comes to mind who's 18 and he's, you know, eager to jump into the entrepreneurial world. And I remember among many things, we talked about, one of the things I said was just like, grind it out while you can, because as soon as you hit 30, like things change. And you know, when you're younger, like in your twenties, you think, you think like all like, quote unquote, all that like starts to kick in like late forties, fifties. It's it's like early thirties, mid thirties. And you start having those little hiccups and glitches in your body a lot sooner than you think. Absolutely. Um, and it's all down to sex hormones. Um, It's not very sexy at all. Uh, but sex hormones pretty much dictate on metabolism and around our metabolism, things like cognitive abilities to focus and concentrate our memory. Um, so after the age of 30 for men, testosterone levels begin to decline by. Up to 1.6% per year. So within a decade, you could have lost 10% of your testosterone that gives you that drive and determination. Um, and then for, for females, for women, it's a perimenopause and going through the menopause and that decline of estrogen. So they impact heavily on productivity and focus and direction and, and really being connected with who we are as an individual and who we want to be. So health and wellbeing is, is a huge part of Mack that maintenance of success throughout the thirties to forties, fifties and beyond. Yeah. I think that's a great area of focus for our audience and sort of largely entrepreneurs is, you know, how do you maintain that productivity to maintain the success drive? So since a lot of it is genetics, you know, what can you do to counterbalance that? In terms of genetics. So when we're talking about genetics, where I'm assuming that you mean, if, if this is incorrect, then, then, then let me know. But genetics is what you're blessed with from your parents and their parents and the bloodline you're from. So in terms of genetics that do play a part, um, but you can influence that. So I talked to a lot of people who have things like. Cancer in the family, outsiders, diabetes, all of these lifestyle type diseases in the family, and they assume they're going to get it. So genetics plays a big part in your roadmap to your future, but unless you're replicating those habitual lifestyle patterns that state that market to come into your life. Then you won't necessarily suffer from those things. So a lot of people, I have the word of that in the, in the, in the back of the mind when we're talking about genetics. Yeah. If we're talking about what happens with the human body and how it changes over time, you are completely in control of that thing. You are completely in control of. Anxiety and stress levels. What you put yourself in front of your weight, um, what you're eating to facilitate energy and, and focus, and again, sleep how much water you drink, how hydrated you are. So in terms of health and wellbeing as a human, you are pretty much, if not a hundred percent in control of your future self, by the decisions you're making along the way. Um, and it's, it's important to understand that there are ways to get around it. There are ways to boost our hormone levels to give us greater focus, greater cognitive focus, and drive to give us greater energy to reduce stress and anxiety. So we can continue producing work to the best of our ability for sure. For decades. So in the example where you say, you know, men can lose, I think you said 1.6% per year. So what do you do to kind of, you know, fight that? Like, can you slow that down or do you replace it in other ways to maintain that productivity? In terms of testosterone levels, lifestyle choices will adversely affect testosterone being produced. So, um, alcohol, uh, poor sleep patterns, increased stress levels, um, will all add to a further acceleration of that decline and as well as nutrition and exercise to help boost that as well. So, um, If we take in each one in turn things, I stress, we're all, we all experienced stress at some points in our lives, but some people get used to or accept that stress is just part of the package. Um, particularly as entrepreneurs there's that, um, That grind till you get there type mentality. And if like so many people I'm speaking to who are so fed up with their jobs in their thirties, and then begin on the entrepreneurial route late in their thirties, it's about understanding that you can make significant changes to your lifestyle, to increase testosterone and not accept that stress has to be part of it. So we don't get used to that element of stress in our lives. What about this coffee that I'm drinking right now, better or worse? For me, they're all worse things out there for you than caffeine. Um, again, it depends on how much caffeine you're using. So like alcohol, if you take yourself back, Daymond's when you first had an alcoholic drink. I can remember that. And I didn't need that much to feel a little bit intoxicated. And then as we developed that, um, salient to them, we need more to get to the same place. So the same with caffeine. So you have it receptors, caffeine receptors on yourself. So the more you drink, the less effect it has on you, but knowing that caffeine stays in your system for a good six to eight hours, that. Some people use lots of caffeine. And then there's a strong correlation between lots of caffeine in the day and then alcohol in the evening because alcohol is a great alternative to a sleeping pill. It just knocks out your frontal cortex and you get right off to sleep. So people will say what I drink coffee and all day and I can sleep. All right. And then we find out they have several glasses yeah. The evening, and that switches off their frontal cortex. And then they'd just pass out. But that impacts on their sleep and their ability to regenerate. And it impacts on your hunger hormones. So the less quality sleep you have, you'll feel hungry or the following day, but you'll get used to that caffeine hit in the morning and it becomes an autonomic process. And then you back into that cycle of caffeine, caffeine, caffeine, alcohol, sleep, sleep, sleep caffeine. So understanding that they're behind that fog of belief, there is always something brighter. Yeah. You know, we had a guest just the other week named Tom King he's um, he has a product called guy gone Quito. And so he talked about productivity with like keto diets. And what I liked that you mentioned is, you know, finding the right solution because I've always, I've always been hesitant with people that say, you know, you have to do this diet, this diet for everybody, or this solution for everybody. And I think people blindly walk into those. Too often because it may work for a lot of people, but it doesn't necessarily mean it works for everybody. And, you know, what's interesting is, is I started keto recently, you know, I'm like 80% there. I haven't got a hundred percent there, but, um, I've been at it long enough now that, um, it's been amazing for me on the energy level, because I didn't do it for weight loss or anything like that. Like I just. I just wanted to try it right. For something a little bit different. And when I got through giving my body enough time to go, okay, here's the new cycle. It's been awesome. Um, you know, my sleep, my problem is, you know, I'm a dad to kids, lack of sleep, all that. Um, but despite all that, none of that's changed. I'm still lacking there. But, um, I, I feel way better and it was just, just a slight change for me. And that was the thing that worked for me. So why don't you talk about maybe when people come to you, you know, how do you identify, where do you start? How do you figure out what works for them and, and identify what solutions for sure. Um, there's, there's very common factors that people come to me that they have. Um, and it's, they feel their bodies are resisting change. So a lot of people have tried diets, um, and they might see some success initially, but then the weight loss slows down and then the frustration kicks in and they'd simply return back to the habits that they were trying to escape from initially, um, knowing how the human body works. So you can either train your body to get used to the sugars or carbohydrates that you feed it. Or you can train your body to utilize fat reserves more. So the better quality source of energies is body fat. Um, so I don't take people down a cute genic diet, but understanding how the body can switch from being, uh, an expectant sugar burning machine to a fat burning machine is a transition that you can go through by educating people that. They're resistant to utilizing fat because of what they've done in the past. So you train your body to utilize sugar because of maybe alcohol or the types of foods you've been eating before. Um, so you, when you bring in things like stress or these toxins and stress hormones get stored inside fat cells, and unless you're able to release the, the toxins from fat, then your body won't. Burn fats as a fuel source very effectively. So Keith, Jenny does it very quickly, but within very strict parameters of, if you want to go full Kito, you've got to take out all carbohydrates and that's taking out one whole food group from your diet. I'm not on that path to take in that out completely, but understanding that you can do it. Very similar in training your body to transfer from sugar, burning to fat burning without taking a whole food group out by relinquishing toxins from cells cleaning up your inside. It's like a control alt delete reset on your metabolism. Yeah. Very important that people understand what's going on. So they don't feel restricted by a particular box of a diet. You have to do this to get that. Yeah, cause there's other ways around it. So is when you help people, is the majority of your focus in that space of diet or is it other things as well? It's the majority in that, in that space of diet, um, along with it comes a lot of mindset understanding. So I take people through a lot of mindset work. I've, I've done a lot of mindset work in the past with, uh, professional athletes and those. There's techniques and those systems work with everybody. So understanding who you are as an individual, what your personality type is. And in order to get success, sometimes we have to reach towards the opposite of what we are to get the results. So, as an example, if we, if we feel were quite driven by emotions, then understanding that to avoid repeating. Failure as we've done in the past for their health, then be more logical and have more of a logical approach to how you're looking at your health and lifestyle. If you use a logical approach to it, rather than your emotional subconscious thoughts, then you can make a decision very quickly. And you can put yourself on the path to success repeatedly, get what you want just by pivoting. It's not about changing who you are. It's about pivoting to get success, but ultimately celebrating who you are. You mentioned you'd worked with athletes. Maybe let's talk about your background a little bit, because you did 10 years, you know, being in the UK, the Royal air force, and then you also did physical training. Um, so. At what point did, like, have you always been health focused or was there like a point in your life where you said I need to start? Did you go through your own journey that brought on this career path? Or was it something that you've always kind of been into? Um, my, I have to put a lot of my sports and enjoyment and, uh, Involvement that I do now all down to my parents, because my dad was is, is okay. Was very active. He was in the military. Well, so I had a very supportive family unit, which encouraged me to take part in sport. Um, That also came with a downside because while I was enjoying playing football and basketball, I wasn't focusing on education. So I was, I was much happier playing sport. Then, then educating myself at school. Um, that took me through a little. Dip in my, in my, uh, late teens where I got my first exam results and only pass one. And it was really an eyeopening moment for me that I couldn't just play sport. I had to do something else. Yeah. So my education then continued, but I latched on education with sport and exercise. Um, and with that came success with education because I was doing something I really loved. I then went through university and then joined the board air force as a physical training instructor, which was absolutely amazing. Um, and people say about character building and being in the military and doing things that builds character. It really did accelerate me as an individual in terms of maturity, looking through life with a wider lens. Um, Going through the, towards the back end of my 10 years, I had a, I had a really Rocky time with going through a divorce and, um, it was a really emotional time for me and I was using alcohol too much thinking I was enjoying myself when ultimately I wasn't, I was just masking my insecurities and my sadness with the drink. Um, And I knew I had to leave because the military is very much, it's a drinking culture. Like university is a drinking culture. So you were still in the military during the divorce and the drinking. Yeah. Yeah. So I made the decision to leave too. To cut ties with that. And to, because I knew that if I continued on the same path, that would be, um, it would be faster. So at this time people were telling me, no, you shouldn't leave. Why are you leaving the military? And this was in 2009, when there was a economic decline in the UK and things were going past shake financially. And everybody I spoke to was saying, why are you leaving? Uh, a stable career to start your own business. Um, but, uh, my ego wouldn't allow me to tell them about the problems I was going through. So I started my own business and, uh, It went very, very well in terms of gaining clients and building reputation, et cetera, it was in the health space or something else, the businesses in the health space. So I was working as a personal trainer, seeing people once one traveling around my immediate area, I'm still in personal training and injury rehabilitation, which was a specialization. Um, and I. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Aston Martin racing. So I'd spend the next five years of my fitness career traveling around Europe and around the world, working with professional racing drivers. And it was an amazing experience to be able to a dream because I love motor sport. Yeah, all the time, just building confidence, understanding myself better, utilizing coaching psychology techniques with those guys. Um, so it's all the way through my life and my initial career, as there's always been sport involved, there's always been that connection to health and wellbeing and wanting to help others. So I'm a helper. So I. I quite often put people first before myself and that's something I've got to work on because unless I'm strong enough, I can't help people better. And that's something I've realized in the last sort of three, four or five years. So building myself has been a real journey of ups and downs. Um, now I'm at a point where. Five years working in the racing industry and people see me flying all around the world, staying in nice hotels, um, being in the, in the, on the pit lane and people are thinking, wow, and now I'm saying to the same people, I'm leaving this and they're saying, yeah, no. Why, why, why are you leaving again while you, you just got, you got a fantastic job. You're, you're flying around the world. You're getting paid well for it. And now you want to leave. No the same conversation with being repeated, um, sort of that, that were, that was said when I was leaving the military and it ha how many years later was this between, so you leave the military and Oh, eight Oh nine. And then how many years, uh, building up your own thing, was it when you start telling people you're going to leave that? So this was around six years. So I left the military and there as spending around six years, building my own personal training, business rehab business, working with racing, drivers, working with some fantastic personal one-to-one clients. And now I'm saying I'm going to stop again. My ego is like, no, you can't tell anyone why. But I I'm struggling with being away from home all the time. I'm fatigued. I'm just losing interest in my passion because I'm working so hard. Yeah. So I've got to get that back. So now I'm saying to people I'm going to work online, I'm going to create an online business and the same people are saying, how'd, you know, that's going to work. What are you doing? What you're doing? It looks amazing. So for the second time I leave that and I start a business online against the advice of all those people around me and for the last four years has been the most rewarding and enjoyable, satisfying following my own purpose plans. I've I've had over 20 years. Um, I now work online with people in a, in a, in an area and a niche of people who are struggling themselves, who also have been through similar things to me who are striving to support families who are, um, wanting a solution, but constantly coming up against the wrong message or incorrect messages for them. And. Providing that solution for people and seeing them go through that change is a true blessing for me to be able to share someone from being completely frustrated, low self esteem, as it goes through that 12 weeks later and be this is just changed my outlook on life. Yeah. Is that kind of the average timeframe? Do you have kind of like a general fixed range, like you said, 12 weeks or are, is it a case by case scenario for each individual person you work with? So the program I run is it's 12 week program. Um, some people will accelerate themselves very quickly through that 12 week program. Some people will take much longer than that dependent on whether they are able to see themselves from that 50,000 foot view and accept they're responsible for where they are. That's probably the hardest thing for people to say. It's my fault. The reason why I'm here and the quicker you can say that and accept that change is requires. To facilitate what you want then acceleration is, is rapidly increased. Um, but it's alive. I like to say Damon, it's a lifestyle choice to be healthier or to be fitter or to be slimmer. No one has no one's ever. Accidentally put weights on no, one's accidentally gone to bed too late. No, one's accidentally repeated levels of stress. It's done by choice, whether it's a subconscious choice or not. Um, so it's, it's, it's very much individual, but people really do make lifestyle changes for good. And don't go back. I think you're talking about subconscious, um, is super important because I think it goes beyond just the scope of health. There's so many that even just, you know, me working with other people, um, just, just limiting beliefs, self-doubt things like that. There's so many things where, um, it, it seems like the simplest thing is the cause of the biggest problems and it sounds like it's the same thing in the health space as well. Yeah. Absolutely. When you, when you understand that 95% of our daily thinking comes from our subconscious and our subconscious thoughts is built from years of programming. That only 5% of our thinking is conscious and conscious thoughts is attached to logic. And when we can make changes based on recognizing subconscious, seeing it being wrapped in emotion, And past behaviors and recognizing it for what it is, and then using a conscious brain to attach logic to it. You can make so much, uh, you can. You progress, you just accelerated, it's like a catalyst when you understand how the whole process works. It really is. Um, as we get kind of close to wrapping up, I wanted to ask if there's any out of any of the people you work with, and obviously you don't need to give away, you know, personal information, but is there like a, a success story that really stands out as a before and after, you know, maybe more than other people you've worked with something just amazing that was accomplished out of the transformation. There's. There's several people really. Um, and one really stands out. He is a CEO of his own construction company, um, in his mid fifties and had been struggling with his weight for years and had had, it was getting a lot of earache from his wife. About his eating behaviors about his weight gain. And it was causing him a hell of a lot of stress, which impacted then and his business. So people say that we don't have business problems. We just have personal problems that leak into our business. So he I'd spoke to him a couple of times and he'd asked to meet me. So we met in a coffee shop and, um, It was one of those really informal sit down. I was just grabbing a flat white and he came and sat down. Jordan is a lunch break and is in his work and his work here and within the space of 15 minutes of just chatting backwards and forwards, he said, right, I want to, I want you to help me. And I wasn't expecting that. So we were just talking back as a board and he was one of these people that had just accepted his health and fitness was poor and it was going to be poor. And he was someone who enjoyed exercise. It was always at the back of the group. So he liked mountain biking, used to go out with a group, always at the back. And people saw him as the unfit. One people labeled him as he'll be at the back. So we worked together for three months and, uh, he lost just under three stone. He was a bit disappointed that he didn't make the streets. Don't Mark. He initially said to me, this is a little bit expensive. I'm not sure about spending this money on health and fitness. I've never done this before. Went through the program. Um, they earache his relationship with his wife, improved tenfold because now he's more energized now he's sleeping better now. He's um, his communication is better cause he's more alert. This cognitive thinking is better. Now, the things that are causing him, grief in his business, his paperwork, his admin. Um, these office space is now tidy. Um, all of those things that were given in grief for now within his control, he feels now he's in control of those things. I can mention. He lost his now lost more than three and a half stone. Now, is it the front of the group? When he goes mountain biking? Now his peer group, his friendship, peer groups. See him. As a different person. Now they communicate with him as a different person because he's not at the back. He's not complaining. He's not using excuses now, is it the front with a smile on his face, really enjoying life. And that energy is feeding out into the group. And he said to me, he said to me at the end, you know, I said at the start that this was a bit expensive, he said, Knowing what I know now, I don't pay you double or three times or four times as much because of what I've experienced now. And it's not about money. I'm not in the fitness industry to make money. When someone turns around and says to you that they value it so much more than they initially did, because it's brought them so much more than they originally thought. That for me is, is the whole reason why, if I wake up earlier than my body actually wants to get out of it bed, that's why I wake up so early. That's why I, I sit in my, in my, uh, in my office at home. And that's why I love working with people because the untapped potential, as you know, Damon, is it just behind that fog that people see. Once you, once that folk disappears, then wow. It is a super crazy and just for our audience. So three stones is about 40 pounds. And so that's, that's a huge success story. And especially in just three months. Uh, but yeah, it's super crazy. And, and, and I've talked about this to, to our listeners before. Sometimes it's hard for me to relate to, and I don't know if it's just coincidence. I've been fortunate to always have like a forward mindset, but not until years, recent years. Have I realized that. Well, I'm the odd ball. I, you know, to me, it's always like, okay, if you want that thing, I go do that thing. And then everybody else it's like, you know, I'm hesitant to go do that thing. And like you said, it's just, there's a very thin line, a thin fog between, you know, what's stopping you and what your potential is. And it's, it's a, you know, it's. To a lot of listeners, it probably sounds, um, you know, more simple than it is, but it, it, it really is that simple. Right? You just, you got to see past that little bit of fog and there's so much potential that you're gonna accomplish. Um, how, uh, the last question on, on that gentleman, you just talked about how long between, when he said. Um, you know, this is expensive before he, you know, maybe he didn't, he didn't literally tell you that now he understands the value, but, but maybe understood, or you were able to interpret the study then understood the value. How long between when he said this is too much between and then, okay, this is what the value. Okay. So a lot of the time people don't make the decision to change their lifestyle overnight. So people will say to me, I've been thinking about this for years. I've been trying to improve my health and wellbeing for the past five or 10 years, but I've not found the solution. So I'm super proud of being in the health and fitness space, but I'm also a little bit ashamed of it as well, because there's so much BS. In industry so much of it is about here's your quick fix. You've just got to drink this shake. You've just got to take this pill and that will fix it clearly. It doesn't because diets don't work. Um, he'd been thinking about this for years of, and he got used to being a certain weight, even though it was creeping up and up and up. So. This guy was 16 stone in weight. When we had that chat in the coffee shop, that's band two, two 25 for our listeners. Okay. Yep. Two 25 pounds. Um, so he, he knew he had to make a decision. We'd had a conversation prior to that, just a, um, a very informal chat. So in passing, I'd seen him before and we, we, we chatted and he, he knows someone I'd worked with before. So he'd been out to speak to that person as well. Um, he said to me, join that chat in the coffee shop that. If I don't do something now, then I don't think I will do it. Oh, I'm just going to keep beating myself up and I'm going to just go for it. So in that moment he made that decision. So, yeah, and I think this might, I'm not sure that the people who make decisions quickly. Like that in the moment who've been thinking about it. And then they approach someone who who's got the solution. People who make a decision quickly will do really well. People who see a solution and then back away from that solution and then have to keep coming back and ask questions and then going away and then coming back and ask more questions they don't tend to do as well, because they're not committing to that thing. Yeah. Even though they know it's going to give them what they want. So yeah, there was, there was some time where, and I couldn't say how long exactly. He'd been thinking about getting these health and wellbeing in order, but, um, yeah, he was on a three month. I've worked with him for three months. Yeah. Well, let's get on him to have the opportunity to recognize that it was kind of now or never. If he was going to make a change. Well, Stefan, I appreciate your time. I want to give you the last few moments to share with our listeners, how they can get ahold of you or find out more information. Sure. Um, I'm on LinkedIn, so you can find me a Stefan Seder on LinkedIn. We also have a website it's called Vinci pro fitness, and people always ask how you spell been seat? Uh,vincitprofitness.co.uk. And you'll be able to contact me through there. Um, or on Facebook it's Stefan Taylor. Um, feel free to drop me a message. And I can say to everyone, we can just jump on and have a virtual coffee and have a chat. Yeah. We'll get those links in the show notes, um, and seat profit and associate at UK. And then we also have your Facebook group on here. It only take 60 days to success. And then as you said, like Dan Stefan Taylor that's S T E F a N. Thanks so much. You're welcome. Pleasure.

