The Focus 53 Podcast: Business Systems, People, & Processes

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A few weeks ago, I took my 7-year old son to the Colorado Avalanche game and though we've been there before, this was for a school function so they weren't the best seats in town although frankly, I don't think there are bad seats at an Avalanche game especially if you're a student at a game where you could sit up high and see how things develop. We were up high but it changes your perspective. As we were sitting up there, little Ryan was asking about things in the sky and as I looked up, he pointed to the jerseys in the ceiling and asked these questions:

What are they doing there? Are they special? How come there are hockey and basketball ones? How come there are some with no names on but say Champions?

As I sat there and asked those questions, it just dawned on me how significant and how much work went into those banners and what they signify. As a former athlete, I worked my tail off to get my name on the rafters. I don't think there's a kid that played sports that didn't dream about playing on the Super Bowl or on the NBA Championships or winning a home run or getting your name on the rafter. It's all about winning championships.

So I explained to my son that those were the leaders and champions who were fortunate enough to get their name raised and be recognized because of their hardwork. They were recognized that they were the best of the best.

My son sat there a little puzzled and further asked what the best of the best means. I didn't have a good 7-year-old-answer to him except for this:

When you play basketball and there's 20 different teams and you know who the best guys are on that team. Then you take those best guys and stick them on another team and then you take those best guys and you stick them on another team and then you get to the very end where there's nothing left but guys that are the BEST. They're the best of those guys or girls. Those are the ones who get their names on the rafters.

What does it take to get up there?

Work hard.

Have fun.

Do your best.

I thought about this relating to business and questioned myself if this what I'm doing and the things I go after. Am I working so hard to get to the rafters where I want to be the best?

I played sports and I fell short of it as a lot of people do too. But it's the journey that matters. And as I questioned that, it became so surreal to me.

Then my son asked me this question I knew it was coming, "Dad, are you retired and in the rafters like them?" I told him I was on the Hall of Fame in high school although nothing like these guys.

Lessons to be Learned:

We all aspire to work as hard as we could to get our names in the rafter and to be a champion or to get our team in the rafters and retire. But you won't get there if you don't work like a champion, if you don't have fun, or if you don't lead. You will get close and you will earn legacy status if you do those things even if you don't get into the rafters.

There's a lot of great people in business and in the sports world that are not in the rafters but still live epic lives.

Are you working hard to get into the rafters? Or are you just going with the flow and drifting? Are you fulfilling your destiny and using your God-given skills to better yourself and the world, to better your family, to better your life, and to better your circumstances? Are you getting up everyday letting your feet up the ground, getting fired up to be the best you can be?

Books, People, & Resources:

I'm researching former professional athletes and how they transition from being an athlete or a new lead athlete into the "real world." I'm interested in hearing about their struggles, their challenges, roadblocks, successes, and everything in between. Sports has always been a big part of my life. I love them. I have a special interest in athletes and specifically the ones that have competed at the highest levels. Do you know anyone like that? If so, I'd love to hear from them or maybe it's even you. Shoot me an email at ryan@Focus53.com.

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My guest today is Cameron Herold, the mastermind behind the exponential growth of hundreds of companies. Cameron built a dynamic consultancy and his current clients include a Big Four wireless carrier and a monarchy. His clients say what they like the most about him is that he isn't a "theory" guy. And this is what I like the most about him as well. He speaks from experience. He's actually done the things he talks about doing.

He has a reputation for growing businesses and he's the guru behind them in doubling their profit and doubling their revenue in just three years or less.

Topics We Discuss:
Major challenges of organizations: Vision & Alignment and Quality level of people
Cameron's concept of the Vivid Vision: A 5-paged written document that describes your company in vivid detail three years from today
The challenge to get A players and working hard at getting rid of the wrong people
Is business difficult?
Hiring for greatness: Finding people who have done it before + Reference checks
The power of having a daily accountability partner
Focusing on the critical few things versus the important many
Hiring A players: Giving them a better place to work + Core values
Stop making excuses, fix your excuses!
Metrics for success: Net promoter score + SWOT Analysis
Factors for profitability: Employees first, customers second
How to grow your business from zero to 60: Customer satisfaction
Balancing systems: Family first, personal stuff second, then work
The importance of unplugging yourself from work
Building fun activities and building your business around that

Books, People, & Resources:
Double Double by Cameron Herold
The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs by Cameron Herold
Good to Great by Jim Collins
The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard
Endurance by Alfred Lansing
Toronto Sport and Social Club

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Today's show is a bit of a rift but this seems appropriate to dive into. The topic is called Unconscious Bias.