Today's guest helps find the BS in... yourself. Known as the "BS Buster," as in belief systems, and yes, the other "BS," you can break down those walls of self-doubt. But first you have to identify why they exist. Not only here to share advice but their own story of how they came out of their shell to find success, please welcome Kimberly Hambrick. Contact Info https://www.kimberlyhambrick.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberly-hambrick-73a14a7/ Kimberly Hambrick, my friend, how you doing? Hey, I am doing well. I'm so excited to be on your podcast. And just to talk with you again. Yeah. You know, we've had a couple of casual conversations here and there, but I think, uh, you know, we obviously engage a lot on LinkedIn, but I think this is probably going to be our first, you know, legit lengthy conversation. Well, you know, David I'm crushed because you were on my podcast and she's not considered that Olympian. Well, yes, but I think that that's probably, that's probably more one sided towards me. So now I get up, I get a puck and pick your brain. No, how come? How come? Okay. I will on this one. I didn't know you were a PhD. Tell me about this. Yeah. So, um, well, you know, I wish I had a really fabulous story about it. When I worked in corporate, I worked as an educational consultant, so it was assumed that I should get my doctorate. I've never taught. I've never been a teacher. I usually tell people I'm just not good with other people's kids because my know where the line is, but I focus on, I focus on providing training and professional development to, uh, People who worked in the education field. But my favorite story when I got my PhD, my boys they're 23 and 26 now, but they were young. And so they were so excited and they told everybody mommy's a doctor, but not the kind that can help you. I'll just talk to you. I have been humbled ever since then. I'll just talk to you. Well, I think knowing where to draw the line in the sand, being good with other kids is probably a good thing to figure that out in advance. Yes. Yes. I, you know, I agree. All right. So the usual two questions, question number one is what are you good at? And what are we potentially gonna learn from you today besides talking? Yeah. So I'm just going to talk to you. That's all I'm good at now. Actually I'm in the Lynch leadership line, so I'm a leadership development, personal growth coach and trainer. And what I like to tell people is I design empowered leaders. Who then go out and empower others. And I'm also known as the bees. Yes, Buster, and so BS his belief system. But I also refer to it as that bullshit, swirl of negative. Emotions that run in our brain the whole time and the whole various successful people back. So that's what I do. Well, I want to follow up on that here in a moment, but not until after I asked you question number two, which is what are you not so good at? I am not so good at singing and I absolutely love singing. I love it. It is, it is my stress reliever. It is my go to. And I'm not talking bad, I'm talking really bad. Um, I've been called out a couple times. Uh, I was mowing grass one time and I had a fenced in yard and had headphones. Well, just jam. And while I was singing and. After about an hour after I was done mowing my neighbor checks me and he's like, Hey said, you know, cause I just put a fenced in backyard. He's like, how's the fence. I'm like, I'm love it. And he said, Hey, your voice isn't that bad. And I was like, so now when I mow grass, I listened to books on tape. Well, that's what I was going to ask. It is like, even though you say you're not so great, do you, do you still try and sneak it in when he can in the shower and in the car and everywhere else? In the house everywhere. I mean, if you see me in the car, I'm always singing. I'm, I'm the oldies, you know, the classical, the classic rock and roll, um, country. I imagined myself as a, um, West Virginia Cher at time. Cause I can fill it out. But I'm not good. It makes me happy. So that's all that matter. There you go. There we go. All right. So let's talk about what you say, you know, your, your background, how you help people break through their limiting beliefs. And what's been interesting to me to kind of acknowledge in the last couple of years is I've always been very confident and, you know, if I, if there's something I want to accomplish, then I don't go, Oh, I wish I could accomplish that. I start, you know, reverse engineering and thinking, okay, how do I accomplish it? And I've, I've learned that I'm the odd ball out and. Uh, so I'm appreciative of that now, but it's still, you know, unique to me that it's more the dominant occasion where people limit themselves in their beliefs. So like, why is that? Why is that the more you would think that everybody wants, would want the best for themselves, which I think they think they do, but why do they stop themselves so frequently? Well, I'll speak personally about. My own journey. I, I resigned from corporate coming up on 30 years. And if you had looked at me, I was very sorry, successful. I was constantly getting promoted. I was constantly in leadership roles, but I didn't believe in myself. And so if you don't have a strong belief system in yourself, you're never going to outperform your mindset. And that's what was happening to me. I was kind of. Starting to look around at other people and comparing myself to other people. And more often than the not, I find people who are very successful, very good at what they're doing. They have this little voice in their head that is saved for me. Mine was, you're not good enough. You're not worth it. And. It's mine developed from childhood, you know, nothing really bad, really loved, but I was the middle child and I was constantly overlooked. And I think I just learned to play small my whole life. So, so that's how it develops a lot of people more often than not people who are successful do have a little bit. Of a limiting self belief. Um, I absolutely love your attitude. And I've learned to do that by working through mentors with mentors. And to be perfectly honest, I can do anything I want to do these days. I couldn't even sing if I wanted to, but I'm, don't put, don't make me put you on the spot, but I'm not going to, so do you think that, so is it that people. May not have the limitations. And then, like, in your example, you sounds like you got pretty far and then had the, kind of the lack of competence. So I kind of imagine there's two options or two scenarios. So do people get far and then become hesitant or do they fake it until they make it? And then it eventually catches up with them? I think for me it was a fake it, you make it. And, and then also what I tell people, I actually got to a point Damon, where I call them got kicks and I had. Too pretty, um, significant gut kicks in a row. One was personal that led into one being professional. And what I realized was because, because I did not believe in myself enough that when people entered my life, that knew, I didn't believe in myself, some people would take advantage of that. And what I did is I created an environment for people who knew. That I had just a little, um, chip in mind armor and they kept picking away at it. And I started to realize that I created that environment. I'm not taking any ownership for people's actions after that, but when I realized that I did that, I got mad at myself and I wasn't going to do it anymore. So I think. It, it takes something, you know, for, for people to make that change. Cause this was difficult work. And for people to make the change something right. Has to happen where they have to say no more. Yeah, for sure. I think that applies to a lot of things. I've talked, a lot of other guests were, yeah, they've had something happen or there's been advice that we all know, um, or is just pretty common knowledge, but you there's a big difference between knowing it and actually embracing it. And there's so many things along the entrepreneurial journey or self discovery journey that you just. Like you kick yourself because you're like, duh, I know that, but you have to go through it before you actually take a change based on that concept on so many things. So what, alright, so now you kind of take this knowledge, you shared your journey, which I appreciate. And then now you help others go through and figure out how to kind of maybe expedite that process a little bit. Yeah. So part of what I do is helping them with their belief system. If it's. W where they're struggling. So when you're talking with, and I focus primarily with leaders, trying to help them advance their leadership, if you will, and you can find out sometimes in those coaching sessions, if there's something holding them back, and when you dig a little deeper with them, you can find out that it's for the most part, it's an unfounded belief that we have about ourselves, or it's an unfounded belief that we've allowed people. I always talk about betting the voices you listen to carefully and, um, I think when I didn't see my value, I wanted other people's to see my value. So I listened to the product and the years of a colleague saying every time we had a conversation, do you know what your problem is? Mmm. You know? Okay. What's my pro. I started to think I have a problem. I'm the problem. And I wasn't, uh, so, so that's just one of the things, but I'm really focused on. Because of the, and I didn't corporate and what I do now, a lot of times people get into a leadership role based on how many years they were in the organization or what's on their resume, um, am a PhD. So people will say, great, she's PhD. She's a leader in the project. Not necessarily, not necessarily. So I really want to help leaders. Understand what their strengths and skill sets are and how they can best lead people. And that's the greatest story I get right now is helping people go from great to greater. Well, how did you make that jump to begin with from your corporate world over into this helping other side? Okay. So this is where I put the disclaimer do not do what I did. Um, because I, I was at work one day. The BDS was just swirling around with, um, uh, in a conversation with the colleague. And I said, I resigned. I I'm, I'm leaving. I that something, there was something happening that I just could not be a part of anymore and I resigned. And so then, you know, walk away. I feel really good about myself the next morning. And I wake up and I'm like, what the hell was it thinking? And what am I going to do? And. Because I'm very competitive. I was going to make it work. And so I had been toying with doing my own business because I am a part of the John Maxwell team. And I had joined the John Maxwell team probably about three months prior to my resignation. And I thought I've been coaching people for years prior to joining. I'm good. At coaching and mentoring people, I'm going to do that. And I set out to do it, but that's how it's happened. There, there are some times that I'll be perfectly honest with you. I'm a person of faith and by the grace of God, I was successful. Um, but then I had to really lean into it and I had to work on it. So I have a couple of follow ups to that. So clarify to listeners who may not be familiar with John Maxwell, what that team is. Yeah. So, so John Maxwell is. The leadership guru of all times. And he's an international author speaker. Uh, and I was certified as a coach, probably about four years prior to joining the John Maxwell team through international coach Federation. Because like I said, I was doing a lot of coaching and mentoring and it was really important to me that I understood the ethics of coaching. And I understood the process before I would. Truly go out and coach people. I didn't know that John Maxwell had a team. And so to be a part of the team, you get certified as a coach speaker trainer and a leader facilitator. And the really neat thing is we get a lot of his content that we could then go and teach. And so that's really good. I've spent my career developing my own content, but now I have John's content and, and that's really neat. And, and I will say. Because we're recording this. I don't know when you're going to release it, but we're recording this and we're still trying, you know, coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And one of the things that I've really seen John do is transition. His business to be a voice out there to help people not only lead through the crisis, but lead beyond the crisis. And it's, it's just been amazing to me. Yeah. I think we, we briefly touched kind of on that concept, um, on one of our LinkedIn posts together about how, you know, it's obviously unfortunate for a lot of people given the current circumstances, but. Um, you know, at some point we'll look back and there'll be a lot of positive things that come out of this, just because of how, you know, people had to pivot and industries have to change and evolve. And so at some point there'll be some positive that comes out of this. Now I am curious. Okay, so you, at one point you just say, okay, I'm done. Ha ha. Had I been building up until that point though? Or was just something that dramatic at that moment. It was at, you know, um, so I don't share a lot of details, but I'll share some of the details. Um, so the first got kick was a personal one with my youngest child. And we were coming out of that. It was about a two year process and, and, and you're a parent it's really different when, as a person who's in control, there's nothing you can control. You just have to be there and love and support. And as I was coming out of that, I found out that a colleague had shared that story up about my son and the company that we worked, not a big deal. Wasn't embarrassed, not ashamed. This was my life, but it wasn't that person's story to tell, like, it's not my story to tell. So I had said something. And I thought we were okay. And then I found out later that we weren't, and it was in a conversation where I was told that this person had secretly recorded for me or for 10 plus years. So audio video, okay. In journaling for 10 plus years. And when that was said to me and nobody else had a problem with it, I had a problem with, did this person do that to like other people or you just, for one reason or isolated? I don't know if I was just that special. Um, I joke and say after I left that person probably didn't have a whole lot of stuff to do. I'm sure they probably found another person, but it was truly. It was truly that, that somebody would my brain doesn't and this is where I, it circles back to my limiting self belief. First of all, my brain can't even comprehend that. Okay, Damon, you and I meet. And the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to start documenting you. Cause I know just one day I'm going to need something. I can't comprehend that. And then for these actions to go on and on, and then nobody thought it was a problem. But, um, but I realized as I stepped away, I think because I was so concerned about making sure other people saw my value value, how could I miss somebody recording me and not even know it? Yeah. So I think it was, it just made me feel icky. And I needed to walk away. So, um, years and years and years ago, somebody told me that my moral high horse had short legs, you thing ever. I love that. And I know it's an insult, but it is money. But there was just something about that, that I thought I can't work here and I can't be around this person. And so that's why I exited. Yeah. So then you say that, you know, you're fortunate to have found success. Like how long would you say give us like some time period breakdowns of okay. Day one to your first. Okay. I think I'm going to make it a moment to like, okay. I am making that moment. Yeah. So, so day one was, what the hell was I thinking? Um, bam. Then I got it. That it was like, okay, you wanted to do this. Let's see. So I created my business. Um, you know, I named it, I created my business and I knew what I wanted to do. And then I was kind of finding my way forward. Um, what was really difficult for me early on is my career in corporate. I was corporate development, business development. So I was constantly creating relationships, networking, bringing in multi-year multimillion dollar contracts. I was good at that. And then all of a sudden I'm over here. It's like I have to sell me. Yeah. And, and I've lived with that for sure about a week and it was very ugly and uncomfortable. And then I realized I'm not selling me, I'm selling what I can do to help people. And then I got a little bit comfortable with that. So, um, I was out of my own for about six months, my first year. And I was very proud of myself that I ended that year with the revenue that I would have made had I stayed employed and I, and I was like, I did, it was so great. And then I got on a call with a mentor and I said, I think I need a business plan. And he asked me what my business plan was before I, I said it was to make sure the bleep didn't win. I mean, that was my business plan. It was pure fight and that wasn't healthy, that wasn't sustainable. So I worked with a mentor to develop a business plan and what I was finding. And I think this is something that I hear about some other entrepreneurs. And I had just commented on somebody's post about this. Once I started to get success. And once I was. Getting contracts. I felt really good about myself and I forgot that they had to continue just keep the foot on the gas boat, so to speak. So I had a great seven months the second year. This is like, I'm making so much, I have a contract, so I've making some money.   And then all of a sudden I realized, well, these are coming to an end. And so that was the lesson. The lesson for me was that you have to continually do it. So the words that have been constantly in my head these days are consistent and intentional action always, you know, celebrate the win, go after a piece of work, get it, celebrate the wins. Do good work because you want that as a repeat client at the same time, find another one, find another one, find another one. Yeah. I actually remember pretty clearly kind of like a shift on, on LinkedIn where you and I engage a lot. And it wasn't like, as you said, you don't give out a lot of details and it's not like I picked up, like there was something specific that changed that you could tell there was a change in your trajectory and momentum. And so it's been interesting to kind of follow that growth. Thank you. Yeah. You know? Well, when you think about what my LinkedIn Cherney was, um, Before the company that I resigned from, I worked at another company for about 20 years. And then I went to this other company. So I created a LinkedIn profile. And I know the day, because you know, it was in, uh, June of 2000, most of mine. And I, my first LinkedIn post was so excited to be working for X company, you know, still doing the same work, reach out if you have a need, I exit corporate in 2018 and I'm like, LinkedIn accounts. I had one post it's just that one and nine years later, I suppose, for nine years later. And then I realized maybe I should do this a little bit differently. So I had to find my voice and I had to get comfortable with my voice. So I appreciate that you picked up on that because I am somebody who's struggled with limiting self beliefs for so many years, even though I knew I was good, there was this point where I thought. I don't have anything to say that somebody is going to find value in. And then I realized, no, I have something to say. And if the one person that needs to hear it hears that. And so just as I got comfortable with my own belief of myself and with my, the gifts that I bring to the table, I think it's just been a completely different trajectory. So I appreciate you noticing that. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that you kind of jumped on in 2018 because in 2018 is when I really started embracing it too. I had a little action before that I didn't have a nine year gap, but it was more than one post. Yeah. Yeah, it was largely dust. And, um, I, I, I, it actually started because of Facebook and so on Facebook. Like, I'm not like I don't use Facebook so much as, as probably the majority of people do. And you know, there's a lot of people say it's negative and this and that. And, and like, I was kind of in that middle ground where I was like, okay, I get why other people like it, but I don't don't necessarily. And so I went through and just deleted everything and, and I actually, my wife and I, you know, if you hit delete on Facebook, it doesn't really delete it. And so what my wife and I did is we deleted it. We went through, it took like three weeks. It was mostly her. God bless her because she went through every single post. Manually hit, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete every single pitcher, unfriend, unfriend, unfriend, unfriend, unfriend, just, just totally wipe the slate clean. And then, um, because I wasn't, you know, I was on it like everybody else was, but I wasn't nothing productive was coming from it. And so then I was like, I'm just gonna wipe this out. And so, uh, I just kinda stepped away from social media for awhile. And Facebook was kind of the only one I was really on. Um, and then at some point I was like, Hey, you know, I'm missing opportunities. And they weren't opportunities that I was taken advantage of. Before, but now being totally away at now, I could see that better. And so I was like, I'm going to get back on and why don't I, you know, like you said, give up, give out value. And I had to go through the same thing. Like, what's my voice. What do I feel comfortable talking about? How do I do it? What can I talk about consistently? Um, and so then it was in, I think it was November, December, 2018. And so that's when I got on and, and I was like, okay, well we'll just give away the farm and just started. So I took a, uh, a much more transparent. Um, you know, LinkedIn all business, Facebook, 50 50 business, but here's a little bit of my personality, but I think it's, I say all that to circle back to what you were talking about, how it's important to find your voice, because there's so much potential with whatever platform of your choice, wherever your audience is, but you really have to trip over yourself for awhile and like figure out what you're going to talk about, how you're going to lose the imposter syndrome and be consistent at whatever you're good at. Yeah, no, I agree with you and see me stories and people's stories. And I connect with people around their stories and you have to be authentic and authenticity is, is a fine why? Because some people, you know, the big debate of Facebook is personal. LinkedIn is business. I crossover from time to time on short, but. Don't be too transparent at too personable, but let people see who you are because you're creating a relationship. I really have, um, I don't do a hard sell. On there. And I really get for people who do hard sells, that's great. It works for them, but it doesn't work for me. And I definitely don't like being sold to. And so this is just the balance. So I, I believe, you know, if you go back to that first question, what I think I'm good at, I think I'm good at creating a dialogue and a relationship and getting people to want to have a conversation with me. Um, I'm bad at just saying, Hey, Damon. I think you need this and we need to work together. Yeah. Yeah. You know what though? I've cause I'm the same way. It's not that I can't do the cells. I can go in that mode, but it's, I just don't prefer to, and I think, I think the nice thing about that is you end up working with the people that you like to work with because you didn't go through and say, buy my thing. And then you've got somebody that said yes, Even though you may not necessarily enjoy the relationship, the working relationship with them. So for me over the years, you know, during the infancy of entrepreneurship, you're like, uh, you know, I want that sale. I want that sale. Um, but for me it was like, okay, well, I may not want that relationship. And so for the Y for awhile, it kind of sucks to turn that down, but then you realize it's actually. Valuable. And then now it's like, that was a good move Dodge and that guy. Absolutely. And those are the growing pains that we all have to go through, you know, are we chasing the money or are we chasing. The work and, and, and sometimes it's hard to say no, but I have said for years, even when I was in corporate, I used to say that I'm an acquired taste, not everybody's going to like me or want to work with me. And people said, well, you know, that sounds a little negative about you and you shouldn't say that, but it's very true because I'm not always the best fit for people. Other people. So when somebody reaches out and they're interested in coaching or wanting to develop themselves, that's a huge step. And if I find out that I'm really not the best fit, um, and sometimes just as you said, it's just, I want to work with them. I want to be able to refer them to somebody else that I think would be a better they're fit. That's truly one of the things, when I think about what I really love about being out on my own, it's. The selecting the work that I wanted to do, working with the people that I want to do. And to be perfectly honest, I, you know, I said earlier that I'm a person of faith. I don't push it, my faith on people, but if I want to talk about my faith and people are okay with it, I can do that. Versus in the corporate world where, um, I got a 20 minute lecture one time because I referred to the holiday party as a Christmas party. And I just thought, okay. And after the person was done with the lecture and it was coming from a genuine place of I'm hurt because this person. Grew up Jewish. And after the person I asked a couple of times to make sure are you done? Are you done? And when the person was done, I said, I met you absolutely know if that's at all and I'm sorry. And I said, but I hope you hear what I'm going to say to me, it's Christmas. So don't be offended by my words. And I'm not trying. And so those were the things that was really the eyeopener for me, that when somebody would reach out and want to do work, it was like, I know it's just not a good fit. Um, and I could say no. And if, if that matters, unicorn that I said no, to turned into, you know, multimillion dollars, I'm still going to wish the person. Well, yeah, I gave him the work too, because I don't live in the past or regrets. I just can't do that. Yeah. So what's it, what's it like to work with you? So somebody comes to you and says they do want to take that next step. So where do you begin? Yeah, I, I, you know, we do an assessment to try to figure out exactly where they are. A lot of people when they're working on. Well, I want to step back and say to me, personal professional growth are the same thing. I mean, I don't make a distinction. If you're trying to grow yourself as a person, it benefits you in your business as well. And from a leadership perspective, the first person we lead as ourselves. So it it's all connected and starts there. And so I've worked with a couple, I had one client that reached out to me that just to try to give a scenario of what it's like to work with me, the person was successful, but they were constantly struggling. They were getting overlooked for promotion. They were having, um, Issues at work and we just kind of stepped back and started to talk about what's happening. And they had to dig a little bit deeper into the why. And once we were able to figure that out, then we could develop a plan plan of action for this person to prepare for an interview and successfully get the job, because I it's like I gave this person permission. Yeah, to shut out the voices of everybody else and look at the job that you want to go after and talk about your skill sets. And it was really good. I help a lot of people with their growth, either business or professional to move them forward. And one of the things is. We talked about the good and the bad. I am a firm believer that there is always good in the bad, or I would never made it through a lot of things. Thanks to my life.   And especially what we're going through right now. I'm seeing amazing leaders. Who are putting their people first over their business. And those are the things right. I've been working with a couple of teams and coaching CEOs. As they're having check in calls with their team. They're not talking about work. Yeah, they're just, how are things going? Because you have people for the first time that are working from home. And the decision for them to work from home was made rather quickly. So they were not sent home with all the equipment that they need. And then. The day after or right before they were working from home, their kids are home from school. Yeah. And it's chaotic, or they have elderly parents that they're worried about. Or they've actually had people who have had the virus and died and all of these things from a leadership perspective, you need to know that that's what this person brings to work with them. Day in, day out. This is just on a larger scale. And you have to be able to relate to your team. In a way that shows that you have, you know, compassion, but you also have to be the one making the decision and that's the fine line. Do you want to be liked or do you want to lead and leaders? I have to battle with that choice all the time. Yeah, there's, there's a, I had a guest on one time that was loose acquaintances with like Tony Robbins. And one thing that he was talking about him that really kind of stood out was the, you said something along the lines that, you know, Tony Robbins or Lee, you know, good leaders in general, um, care more about your success and wellbeing, then your opinion of them. And that really stood out because, you know, I've had that concept, but. Wasn't able to quantify it. You know, it wasn't able to make it literal as such a simple statement. And so I think it's interesting to see the, you know, what's going on with the current world in the virus is so bizarre because you have obviously the one side where people have a huge negative impact as a result of it, then you kinda have people in the middle that are like, You know, it's not up, it's not down. And then you have the other people on one side is just like on top of the world. And so it's such a weird dynamic for leaders to come into to say, okay, you know, I need to be sympathetic and empathetic to these people. And then also congratulate and encourage these people and like just come in at all these different angles. And meanwhile, you're somewhere in there in between too. And you've got to deal with yourself as well. So it's pretty interesting scenario. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And one of the things that I've been talking to leaders about is we're all coming from a different viewpoint. And it'll be in your company and the leadership role. You make decisions all the time and not everything in the normal days. Not everybody agrees with that, your decisions. And so now in this environment, leaders are making decisions and they're not going to make everybody happy. And so they have to be comfortable in own that decision. And what I tell people a lot is. You know, now more than ever is the time to give people grace. And by that, I mean, just assume that the leader at whatever level this is from, in your family, in your organization, all the way up to the country, you know, the people who are leading the country, but they're making the best decisions when they can't at this moment with the best available information. So give them grace. And then give yourself grace, because we're not going to make, we're not going to do everything. Right. And that has just been something that has resonated not only with myself, but with others, because it's okay to say, I don't know how to the lead through this. Yeah. But I'm going to do the best I can. Yeah, well, as we get kind of closer to wrapping up, I kind of want to, you know, maybe similar to that last topic is maybe in a less unique circumstance. So we have going on right now, you know, what are, what are some of the common self-doubts that you see? Is there like a reoccurring theme or maybe some actionable tips? You can leave our listeners with where it's like, Hey, like I see this a lot. And here's, here's how you, here's how you. You take a PR you know, here's how you look at it and maybe make your next move from that perspective. Yeah. Thank you. So, so the one thing that I would, I always offered to people and I do a hashtag all the time that says simple yet profound because it's, it's the little things sometimes that trips people up, but if you do it and pay attention to it and they have a big impact. And for me, when I was starting to realize that maybe there's something was wrong with my belief system. I would, I documented myself, so I want to go on record. I didn't go get the notes from the person that documented me for 10 years. I did my own journaling, but, um, I looked at what followed anytime I talked about myself and said, I am. And it was really negative and it was really hurtful. And I wouldn't say it to my enemy and seeing that in writing and then making the conscious effort to say something nice about myself, empowering about myself. It was difficult. And it was hard, but that's made one of the best changes to me. Um, you mentioned imposter syndrome earlier, and most people on any given day are probably asking themselves, how did I get here? Why are these people listening to me? So if you're starting to feel that way, start looking to, you know, what some of the issues might be. But I think the biggest message that I would say is. Nobody gets it. Right. Um, I have a good mentor that, uh, he says we're all perfectly imperfect. And I think if we understand that we're not going to get it right all the time, we're going to fail. And I tell people all the time, I hope you fail. I truly do, because you have to learn through your failures. And I think that's a great thing. Yeah, very cool. Kimberly Hambrick. I want to say, thanks for jumping on or learning from others. It's been fun watching your journey and I look forward to seeing how much further it goes and I'll leave with the last few seconds. Put out your contact information or anything else you wanna share. Great. Well, thank you, Damon. I'm just blessed to know you. You've been one of those connections that I'm glad that I found, and I like watching your growth as well. And people can find me@kimberlyhambrick.com. That's the name of my company and I'm on LinkedIn as Kimberly Hambrick as well. There you go. Can we have everybody? Thanks so much. Thank you.

Today's guest speaks five languages. Surprisingly, my second guest in just one week that speaks French, and she's here today to teach you the importance of developing your leadership skills. Please welcome Virginie Lemay. Contact Info https://vlv.coach https://www.linkedin.com/in/virginielemay1/ https://www.facebook.com/virginie.lemay.92 Virginie Lemay-Vriesde. Thanks for jumping on how are you doing? I'm good. Thank you, Damon. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so like I said, this is, this is fun because I've had my, my first French speaking guests just a couple of days ago, and that was pretty cool. And now I get two in one week, so thanks for bringing it to the conversation. Well, I like to ask my guests two questions. The first one is what are you good at? And what are we potentially going to learn from you today? So I'm good at communicating with people. I speak for instance, five languages. So that makes it easy to speak to people. And, uh, I hope I will, uh, teach you some stuff about international leadership. I think here speaking five language makes you qualified to talk about that. Well, before we get into all that, let's ask you the opposite. What are you not so good at? So I'm not a manual person. So for instance, I'm not a good cook that I plead guilty as charged I'm I'm there with you. So this is, um,  let's, let's just start with the obvious. So you speak five languages, which is awesome. Um, have you always been into, like, when did you learn language number two? How old were you? Uh, I was 11. Um, it was English surely I don't know where that comes from because I grew up in a smaller town in Northern France with only French people, white people. Um, so I, at nine years old, I remember asking my mum, can you teach me some English? Uh, don't ask me where that comes from, but that's how it all started. And, uh, went to school, started with English and then two years later started with German. I had some Latin in between, but that I stopped because, uh, to me that was not helpful. And then I went to live in the Netherlands. Uh, so I speak Dutch and I also lived in Italy. Sorry. So, so long ago, Italian as well in the, in between, I've learned a bit of a Spanish, but because I don't never really practice it. I, I can't follow a conversation. I understand pretty much everything, but speaking it, everything comes first in Italian rather than Spanish. So. What, which language has been, um, maybe the more interesting one or that you personally enjoy versus which language was the most complex to learn? So I would say the language I like the most is Italian. Just the sound of it. It's such a beautiful language, even when people scream at each other. How's I think so next time. So I've always liked it. Um, it's probably the language I speak the least, unfortunately, but I really, really enjoyed it. The most challenging, I would say. Say it's Dutch. Um, that is very similar to, it's a mix between German, English, and French, but I'm speaking it, it was okay because the grammar is similar to German, but the right thing it's, um, it's, it's terrible for a French person. And when I tell people, yeah, but you write this with, for instance, one or two eight. And they tell me where can, you can hear it? And I'm like, uh, no. Oh, wow. So that's why I, I think that she's a, is the most challenging language. Yeah. Uh, so at what point did, uh, language likely plays a huge part of your career? At what point did, did did one influence the other, did learning multiple languages influence your career path or because of your career path that influenced you to learning more languages? Uh, it's probably the first one. So as I started to learn English when I was 11 at school and did my normal study to the GCA level. And then when I went to university, I decided to study foreign languages. So, uh, uh, English and German. So I did that for four, five years. And because I always wanted to, to work abroad, um, that's kind of. Started to mix together. And from the last year at university, I needed to do training period abroad. And I got one in, in Germany. So I went there and was supposed to stay six months after three months, they offered me a job. So, um, when they're, and after a year and a half, I didn't really like whatever was doing so resigned. And I went to the Netherlands at that time, a friend of mine had told me it was easy to find a job. So I went there. And that's how I got lucky. I was hired in a company. Um, at the beginning it was the beginning of the internet and I was hired to help French speaking English, speaking in German speaking customers to get onto internet. And as I said, I was fortunate to, to grow and evolve and travel and. Yeah. Yeah, it was, I was reading your background and I'm familiar with the company converges. Cause that's where you're talking about the company right there. There's a location that's here where I'm at in Utah as well. So I'm familiar with them. Yeah. So they were called stream international where I start when I started. But yes, their convention is now. Yeah, what's been, um, so why don't you explain to our listeners what you, what specifically you do with your skills? Sure. So, um, I used to work for Amazon here in Luxembourg until April, 2017. Jen and I decided to resign after almost four years because with my husband, we wanted to travel the world. And so in 2018, I decided to start on my own and looking at all my experience and skills that I had, I decided to help people with leadership and confidence. And so recently what I've decided as well as try to see if I can combine my art, the fashion, which is salsa dancing. And, uh, when I, uh, thought about dancing and leading and yeah. Leadership, I was thinking, well, there are actually lots of similarities. So that's how I came. Um, came up with the tagline late fee. So I had people succeed in the adventures of leadership and self assurance. So succeed S adventure, a L for leadership as self assurance. And so that makes Sansa. So that's why, how I try to help people say with their leadership skills, improving their confidence and be a better international leader. So do you work with individuals or do companies hire you to work with, uh, you know, departments or both? Both. Okay. And what's, let's talk about you starting that journey of going out on your own. So did you, a lot of our listeners are early stage entrepreneurs, and so I think these stories are beneficial. Um, Did you have, were you scared to go out on your own or did you already have, um, some safe contacts to start your clients and start your business? Or tell us a little bit about that, you know, year one? Yeah. Well actually when I look back, I'm thinking I was completely crazy, cause I had no idea what was coming. So now I really started from scratch. I had known nothing, no knowledge about, um, what was happening. Um, I didn't really look at the market. So that's one thing I'm thinking I should have found that better. Um, but so I, I really started from scratch. It's been an amazing adventure cause I learned so much from the tours to use, um, what is out there, how to sell myself, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, so I was pretty blanket, as I say, if I had to go back, I would probably do a few other few things differently for sure. Yeah. What, uh, how long did it take until you started to feel a little bit of confidence that, um, you could find success in what you were doing? Uh, Oh, only recently. I say you always have doubts and I guess, you know it as well, Damon as an entrepreneur, you're thinking, okay. Uh, do I continue? Do I give up? Uh, you, you always have also, even if I teach confidence and I'm quite confident, sometimes you just have these doubts, you just the way human rights, um, So it's only recently what I'm, I keep thinking of what I'm good at and how I can help people. And also the feedback I received from lots of people, especially on LinkedIn and Facebook. And I'm like, yeah, this really, this is really what I love to do. I feel like positive energy, every time I'm talking about leadership, trying to help people. And so that's why I know deep down, this is the right thing to do. I'm not there yet where I want to be by. Definitely know that again, like everybody else, it's, um, it's a journey and we're all learning. And I, I know as, as I'm going in the, in the right direction. So, um, that's what keeps me going. Basically, let's talk a little bit about how you help people with their leadership skills. So where do you start when you have a new person that you're working with? So while it depends on their goals, maybe like if it's a younger woman who wants to grow into and organization, and she doesn't know how to get promoted for instance, or what are the steps she needs to do to, to be a director or vice president in five to 10 years. So look where they want to go, where they are. And we're trying to establish, okay, what are the different steps or my stone they need to achieve and what I had them as well, these I'm building that confidence, giving them some tips of the things they need to pay attention to. Um, especially for us women who sometimes say things or do things that we shouldn't, or that have a, let's say a perception of people is different from what we think. So I try to build their skills there as well. Um, and if it's a company, again, depending on what their needs, uh, are, uh, let's say, would need help with stress management or they would need help with how to deal with conflict or improving communications, especially in international environments. Nowadays, the world is very small and everybody works with everybody pretty much. So I had them how to communicate better when, with someone who doesn't have your native language, or how do you deal with a virtual team and especially recently she with the whole face. Yeah. And so that's how I try to give them some tips and tools on what they can do. How do you help them build that confidence? Do you do, um, you know, experimental engagements and sample discussions? Like what types of experiences do you have them go through? Yeah. So I'm a mix of things. Sometimes I show little videos, you know, like sometimes you have these ads that are very powerful, uh, just to show 'em to show women that things that are the same, which we do or say unconsciously, but when you see that in the video repeated again and again, but suddenly someone is going to say, Oh my God. Yeah. I always say that. Or yes, I always do that. So just bringing the. So that's the first thing. And then as well, trying to, obviously to, to again, bring their awareness of what they do, what they say, how they stand, how they look again, the, the, the, that starts with what you you're dressed with and how you, you stand your body language, both.   So doing some exercise as well, with affirmations as well and power poses as well to show what they can do to feel more confident. So it's a bit of a mix of, uh, of different things. Is there a, is there something funny that you see people do all the time? That is just like human nature that has a totally different perception than, than we usually think. Like what's, what are the, some of the common things that you see over and over? Mmm. So what I see and sometimes I still do it myself, is that we often say, sorry, for no reason, like, sorry. Can I ask a question? No, don't say, sorry, just say, can I just ask you a question? Don't even say, can I ask a question? Um, or these little words say like maybe, or just like when you ask. People, what do you do? And they say I'm just an accountant or just a manager. No, it's not just, you are in the content. You are a manager. So as I said, these are all these little things, but once you're aware of it, you, you catch yourself more and more often doing it and therefore not doing it anymore. So. Uh, I find myself saying just, yeah, in emails and it's that very word I've noticed in the last couple of weeks. Um, and then I was talking with another guest a couple of weeks ago that usually after I record these episodes, I send them to an editor and every once in a while, I'll go through and play back some of it. And I've noticed that I say the word like. Way more than I would have thought that I did. I know I say it. I didn't realize they say that many times. Yeah. Yeah, no. I think recording yourself is a great, great exercise. I'm part of Toastmasters as well. And um, sometimes when I put some videos of myself, whether it's in French or in English and I'm, like I said, And that does matter. They teach you to try to catch this, but sometimes you're so into what you want to say, that you tried to use this filler words, like you said, the like, or, well, so it's just becoming aware and once you are aware, you're going to pay attention, not to use them more often, but it's just like everything it's practice. It comes with practice. Yeah. How long do you usually work with somebody? Um, it depends sometimes after five sessions, they, they say it's enough. I always, um, encouraged people for free months because it's really where you really have time to look at the, let's say the medium term, what are the goals? And then put a stop to look at things from different areas, because sometimes. If we talk about confidence again, that may be linked to a problem that you have at home or that you yourself, because I don't know something happened when you were a bit younger that you don't feel that concerns are, you need a bit more time to again, make people aware and then try to put them the action plan in place. And then I helped people countables and okay, we are great. You would do this. Did you do it? Yes or no? And if, no, why not? What can we do to recover it? So usually I'm advising at least three months, but I've had some cases where it was a bit shorter. Would you agree? You, you talking about, you know, maybe things happening when somebody was younger. Our last guest was talking about how they feel like people don't have business problems, they have personal problems that. Rollover into the business world. Um, and, and it's, it's really interesting, like you said, how many things happen in the past influence our subconscious now. So, uh, would you agree that, uh, you know, in the business world and business confidence and leadership, that the majority of those, um, inadequacies come from the personal side, Oh, yes. Yes. At least if I look at my circus, I always try to put myself in people's shoes and I'm trying to see, okay. What I was. I know that, um, it took me many years to, to build my confidence. And I also got to burnout at approximately 10 years ago. And when I talk to people or I talk to someone like three, four years ago, and we were talking about childhood and et cetera, and I remember suddenly, uh, something that's happened to me and I was very young. I was eight, nine years old. She said, well, that may be that's where your, your stuck I started and I'm like, Oh my God. So I got my burnout, like 30 years after actually the root causes. What happened to me when I was a little girl. So yeah. I fully agree. Yes. Yes. We estimate that for sure. Yeah. Well, do you have any stories, people that you've worked with that stand out more than others, right. Maybe a real great success or, um, a real big improvement. Is there, you don't have to explain, you know, who they were or anything, but is there an example of great success that really stands out? Well, one, I am really a I'm happy about is, um, a former colleague of mine. Um, at Amazon, he was working to be promoted, but, uh, Even if we say imposter syndrome is often with women, he had it as well. And he was like, I'm never going to make it and I'm not good enough. So I also build this confidence, gave him some tools as well, what you could do. So I was kind of coaching slash mentoring him as well. And he also had challenges. He was getting a new team. And you also had challenges with. Team member. And so I, again, tried to guide him, told him why you could try this. You could do that, et cetera. And I think after six to eight months, he finally got that promotion and he was so happy. And he's all. Thank you. So imagine, let's say, well, you don't have to think you did it. That was just maybe that one person that. That helped you, but it was so nice to see that you finally achieve what you wanted because he had been trying to get promoted up to the next level for a few years. And, uh, I was happy to be part of his adventure. Yeah. What contributed to that person's imposter syndrome? Was there a specific thing that they're hesitant about? Uh, I don't know. I must say I didn't. I didn't. Ask him too many questions. Cause I still wanted to try to keep it professional by know that, uh, he had that other, um, job experience where he was also doubting himself as well. And he had never got a promotion before. So I, uh, again, by telling them, okay, tell me what happened. And uh, what do you think you could have done better and where you are now? Are there any similarities or things now you're doing different. So again, slowly but surely. Rebuilding his confidence. I didn't really go into the personal side because I didn't, as I said, as you know, we're coaches, we look more to the future and psychologist and we'll look at the past. I didn't really want you to look at his past in too much depth because I'm just not qualified for that. I tried to guide him as much as possible and it works. Yeah. Well, you know, as we get kind of closer to wrapping up, I imagine that you've had some funny language misinterpretations. Do you have any that you can share? Um, maybe the first one that's happened to me and then another one that, um, that happened in one of my teams. So the first one, I, when I was 18, I went to the UK to London to be an old pair, um, to learn, to improve my English. And I was in this family and, um, I was not eating so much every day. And one time the grandmother was there and I said, can I eat something? And she was like, do you want to eat or heat? And I was like, okay, what's the difference? So that's how I learned what that means and, and the important because of the aging enlisted in French from do it. So the one, so that that's the one and another one. And that happened to one of my team members. When I, I, um, at the beginning, when I was working at strengths or, um, or convergence, now I set up an international, no, Tim, we were supposed to the I'm supporting five languages and the team started with, uh, French speakers and English. Because and one of the French, because she was a lovely Spanish lady, very, very nice lady. She could speak very good French. And she had a small accent. So it's probably like me when I speak, speak English. I have my, she had a small Spanish accent and she wants, had the customer on the phone and she was trying to solve his issue. And in France, when you want to say, hold on, you say no, but she said, no murky T pride. That means don't leave me. Yeah, well, at least at least that one was a positive one. Well, Jenny, I appreciate your time today. I want to give you the last few moments to share, you know, your website or contact information or anything. Um, our listeners can, uh, you know, find out more information about you. Great. Thank you, Damon. So, um, you can, my website is, um, he lv.coach. So not operate w before, just VLV my initials, that coach, uh, you can also find me on LinkedIn on there, full name  or sort of Facebook, um, not so much on Instagram, but it's. Virginie_LV and otherwise I'm also relaunching my, a YouTube channel. So it's a visionary leadership expert. So you can find me all of that. And I'm happy to connect with anyone who sends me a request. Great. Well, we'll make sure to put those links in the show notes and thanks so much for your time. Thank you, Damon. Thank you for having me.

  With no prior experience, today's guest followed opportunity to generate millions of YouTube views in just months. After cracking the code, this has led her to financial freedom as well as personal freedom of time. Please welcome a top 1% national attorney and master negotiation strategist, Rebecca Zung.  

Today's guest is famous for helping people get known and get paid for their area of expertise, even if they don't have a name for themselves. She also speaks about how doing the "non-sexy" things in business can help you get ahead. Please welcome Nancy Juetten. 0:23 - Nancy Juetten's Background 3:43 - How to be Proactive 10:59 - Additional Responsibility 13:48 - Being Prepared 20:56 - Learning from the Expert Contact Info https://lifegoesonroadmap.com https://brilliantbionow.com https://getknowngetpaid.com https://authenticvisibility.com https://sizzlingspeakersheet.com https://getlifegoesonroadmap.com Other Podcast Guests Mentioned in This Episode: Karen Ford: Never Stress Out Nancy Juetten thanks for joining, learning from others. How are you doing? I'm good. Thanks for having me. Good. You bet. So got a couple things we're going to talk about. Um, you have a, you will be the first of, on our show for your type of background, so that'll be nice to cover some new ground. Uh, but before we get into that, let's give the intro to our guests with question number one is what is your area of expertise and what are we going to learn about from you today? I have one area of expertise that actually gets spread into two different buckets. I've been a worldwide expert in getting ready for all kinds of opportunity before it knocks one bucket is getting ready for media opportunities. So I can guide people to get known and get paid for their winning ways. And the other is getting ready for real life before it hits the fan. And that's kind of what we're experiencing now. This COVID-19 fan demic. So I have two specific expertise that are woven together under that one big umbrella. Yeah. That'll be interesting to kind of talk about, um, the virus. I've kind of dodged it a little bit with guests because I'm sure they hear it everywhere, but I think your background is much more applicable, so it'll be, it'll be nice to kind of jump into that a little bit more, uh, before that though, number two, question. What are you not so good at? Dave, some thoughts this, as I've been paying attention to your podcast, and I came up with three things that I suck at, as you like to say, Number one is anything that involves being cold and wet for an extended period of time. I grew up in Southern California and moved to Bellingham, Seattle area 20 some odd years ago and Oh boy, to be able to go anywhere without a sweaters. Cause for celebration. Yeah. Okay. Well then what's the second one you got. Second one is, uh, I'm a dog lover my whole life, but I'm a horrible dog disciplinarian. I'm a horrible dog disciplinary. And if he's got bad, bad habits, I'm not going to yell and scream. I'm going to talk to the dog. Like it's a human being and encourage him to have better behavior. So you're like the child that just wants the dog, but doesn't take the responsibilities that come with it. You know, we have a beautifully, well behaved dog, but. You know something about, you know, another theme in my life, this whole idea of raise your voice, make your impact, but make it be a good thing. But raising your voice in anger or frustration, it's something that I grew up with that was really wounding to my. To my soul. So I, I really do it hard to yell and scream when, when the dog does something stupid, I just let's, let's laugh about it and deal with it, but I'm not gonna wrap the newspaper. I'm not going to scold him. And if I'm dealing with a client, that's not getting it right. I'm not going to do that either. A little part of the dad and me just died. Alright, that's good. If you need me to read the super small print in the instruction manual to assemble the weed whacker. Well, you've got. Uh, high hopes and high expectations. That's not happening. That's kind of fully assembled. Yeah. That's small print and, and the, the small motor skills. I just don't have the small motor skills. Okay. All right. Good enough. Well, I appreciate the homework that you did on that. That's good. That's the first. Well, I think there's a lot of things we can talk about. Like you said, um, a lot of your skill sets are applicable to the current economic climate. Um, and I think that they'll, you know, I kind of want to talk about two things. I think they'll, they'll interconnect, uh, you know, one is how do you help people kind of get ready and be proactive. And then to, uh, like with the whole virus issue going on right now, what, what action can people take? And, you know, maybe that's the same answer. So I'll kind of let you start there. Okay. Well, let me start with a little story. Three years ago, three women in my life had their financial lives turned completely upside down by sudden and unexpected death diagnosis and divorce here. These women were living the life uncommon and in a matter of 24 hours, their big girl underpants are around their ankles instead of around their waist. And they have no path forward to get in control of the rest of their lives. And I think we all know someone who has had some, nothing crazy happened where the world just turned on a diamond, everything changed in an instant. And when these three women in my life had that happen to them, it was like my wake up call. And as funny as it works out, I'm married to a certified financial planner professional, and he's really good at organizing this sort of thing. And in a relationship, it just sort of happens that the person who has the genius does the work and the other person takes on other roles. But I basically said I'm Noah or comfortable being a passenger. In this aspect of our life. What I really want for Christmas is a roadmap to show me how I can drive everything just in case something crazy should happen to you. And I need to be in the driver's seat. And as it turned out shortly after we created this beautiful tool to help people get compost, that problem life totally hit the fan for us personally. And it was like a synchronistic. Solution. That was an answer to a prayer for us. And for so many people that are dealing with life, having hit the fan in a globally disruptive way. Yeah. It's actually really interesting. You say that because, um, my, a good friend of my wife's, uh, my wife's like have multiples here. Good friend of my wife. Um, she had a young son who's now like, you know, nine or so, and. The, the, her child was only two or three months old when her fiance died in a car wreck. And she's told us the story many times about how like, It took her years. Cause she like you, you had a really good analogy being in the driver or, you know, not being in the driver's seat. And she said, I had no idea where to start. He took care of all our bills. He took care of all of our finances, all of our savings and to make it worse, like the month before they dropped his life insurance policy to save on money. So she was starting at ground zero with no roadmap, as you say at all. And then that kind of opened up my wife's eyes and she's kind of said. If that happens to us, I have no idea. So she isn't as proactive as you. And so I added the layer where all the estate planning is done and there's an instruction book, but that's, as far as she's going to get well, I'm, I'm so sorry that that happened to your friend. And I'm glad that it. Also served as a wake up call for you and your wife to have these important conversations because you're young people, you've accomplished amazing success. And what I've discovered over the last several years that we've been waving the flag for this, get ready for your. Next grid moment revolution is that people do invest considerably in their success. They build systems, they set a dream board in motion. They put things on the list that they want to accomplish and achieve, but then when you ask them, Hey, if you ever thought about. Ensuring that $30,000 diamond ring on your homeowners policy. Oh yeah. I'll get around to that. I'm too busy. Glamming it up with all my friends. I'll get to that some point. Well, that's cold comfort. When you go to trader Joe's to buy fresh flowers one day and somehow between the time that you bought the flowers and you got the car, your three carat diamond ring has disappeared and you can't find it anywhere. When I'm talking about, and the kind of the flag that I wave is I'm not talking about death. It's going to happen to all of us. We can't get out of here alive, but there's crazy random that happens to us every single day that can't be anticipated. And if you can't get in the car and drive. You could be in a situation where you're spending more money on the wrong solution or you're so emotional in the situation that you can't do the right thing. And if there isn't one more thing that I might say that I have sucked at in previous decades is when my husband's been ill and I've had to take care of. Some crisis. I have anxiety. I mean, it'd be able to do the right thing for my husband when he needs me to be there for him instead of being hyperventilating and not being able to function. And so for me, having my ducks in a row gives me an extra layer of confidence that I can handle anything no matter what happens tomorrow. And I think given what we've been shown over the last several months, There's a lot more productive things we can be doing with our shelter in place time, then organizing our socks and unmentionables by color and style. If we could just spend 20 minutes a day doing something specific and terrific, that would actually help us in the clutch moments. I think we'll have something to celebrate when it really, really matters. Yeah. And a lot of these things, I mean, I know you're just kind of giving random examples. Like the, the ring, you know, my wife's, my wife's ring is insured under our homeowners insurance policy and it's not that big of a deal you've sent in the appraisal and it's like, Pennies on the thousands of dollars. It's not that expensive and it's not inconvenient and it's quick. And then it's just dumb. Well, you, you would be surprised. Um, here's another little, not so random thing. Twice in 15 years, our home was burglarized while we were out of town. And it's really a violating experience to have that happen in your family. If this is where you raise your family, it's where you make your memories. And if someone comes in and go shopping for everything that you've worked so hard to achieve and violates your personal space, I can really get over that. But the other thing that's challenging is when they take the. The top drawer of your closet, organize it. Yeah. It has every piece of jewelry that you've ever received for every important occasion of your life. And they drive away with that item in your car. I mean, if the truth is stranger than fiction, I mean, these things really have