Here are a couple of definitions to set the stage as well as some of the narrative around it before I dive into what my beef is with it.

Bias versus Intuition

Bias is defined as an inclination of temperament or outlook, especially a person, and sometimes unreasoned judgment.

The flip side of it is something I consider one of the most powerful things that business people or anyone for that matter have, which is their intuition. For me, I've found that when I do some of my worst work is when I don't follow my intuition.

Intuition is defined as the ability to understand something immediately without the need for conscious reason. So it sounds an awful lot like a bias.

However, a bias is obviously with negative connotation. You look down on something or somebody or have some type of prejudice.

Unconscious Bias

You may have heard of this term and there is a massive narrative going on with this. I see it extensively in large organizations and on media outlets, especially the Fortune 500 companies I'm in or around.

With training, communications, meetings, forced training, forced action, and questioning - basically everything you do is some form of unconscious bias.

It's a question of the people you work with, with their race, gender, sex, nationality, etc., the people you hire and fire - it's all being shaped or molded by this concept of unconscious bias.

A Mask on Discrimination, Stripping Away Intuition

To me, this is a new mask put on the word, discrimination. (This might make your feathers ruffle a bit) Instead of focusing on the people or the circumstances that are discriminatory, the narrative is that you have to question every decision you make about any person, any situation, any organization and vetted against some sort of bias. Therein lies the problem.

I believe this strips us away of some of our natural intuition and the biases we have in our life are the things that have built our intuition. Especially for those people that are intuitive (which I consider myself), it strips away your power.

For example, if you have walked by a house that has type of dog that's ferocious and vicious (pitbull for instance) and it bites you, maybe you'll be scared of dogs. However, if you walk by five houses and this dog is ferocious and vicious and it bites you, you're going to establish an intuition about that type of dog. So when you run across that dog in the future, you will now have this natural thought process about that type of dog. That's normal and natural. That's what you call a defense mechanism. That's what you call experience.

People that are experienced in the field see things, feel things, hear things, and sense things. That's what makes them awesome at their job. This unconscious bias strips that away. So when you run across another pitbull and you automatically associate it as dangerous, you could be wrong but you could also be right. And you could be right far more times than you are wrong for that one bias that you have.

This is the challenge in the business world, in corporate America, or in your small business. What does that unconscious bias look like?

It’s About Being Smart

There is a fine line between a bias that's on the negative side and intuition. Let's face it, this is where people may not agree with but your intuition is not only for good things but also for the bad things. If it's going to be labeled as a bias that your intuition tells you to stay away from a certain person or business profile that's treated you wrong, if those are the things you stay away from because you've learned from them in the past, then I don't consider you a racist or that you're discriminatory. Instead, I consider you smart that you're taking action.

Labeling Based on Perceived Unconscious Bias

I am not naive, in the slightest, to believe that there is no discrimination out there. My wife's family is from Mexico and my kids are half-Mexican. I am a mentor of underprivileged youth so I am very aware of the discrimination for race, gender, sexuality, nationality, etc.

But the narrative of not putting people in a box and then later put them in a box because they're part of the box or that you hire or fire them because they're not in the box is the same thing with what they're trying to teach about not having unconscious bias.

When I was a kid, we had a mixture of nationalities - Hispanics, African-American, Asian kids. I really didn't know the difference between races or what that meant. In fact, one of my best friends at that time was Jewish. I had no idea he was different than anyone else because he really was not. They just had a different holiday celebration but that was it. They're the same people. Unfortunately, we've lost some of that. My intuition now is that we lose some of that by labeling and forcing actions based on this perceived unconscious bias.

I was talking with my business coach, Mark Silverman, and brought up this concept of unconscious bias to him and how it charred me a bit. He brought up a good point though that people do have unconscious bias. I get that.. I wouldn't even call it an unconscious bias. I think some people are just flat out discriminatory. I don't even consider it unconscious.

Intuition versus Reality

You have to have a level of awareness inside of you to acknowledge what your intuition tells you versus reality. People that are aware of that can handle it.

So if I see a pit bull and it comes up nice and wagging its tail and excited to see me, I should be aware enough to change my perception about that. And you can apply this methodology to whatever business scenario you want.