happened to me. And so with regard to having the jewelry, this is a nitty gritty thing, but yes, you probably have your wedding ring and your engagement ring and. Your mother's favorite broach insured on your, on your homeowner's policy. Right? But all that fashion jewelry that your wife has been accumulating, the Swarovski crystals and all the beautiful things. She's probably spent thousands of dollars on that, too. And if your insurance document, doesn't say wedding rings and other assorted fashion jewelry. Then when you try to get dressed the next day after these thieves have cleaned you out, you have not a single pair of earrings to put in your naked ear lobes, and you feel completely undressed. I bet. When you, when you were talking about how, when in times where you, you have to. Take on some additional responsibility when your husband is sick or whatever's going on and you say you get anxiety. Is that because that's just the way you are in the scope of that type of thing, or you feel under pressure because her husband delivers so well on those. I think it's both, I mean, I mean, I love my husband. We've been together my entire adult life and we, and we met when I was 21 years old. And as we were talking in the green room before I went to a job interview, I said, how do you do mr. And he says, I'm mr. Jetton like button. And it was like, Oh my goodness, like here we are. 33 years later, happily married the parent of a 23 year old son. Today is his birthday. We've had a beautiful life, but if anything were to happen to him, I mean, he's the love of my life. Anyone would feel anxious or scared about what would happen if, and then when you add to it, what if I can't find what I need when I need it. Like, for example, last December at 1145 night on a Saturday, I walked up the stairs to say goodnight, and he was standing at the door. Counter in the bathroom in excruciating pain, his arm wouldn't function. His head was splitting with pain and his left side was gone Slack on his face. And he said, I think I'm having a stroke. Can you please take me to the hospital? Okay, well, let me help. My six foot two, 200 and something pound husband down a flight of stairs into a car, into a new city where we moved because of that home burglary finding my way to the emergency room and what I was happy about. If there was a moment to be happy about anything, I had a social security card. I had his list of medications just in case the doctor were to ask about them. I had his, everything that he needed identification because in a stroke scenario, if you do not know the medications that you're. Loved one is taking it slows down the doctor's process and being able to provide the rapid treatment that could reverse what could be a cataclysmic catastrophic situation. Fortunately, I had the confidence that I had it nailed. I held my breath. I took him to the hospital. We took care of it. He was in the intensive care for 36 hours and then he came home and he's fine. And it's like, how's that for dodging a bullet. But if you don't have your medications figured out. And your partner doesn't know what they are that could slow down life, saving time, saving medical treatment that could really make the difference in that moment. Yeah. So how do people, let's start talking about kind of your area of expertise on doing these things about, you know, getting ready and, and probably even more so beyond just the personal space, but entrepreneurs and business owners, you know, how do people get proactive in. Being prepared. And let's kind of use that as a segue into the kind of the positive side of things, of being prepared. So let's go from here's how you protect yourself and be prepared. And then with those assets, now you can leverage, you know, growth or business opportunities. Okay. Well, here's where I'll, I'll do a little pivot. The first business I created was all about getting ready for media opportunity before it knocked. Okay. And I was, I was able to leapfrog over other experts with much bigger names because I was prepared. I had interview questions prepared in advance. My photo was ready. My, my bio was ready and I had listened to the person's show two or three times. So I could rise up to meet their awesome energy. I had learned how to do those things so well that I leapfrog other other experts who were far. More successful or better known to establish a big name for myself as the bye-bye boring bio expert, who helps people get ready for big opportunity. Okay. And turned into a multiple six figure business that still operates today, serving people who want to be ready for these kinds of opportunities. And given what we're dealing with with this global pandemic speaking virtually on podcasts, radio shows. Zoom connection calls. This is the way people can take control of their destiny to grow their business, grow their influence, grow their impact and make their difference in the world and have their legacies be alive today. So that's really positive and very exciting. Getting ready for that kind of opportunity pays off for everyone no matter where you, where you start. So getting ready for real life. How is that helpful to help you grow your business? If you have been a victim of identity theft, you're going to spend hours and hours trying to rebuild your life. That's going to take your eye off the ball and not be able to grow your business. So getting your personal credit cards and access numbers and all those kinds of details squared away means that if you were one of the three out of four people, The world whose identity is taken, you're not going to waste time chasing details that you already squared away ahead of time. Um, I think that the life saving and the time saving aspect of getting your act together is a point of peace of mind and empowerment that every business owner can take on. As it, as a gift, they give themselves in their family and their business partners. And. If you are the kind of business owner, like a financial advisor, an estate planning attorney, a banker, or someone who has an intimate relationship with clients whose money is a big part of what you talk about. What we do can be a co-branded licensed system. You can add to your suite of services to fill a gap. That's not met by what you do now. Right now, that could be an incredible loyalty building tool that brings your clients closer to you and to be stickier to you in the best and the worst of times. And really when times are tough. That is when financial advisors and estate planning attorneys and bankers earn their greatest value. So what additional value can they add to their important client base that people will stay with them? In the best and the worst of times, that is one of the best ways that our system can be used by specific kinds of professionals to grow their business, create loyalty, create stickiness, and also ignite important conversations between the parties so that they don't have their head in the stand because that's a horribly disempowering place to stand. So it sounds like you largely work B to B more so than B directly to individual C and an individual consumer. That's what the dream is, and I'll be very candid. The consent we've sold hundreds of our system. It's called life goes on roadmap. We've Holt. We've sold hundreds of our systems to families across the country over the last two years, all to rave reviews, not a single request for refund and that's remarkable, but person to person, family, to family, it's pretty hard to grow a very. Lucrative business. So we see our greater opportunity is with the licensing and we have had a dozen or so estate planning, attorneys, accountants, financial, yeah, planners, test out out and prove our system is delivering the value that we promise. And so right now there's a leading national bank that has. Preliminarily agreed to bring our system to their clients from coast to coast. And we're just waiting for the green light so that this thing can move full steam ahead. And that kill, that will be a game changer for us and allow us to have that additional credibility so that other organizations will join in with us too. Yeah, that'll be exciting to see the type of reach that you can get on, on B2B. So it sounds largely like the, the, the, the way, you know, from, from the position of this topic, the way that somebody can grow is just by avoiding distractions. And like you said, getting their ducks in a row. So, so let's. Which isn't which isn't super sexy. So the boy, Oh boy, you know, that's, that's the hardest part. I mean, I've listened to a lot of your podcasts and some of your guests have, you know, millions and millions of dollars, billions and millions of dollars. And I'm, I'm in a different bucket, but I've got a really big flag. I'm waiting for a revolution that I think is so crucial for families everywhere. And I think that. It's going to, it's a spark that will turn into a flame and I'm just not sure exactly what the timing is. And I don't necessarily control that. Yeah, no, I totally get it. I've realized over the years that I'm, I'm kind of the odd ball in many ways where like all these things that we've talked about. I just did, like, I didn't have, um, you know, a break in that that made me look at something differently or a trauma with, you know, somebody in my life passing away. And so all of this is, is. Very common sense to me. Um, over the years I've realized, okay, I'm the weirdo and, and it does need to be brought to the masses more. So I totally get it. And you know what, I actually kind of related, um, you know, we were talking about SEL before we jumped on and it's you saying it's not sexy. And it's like the same thing with SEL, like. SEO. Isn't sexy, like the first, the first word in my introduction, but my first sentence is let's be honest, a book about SEO doesn't sound like the sexiest topic. That's my first sentence in my book. So what I relate this to like is, is SEO because you have kind of two buckets. The first bucket is largely what you're saying is be proactive and that's like, make sure your website does all this boring stuff and loads quickly and is mobile friendly. But. All the sexy stuff is, is after that, but you can't do all that sexy stuff until you do the boring stuff first. And so it makes a lot of sense where you got to do the non-sexy stuff, get your ducks in a row, then you can go blow up and do all these other cool things without having, you know, having that safety net behind you. So it makes a lot of sense. Well, you're just my perfect ideal client. And that sort of brings me to another kind of fun, little sound bite or statistic. It's 60% of United households in America do not have I have a current, well, that means 40%. Some of them do so those of us who've started businesses that appeal to people that are in a smaller segment already. I mean, we're talking to 40%. The people that are really tuned into this, that means 60% of them are not. And some of those 60% of the people that don't have a well, they've got plenty of assets. Look at prints, look at a, read the Franklin, look at, you know, celebrities that know that they've got a short runway and they still don't get their acts together. Like I just scratch my head, but for the people who read consumer reports to make sure that they buy the perfect car, the perfect washing machine, the perfect. Weed Wacker, if you will, these are the people that are probably gonna, would be better candidates for our system because they care enough. About their family to do the very best for them. Speaking of which Mark family would probably really care about our system because their family is everything to them and they don't want to leave a big fat mess for any of them to clean up. And so it's sort of interesting when you choose a niche audience, because with SEO, Literally literally small businesses and big businesses can benefit from it and benefit really big because of it. And every family can benefit from our system, but some are just devil may care, jump out of a airplane and who cares, what happens next kind of people. And there is absolutely nothing I can do to change that person's behavior to get them to spend 20 minutes a day over 16 days, filling out. One of 16 different sections. That will be a roadmap that will be a godsend when it really counts. Yeah. I'm really surprised that the statistics, even that high, that 60% of people have wills or some sort of a state or planning, um, you know, the, there was one. A celebrity Snoop dog who is famous for saying, um, in some interview they asked him, you know what what's do you have your will? And he's like, no, I'll just let my family figure it out. And I'm just like, Oh man, like, even at that, like, okay, let's say you don't want to get your state in a row. And let's say you don't care where your things go. The part that boggles my mind is seeing. The fights that come with it, like, wouldn't you just want to at least prevent, prevent the fights, like sure. Yeah. Who cares where your stuff goes, but just prevent the fights? Well, absolutely drama, trauma and chaos, not my favorite recipe, not my favorite cocktail. But earlier in the conversation we had, you made some comment about your wife and you've said there could be plural lives and you were joking. I know that. Yeah, but it does bring up an important point. That's useful for people who might be paying attention in today's modern family. There are situations where not everybody's married to the same spouse forever more. Sometimes they have one, two, three spouses. Sometimes they have multiple children from various partnerships that creates a lot of. Complications that are challenging for anybody to contend with. And so a practical tactical thing is to make sure if that's your situation, check your beneficiary designations on your important assets to make sure that if you did remarry that wife number three, really does get to inherit all of the wins that you've stirred up, because if the. It ultimately hits the fan and we're sitting at the will of the reading and it turns out that wife number two gets everything because someone forgot to update. That's a bitter surprise. Yeah. That's a bitter surprise. I know for myself, I have a 23 year old son. His birthday is today, but when my husband and I got married, as soon as we came home from the hospital, excuse me, from the honeymoon, there was a life insurance guy sitting in the dining room asking me how much money I thought I would need in order to function. Just in case my husband should predecease me. And I remember thinking we just got home from our honeymoon, had the best time ever. You're asking me this, like now, like timing, really? So I designate it. My husband is my beneficiary and my sister is the secondary and we didn't have any children, so it didn't matter. But when we moved to the new home, you have to tell all your vendors. That you've moved. And it's a great opportunity. If you have moved to double check to make sure that, Oh, gee, it was 25 years ago. The last time we updated that and now we have three kids, let's make sure we add the name so they don't get written out and all about just like you change the smoke detector and your. Fire alarm to make sure the house doesn't burn down once a quarter, go through your roadmap and make sure everything is up to date and current, just in case something random or crazy should change everything in an instant. So did your husband, uh, coordinate this, the life insurance guy? That showed up after your honeymoon, it was like go to our guy. No, he's one of those kinds of people. He's a certified financial planner and he cares about his wife and his family. And he just, it's one of his love languages to make sure that we're taken care of, you know, so it's like acts of service and making sure those details are tended to is one of the ways he shows how much he cares. And, you know, not I'm lucky that way. And it sounds like your wife is lucky that way too. And get, there are some people that are married to people that just won't talk about this stuff, or they're keeping secrets from the other. This one will get yet someone I know married to a craftsman who was a cabinet maker. She was a school teacher. They had two kids, young people living life uncommon. His mom died. He got depressed, kept going to his workroom to do his cabinetry. They saw, they thought, but turns out he was going. We don't know where he was going, but he wasn't making any money and he wasn't paying his taxes and he wasn't being a responsible adult. And this went on for quite some time. Imagine the surprise of this young woman. Who got a visit from a tax collector at her school and making demands for large sums of money that were doing taxes that he never paid. Yeah. There are people that don't, that are keeping secrets, uh, drug problems, extra children, extra relationships. It's. Some IRS agent wrote to me and said, everything's fine and dandy until it's not. And if you've got all this money and you're living this great life and you never have to look twice because you've always got enough for now, all of that, you don't really want to look too closely because you're having too much fun. But when the whole thing changes in an instant, because crazy thing happened that you could never have imagined. Well, you share, do you want to have enough of a runway for the rest of your life to recover? What if you were 75, we're older and thousands and thousands. The dollars had been diverted from your important accounts and you were older and not as capable and not as able to recover. That would be a tragedy. So head in the sand, not a powerful place to stand. That's my rallying cry. Yeah. You know, we had, um, one guest, her name is Karen Ford. I'm looking at her up now. She had, um, what was interesting about you talking about how like things come out and surprises? Um, she does financial planning and she had, she was talking about how. She brought some clients, you know, husband and wife, and, and say, okay, you know, bring me your accounts and your debts. And let's look at it and, and bought the house. I feel like I'm super happy. So come to find out, I'm reading the little, little statistic here. Um, the couples had nearly $800,000 in combined debt and they were approaching a hundred credit cards, total. Oh, Oh. That's sent shivers up my spine. They, I think they call that financial infidelity. There's a word for financial infidelity and it's like, that's how do they, I'm just, I'm just taking a breath. Condolence since these people. Well, so let's, let's talk a little bit about, okay. Um, you know, you had talked about how part of your expertise is helping people leverage or build a name, just like you said, you'll leapfrog over people. So maybe let's talk a little bit about that. Like what are opportunities where people can get exposure, especially if they're, like you said, maybe they don't necessarily have a name, but they can start to build it. Well, Given the shelter in place order, I've been giving a lot of focus to this in my conversations with people. You can start a YouTube channel. I always say to people, if you want to speak more, don't wait for an invitation. You can start speaking more starting today. You can use Facebook live. You can use be live.tv. You can create a YouTube channel. And share how to information that can be very specific, terrific, and SEO optimized so that people can find you quickly and be engaged in your content. You can show up on zoom connection calls and find out that there are speaking opportunities to serve those groups. And you can raise your hand and ask to be the next speaker that gets invited to share your content. With that group, you can go to Toastmasters and practice your speaking skills to make sure that you don't or, and. Just to disappoint your audience with too much what I call verbal punctuation. Um, uh, so you know, so many times I listened to really quality experts on podcasts and have their guests show up. With that kind of poor verbal punctuation. And I click away right. In a way, because it doesn't, it's not music to my ears and it's not music to most other people's ears either. So if you want to be speaking in this way and you want to be showing up in this way, couple things that you can do on a, how to basis. Number one is create a sizzling speaker sheet that speaks to who you are, what you speak about and why it's intoxicating. For a particular niche audience and put your photo on it and your contact information. And if you're excited about being on a podcast or a broadcast or a news program, See here and celebrate the program first so that you know, who are the post is and what they care about and what they value so that you can rise up to meet their energy and add value for their broadcast that hasn't been shared before. When you reach out to a podcast host and you show something that might be new and different, that they haven't covered before, and you make a point about why this could be a value now more than ever, you show the host that. You're paying attention and the host will likely honor you with an invitation to share your message. But if you do a spray and pray, Hey, I love your podcast. We'd love to be on your show. I've got this book. I want to Hawk and I can't wait for everybody to, I don't know. Let me ask you. Do you get some quotes, some inquiries like that, and what's your response? I do. Yeah. Um, I, you build a sixth sense. So it's funny cause I was just skimming through them today. But as we were talking before we hit record, I've been just super busy, which is a great problem. And so I've kind of neglected my, um, my, my podcast email inbox, and I see the count there, which I know nine out of 10 are gonna be pitches. And so I just kind of skim through them this morning and it's just like, it's just like banner blindness with ads. Like I just. I don't even have to read it. I can, I can just absorb the format of it and tell it's a pitch. And I just hit delete. So what kind of pitches excite you? Let's let's talk about that. That would be interesting. So probably two things are what are going to catch me where I'll at least give it a read. So the first thing is not excessively formatted where I know it's just a copy and paste because it's perfectly structured paragraphs. And then there's a perfectly bolded signature with the perfectly attached to everything. Um, so if, if I. If it looks like it was manually typed, then that's going to help a little bit. Now I can understand the necessity to scale your outreach. So I don't completely ignore all of them, but if it looks like at least some effort, like maybe the first sentence is, Hey, Damon, my name or something, or instead of like, hi there, or a hello podcast, guests. I mean, that's probably those two things, you know, one that it doesn't look totally. Templated and then to elite and they overlap quite a bit, but you know, at least some effort of something to say that they looked at a previous guest or know my name or just anything at all. You know, I'm really glad to hear you say that. You know, one of my deepest wounds in life is that I was not seen, heard or celebrated much in my own family. I know what it's like to feel invisible and unseen, and it's painful, especially if you've got something to say. And so over the years, as I've worked with clients who want to step up to a bigger stage and get known and get paid for their expertise, I know that they have a deep wound or they must have some kind of a desire to be seen, heard, and celebrated too. And the best way to be seen, heard and celebrated yourself is to make sure that you see here and celebrate the influencer has. Who's the gatekeeper who can open the door. I remember hearing one broadcaster who was really hardworking 25 year anchor on the news in Seattle. And she said in a keynote one day, she really. Bristles when she gets these emails that say, I never watched the news, but you should have me on your program. Yeah. Sign me up. Oil boy, run Forrest run in the opposite direction. I mean, have a little respect for what it takes to create an excellent broadcast. See here and celebrate the host. Take a personal approach, create a real relationship. See how you can add value, have a real conversation. And. Deliver what you promised and who knows what good will come from it as a result. Usually it's good. Yeah. And I think that applies to a lot of things. I've talked frequently about the value in social proof and just giving away free, you know, advice, content, expertise, whatever it is. And, and aside from referrals, you know, here we are my company being in a marketing agency and we never spent money on. Marketing ourselves. It's largely referrals because we drive results. But then the second runner up is just social proof. Like I get on LinkedIn, I give away free advice. I don't expect anything in return. And the key is like, not expecting anything in return, which sounds counterintuitive. But the reason why it works is because you come across more authentic, which establishes trust, which brings down the sales walls, which makes it all work. I call that lead with a giving hand. Yeah. I love to lead with a giving hand and, and exceed people's expectations for value and let that be a magnet to bring the right people back to me who, who feel called to do so, you know, and I think when you get to be on a panel, speaking of those who are watching or listening who want to be on yours, When you get the opportunity to speak with someone in the conversation for an hour or so, and go back and forth as we are, and having the fun that we're having, people who are listening, get a sense of who these people are and whether or not they have any, no like trust built building. And if they want to take another step and if there's value delivered, give generously with a giving hand, usually you end up holding the greater bounty when. The long game is done. Yeah. Yeah. And there's so many other, uh, unexpected benefits that come along. There's, there's been a couple, you know, one guests in particular who I've become pretty good friends with virtually, you know, we, we send messages on a daily basis now, and then there's been other guests where I've sent them as referrals. Two other guests and that's worked out. And so there's all these other things that if you don't come in at selfishly, you'll, you'll be rewarded. Um, and so you get what you want anyway, but you get it in a win-win format. Yes. I, I find the whole thing really intoxicating, to be honest with you. And I'll tell you one other fun little story that is very memorable and speaks to what we're talking about here. I did grow up in a household where I was not really paid much attention to and. My dad was an entertainer and has a name that you'd probably know and was pretty famous. So the way you managed to navigate a household like that is to fade into the wallpaper so that person can be the star. And when I was nine years old, there was this commercial on television about. This owl claiming that he knew how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie pop. And I remember at nine years old, I thought I'm going to figure that out. Wow. And so I actually did an experiment and figured out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie pop. And then I wrote a letter to the president. Company. And I said, I just want you to know that I've done this experiment and I've determined that it takes this many likes to get to the center of a Tootsie pop yours. Very truly. I think I wrote it in a purple crayon, but I was writing a letter with a message that I thought he would want to hear, let him know that I was paying attention. And I had the sense of expectation that something awesome was going to happen. And what do you know, a few weeks later, I get this gilded certificate in the mail and it says very few people on earth, know how many likes it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie pop. This certificate belongs to one of the few who do congratulations, you know, but at nine years old, what did I learn from that? See here and celebrate big company, have the courage to reach out to the person in charge. Maybe something awesome will happen. That's beyond your expectation. And maybe that will set you on a path to do brilliant work for them, for others who want that same thing. So that's how writing for results. And helping people to get known and, you know, growing up in the shadow of a person who needed to be the star, I totally get what it is to work with people who want their star to rise. And I know how to help that happen. And I know how meaningful it is to them because I've experienced it myself. So the same thing happens with the life, goes on roadmap, knowing how empowered I feel and knowing how good I am. Feel knowing that I can do anything no matter what. That just allows me to plan the rest of my life with more confidence. I can see more Epic adventure still to come. Then I will not be fettered by things that I don't know, it's everything that I do know and how well I use what I know to make an impact for my family, for my business and for everything that I care about. So. Both of the things that I've done in my life, getting known and helping people to get known, to get paid and help people get ready for life before life happens. It's just a big umbrella of readiness for the big opportunities that we all want. And I think that has definitely paid off for me in so many ways that I want everyone else to have the same benefit. Yeah, well, it's like you said, it's intoxicating and you kind of want others to, to, to absorb that as well. So, well, Nancy, Jo, and you've been a pleasure. Um, I want to give you the last few moments to put out your contact information and let our listeners find out how they can learn more about ya. Well, thank you so much. If you would like to download the, get your act together, getting started templates so you can start the scavenger hunt to get your act together before something random or crazy can stop you. Let me make it easy for you. Go to lifegoesonroadmap.com. It's as simple as that. And if you feel called to make your bio brilliant for client attraction and you want to start right now, you can go to brilliantbionow.com and a brilliant template will come to your inbox and it will change the game for how you show up and share your message with the people who need to know. So they will be glad to invest in you. Perfect. And we'll put those in the show notes. And the last thing is. Don't leave us hanging. How many licks does it take? That's another story I tell people. I know how many likes it takes, and I'll never tell that's why you can tell me your secrets and have confidence that they're safe with me. I use that in my PR business for years, but you can check with Google and Siri or Siri, and she will tell you, she will tell you, but I won't. Alright. Uh, Nancy Juetten been a pleasure. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Today's guest has 4x'd his own business in less than three months... during the peak of coronavirus downturn. Just imagine where it will go from there, and he's here to tell you how super simple marketing basics can help you too. Please welcome Evan Knox. 2:53 Evan's discussing what he is good at 12:08 Evan's realizations about his experience 20:39 Evan's Marketing Success Contact Info https://evanknox.com https://caffeine.marketing   I have an ox on learning from others. What's up, man. Thanks for jumping on. Hey, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah. Uh, you know what I appreciate Evan is that you have a beard. I had some buddies when we hopped on, I mean, obviously guys gives you a podcast, but he's got a pretty sweet, like goatee beard going on too. Did you see how far I committed this to the back of my backdrop? My blog, my personal logo, not my company logo, but my personal logo has my face with my beard in it. Yeah. You could never go back now. Always said that facial. Yeah. That's a new thing. Well, relatively new, like the last two years is when I like really committed. And so when we were redesigning the logo, I'm like, yeah. Do I really want to commit this this far? And I guess I decided, yes, that's great. So, you know, it's funny, as you mentioned, that is I had really long hair maybe a year ago, and I knew I was going to come up with all this like personal branding stuff. I was going to launch my website is set up for my, just my agency and whatnot. It sounds like I just can't have as long hair forever because I want that to be the thing that people picture me with with sounds like. Cut it. So, you know what, I'm almost considering doing the opposite. So, um, I just cut my hair yesterday. It's like, it's longer than usual. It's certainly not long, but it's longer than usual. And so when I tell them to clean up the sides, I'm like, you know what, leave, leave it on the top. And then just do the sides and they went a little bit further than I expected. I think it looks fine, but, um, I might just take, I just might ride this coronavirus thing out and just be like, yeah. I mean, if I have an excuse for my hair and you know, now's better than any other time, a hundred percent. Yeah. That's why, that's why my beard is so shaggy. Yeah, well, this is also, I know that we were gonna talk about marketing and whatnot, but your mustache is, is very thick. And I got mine got vetoed. Like last week it was, it was almost that thick. And my wife was like, you have to cut the mustache. You have to cut that. That's funny because you know how I said the Baird's relatively new? Well, what I mean is like I had it, but it was so my mind so wired, like you can't see up close, but it's like, Long thin hairs. And so I, I looked just Amish and then until I did the mustache and then I was like, Oh, okay, this go, this, this makes it work. And then the master I've been telling my wife, um, she came down and just, uh, she was given, come to my office, gave me a kiss the other day. And I was like, is this mustache too much? And she's like, I don't even notice anymore. So yeah. Lucky you. That's great. Yeah, but I haven't. So you're the founder of caffeine marketing caffeine labs. Um, so I like to ask guests two questions. I think question number one will kind of give us some insights into what caffeine is and then we'll, we'll dive into that deeper a little bit after that, after question number two, number one is what are you good at? And what can we learn from you today? Yeah, ultimately, I'm good at making marketing profitable. So as the founder of caffeine marketing, I bring strategy to my clients and make it came that marketing actually give them results in a great way investment. And I'll also in the private equity world. And I serve as like the COO of a couple of different companies, which is a ton of fun. Very cool. All right. So we're gonna, we're gonna jump into that here in a minute after question number two, which is what do you suck out of him? Well, what's funny is that I'm really good at the messaging side of marketing, but I'm really bad at spelling and grammar. So I have to hand it back to my team after I read it because they never, I mean, it cannot go to print before, um, I'm just not good at spelling and grammar never have been. Yeah. Well, at least you own it. And so somebody else can take care of it. I'm power somebody else, for sure. So how long have you been doing all this? So I've been in the market. If we go really far back, my grandfather was an entrepreneur. So as my dad and my grandpa, my great grandfather. So I've been in business for a long time. I just grew up in it. Growing up, grew, uh, grew up, going to work with my grandfather, worked in a head's jewelry store. And I remember the first time that I got into marketing was when he was teaching me when I was like 12 years old, he had pulled me aside. Like, Hey, I've been, we're going to create an ad. This is going to go in the Atlanta, Cynthia symphony symphony. And once we do that, here's all the details that need to be in it. And that's really what I developed a passion for marketing. I love the strategy. I love the thought process. And then fast forward to about four years ago, I had just got done working at a nonprofit, doing marketing. There are part of my role is marketing and decided that I wanted to help small business owners and entrepreneurs, but their marketing. So it started caffeine marketing like three years ago and change. Hmm. And then tell me about the private equity side. So, you know, if, if you're, you, you have a lot of experience in entrepreneurial world, but it sounds like you you're like formal doing your own thing is in the last few years. So is that about the same time the private equity stuff started to? So that's been about a year. Uh, actually maybe two years is when I first started dabbling in that, um, I honestly, it's just crazy how the whole thing came about. I initially was a partner in a fly fishing guide business, and that was going really, really well. Um, one of an example of how well this going is my partner. We just sign on and decided to do partnership or whatever. He sent me a text on the 5th of August. Okay. So get them August. And he said, Hey, we've already Forex our entire revenue. From the previous year of that whole month. So by the fifth Forex, the entire month's revenue. So it was just a really cool experience to come into a company, help create all the marketing from the ground up, all the systems and processes in order to scale the company and found that that was something I really enjoyed. And then a little less than a year ago, I met my partners and we decided to essentially. These are different partners to come in and help small business owners, entrepreneurs who really want to scale their companies and make exits in a couple of years, uh, make it really profitable for them. So they come in as a partner, we help, you know, three or four X the company, and then get them a higher, multiple at sale as a partnership. What marketing was driving the Forex on, uh, the fly fishing thing. Yeah, so we completely redid the one website. Um, and that sounds a big WHOIS, but here's really what was, uh, needed to be changed on the website, which a lot of messaging. So instead of making him and the rest of his guides that we have on our team, the hero of the story, we actually made the fly fishing, the. Not to be cheeky here, but the guide and what I mean by that is that they came here with empathy and authority. So essentially the entire website was about helping the customer or the client get what they want, which is to have a, a, a fun time fly fishing without the frustration. Um, and have an experience outdoors that was gonna make memories or whatever. So adjusting the messaging and then building in other parts of the marketing funnel, um, organic by focusing on SEO, which are deeply familiar with. So make sure we get all the keywords and, um, on page and off page SEO, sorted out, and the other one was the advertising. So. Our cost per acquisition is a little insane. I won't say it, but it's really profitable with Facebook ads right now, which is really cool. How has that been fluctuating a little bit for you? Because it seems like before the virus, you know, thing costs were going up and then because of the virus costs are going down, which is good. Um, has that gone up or down for you as well, or just kind of stayed the same through it? Yeah. So for a little bit, the state of Georgia had a, like a bull shelter in place, and now they've kind of alleviated some of the guidelines. And so we're able to still book trips now, but for awhile we weren't. So we cut off all of our advertising when the shelter in place or was mandated because we weren't doing the trips they've since then turn those back on. And what I've kind of noticed is that, um, You're not, you don't have as many people bidding because if you're familiar with Facebook versus Google advertising, you're not bidding on a keyword, you're bidding on a person. Um, so in that scenario, I've noticed that the cost is actually a little bit lower right now, but like you said, that could change. Everybody could hop back in and try to drive revenue back up to where it was pre coded. Yeah. This is kind of off topic, but like fly fishing people. Um, I I've. As I see it, like I have this, this Lake property, that's like two hours away. And so I have to drive through a mountain to get there. And a lot of times I'll drive up there early morning, like five or six in the morning. And especially in the, like in the fall or the spring, when it is just freezing cold. And I see fly fish dudes out on the river. And the first thing that crosses my mind is like, I wish I had something that I was that passionate about. Totally. Well, you know, what's funny is so, you know, my partner it's him. And then we have a bunch of guides that are on our team, but I will wake up and go, man, I really don't want to wire from this website right now. And I'll look at his Instagram and he's in the snow. Like it's just like freezing. It's got jackets on and he's in there. Like guys smile. Yes. I'm like, I have no excuse. Like I should be working harder. Yeah. Yeah. So what types of marketing do you focus on bringing to your other clients? Is it largely Facebook ads too? Or, or is it like, do you have an area of expertise or depending on the client, it's a variety of solutions. Yeah. It's definitely a variety of solutions. And when we first come in with a story, we use this thing called the StoryBrand framework. It's a seven part of the framework created by this guy named Donna Miller in Nashville. And we use that framework to craft all of the messaging. So that's one thing that makes us unique. And also we essentially design each customer from the ground up a strategy to implement, to get them that return on investment. So. Like you were mentioning the nuts and bolts of it might be different depending on if it's a beanie B2B company or a B to C company. It really, it all depends, but it could be websites. It could be creating a Legion and email series. Uh, oftentimes it does have an advertising in it, for sure. What, uh, I'll kind of ask you like a split question. What type of marketing do you do the most of versus what do you, Evan personally enjoy the most. Well, I really love strategy and math. And so I. Even though, you know, at some point you have to, um, empower somebody else. So do stuff if you want to scale. And so this is one of the last things that I'm still holding onto, which is the paid advertising. And, but I just love it. I just love creating Facebook ads and Google ads, measuring results. Seeing the return on investment. It's kind of addicting. Cause once you see for your client, you're getting them sick execs or whatever return on their ad spend. Um, it's really fun. So I do a lot of that. Um, I would say probably as of recently we're doing a lot of messaging and specifically websites. So that's probably as of late, we're doing a lot of that, but I probably spend most of my time in the actual ads world. Why don't we talk about that for a little bit. You talking about, you know, it's hard to give away things because you're passionate about which I can totally agree because, um, you know, the evolution of my company, uh, so SEO National's been around 13 years and like the first year or two, it was just kind of basically one man show. I I'd freelance certain things here and there that I would need extra support on. And then years two through four, I had like one or two people. And then, and then I, I was listening to. Tim Ferriss's four hour work week and nothing was really like mind blowing enough, at least for me. But the main thing I took away was I don't have more on my team. Like, why don't I give away more? And it was kind of like you were saying, I don't think I really did it because a lot of it I was passionate about, but some of it, I was certainly more passionate about it. So I was like, okay, that middle ground stuff let's give away those. And so then I brought on a whole bunch of other people, but it seems like I go through this cycle where every year or two it's. Um, you know, a new growth with the company and I have to give away more, but the only things that are left are the things that I'm really passionate about, or I really want to call it a control, but even now, like I don't want to bottleneck things. And so why don't we maybe talk about in your version of that story of what you've experienced as you've grown and how you decide what to give away, if anything. There's definitely things that I come to realize that I'm not the best at when I first started caffeine, I was actually doing like writing captions for social media. And then I quickly realized that was draining my soul. And I was not only not enjoying that, but also not the best. And so I found people to bring onto my team that were really good at that. And they really enjoyed that and that really made them happy and they were, you know, Really receptive to feedback. And if you've ever heard of this thing called the Enneagram, I'm an Enneagram eight. It's like a personality test. Take it. But basically I don't. Right. And so it's hard for me to like get into the nuts and bolts about a social media post. And I'm like, Hey, this is important, but it's not that. Yeah. Um, so I have, I have little patients so that there's gradually became stuff that I realized, Hey, you know what? I don't need to be involved in this. I need to bring people into my team that I can trust who ultimately can run with this and you can do a great job. And I need to actually be involved. I need to at least be aware of what's going on. I don't need to just like. Check out, forget about it. That's not good leadership, but I gradually stuff comes up. But I think the greatest thing that we can do, uh, when starting out is to actually document things. So to document your systems and processes, I think it's really, really helpful because if you do come to the point where you go, you know what, I have to bring someone over right now. Like, let's say your company just ran like three X. You've got too many leads. You don't know what to do with, it would be really great if you have all of the materials in place in order to hand somebody else, a contract or a virtual assistant, whoever, and say, Hey, I need you to run with this and you've already outlined exactly for them. And so I've tried to build stuff in that way that you know, that whenever the time comes and I, I can't have that on my plate anymore. It's a seamless transition and I've created videos or guides. Now I'm not done that completely, but I need to continue to do that as we scale. Yeah, for sure. Um, you know, I've talked on other podcasts about the importance of that. And, uh, an example I gave is, um, you know, I, I had. A client that came along. And so it was after like the four hour workweek thing and I hired a bunch of people. And then I was listening to the myth revisited book, and then it was kind of emphasized the same topic of make sure your, your company is dependent on your processes and not like individual skill sets of employees. And so, like you said, that way you can just plug people in. And I had probably one of our largest clients. Today at that time, come in and I had to hire five people. Like if I didn't have that stuff documented, then I not only could have probably not felt confident in giving a bid on the contract because there was a good chance we would have trained, wrecked it if we got accepted. And then if we did get accepted, like. Are we going to train wreck it? And so, but I was able to confidently put it in the bed now very clearly what we would do. We got the contract and it was awesome. So, um, I support you and any other listeners like yeah, do it. I had while you can, because it sucks in the moment, but it's going to suck more when it prevents growth. Totally. And it'll keep you up at night. Cause you'll spend time working on stuff that you should have already taken care of and it'll make you miserable and Patriot business. Yeah. Well, let me talk about, so you do a lot of Facebook ads, it sounds like, um, let's talk about ad trolls. So like. I did. So I've never really spent marketing. So as much as our company's grown, we've never really spent marketing any dollars on marketing, but year and a half, two years ago. Um, I was just like, I hired some companies to test some funnels because I was like, okay. I wonder if I wonder how, you know, we have these really great SEO processes. What if we packaged that as a course for the people that. And so we did that and I was like, all right, let's just see where this goes. And then maybe we'll turn this into another source of revenue. And so I paid these great teams. Yeah. You know, these other companies to build out funnels and copywriting and all this stuff. And then we start doing these ads and I have like a story, less reputation. If you search me online. Tons of positive reviews, tons of great, you know, value propositions and expertise and all that. And then I turn on one damn Facebook ad and it's just like every other person's like, look at this scam or look at this hackathon, you don't even know me. Like did, did you, did you watch the video? Just because the content of the video was like, Hey, you can be successful online. It's just instantly like this guy's a scammer dude. I couldn't hang with it. Yeah, it's so funny. And you probably had your Lamborghini in the background, right? I did not. No, I actually, no, I actually went, I was the opposite. I was the other guy. It was the guy that came on and was like, I think in one of the ads, I actually was like, I'm not here to impress you. I don't want to tell you about my big fancy house. I drive a 2003 Infiniti because I like it and works fine. I don't have to impress you. Like if you want. You know, if you want proof, like here's the proof of what I can do with SEO, but I don't need to show you my bank account. Like, I think I'm pretty confident. I literally was like, I'm not that guy. And I still got the people saying I'm that guy. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That's so funny. Um, I don't know. I just a couple of different thought processes, right? There's the. This is what I love. Okay. So this is maybe a very practical tip. The people that actually create the content on our team, I don't let that person be the same person who does community management. So if can we think of community management, being the person who responds to all the comments and messages, the emails, the feedback, all that jazz. You need to separate that too, because. Are those two people are those two roles, because ultimately that's going to kill their creativity and be really, really discouraging for the person who's trying to come up with content. And that still goes with the C like, even if you're the one making the video, it's like, you cannot have the person who's creating it. Yeah. Exposed to all sorts of just ridiculous hate mail. You know, it's not going to be helpful or productive and well we'll always come and go. It's very interesting because. On some of these websites or some of these platforms, you can actually hide the comments or delete them or flag them. And, and a lot of cases, that's probably the best way to go, but there's other scenarios where if they're like, like real humans, you know, and I say real, like they're reasonable people and they're just upset or whatever it might be worth responding to them could actually add brand value or equity too. What you're doing. Yeah. I've seen some comments where like the initial reply was kind of had some negative intent, but the whoever owned the campaign, like put a positive spin on it. Well, you know, we're sympathetic to that, but like, here's why the opposite is true. And it was such a way where like, Oh yeah. And then just completely neutralized whatever the negativity was and turned it into positive. But that's a really good idea. I like that idea of separating the ad creator versus the moderator, because I would see the most bizarre things and I knew it existed because obviously I see ads and read the comments, but there was like one, I remember one guy was like, that guy wears a tee. He wears a sports coat over a tee shirt. He can't be successful. Like I'm like, what? Like, why does it matter if I learn a jacket over t-shirt yeah, no, every time you put a sport coat, You're just a little static inside now. Yeah. I'm, I'm a little sad, like, look, you can't see it, but it was this pork sports coat right here. I keep it on the back of my chair and I've worn it a lot less since then. Totally lesson learned you can't make sense too. Uh, let's talk about some of your success stories when, you know, either with your own stuff or with clients, is there kind of like some standalone, like breakout case studies where something really amazing happened? Yeah. Well, I'll let talk about something that I, I have to permission to. Um, so one of them is going to be my own holdings in a company that we just recently acquired. Um, so they're a window company. So if you want to. I'm not a window company, but a window film company. So if you want to put like a, some sort of, yeah. Tents on your window, and I don't necessarily mean for your car, I mean, for like your house, so you can frost it, you can make it a mirror. So instead of spending thousands of dollars on like a one way mirror, you can just buy a window tint for 70 bucks and it'll do the same exact thing. So that's that company. We acquire the company in February, we kind of finished up, polished up a paperwork then. March, we got all the backend systems. Correct. And then that's a success a year or the previous year, February. This is this year. Um, so this is all like fairly recent, which is really cool. So, um, you look at Mo like February closed March with built in all the backend systems. So my partners who do a lot of the operations, they're the ones like trying to figure out what inventory we have, all the basic stuff when you acquire a business. So they're doing all that stuff. I'm over here now, working on. Um, conversion optimization without any sort of paid advertising. So we go in and we start adding, um, abandoned cart emails, um, welcome series lead, captures, um, popups, all kinds of jazz in order to actually optimize the engine so that when we put the fuel in their quote, unquote of advertising, it's going to run really effectively without spending any paid ads. So we do that right. March and April, we had a 250 cent increase in revenue versus the previous year for that month. Okay. So not a hundred percent increase, 200%. And then we scaled up and for, uh, February, March, April, may. So in may, we had so far it's over it's between a five, depending on what day it is and how many sales we've had. It's a 500 to 700% increase in revenue. And our net profitability has been like two to three X, what it was before. And so that's a really cool thing where it's like, Um, you know, we're spending more, but we're making way more in percentage wise. We're also making a lot more as well. And that's just an example of what happens when you have a completely built out funnel that works really well. And that's even during this whole virus thing too. So I imagine it's just gonna grow further beyond that as things chill out. Okay. What's your average client? Is it in, is it retail and products or is it service or a little bit of mix? It's definitely a little bit of mixed. I'm a firm believer that if you understand BDB, it really just, the principles are transferable across most B2B spaces and the same goes for BBC. And I just made business to business and business to consumer. Um, so the actual nuts and bolts of what we might do for them are different. But yeah, we serve both really our sweet spot for our clients is those who are doing less than $25 million a year in revenue. Got it. Now, what, um, you know, as we kinda get closer to wrapping up, I want to ask, is there something that you see over and over and over? Um, that might be a good tip that you could leave our listeners with, or, or even if it's not a reoccurring problem that you see just like a real, tangible tip, but some actionable tips that somebody could take into consideration. Yeah, I've got two that come to mind. And these are the things that I feel like most business owners or business leaders, name mistakes on when it comes to their marketing. And that first one is playing the hero of their own marketing story. Because most people, when they're creating a marketing, they think, man, I have to get people to know about how awesome we are and then they will actually work with us. But in reality, people are not looking for another hero in their own narrative. They're looking for a guide. They're looking for someone like an Obi wan Kenobi or Haymitch from the hunger games. Somebody that will help them ultimately win the day. And so your job in your marketing is to not be the hero and talk about how awesome you are. Your job is to come in and help your potential customers. Understand. Hi, you're going to make their lives better and help them win the day. So that's the first thing it's making the switch from hero to guide. And the flip side is also measuring conversions and I'm sure as an SEO guy, um, you know, you're very familiar with, um, measuring all of the stuff, but I feel like if you don't measure something, then you cannot manage it and you cannot improve something that you do not manage. And so if you just throwing bus stuff on the wall, hoping something will stick a lot. A lot of business leaders do that. They just get really excited about Facebook ads or, you know, take talk. Yeah. Now, whatever that may be, they get really excited. They just throw something on the wall. Sometimes it's six, sometimes it doesn't, but that's not a great way to scale a company. And so if you don't measure something, you cannot improve it. And like that company I was talking about just a few minutes ago, we do, we did like one thing at a time. So we made one change. We waited seven days to see what, what happened. We made another change. See what would happen. And, you know, if we don't control one variable at a time, that's a really poor science experiment, it's gonna be hard to figure out. So, yeah. Yeah. I liked the idea of, um, not only testing, but like segmenting the test so you don't get mixed results. Um, it reminds me of one kind that we had a, this was like 10 years ago. Um, there's still a client today, but when they first came on, They worked in electronics manufacturing. And so they were bidding on it. So they do the assembly of electronics, but they don't build the components. And so they were, they, before they came to us, they were spending like 80% of their budget on component names. But they don't build the components. They assembled it. And so came in and were like chop and cut that off, saved 80% of their budget and increase their conversions by like 200%, because they were just, like you said, it's just like, Oh, we do that. You know, that's, that's, that's an industry preterm. What does it matter if it's an industry term? If it doesn't match the intent behind the buyer that you're trying to target. Yeah, it's crazy. You know, if you just go in through your, um, your ad Google ads, for example, is assuming what you're talking about right now, and you just add in those negative keywords that aren't actually converting for you. It's wild, how much more money that you can make your company. It's so crazy seeing, um, you know, cause we, we, we just do the SEL, right? Like I have skill sets. My team has skill sets and other areas, but like, we don't want to be the one that takes on it at all. We just want to focus on SEO, but sometimes clients come in and we're like, well, you know, we'll just give you like one time advice. It's not yeah. Things we're going to do it for free and just help you out. And we go and look at these paid ads and they have no negative qualifiers. They have no, you know, match parameters. It's just like the example I always give is let's say they sell. You know, mattresses and they put beds as a key word, right. And all your con, you know, half of your budget goes to somebody searching dog beds and you don't sell dog beds. Like you can just burn through cash. So fast on paid ads is amazing. It is. And I know that you I'm sure, I'm sure you've experienced this, but there's varying levels of quality of agencies and people in both the paid advertising space and SEO, because there's people who will sell snake oil, basically in either one. Just set up a Google ad words, account and run paid ads on just random keywords that are somewhat related to you. And then there's also people that are just set up Google analytics for you and say that they're doing SEO when they may not be. Yeah. Yeah. That's a whole other question or a whole other whole other topic. Um, yeah. Well, Evan cool. I appreciate you jumping on learning from others. Um, I want to give you the chance to, uh, put out your contact information, how listeners can find out more. And then I think you also got like a free guide on sales funnels. Maybe you can talk about that. Yeah. So it's, um, how to build a winning sales funnel. It's basically the Lego blocks of exactly. Step by step checklist on how to build a sales funnel. Like we've been talking about a little bit, so that's both on caffeine.marketing, no.com. Just caffeine, not marketing. It's our agency website. And then also @theknox.com. So you can access it at both places. Cool. And that's K N O X I'm Evan Knox. Thanks so much. Appreciate. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.

Today's guest is a believer in authentic connections and heart-based leadership. He's spoken at TEDx five times and is an Inc Magazine Top 100 Leadership Speaker. With over 500,000 social media followers, he is a recognized influencer and here to teach you how to network authentically to build brand awareness. Please welcome Bobby Umar. Contact Info: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbyumar/ https://twitter.com/raehanbobby https://www.facebook.com/raehanbobby/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/bobbyumar/ https://www.nsb.com/speakers/bobby-umar/ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLei-DaVi2YC0vXcZ13AiJvYgBDKzfaecq https://www.instagram.com/raehanbobby/ https://www.youtube.com/c/BobbyUmar Hey, Bobby. Thanks for thanks so much for jumping on learning from others today. I'm excited to be here, Damon. Thanks. Uh, you have a pretty diverse background, you know, inc magazine, top a hundred leadership speaker. You've done TEDx a bunch of times, tons of social media followers, and that's how you and I met was on LinkedIn. Um, so. Before we dive into how you got there and what your, your secret sauce is. Let's kind of start with my guests, usual, two questions. And question number one is, you know, in your own words, what are you good at? And what can we potentially learn from you today? I would say my main expertise is what I call the power of connection and that's my hashtag. And they use the power of connection in three ways to help companies and individuals. One is a personal branding, which is the connection with the self. Number two is authentic. Network analyst should build it in the thirties. Um, Social media, digital influence and public speaking, which is the connection with the world. And so for me, helping people connect as individuals to other individuals or other groups, that's really what I do best. Okay. I'm going to have some follow up questions for you on that, but I need to know what are you not so good at? Hold on. Not so good at it, man. So many things. Yeah. I can't swim. I really never learned how to swim. I have not. Uh, I'm pretty, I'm terrible with the, the, the health management piece. I mean, I'm trying to lose weight and I'm trying to eat healthy and just, I find it very difficult at times. I think that's, that's a hard thing. Uh, I probably suck at, uh, definitely. Uh, time management sometimes. And sometimes I'm really good sometimes just like terrible, but it's more about the, you know, getting those small things in. And I just, like, I find like, okay, I'm stressed, I'm distracted. That's squirrel. That's, that's the thing I'm very distracted easily. You know, what's interesting is, and I've said this to our listeners more than once is that it's so funny to bring on experts and more often than not. They say that they suck at the small things. So they suck at time management, which is like the total opposite of what you assume, but it's just a reoccurring theme. Now, if you learn to swim, that also helps with weight loss. So there you go. Oh boy. Yeah. I could just float around everywhere. Yeah. All right. So, um, let's talk about, you know, the explanation of what you do is fairly broad. So let's kind of dial it in a little bit and maybe give us some examples of. Either like real examples of types of situations you've helped businesses with, or maybe, um, maybe if that's maybe if maybe your most common example is, is a little bit different than your most preferential type of arrangement. So like, you know, what part of it do you actually love and maybe what do you do the most of? Hmm. Yeah, I think when I go, I mean, I speak at companies and conferences and schools everywhere, but usually when I go in, they want me to take them through. Um, how to, uh, things like how to connect better and network better, you know, in person and how to have great conversations, how to communicate more effectively, uh, very soft skill type stuff. That's a very common day that I'll do another one that I'll often work on is what I call thought leadership, personal branding. So how do I understand my brand? How do I build thought leadership on our big content as you build that up? And so I'll take. You know, like small business owners, I'll talk to a bunch of custom custom with brokers, and I'll talk about how to build a brand using content and how to communicate effectively and use that brand to generate more business, a community. And those are examples of organizations where I'll go in and I'll help them out. Another time it'll be more around things like, well, how do I build a social media following? How do I communicate with that community? How do I actually. Um, you know, build followers, how do I engage them? Do I comment everything? Do I reply a lot of senior people don't know how to do that. They're very scared of social media still, like years later. And so I think that's something that they struggle with. And ultimately, because when people die, I usually go in and do team building or employee engagement stuff and talk about passion engagement, uh, better teams not working in silos. So I'll go in and. You know, work with companies and teams that are struggling within those areas of culture, culture, culture, gaps, work in silos. These are things that might go in and, you know, we'll do some activities with them to help them better bond and better communicate with each other. So what's your background that got you into this world? Well, you know, it's pretty diverse, you know, I w I was a engineer, uh, so it was kind of an analytics guy, a, you know, aerospace design engineer. So I'm a problem solver, but then I went to brand marketing and then I was also in performing arts. So I performed a improv comedy, musical theater. And so when I was feeling like, kind of lost and stuck in what I was doing, I dealt with my brand and I was like, Oh, Hey, well, what's going to come, come through here. And it turned out, you know, five things can come about one with Bobby, those people marvelous and nurture. Like my mom Bob was to perform a present like onstage. Bobby was persuading influence, which is kind of a sales thing. And then of those diversity, um, so all five of those things kind of led to me thinking, okay, what can I, what kind of have, can I create with this? And that's when you know, professional speaking kind of screaming at me, okay, this is the way to go. And that's kinda what I went with. And what I've been doing now for 15 years and that, that diverse background is really what led into it, because they're all part of what I'm doing now. Yeah. Yeah. Now one comment you mentioned was soft skills and. I, uh, I'm a huge believer in the importance of that, but until you said, I, I, I didn't really realize, I haven't really talked about it very often on the show. Um, why don't you give us explanation of, you know, what soft skills are. And I think what's super important is, um, Because I think soft skills have kind of degraded with technology. And so then maybe we can talk about that. So, you know, in your world, what are soft skills and like, how are they applicable to business? Well, I think the most direct way to talk about soft skills, the soft skills are the skills you're using to create an emotional connection. With people that you, uh, interact with. So whether they're your colleagues at work, whether it's your boss, whether it's your parents, whether it's your social media followers that you create content for, you're trying to create an emotional connection and emotional experience with that. And so soft skills. That's, what's going to get you there. So for example, you know how I communicate, it's the soft skills. And so my communication can have empathy. It can have storytelling in it. They can have, you know, a warmth and energy to it, which will then create a better connection with that person and create a more memorable experience. So for me, that's what soft skills. Now do you agree that, and this is a pretty broad statement, but do you agree that technology has caused, um, some of the authenticity and in soft skills to kind of dive a little bit in the last 10 years? Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Um, I was actually going to, um, launch a brand new talk, um, uh, actually is going to be, uh, in a week from now in Poland, but, uh, it didn't happen, but it's been postponed, but it was going to be, it was going to be on. The future of connection now. And what's happened, is that what hypothesis thesis is that? There's a couple of things happening. One is, you know, technology has made it more difficult for some people to connect. In person. And so I think people struggle with that, but at the same time, there's also a disconnection too, because people who are actually, the people are struggling to actually, uh, in person to leverage technology, to connect with the world. And on top of that, we also have all those technologies. No we're using like at work, you may have two screens, you may have a laptop and a desktop. You may have a phone and something else, and we're trying, and then we have all these other platforms, you know, Slack, Trello, A sauna as well as Facebook and social media and LinkedIn, and it's, it's overwhelming. And so people are now struggling to just even find the right balance. So I think that, you know, the, the short answer is yes, I think it definitely has caused a challenge. People will, I've been challenged to connect in person before, but now with technology doing online stuff, they're also challenged that way to connect and authentic way. So I think it provides a lot of challenges for people. Uh, and to find the balance between the two. That is interesting, because I think I've thought of those two where technology makes people more in person. And I thought of that independently and then independent of that, I thought about, you know, the opposite, but I guess I haven't put them in context. It's like overlapping the same, that they're both, you know, the yin and yang of each other now with soft skills. How do you. Where do you start? Because I think that maybe the more extreme example that I, that comes to mind is you have an introvert. And so you're like, Hey, it's really important that you talk to people and have soft skills. And that they're just an introvert and they're like, Bobby, I don't want to. So is that something that you deal with sometimes and how do you do that? Yeah, absolutely. I did a webinar on how introverts can network more effectively. One of the things to keep in mind is that, you know, people. We have to understand the importance of people in our lives. So the internet and our social lives are personalized, but even professionally, if you're good at building relationships and building people's skills, it's going to suit you. You're going to get that promotion. You're going to generate those leads. You're going to actually have your close clients, whether you're doing corporate or entrepreneurship or whatever it might be, or even, even as a student, if you want to get ahead of the professor to be your buddy, you know, people's skills are really important. So, you know, one of those introverts I'll always say is that, you know, you have your own superpowers. So know what they are. You're good listeners. You're prepared, usually organize you're quite thoughtful and reflective. So take those things and use it to be a better networker. A perfect example for networking is I'll say, look, you know, prepare 10 questions that you think will drive a conversation to help someone get to know them better and also invest in who they are. And yeah, them practice them, rehearse them before you even go. And you have them all memorized. That's going to help you tremendously because you know, you're really good at that kind of stuff, all that prep. And so it helps them to figure that stuff out. You know, what came to mind while you're talking, this is kind of off topic, but yeah. Also immediately relevant at the same time, you know, you talking about everybody having kind of hidden values is. Years ago. I don't know if you saw the story. There was a, a woman that was like legally blind. And so she understandably had hurdles and types of implants. And so she started her own company as a sensitive document paper shredder. Because she couldn't read the documents anyway. Right. It's a, I think it's just a, I love those stories like that, where they take something that's super unique and then just turn it in as a positive. I mean, that's a total win right there with them. She builds trust right away. Now waters, you mentioned that all their audiences oftentimes get scared of engaging on social media. And I think that's fair, but what are they scared of? I think a lot of them are scared of technology and security is one thing. So they don't know how secure things are. And they're worried about things being a picture, being taken out of context or working things out of context, and it blows up in their face. I think that's one thing that they're, they're really concerned about. Uh, the other thing that they get concerned about is really trying to. Uh, they, they feel, they feel, um, that they're not technical. And so I think that worried that they're dumb, they don't want to look, they don't want to be vulnerable. I find it like kind of daunted because they were told or where they grew up. They were told to be tough and to be, you know, strong and to, you know, always put that best face forward. But, you know, nowadays, you know, leadership 2.0, you know, we all know that it's okay to be vulnerable. Okay. The asphalts. Okay. That talk about your struggles. Uh, but I think when I, when I engaged the older, older folks, they have a hard time saying, well, how can you say that? Even my mom's like, why don't we, why don't you talk about the way problems? Like, you know, she doesn't get it because she thinks it provides accountability, a support network. I, it makes me accountable. I love doing and relatable too. Yeah. Relatable exactly what let's talk about that a little bit more about being perfect on screen and the value in, um, You know, having those, I don't want to say flaws. I don't have a better word for those. So, you know, those unique characteristics, um, and one example I've joked about before, and it may very well may have been you. I can't remember. I think it was somebody from LinkedIn. I'm talking about a client they were working with and his. The presentations were like two polished in a short videos. And so they weren't relatable. And so the, you know, his advisor coach said, you know, when your next and your next screen pick your nose and he's like, he's like, why would I pick my nose? And he's like, just do it. And so like on his next thing is just like, you know, digging for gold for quick half second. And then he said that had the most engagement of any of his recent videos at any time because people hung on a little bit longer to watch what was next. I remember watching a speaker and she was talking and. Or the entire time of like the 10 minute speech I know that she never ever said, and I was like, Oh my gosh, let me just keep listening for the I'm. Like I, and I was like all the time and not once. And after a while, is it, this is so robotic. And I, by the end of it, I was like, okay, I didn't hear a single arm. Do you remember what she said? I don't even know what she said. Yeah, no doubt. You know what, you know, what my crutches, uh, aside from the obvious, um, you know, I think, I think, I think there's like a balance because ums are okay when, when you're just like moving forward. And so I think, I think it's like, what you don't want to do is overthink it and then have that kind of, um, you just want to have the forward momentum. Um, but one thing that I've noticed in doing conversations like this and having my editor work on the podcast and, um, I'll repurpose some of the content. And so sometimes I'll say, Hey, Go transcribe everything. And then I'm going to just scan it real quick and like find highlights of things that I'm making to an Instagram image or whatever. And so as I go through those, I say like a crap ton. I really like is my, um, and then you don't notice it until you go back and listen to minutes. It's like every, every 20 seconds, like, like, but that's me. There you go. There's there's there's my, and you were asking for like, you know, does one start to be better at these things? You know, the, the first thing is to really understand who you are driving your brand. So like getting, doing your own self assessment, as well as doing assessment of your feedback network. When people to, to tell you what they see, what they like, what they think are challenges for you, that information is incredibly invaluable. And so, you know, whenever I work with people, I would say, look, you know, diamond your brand, do the assessments and get people to give you feedback. It's a goal of mine for you to understand what your brand is and to help you figure out what you want your brand to go. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, why don't we talk about TEDx a little bit. We've had some other TEDx speakers. Why don't you walk us through the process? Because I think the process is a little bit unique to what people probably assume the processes. Um, so why don't you touch on the process and then maybe talk about, um, you know, what you thought your experience was like? Well, I think for the most part, I mean, uh, the first I've done five TEDx talks and the first four kind of came because I had really strong thought there's a brand. So people reached out to me and said, Hey, can you do one of the, okay. Uh, it's daunting though. Cause the first time I remember I did one and they said, okay, tell us, tell us the best idea of your life. Go deep dive in your personal story. Um, and minimal slides. And I love my PowerPoint. My middle slides do it, do it in 18 minutes. And I was like, Holy cow, that's really intimidating. And, and it's free. We're not going to pay you. So you know that first Ted talk, I spent hours and hours and hours on it and I rehearsed it 30 times. And, Oh my gosh, I was so nervous because many times, as you say, I'm. Oh, who knows, but like, you know, I was, it was about that and it went, it went well. I mean, at the time, but I was super nervous. And so I think that, you know, that is an important piece now in terms of the process, the fifth Ted talk in, cause I saw there was a fee and the theme was power connection, which again is my hashtag and my brand. It's like, Oh, I gotta apply for this one. So I applied for it. Got it. Um, so what'd you do, do you typically apply and do a full, full application where you talk about what your ideas? It has to be really simple and easy to understand, like in a couple of lines and then they want to know why it's important to the world. This is all important. You have to explain how it's unique. So, you know, taking you through the application processes, it's very important. You have to make sure it aligns the theme and they organize this, get it, and they get really excited about it. And then once that happens, then usually they want to meet with you and, you know, flesh out the idea a little more and see how, if you're open to making some adjustments to coachable, and then usually you get accepted to right away and they start training on the, on the old platform. And, um, they'll, they'll begin to give you coach and I've coached speakers too for Ted talks as well. And, uh, you know, they really focused on the storytelling and the rehearsal and just being yourself and not trying to be someone that you're not, I think that's an important piece. Yeah, for me, it's been a great experience. I mean, when I first did, I didn't know what it was, but now I see the brand relevance. It's certainly a, has been a big part of my brand in terms of what people know about me and what they like about me. So I certainly leverage it. And that's also why I encourage other people to go do one too. Cause I think everyone has a story and a really cool Ted talk within them. It's just a matter of trying to extract and find out what it is. Yeah. A couple of things I wanna touch on. Um, it's it's w one comment is it's interesting that you say that there's like, TEDx coaches or they walk you through, like, here's the process because now that you say that there is a very concise there's consistency in the presentation, and I've never thought about that before, about people on totally different talks about totally different presentations. There's still some element of consistency, um, in how it's presented, which now I assume is because of the TEDx people going here's the flow. And here's how these things happen. Culture there. Yeah. Um, I'm curious, you said the first one was something about, you know, best thought of your life, I think is what you said. Um, so what, what was that all about? What, what was the, uh, theme of the presentation? Like, is it best out of your life that you've actually executed? Was it best. Personal thing, was it best business thought? Yeah. They want to know what's the best idea of your life that you have that you want to share on the stage. And so, you know, when I looked through everything I was doing, I came up with connection. So I said, you know, I said, how do you create deep, authentic connection with people? And we kind of broken down the idea that my wife. Tell me, which was like, you know, how's it, you meet people. And within 30 minutes, they're telling you the entire life story and then talking about their finances and their sex lives and everything. How do you do that? And I'm like, I don't know. Uh, let me think about this. And then I combined kind of my own personal experiences along with what I saw from Bernie Brown, which had research around being vulnerable and being deep and creating that connection. Well, you know what, I'm going to talk about how I create the book connection. So I turned into a home when I called the five CS of connection. Got it. Yeah. Now I think one of the obvious questions a lot of listeners are going to ask is, um, Bobby, how do I get on TEDx? Yeah. So, I mean, I think the best way to help you is to tell you where people go wrong when it comes to I let this great Ted talk. So the first thing is your topic idea is always the thing that people screw up. So I want to talk about love. I want to talk the importance of sales. I want to talk about the problems of mindset. You know, those are such generic topics that everyone's talking about. That's not going to work. I'm a perfect example where it does work is there was a guy came up with how Ninja philosophy applies to sales. That's a great slant. Hmm. So are they have a unique idea or unique slant? So having the right idea, I would say 80% people would tell me their TEDx idea is not good, or it's not going to work. It need some, you know, it needs some changing on the subtle bit of massaging, you know? So I think that that's the first thing. The second thing is. Is building a strong thought, there's your brand. So people know who you are and they know your content and see you speak. That's how I got my first four. Cause people love my content. Love my stuff out there. So easy to be doing that too. And then the third thing I think that really helped is to get to know organizers that run TEDx on this because they're the ones that will know you and will think of you and maybe, you know, pitch you and give you a spot. Uh, which again, what happened to me the first four times days, the organizers looked like my stuff and brought me a spot. Uh, on, on their stage. I think that, and then that, I think that's another one. And then the last thing that's really important is you have to look at themes. Every TEDx event and conference has a theme. Sure. That your idea or your ideas. Cause I have two in my head that I still am going to pitch in the feature. You want to make sure it aligns to the theme really, really well, because that's also going to get, uh, get you there. And then the secret, the one secret I'll give you the last one. Which is most TedTalks, always aim for the 18 minutes. If you have a three minute talk that is goals, people are they're dying for those short ones. No, there's a famous Ted talk with a guy with the, with the, with the, the paper towel, right? He's like, just shake your hands three times, right. And use paper and use less paper towel. This will save, you know, millions of sheets of paper towel every year. It's a simple idea, but it was a great Ted talk. Right? So, so the 18 minute mindset, that's the people that are aspiring to be on. Those are the people that are stuck at 18 minutes, or whether they're trying to maximize the time they have. And that's nice and all, but an organizer would love to have shorter talks. And so if you have a shorter talk that's three or six minutes long, you actually have a much better chance of getting on stage. So generally speaking TEDx says, Hey, you have up to 18 minutes. Correct. Got it. Okay. Very interesting. Well, Bobby, I appreciate your time. I think this has been, um, you know, an interesting conversation. I like all the little things we touched on. I, you know, you and I are obviously connected on LinkedIn, but being able to chat in person, virtually in person, um, you know, there, there's a lot of common ground that I can appreciate and how you present things and, you know, the whole goal of just being authentic. And it's always refreshing to get another person to come reinforce that on the show. So. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. And I'll give you the last few moments to tell our listeners how they can find out more about you. Sure. And thanks so much. I really appreciate that with YouTube. You know, people can find me on my LinkedIn pages and profiles where they can follow me. You that you can also check out my website  dot com and dyp.ca and on social media, I'm everywhere. So Twitter, Instagram, Facebook under the handle. Radon Bobby. Very cool. We'll put those in the show notes, Bobby Omar. Thanks so much. Thank you.

Today's guest is an impressive entrepreneur who single-handedly turned his collection of 40 golf drivers and love of the game into a multi-million dollar business in just a few years. After the perfect storm of being fired from his day job while his wife was pregnant, he's now gone on to sell $15 million in product and launched a second company helping others do the same. Please welcome Tyler "Sully" Sullivan. Contact Info: https://www.ecomgrowers.com https://www.bombtechgolf.com https://www.facebook.com/BombTechGolf/ Mr. Tyler solely Sullivan. How are you doing? Thanks for jumping in. I'm doing good, beautiful day in Vermont. It's about 45 degrees. So it's not snowing today, so I'll take it. Oh man. I can feel that. And I thought we were doing pretty good. I'm in Utah and I know exactly what you mean by that, but sounds like we are. Um, how do you on the temperature? So now I feel extra special. I was funny. I just got back. Well before this whole corn team thing happened, I was in Utah skied. Um, Oh, it's called the canyons now. Or, or if it was called out, we was out there for five days. It was, it was beautiful. Nice. So what was that like? Late February, early March? Yeah, it was late last weekend or January into February. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. So good time. Well, I appreciate jumping on learning from others. I like to start with the usual two questions and question number one is what are you good at? And what are we gonna learn from me today? Right now for the last eight years I've been focusing mostly on e-commerce, so selling more, more online. And then from that success, I also help others sell more online. Perfect. And the followup is what do you suck at? What do you not so good at? It's a long list, but, uh, I own a golf company, so everyone thinks I'm really good at golf. Um, I used to be good at golf, but I was in for two kids and two companies. So I'm not as good as everyone wants me to be. I'll take it. Uh, yeah, I can appreciate the good thing. There's there's um, you know, speaking of skiing and snowboarding, that's probably one thing that I would say I used to be all right at, but, uh, we haven't been my wife and I haven't been since she was pregnant with our first kid and he's now nine. So I feel like I gotta get out there. It's time. Yeah, well, speaking of golf, um, so you got a pretty cool backstory about bringing this product to market. Why don't you explain to our listeners what your product is? And then let's just jump into the journey of how it came to life. Sure. Yeah. So I was an accidental entrepreneur. I had no vision for the life I'm living now. Um, but 2012, I was trying to get peed in this niche sport called world long drive, which is 10, essentially homerun Derby of golf. Um, and I was okay. I mean, I hit a couple drives and competition, like 360 yards. I want a couple like local qualifiers. And I thought I was going to become famous by hitting the golf ball farther than anyone. And through this weird journey of me trying to hit the ball, as far as I could, I ended up breaking a lot of golf clubs and I just wanted to make my own, um, I actually ended up not being a very good cause the guys in competitions would hit it 50 yards farther than me after I got past the local level. Um, And then from there, it just kind of turned into me, documenting my journey of design in a golf driver. And I just documented it. This is way back when Facebook's reach was mostly organic. You know, we, I had like a thousand followers and it was a real thousand people would see it. And I just documented like, Hey, I'm designing a golf club, this one I'm thinking. And like, I just did it cause I loved it. You know? And then. I was, it really was timing and passion. And I did a lot of the wrong things for a long time. But now since then, for the last like four years, I've been, we do like four to 6 million a year, typically 5 million a year with one employee. Um, and now I have another company I started from that success where we actually help other brands with their emails. So now I'm running two companies working less than I was before, but it all started with my weird. Obsession with hitting a golf ball, as far as I, could you have any, any designer engineering background when you decided I'm going to see if I can design a golf club? No, I, well, so I started like assembling clubs with other components from small brands, like really niche, you know, really small companies. And I had a couple of issues with like back orders. I had a couple of clubs break on me. I just was like, I want to design my own brand. And I called up a buddy from. College. Like this was like 10 years before that we went to college together at the university of Vermont. He was a frat brother of mine. We lived together and I was just like, we were just, you know, the S and on the phone, it's like, Hey man, you know, I sold a cup of clubs on the internet. Uh, I kind of want to make my own club. He goes, you're not that smart. I go, yeah, you're right. He goes, well, why don't you call UVM? Which is like eight minutes from my house. See if they'll design it for you. Cause he had an engineering school. I said, I'll try it. Why not a university of Vermont? That's the biggest college of Vermont, which means it's really small, but it's a great school.   I had a, and that's why I live in Vermont because it was such a good experience. But so I ended up working with four senior students and the faculty, you have a program you can apply for every year. Um, and we designed. The first product I ever made, which was the dual cavity grenade golf driver. And, uh, I took kind of a big risk and I just went for it. I took their design, found a manufacturer cached on my 401k and just made a bunch of them. And, um, I luckily sold them and, and I was also fortunate. The product was really good. Um, And that's kinda how it started way back in the day now it's, it's more 55 times from, or a hundred times since it started, but it was a passion project through and through. You know, I have a lot of appreciation for that because that's a topic that we we've kind of touched on a couple of times in the showers I speak on other shows is how I think it's really important that entrepreneurs not necessarily. Lock themselves into a path. And it sounds like you've kind of explored and said, okay, is this the path I want to pursue further? And just kind of identified what you like and don't like, um, without fully committing. And then that allowed you to fully commit when you felt like it made sense. Well, I was kind of forced to fully commit. So I, it was, this is kind of a good segue into that. I mean, I was, I had a full time job. Making decent money as a sales director for a local company and bomb tech side hustle, it was, it was doing okay. I was in like 14 grand right month. But with an inventory based business, I mean, because you have cashflow and you know, it's not, it's not doesn't sound that cool. Um, or sounds cool than is. At that time when it was just a side house in light, my wife just became pregnant and I got fired from my day job. So, and it was the week before Thanksgiving. I mean, there was like, it was, it was just like this. How could all this happen at once pregnant week before Thanksgiving got fired and she was super supportive, like I was home first before her, the first time ever. She's like, what are you doing home? I was like, well, I got fired. She was for us, but she was like, are you going to take bomb tech to the next level or what? Um, and supported me. And that was honestly, probably the hardest year and a half of my life. Cause we, I worked 20 hours a day with a newborn seven days week. I used to assemble the clothes by hand. I mean, I did everything wrong. So I did, I, I was. What's the word I was obsessed. Like I wasn't hitting the ball. I was obsessed with doing everything myself and I really choke hold the company and did too much myself. And it took me. A good year and a half to like scale. And then it took me time to let go. But now I work on like high level stuff and I do nothing day to day, but I work high level on BombTech, you know, and stuff. I still enjoy it, but it's, it's like high level four hours a week. Um, and I definitely sometimes work more than that, but I'm not from a computer punching in my keys. Like I used to be, you know what I mean? Yeah. What was the moment that you realized you should back out of that? So you said you were kind of bottleneck and things for awhile. Was there like a definitive moment where you went like, yeah. Oh yeah, there was, there was like three or four epiphanies I had that were life-changing. Um, the first one was being fired. The second one was the sheer volume of orders where I physically could not work any faster or harder. To, to keep up. So he was like, I literally just one day, like had to delete all my emails. Cause I like 20,000 emails. I couldn't reply to like, it was just like, it just, it bubbled over and I outsourced the assembly. Then I started hiring people and then the real big epiphany number two was. Um, when I reduced complexity, so I, we had a custom golf clubs, so we'd have all these options. So like, we need to order something from us. It'd be six different drop-downs on the product page. And I just said, why don't we try. No options with one of our products that we're going to launch. And I was like, no, one's going to want it. It's going to be too simple. So I came from custom, the background, doing everything unique, and that product did better than any Proctor ever launched for. So that was like, okay, let's make it simpler. And then that would became a cadence for like simple, but a business simplify my life, simplify the products. And then the third one was. I have another kid. Um, who's now three and a half. And before I had her, I said, I need to take some time off. So I set the business up so I could take six weeks off before she was born. Which before you would never, that would be, I wouldn't take a minute off. I was always thinking about it. So I took six weeks off before I had her at what, what do you think happened to sales in those six weeks? They went up cause you got out of the way. No, and that was my, that was another big epiphany. I was like, wow, what am I actually doing? Going to the office. We had sitting in front of the computer, moving widgets around on the website, changing call, like just doing stuff to feel busy, micromanaging the shit out of it. And um, now I've like, since then, you know, I had like six employees, a dedicated office. I have one employee. Uh, everyone works remote. He works remote and then outsource the experts. Um, and I w so I'm making the most one I've had, but I'm working the least. So my hourly pay, if you want to equate that, it's the highest it's ever been, but it's taken me years and years of doing things wrong and having like a Tiffany's, you know, like as I go through it, because people were telling me certain things, but if you haven't been. Had a life man or something that really makes you change. It's hard to take someone's advice. So that's been a thing for me, like, cause we work with other brands too, and some of us aren't ready to hear it or they don't really need to change. They probably won't. Yeah. Yeah. You have to, there's a lot of things you have to go through. I think just in entrepreneurship in general, that, you know, in the back of your mind, uh, I need to do this or not do that, but you just do, like you said, you know, you just. Stay busy to stay busy sometimes. Um, and the kind of on the same concept of simple or product selling better. I see that. Yeah. In so many iterations, not only in products, but you know, in my area of design and SEO, where, um, clients come in and, and they're like, add more, add more, add more, make sense last year, do this other thing. But I've seen the most beautiful, you know, I won't even say over complicated websites, maybe there. Still very nice and aesthetically pleasing, but they're not simple. And those simple ones just outperform them nine times out of 10. Totally now BombTech golf. So that's the company. You start getting these products and you've sold millions. And then w and we're starting to talk about how you then scale that boat. What about like right in the middle before that, how did you get to building a product out of passion to then selling millions? What, uh, what, what was the fuel behind the fire to get it in that middle ground to actually start scaling? It was just the fact that I had tasted it. Like, so when I first let me step back a little, even further in time. But like when I was, this was a real moment where I was like, I just need to do more of this. I was on a boat. It wasn't a nice boat. I got it for five grand. It wasn't bad. I mean, it was a 20 foot open, like a Bayliner type boat. Um, and it was on the, on the Lake, in Vermont with my wife at the time. And I had an email coming in. And it was a sale for a golf drive for $268. I said, Oh my God, I just made money on a boat in the middle of a Lake. Not doing anything, not in front of a computer, not working for someone else. And that was like, The biggest adrenaline rush. Like I was just fueled by that feeling. And it was like that, that, like, I can do this that really pushed me through all the bullshit, like the year and a half, two years it took to like, there's are actually longer than to get momentum. And really, like, I was definitely, I stumbled upon success in some capacity. So like, Like Facebook was good to me. Like I started selling on Facebook and I just, when I saw that working, I just really poured my energy into it. And I, I, I took it from a no expectations. Standpoint and just literally documented what I was doing and it was open and transparent. And that was my key. Like, yeah. When I started putting myself on video and asking questions, I needed to know to make the business better, people felt like they were buying from me, not just some faceless brand. And I was polluted by like, I just loved the product. I was passionate about it. It was already doing it. So I like, I remember this is one of those moments again, where I was shocked and I just said, let me do more. I made a video in my backyard. When my kid was taking a nap, I'm like, I got to go shoot a video, Facebook just launched video. I want to make this cool video. Um, and it was me like, Hey, I'm solely, I'm the owner of bomb tech. I'm gonna hit this club. 15 second video. I hit it into a net. It rips a hole in the net. It sounds like a gun goes off and I go, does your driver sound like this? Boosted it for 300 bucks. That video got 300,000 views, 10,000 comments. And I just, literally, all I did was I was so in shock. Then I got 10,000 fuel comment that I commented on every comment until my thumbs were bleeding. So I had a Blackberry at the time, wasn't even a touch screen. And it was like that engagement. I was like, again, among these things where I was like, Oh, this is cool me. I don't even really know what that's going to mean for the business, but I'm going to talk to him if you were just commenting. I was just commenting back. So I literally just started engaging to have conversations at scale. That when I launched the product or like ran an ad and it just allowed things to work better. And then I really to take it to boil this all down. I started running Facebook ads really poorly. Um, but the, it was engaging enough content that was so cheap that I was able to go from. Like I went to like 400 K to 1.2 million to 4.2 million to 6 million. So I had, because we were able to use, uh, Facebook and good content and engage with it and just scale it up. But the first couple of years was a grind to figure out what to even do because Facebook ads didn't even exist when I started. And those numbers you're talking about. Those are gross sales volume, not like views, right? That's total revenue. Yep. What the company does. Yeah. That's still how I leapfrogged was through scaling with paid traffic after we had like a base of customers emails and just that whole thing going then we were able to scale it up. Yeah. You know, it's an interesting thing that I'm actually super passionate about and talk a lot about, especially even now during like this whole coronavirus thing, and you actually used a term identical to what I use about buying, not buying for faceless companies and a 100% agree. With your approach. Uh, people, you know, people want to buy, but they want to buy from people they trust. And like you said, not the faceless companies. And I think that's even more applicable now because people are being more selective. They have more attention and time, more time to give their attention to something. And then they also have more reason because of the sensitivity of the world to be more cautious with their trust. And I think that same concept still is super valuable nowadays. It was one of those things where I didn't expect it expect me to become part of the brand. I just was the only guy and was passionate about it and just said, well, I'm going to put myself out there. I didn't even say, like, I want to put myself out there. I just started doing it. Cause I saw little bit of traction. So like I think my one skill set, not that I have that many, but it's like if I see something that works and have, or feel traction. I just tend to do more of that. Like, it's that simple. If I have an email that does well, we'll do more of that. If we have an ad that does well, we'll do more of that. If there's a piece of content that crushes, so I may not. I'm not one to overcomplicate or over plan. It's more of like now, I mean, now it's so much different, but as I was growing and growing and dealing with stuff, I knew stuff that didn't work. And then there was stuff I saw that had traction and just try to do more of those activities, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And then just a point of clarification for the listeners. So when you say you get on Facebook and drive sales, that was the engagement, then drove them ultimately to make the transaction on your website, right? Yeah. So early on. I just was obsessed and we still do this, but probably not as well as I used to do it is I treat BombTech and our other business as two way, like two way communication are two way platforms. Like really my whole goal is can I have conversations with real conversations with people at scale, if I can do that with email, with SMS and with ads and social. Then I will. You'll you'll be good for life, really. So like, I try to change my goal from selling to having conversations and then selling just kind of happens from that. Yeah. Yeah. Now let me go back a little bit. When, when your wife said, you know, are you going to take BombTech to the next level? Did she say that out of desperation or because she believed in it, I don't really know where she was coming from, but she, at that point in life, Believed in me enough, for some reason that I could do it. I had nothing previous to that. It wasn't a entrepreneur before that I didn't have a track record. I'm just until totally transfer. I didn't have a track record for launching brands. And she was like, well, what are you going to do? You're going to crush her with this or what? So she saw something in it. It's funny. She used to make fun of her web about a year before that. And they were all at their, at her job. We would make fun of it. So just in general, are there something specifically? Oh, well I used to have a cartoon character on like first website of a guy flexing with huge muscles breaking a golf club and that website sold zero drivers. Um, so they would rip on it as they should 100%. I agree. But yeah, so for whatever reason she supported me, um, Even though money was so tight and terrible. And I had debt and, you know, I took out loans. My dad gave me a loan and she supported me and somehow thought or knew it was gonna work out. So I appreciate her believing in me. Cause I didn't, I was just doing, you know, I didn't have, I just kept going, like there was no option because there really wasn't. Yeah. Now what earlier you said you're living the life, the life you're living now is, you know, uh, accidental entrepreneurship and, and kind of the way that you said it, it, it sounded like there was noticeable befores and afters to, you know, your lifestyle or your. Your financial stability or whatever it is, obviously you've increased sales, but it just, the way you said that, it sounds like there's, you know, something really obvious that you can define the way you used to be versus now is, is there things beyond the, the financial stability that was behind that comment? Which piece to clarify, just you saying that, you know, you're an accidental, you said you're an accidental entrepreneur and you wouldn't have imagined the life you have now. So is that strictly, just from a financial standpoint or yeah, financially much better off, you know, we're debt, free businesses are crushing it. I couldn't, I could never imagine that, but my, I think I had a mind shift multiple of them that. Allowed me to be, to not work myself into a greater, so like having kids sounds like you have at least one, um, having two kids was a big personal life change that allowed me to be like, well, what's the point of working? So like now what I've done, I used to work 20 hours a day, literally seven days a week, assembling clubs, shipping clubs, packing the clubs, do an email, doing social, doing like doing everything. And then through my life experience, I said, well, what, what I want the business to run and operate without me. So I set it up now to essentially be a business that works for me versus me working for it. So now when I work like today, for example, what time is it? Two 55 nephew. My first thing I've done for work today was that to two 30, jumped on with you. I was with my kids all day today. And there's moments in that. Like, I really have this inner urgency. Like I need to do something, try to quiet that down and say, okay, I have this built in lots of always be working and to be getting better, but 95% of that feeling, um, that doesn't have a big result. So I only try to work on. Big impactful things that will actually move the needle. And those never have come sit in front of me, Peter. So my life before is working all the time from a computer, doing all the wrong things. So now working on high level things that move them is in a much bigger way and working a lot less. So it's, it's just. Financially better life is better. I was able to watch another company and run that and not be successful, which I could never even imagine with how much I was working before owning two companies and working less. Like, how does that make sense? You know, so it's. Everything is better, but it took me years of doing it, the stuff to learn. You have to do that and also do it a lot of the wrong stuff to know. Well, maybe I don't need to do that. Let me see what I need to do. And that's probably the hardest thing I think for entrepreneurs too, is like, it's good. You feel good when you're doing busy work makes you feel like you're doing something productive, but a lot of times you're just doing BS busy work. But it's not moving the needle. You know what I mean? Yeah. But that's, that's kind of a good transition to the next thing I was going to ask you about. Cause you mentioned accidental entrepreneur. And so sounds like before he didn't have the mindset of, um, you know, I'm going to go down the entrepreneur path some point in my life. And so having found that first success is that. Is that what birth, your second business is now you have this new understanding of entrepreneurship and confidence and, um, kinda like you said, that you wouldn't have imagined that before. So as BombTech what birth, your confidence and being able to go do other things and, and that other thing being, I believe e-comm growers. Yeah. So this is another interesting. Unexpected path. So we started been like, I was written up in a number of them articles, like big commerce, inc magazine entrepreneur, and people started reaching out to me like, Hey Soli, can you help me grow my eCommerce business? And at first I was like, absolutely not. I was like, you didn't want to put in the time or you didn't, you didn't think he could do it it's time. And I do think it could truly help them. So I was like, I was like, for me, I had hired and fired so many agencies that had driven no results. And I, at first I was like, no. And then they just kept on hitting me up, like, Hey, can you help me? Your story's awesome. And I said, Okay, let me see what I can do, actually help someone. Right. And my first employee at BombTech who's the most unique individual in the world is now my partner in econ growers. He was the one running all my email at BombTech and still does he's a Klayvio expert. So he runs and sends all my emails and my text messages to our audience. And he, I mean, he was working literally 80 hours a week. And I was paying them, you know, a regular salary and he just would not stop working, had all these different ideas. And he was like, Hey, uh, all these people reaching out. Do you mind if I try to help them? And all I wanted for him in life was to succeed and make more money than I could pay him. So I said, listen, if you want to help them out, uh, go, go ahead on a side hustle and let me know what the results are. So he went out. He closed three clients, which first I was shocked with, um, like really quickly go talk to me in two months and two months. Yeah. They all had went from like 10 or 15% of their revenue from email to 40 to 50%. And I was like, Whoa, that's like, it's so tangible, measurable to show that result. Well, what are you going to do? And he's like, well, I'm gonna try and get more clients. I said, well, why don't we partner up, um, with this business? And I'll have, you know, my approach to it. Like as an eCommerce owner, what I know what, like coming from my angle and you can come from your angle as the expert, and let's just see what we can do with it. And now. That has grown so fast, but he runs all the fulfillment in terms of getting the work done. You manage our three employees and really, I just help on high level strategy and really have a third party perspective. It's like, he'll come to me. We have a call and he tells you what's going on in the business. I literally break it down and say, why do we do that? Uh, can we do it more efficiently? And what it's allowed us to do is run a business that's so lean and so profitable in a space that's usually so bloated, like most agencies, number one, don't drive a lot of results. Number two, um, are really bloated and have a lot of overhead. I said, well, if I get involved, I'll help you reduce that and ask you more efficient. So we're running like 85% to 90% net on that. And we're getting crazy results. You've got about 20 clients right now, and that has been so exciting because it's everything I've done on my own brand. And now we have an offer that is transformative and exciting. Um, so the clients we brought on, it's only been our business around almost two years. Most clients have been around since we started. So the retention is just insane, which is, which is cool. So it's a I'm hands-off, but it's really fun to be involved in that. So what, what does e-commerce econ growers actually do? So are you doing different types of ads for them or is it primarily super niche? So all we do is one thing because we do it better than anyone. So we help econ brands that are doing at least a million dollars a year. We helped them run their Klaviyo, email marketing. So email campaigns, email automations, um, how you send the copy, you send the followups and now we do text messages. So any outbound messaging. With email tax, we will manage for companies and bottom line, we drive more revenue from your list all day, guaranteed. So we don't mess with that. We don't mess with SEO. Um, we don't mess with website design and the only reason we do one thing, it's because it's, so for us, it's so measurable and that's the reason I backed him because he doesn't for me, you know what I mean? And then he was like, It's so tangible. And like, for me, I'm such a simple guy. Then I was like, alright, if we can have them spend X and get Y with our service and their ROI is really high, it's something all support because we're doing it for myself. So that's really cool. And now I work with some really large brands, which is a whole different battle. Um, but it's, it's really exciting to see the numbers even like, In current coronavirus environment, we're seeing some stores scale, the numbers we've never seen before, so people are buying and I'm glad to be in this space. Yeah. What's so what's it like when people in business has come to work with you, is it based on a retainer or is it a percentage? So we have a flat fee plus a percent of revenue we drive. I mean, really we're so confident in what we do. That's why we do the percentage of revenue. Because if you win, we win just makes more sense for everyone. Um, and we haven't had any issues with that redo texts. Now that's a new add on we've done. And that's been from, and again, this came from my own store. Like we started doing it for me. It was a new channel or new asset we could grow. And that's really the thing. That's. I think for me, it was another aha moment. Like Facebook ads are getting more expensive pre coronavirus, but, and I was like, well, what happens if Facebook ads just stopped working? And so for Chris and I. Um, I said, well, I want to have a list that's so engaged and so valuable of an asset that if Facebook's just died, I could still survive and grow my business and still continue just based on my only asset, I own email. So that's really the, the mind, mind shift, ad words, or the mindset we have with emails. Like what's the assets. You really own it for us right now. It's your customer list, your subscriber list. And then your Textless. So for me, I came from a personal, like, I want to be, I have no fear of Facebook becoming nonprofitable, and I want to have an email list it's so valuable. So our open rates are crazy high engagement, so high, so we can launch new products and still survive it somehow that ended because at some points everyone's like, it's going to stop. And if it does, we're going to be fine. But that was another, like, Thing I was trying to get over. So I was like always waiting for it to stop, you know, like when is this going to end? But now, um, Okay with, if it ended, I'd be like, alright, we're cool. We have assets in place. We can launch new products. We could sell more and we could still thrive and exist without Facebook being our main traffic channel. Yeah, I think it's, um, I agree, a hundred percent, you know, you say, what can we work with that we own for you? It's email for, you know, my clients, that's our website. And I, I totally agree because, uh, I think Facebook is so big that some people are ignorant to the fact that at some point it may not go away entirely, but the assembly line of dollar in $2 out will break at some point. And so you're totally right. You have to own, you have to, you have to have a pillar. A chair on a lag on your chair that you own, you know, you need to own at least three out of those four, so you can stay up because at some point all those assets that you don't own may not go away, but it's definitely going to be impacted at one point or another. Totally. It was just a. Thing I wanted to have for comfort. And it also helps you scale more like in these times where it's still a dollar for five or dollar for three, it helps us scale a lot more like today, we just did an email for bomb tech, which is doing pretty well. Um, and it allows us to scale up at like we've done 45 cases so far today, uh, for an email. And we can, what that means is now that we can even spend more on ads. And, and, and we could scale further. And again, we could scale as high as we want within a return ad spend to be as profitable as we want or scale as much as we want. So email's not just like, I think a lot of people think email is dead. Um, but it's like, it just helps your ads. Like you will have looked at our ad account, my ad account, like, how was your return out? It's been so hot. I'm like, well, it's not because of my ads. What are you even mean? I'm like, well, it's because our email and texts is actually lifting that number, making it look artificially high. Like there was a day I did like a hundred, two K in a day and the return ad spend was like, 50 X. And it's like, obviously that wasn't from all that, that was 95% from email making that number look better than it was. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Well, so he is kind of a constant wrapping up. Um, I, I love your story of growing a business through living it. Um, I'm a big advocate of your approach to, you know, transparency and having. Communication with your audience and building that trust. So I want to say thanks for it. Jump down, learning from others and give you the last few moments to put out contact information, or just share anything else you want to put out there. Yeah. So anyone that wants to contact me or wants to buy some golf clubs, uh, BombTech golf.com. If you're e-commerce brand looking to profit more with email e-com growers.com. If they want to email me direct Sally S U L L Y at e-com UCLM growers calm, also really active on LinkedIn under Tyler Sullivan. Love to connect on LinkedIn. That's been a really fun platform just to talk about eCommerce business. Life, you know, the whole thing, but I really appreciate the time. You bet. Tyler, Sally Sullivan, everybody. Thanks so much. Thank you.

Today's guest is a speaker and motivational expert who wakes up every day with one mission; to impact the lives of entrepreneurs and business owners across the world. Not only does he coach on mindset, but he lives it. Having been in the army and transitioning back to civilian life, he went through his own ups and downs. Now he can bring real-life experience to those that listen to his story. Here to help you master self-doubt and accomplish what you want out of life, please welcome Nate Bailey. Contact Info: https://www.natebaileyspeaks.com https://www.100milemindset.com Hey Bailey everybody. What's up, man? Not much, man. How are, how are you? Good. Thanks for jumping on learning from others. I appreciate the chance to kind of flip the mic. You know, you're kind enough to have me on your podcast and, and now we're doing the other side of things. So, um, let's, let's just start with the usual, you know, I like to ask my guests two questions. First one is what are you good at? And what are we going to be learning from you today? Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, I just got prompted with this, but that's all right. I mean, that's what I do. So, uh, it should be pretty easy, but, um, I'm a coach, so I I'm really good at helping people with their mindset and getting them to really get into action. That's required to, to get what they want inside of their life, as well as, um, you know, really like leadership. Type trainings and teachings, teamwork, communication, um, perseverance preparation, execution, and really all of that, primarily through experiential training is what I'm really good at. Like, um, in-person physical type. Uh, experiences, not in a classroom, really getting them to kind of get out of their box and, and really to push them and expose some things that they've had going on in their life and getting them to work together with some complete strangers coming together as a team, and really getting them to extract what they're learning. In those experiences so that they can bring those home and apply them into their life. Okay, cool. So I got a lot of things I want to dive into on that, but, um, before we do, uh, the second question I like to ask, uh, you can answer it as serious or as a non serious as you want, but, uh, opposite. What are you not so good at? Yeah, that's a man. I'm sure. There's a lot of things that I'm not so good at. And, uh, you know, what's coming to mind right now might be like, I have two daughters and, uh, I definitely am not very good at, uh, braiding their hair, taking care of some things like that. But, uh, I do my best, but they, they let me know about it. Right. So how old are your daughters? Um, 12. So, yeah, she doesn't even let me come close to her hair right now, but the. The other is a 10, just turned 10. So they just turned 12, 12, and just turned 10. Yeah, my youngest, I have a daughter. She's two. She'll be, she'll be three here pretty soon. So yeah, like I'm, I'm like waiting for that. I'm not there yet, but I'm waiting for the like, Hey, let's do this girl thing, dad, and don't screw it up. Yeah, absolutely. That's great though. Well, alright, so a couple things, when you were telling us, you know, what you are good at a couple of things kind of stood out. The first area I'll start is you had mentioned, I think the phrase you used was like experiential coaching. So can you talk more about that phrase and, um, like give us maybe some examples of what you bring your groups into doing. Yeah, you bet. So, uh, one of the events we have is what we call immersion. And so we have women that will cut like a group of women that will come in or a group of men. And, um, we'll take them, we'll take them to the beach and we'll take them to kind of a Hill or a mountain or we'll take them outside. And, uh, We'll put them through a lot of different physical evolutions. We'll kind of put a little pressure on them, right? Cause in life like there's pressure and stresses on us all the time, all around. And so we kind of take that into the physical realm and we turn that pressure and intensity through physical evolutions and hard work. And, and we, um, you know, we'll assign people and put them into leadership roles. Well, we'll give them like, uh, we'll put time, time caps on things, which also adds a little bit of pressure, um, or we'll let them flail a little bit. And, but, but it's, so it's not just to push them and like beat them down. It's all with a purpose. Right. It's all, um, to show them how certain things. That they're doing right there in front of us, might be showing up in other areas of their life and getting them to really open their eyes to a lot of that. And then just to see the evolution from the beginning. To, you know, kind of the end where you can see him, like, man, how, how, how much they've learned, how much have you grown, how much quicker they, they move, how much better they communicate and work together as a team? Uh, some of the things that were maybe massively getting in the way for, for them on day one hour, one, um, on the last day, um, aren't an issue anymore. So yeah, we'll put them in the ocean or we're all around in the sand and wet Sandy uncomfortable. Um, Because like, I'm just a firm believer that there are massive, like push inside of the physical performance. Like there's so much overflow. It's like the key that drives everything else. And, uh, and overflows on it can be applied into all the other areas of your life. How long of stretches of time are we talking when you're, you know, bringing him down to the beach and doing all these things and getting them uncomfortable. Yeah. So for that program, it's really only a few hours a day. Um, it probably feels a little bit longer or for them, but, um, we really only go a few hours a day. I have another championship leadership or our, uh, experience coming up and to may and in June and that's 24 hours. So that's going to be much, it's going to be kind of that on steroids, right. Um, But again, you know, so yeah, there'll be up for 24 hours long and they won't go to sleep, but we'll give them, we'll give them breaks and rest periods and a lot of ton of teaching as well inside of that. Um, so yeah, we'll do anything from a few hours to 24 hours. Are you like the show floor chauffer. And are you like rolling up and kicking them out of bed? I can't. What point, how much time do they got before they open their eyes and then like, you're there. Well for the 24 hour experience, they'll, they'll just, they will like show up and report themselves and then we'll take them from there. But the emergent experience is a little bit different. Cause they'll come the kind of, they get to around four o'clock that first day. And, and we kinda, you know, We poured the pressure on really hard in the beginning. And then as the days go on and you start to kind of lighten up and loosen up and, uh, and, and it becomes more fun. It's just like kind of a progression. Right. Um, so, so yeah, at the immersion experience, often times we will start. The first night, we'll take them to the beach. They'll get done late and then they'll get just not that much time to sleep. And then they get to come back pretty early in the morning. So I'm not knocking on their doors, but we, we do have them. Yeah. Pretty early. Yeah. How about how big of groups or do these tend to average? Average is probably, um, 10 to 12 for the immersion we've had up to 19. We've had, you know, eight to, but on average, probably around 10 to 12, um, with the 24 hour event, that's. That's a little bit bigger, meant about 20 people. Okay. Alright. So you got these, you got these 10 people, and then you had mentioned that at some point, you kind of say like, all right, you're the leader of this group and just kind of let them experience. Do you have like a strategic mindset where you is picking the leader random? Or do you identify somebody that has a certain characteristic and then you're like, they're going to be the leader and there's a reason why. Well off the top at first, we'll always be like, Hey, give me a leader. And, and, and I already know that no, one's going to step forward because that's just like, no one wants to, it's kind of scary. Especially in the beginning of like a leader, like someone else stepped forward. So they're all kind of like looking up in the air I'm to call them. And so we. Well, I always use that as a teachable moment. Like, why wouldn't you step forward to lead? Like, that's why you guys are here to be a leader. And, um, and then by the end, you know, so as we go after, I give them that little teaching moment, typically everyone's stepping forward now. Right. And yeah, but there is definite times where I'm strategically picking certain people out, depending on maybe how they're performing. You know, if I can tell that they're kind of trying to hide, like, um, yeah. Yeah. What, so how did you get into this world to begin with? Well, I mean, I got into the coaching world really. Uh, uh, started when I, when I first invested in myself and, and, and, uh, and hired a coach, right. To help with some things in my life, and then realize that there was this world out there called coaching. I didn't even realize it was really there or that it was necessarily even an opportunity. Uh, and so that was. And then from there working on myself, investing on myself, I was like, yeah, this is what I want to do. Right. And a lot of experiences leading up to that really, as I look back now, make sense. Right. I've always, I was an officer in the army as platoon leader. Um, I was, uh, you know, about high school. In college football coach, um, uh, you know, I've always gravitated towards leadership positions in the different industry associations that I've been a part of a was a teacher, you know, so I've, I've always gravitated towards being a leader and a coach and a mentor and wanting to impact people. And so then I went and yeah, I invested in myself, get some coaching for myself and then realized, Hey, this is something I want to do. And that's ultimately what led me to doing what I am today. So it sounds like you kind of already had that experience, like you said, he didn't know that was a thing. And so going through the process of it yourself, you're like, Oh, okay. Like now that I get this, uh, in how I can package these experiences and these tools to help other people, I already have those experiences, but now I know how to bundle them. And then, then you can bring them towards the people. Yeah. So I, I went, you know, there are similar events out there. And so again, I love to push myself physically because I know what the benefits are. I ran a hundred miles. I did the SEALFIT Kokoro, which was a 52 hour event led by Navy seals. Um, so I've done some extreme type events like this. And so I'm kind of taking my experiences from personally going through it and then the coaching experiences. Yeah. I've taken a molded, some of that into what we do. And then all of that's culminating now to, to this 24 hour experience that I'm, that I'm putting out. So I'm constantly just like everyone, right? You go through life, you have experiences, you kind of take things from different people in different places and, you know, ultimately package it, bundle it into something of your own. Yeah. What, so you say that you've gone through all these different things and then you hired a coach herself. So is there like an, a, an early version Nate, that you look back on now and, and, and you could comment on who Nate was before versus who he is now. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. You bet. Um, I was, you know, I always kind of go back to. When I got deployed to Kuwait as a team leader, I was married at the time. Um, and still am, but, um, was just married. Didn't have any kids at the time in 2005 and was deployed for 15 months was put my business on hold. I was in the insurance business at the time, kind of. I was in the, in the insurance business for probably just a little bit over a year at the time. Well, my business on hold got deployed, uh, left my wife home to have to take care of everything and keep everything go on. And then it kind of came back. And really from there, you know, just looking back, if I could tell myself like, uh, What to do different, right? I would, I would be less selfish, much less selfish and, uh, and, and would have transitioned home much differently. Um, but yeah, there was just, you know, a lot of issues inside of a marriage that really were created through myself. Then we have kids and that just magnifies the problems that we already had. It didn't didn't solve them. Um, yeah. And then, you know, kind of let my body go focusing on the businesses and spending more time in the businesses because. You know, I didn't want to be home. Cause there was a lot of issues going on and it was just kind of a mass from the outside looking in, maybe looked like we had a nice life, but it really wasn't at all what I wanted. I know it wasn't at all what my wife thought. And again, I didn't seek the coaching out, but it just kinda came to me. Right. Like I just ran across the, uh, this program and. Yeah, the marketing was awesome and just sucked me in and yeah, that's what it's supposed to do. Right. That's what it was. It was a great job. Suck me in. And so from there, I really, like I said, just focused on myself, which I think all great leaders need to do as well. Lead yourself first, before you go and attempt to lead someone else. And so, um, yeah, just all areas like out of weight, really, you know, there was one day I leaned over to tie my shoes and I was out of breath and I was like, I have never experienced that. And I was like almost 300 pounds. I'm like, what the heck? Because you have this image of yourself of like still being the college athlete and the college football player. But I was like nowhere near that. Right. And so, and then. Yeah, just not showing up as a father, how I wanted to, or as a husband, um, I had a few businesses and kind of successful, but nothing not killing it anywhere. And just, just like, man, this has gotta be a different way to do these things. I've tried long enough to figure it out on my own and it wasn't successful. So that's kind of where I was at before all of this today, you know where I'm at today, it was much different place for sure. Yeah. You know, uh, the kind of that last thing you talked about, let's touch. I found that a little bit where you're like, you know, I had some moderate success in here and here and here, and that's one thing that I get a lot of my entrepreneur contexts come to being, you know, and they may be one level beyond your comment where they have, they are killing it, but they're just doing a cross. Tons of things and almost every single one of them are like, this is just too much, I'm juggling too much. And so can you maybe comment on that where you were like you started to get to was, you know, this is too much, even though it's decent and I'm comfortable, like, was there a point where you're just, like you said, there's gotta be something different and then you said I'm going to, I'm going to be better at less things and do those less things better instead of just like stretching myself out as you have that clear conversation with yourself. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I owned to, at the time I owned a CrossFit gym, I owned a Sharon's brokerage and Ellen, you know, probably like 10 different investment properties at the time too. So I'm kind of like juggling and managing all of those. And not again, not doing any of them super well, not, not like. Horrible, but just not to, to the standard, to the level that I would want. Right. And so, yeah, a big piece of that was cutting out the CrossFit gym and just realizing that like, Hey. It's okay. Yeah. You got to let go of this. Yeah. Consuming a ton of time from my family and it wasn't an analyst, so scattered and stretched them. And I wasn't really able to focus and build it to where, what I could have if it was the only thing I was doing. And so, yeah, to your point, and I think this was kind of some of the coaching I was getting at the time, she was like, You know, what do you want, what do you want to do? And, and, uh, you know, you get to kind of choose and focus on ones that you can be really good at it. And so, because of where I was at in the time that I had in the insurance agency brokerage at the time, that's the one I ultimately, you know, I've always kept the Wrightsville investment properties. Um, because once we get, I get those to a certain point. They don't require a lot of time, but I did get rid of the CrossFit gym and really did focus on my insurance brokerage. And, and really I saw like I did really build it up quite quickly. Yeah. When I really put that time, energy and focus into it. And I've since sold that I sold that a few years ago, to be honest today. Um, which is full time coach. So, yeah, so you've been through the whole thing or largely similar things. I imagine what people come to you, you know, the situations that they come to you and where they want to, they want to focus better. They want to accomplish greater things. And so like, you've, you've walked that path. So being able to see that clear before and after, is there like a common denominator of what holds people back that you just see over and over and over? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everyone is a little bit different, but, but yes, definitely. I mean, it's, it's really is just. It's a lot of mindset stuff. It's just a lot. I like stories that they have that really hold them back from living the life that they want, or they just don't know any different. Like, that was a big thing from me. Like I kinda knew that there had to be a different way, but I started to question if there really was, if it was really possible, like, I was really starting to question that, like maybe it was just, and, uh, and thank God that I did come across. The message when I did the see that there was, but, but yeah, a lot of people they get in, they get comfortable in a place that they see a little bit of success, and then you just start to kind of lose that fire that drive and get comfortable and, and, um, and, uh, and in stock. And that's where they just feel. Again, a lot of those folks are just like, man, this is, this is this. It really is. This all there is like, you know, they have, I think we all have that inner. Drive or purpose inside of us. It's telling us that I know we were, I was created for more than this, but, um, they just don't know how to get there and get through it. So the immersion experience really does. It's it's a great. What we do probably better than anything through that is really just wake people up. Right. Just like wake them up to, Hey, you can go out and, and it really, you're not far away. And there's just a few shifts and tweaks and, and, uh, so yeah, that's the biggest thing. Yeah. So when people come and they, and they do your experiences is when they're done and like, you were just commenting, you know, Hey, I'm not too far away. And it's just a couple of shifts. Like, what are those things that people come out and they're like, Oh, that, that thing is now attainable. Like, I imagine that most people come through and it's not like I want to make a million dollars. I want a mansion, but it's more like personal things, you know, maybe indirectly we'll bring those materialistic things that like, when people finish one of your experience and they go, I feel better. Like, what are they feeling better about. Um, well, they, I mean, they realize that they, they can do way more and they realize that like, um, there's in a lot of this does happen in these physical experiences. Cause we do, uh, plenty of conversation and talk inside of a classroom as well. But a lot of the breakthroughs really do come through the, the physical piece where they're like a light comes on and they're just like, Holy cows. Like, I'm totally doing this and in my life, you know, maybe it's like, they're not stepping up and leading there. They are waiting for everybody else to kind of do it or they're trying, or they're going ahead of everyone else and just trying to do everything on their own because they're not trusting anyone else to do it. And, uh, And so they're really self sabotaging their world, but they don't, they don't know it. And then, and then when we help them to see that they're like, wow, like, yeah. And so it's, it's, it's profound shifts, but they're really kind of simple, right? It's always easier to see what's wrong with somebody else in their life, uh, when from the outside looking in, but you can't see it for yourself. Right. And, um, and so that's what a lot of it is, is just. Kind of remembering who they are or rediscovering that passion and that purpose and that drive that they've lost cost and showing them, you know, how to, how to access it again. You know, this is just, it is hard. It is hard to explain because it is such an experience that you have to go through to figure it, to find it. Um, But, but those are some of the biggest shifts for people is like a lot of people feel they're unworthy, right. Or they have the imposter syndrome of like, who I, who am I, you know, to do this or to do that? Um, a lot of people don't don't realize how much of, how much of. A responsibility they might have if they're having struggles in their marriage. Right? Yeah. And you're often we're just going to like the place and the blame on the other person. We kind of help them to see like how, how, how big of a part they play in that and give them some, some models and some, some tools to use to, to shift that. Um, so yeah, it's, it's a little bit of everything. It's a little bit of everything. Yeah, the, the imposter syndrome is, um, surprisingly common. It's really interesting because you use the word simple and. I w I would totally agree. Cause as you're going through these things, you know, you and I, and whoever that are, have you embraced what they'd like to do and got to a certain level of success at what they, what they do. You know, I'll just speak for myself. Cause I can't speak for other people, but I agree that it's simple, right? It's like, if I want to do a thing, then do the thing. And so a lot of times I have people that I'm either mentoring or talking to, or just having a conversation. They're like, how did you get to where you're at doing that thing? And I'm like, Simple. I just did the thing. Yeah. Like sometimes it's so hard for me to relay. And what I've realized is that, you know, in my mind originally it's like, What's so hard about it, just do the thing and then, you know, you're overthinking it, but now I realize it's the opposite. It's it's um, I'm the odd ball out where I just do the thing. And so it's, it's really interesting. Just how, how, and I think some people should find comfort in that. And what I mean by that is you're not alone. Okay. Totally. If you're like, Oh, I I'm hesitant to do the thing, then just own it. Be like, okay, what do I do next to figure out how to do the thing instead of going. Uh, that sounds really hard. I give up I'm alone. No, no, there's a million other people try and do the thing, like take a staff and absolutely. That's where you're going. Yeah. Um, what's, what's like one of the biggest do you have, I imagine that through your experience with some of the people you work with, they have like real emotional breakthroughs. Um, is there like a, a standout moment where, um, Like one memory stands out more than the other of somebody accomplishing something or having some sort of breakthrough. Yeah. I mean, we've had, you know, I mean, it's, it's easy. Some of the stuff that will come out of course. Right. And some, some of the things that will come up. Yeah. Extremely personal stuff too. Right. And. A lot of things will come to the surface that man, now that they've, they've worked so hard to bury and cover up that they almost forgot that even happened or a part of them. Right. Um, you know, we've had people that were like extremely suicidal and just like, you know, just talk about. You know, when I talked to you on the phone for the first time as we're enrolling them to come into the program, or like just how, how this has saved their life. Right. Because they've, um, because of all the things that we've talked about, but it's so new for them that it's, so it's just really is so true for them. Like they just, they just believe it and put that on as their identity and that like, almost that there's, there's no way they can ever be something different. And so. And so there's just, there's been quite a few moments where that, where people have just read broke down and, and, uh, see them kind of release or shed that weight. We have a pretty powerful. Uh, what we call evolution, where people, I have the opportunity to release them physically through like emptying the sandbags and those represent all of the things they've been carrying on. And so that's probably one of the more powerful parts of our immersion experience is that moment. And so there's many of those that is just like super powerful to see them release it and just like, okay. Verbally, just like yelling out, screaming out, you know, Tish add like, just because it's a significant moment for them. Yeah. That's interesting. Um, with, with you being in coat coaching, I want to ask, like how do, how do people find the right coach? And the reason I asked that is because it seems like. More than ever. There's coaches that coach coaches about coaching coaches. So how, you know, you have clearly gone through something, how the transformation yourself, and it can bring the real world experience. Other times I see these coaches that are. You know, 20, and they haven't really lived life and I'm sure they've had their own things and they've learned things and it's not to say that they don't have their own valuable experiences to share, but I, but I don't think they're at the level where they can say, Hey, I've had broad enough experiences to really relay and resonate and communicate properly. So how do you help our audience understand? How to find the right person and go down the right path to do the healing and the growth or whatever they may need. Yeah. Well, I think it really just comes down to, you want the coach that's going to help you get through the things there that's been that has been through the things that you want them to help you get through right there. That's what really just stuck out to me again when I first came across that message over five years ago now, um, Like, it was like, he was speaking to me, which is exactly right. And he was trying to do, but that was his point. Like there's, there's hundreds of other guys that said the same thing, man. It felt like he was speaking to me because he was talking about his experiences, his life and what he's been through and it's exactly where I was at. And so, and, and he's telling me that, Hey, I've done the work I've done the experience. I've helped all these other people do the same thing. I'm like, I can do that for you too. So, um, so yeah, find that right coach, that, that, uh, that has been. Through what you're looking to get through yourself so that you don't have to so that you can get there quicker, right? So you can avoid some of the pitfalls and, and, you know, you're not gonna avoid all of them, but, but they can help pull you through that faster than you would on your own. I think that's why you would hire a coach to help you see the things you can and to get you to where you want to go quicker. So, and then also just, you know, make sure that that coach. Resonates with you, the one that you, you know, cause don't just go hire anyone, vet them, you know, look at their track record. Right. Have they produced results for other people? Um, can you, are they real people like yeah. So, you know, listen to your gut. I think that's a big one. You kinda know if someone's real or not. I think those are all great. Um, No, cause I'm not the right coach for everyone. And, and nor do I want to be. And yeah, I want somebody that's not gonna like match with me. Cause then it's just like, they're going to resent paying the money. I'm going to resent taking the money because you know, there's just, I guess it's a no win for anyone. So yeah. So do your homework and make sure that it just feels right for you. Yeah. And that they actually have the experiences. Um, they've been where you, where you currently are and, and they have a path to get you out of there. So are you saying the right coach for everyone? I think is a good answer. You know, not being the right coach for everyone. Um, it sounds like it makes more sense to, if you've got these three things that you want to accomplish, then potentially hire three different coaches that are experts at three different things and, and don't. Look for the guy that says I can solve everybody's problems and I am the coach for everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, uh, as, as we can, I want to ask you another one or two questions as we get kind of closer to wrapping up, but, you know, as, as we talked at the beginning, I had mentioned you were kind enough to have me on your podcast. And, and so it's been interesting to see the evolution of your podcast going from ground zero to bringing on some high profile guests. And I think it's cool how you share, um, You know that experience, people come to me and they say, how do you get these high profile guests? And it's no, that's what we said earlier. You do the thing. So maybe talk about what you've learned in some of the, the, the journey of growing your podcast. And I don't think the listeners need to necessarily take it in the context of go do a podcast. I think your journey is applicable in many other ways that they can go do their thing. Yeah, well, I mean, I started championship leadership started that podcast in July, I believe of 2018. And I really did start from where I was at. I've always loved Joe Rogan. And so I kinda thought it was cool that he would interview these cool people and get to have conversations with them. So that was kind of the idea of the format for me. I love leadership and I love talking to people that. Uh, and hearing their stories and you know, how, where they've come from and how they've learned from their experiences and how they lead other people. And so that's, that's where that the theme of the show came from. And, you know, in the beginning it was one, one show a week. And that was, I was inconsistent. I really was for probably the first, um, three quarters of a year. You know, there were, there were months where I would do consistently once a week, there was a month or two maybe where I didn't have any episodes. Right. And, uh, and then I just saw like, Was that a seminar actually. And so the guy was talking about how consistency and how he's just showing up every year for the past 10 years and how many episodes he's put out and like all the blog posts. And I'm like, yeah, like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to commit to this. And so, yeah. So I D I did that. And at first it was just people I knew connections I had, and then I realized, Hey, like, why don't I just send some messages out to people that that would be really cool to have on the show that I'm thinking in my mind, there's no way why would they ever want to be on my show. Right. And so I just got really intentional about building the show, the audience, asking for reviews to help kind of build it up and, uh, and had nothing. And just like, if there was someone that came to mind, Like, you know, a lot of people say, no, a lot of people don't answer my requests. A lot of people ignore them for months. And then finally they are like, dude, this guy's serious. He's not going to quit bugging me unless I come on the show. And so then they find the competitor. So, so, um, It's just doing, like you said, doing the thing. And so it got to the point where I was, I was recording so many episodes and now I have a bunch of recording and I was like, man, I gotta start putting out like three a week. So for the last, probably six months, I've been putting three out a week and I have a bunch of, and, um, it's all because I just made that decision to be like, ah, if I'm going to do this thing, I'm going to get serious about it. I'm going to be intentional and be consistent. And I'm just like, if there's someone I see that I want to have on, I don't care who they are. It could be the president of the United States. I'm going to ask. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You've had, um, who are some of your more recent, well, what was one of the more recent one? Was it, um, Dino RTS was one. Yeah, Tito Ortiz. That was awesome. Um, he's coming out here. His hasn't released yet, but it will be coming out soon. Um, Yeah. I've had like some, you know, I had a super bowl champion, Gary Brackett. Um, I've had, uh, Matt Brown. Who's another UFC guy, uh, had general Caroline, Jan Johnson. She's a, she's an F 18, uh, aviator in the Navy. Um, yeah, all kinds of just cool, cool people. Uh, Recently, so, yeah. Yeah. Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. Funny. Um, Tucker max, that's funny. Cause one of my, my neighbor's last name is max. I guess I can remember names and that's how I remember my neighbor's last name. um, well, Nate, I appreciate your time. Appreciate jumping on learning from others. I want to give you the chance to, to put out, you know, your contact information or, um, just give you the floor for a minute and say what you want to say. Oh, yeah, you bet. Well, I mean, yeah, hopefully you got something out of this. Hopefully it helped impact you in some way. Somehow you can find out more about me, my podcast or events, what I'm up to at my website. Nate Bailey speaks.com. Um, if you want a copy of my free audio book, you can get that@onehundredmilemindset.com. There you go, Nate. Thanks for jumping on. I appreciate it.