I’d Love to Know Your Opinion

Unconscious bias is a hot topic right now and I'd love to know your take on this. It's a massive hot topic in the Fortune 500 companies.

As a side note, anything that becomes a massive hot topic in the Fortune 500 space is because they're afraid of getting sued. They don't do anything without some type of consequence so they're doing risk mediation.

Like I said, I consider unconscious bias as just another painted picture for discrimination and the things that come with it. This is a disturbing topic for me because it strips away intuition and again, for me, intuition is built through experiences and experiences create really good professionals and really good business people. Stripping that away and throwing a wet rag over that does the business person and the employee a bit of a disservice.

Some hard core examples from a business standpoint:

Facial or neck tattoos

When somebody comes in and I'm interviewing them and they have facial or neck tattoos or piercings, you can bet that I have some intuition about whether this person is a good fit for my company. And I may be wrong and they may be the best person in town. But they don't fit what I'm looking for and I know that. They will have impact on my customer base if they're doing physical interactions with them that I don't want. Call that bias. Call that intuition. Call that experience. But if you've got a neck tattoo, you can't be helping me sell or deliver high quality services and it's just how it is.

Communication

I think that scenario happens all the time. And sometimes it is wrong. You hear it all the time in the development or programming space. Like you don't want an Indian person answering the phone because you can't understand them. And I find that to be crap. That said, if their communication is not good, regardless if they're Indian, Chinese, Mexican, American, etc, if they can't communicate well then that's the problem. It has nothing to do with them being Indian.

What are you trying to accomplish and what are you trying to solve? How does your intuition work? Mine doesn't work in "Wow! They're Indians so they automatically don't speak good English." But, "I wonder how well they communicate." I'm obviously going to wonder if they have a thick Indian accent that would be hard for people to understand. Of course, that has to go through your thought process and has nothing to do with being racist or bias because they're Indians but it has to do with whether they're communicating well. And you need to vet that out.

Books, People, & Resources:

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Guest Name:
Coach Dayne

Guest Intro:
Today's guest is the distinguished and honorable Coach Dayne. He's a former professional athlete turned mental performance coach. He's focused on elevating our belief, what we're capable of, and achieving and aligning our mindset with those new expectations.

I've been following Dayne for some time and I love his style. I love his message. He's an athlete and I'm a big fan of athletes being a former athlete myself. I love his "no excuse, no BS" kind of way.

Topics We Discuss:
Coach Dayne's background growing up in a family of athletes
A missing piece in what people or trainers are teaching: Mental performance
His struggles and how he got into mental performance coaching
The other side of struggle: Greatness
Aligning your mentality as an athlete with your business or career
How to harness your greatness when you keep on making excuses: Going from macro to micro
The power of visualization: Having a mental picture of what you're working toward
Goal versus vision: How do you differentiate them?
The secret sauce: Get committed to your belief!
Hiring for greatness: Identifying the barriers that are holding you back
Redefining failure as a success: Failure is your trampoline where you will be launched to new levels.
Failure isn't just inevitable, it's mandatory.
Putting yourself in situations where you can fail to train you for greatness
How do you know you're on the path: An inextinguishable passion
Coach Dayne's vision of making an impact and how he defines it
Reshaping your expectations and raising them to insanity
Monitoring progress: Journal entries and progress report on video
The power of taking risks: Stop playing it safe!

Books, People, & Resources:
Learn more about Coach Dayne on www.coachdayne.com and connect with him.
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
The Book of Joy by Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu

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Do you have any certificates? OR What awards do you have? OR What certifications do you have in your arsenal of skills?

Let's break down what this actually means.

An External Validation
It's really a validation. They're asking for external validation, which is some form of insurance of who you are or what you are. This is an indication that you haven't served them.

Over the last 25 years, I've worked for companies like Microsoft, Ford, Dell, Sports Illustrated, and with small businesses (hundreds of them at this point in time). And when someone that you've already worked with ask you for these types of things, you haven't served them initially right out of gate. Or they're looking for some form of "insurance" about who they're talking to. They also use that as a quick way to discard organizations or people they're working with. And they make decisions based on other people's perceptions. So it's an external validation.

Are you certified? Do you go for awards?
I'm a lifelong IT person and I've been in all sorts of positions from the very bottom to the very top in an IT organization. Along the way, I've held all sorts of certifications which have got me jobs and have got me in the door. I've learned a lot of "booksmarts" trying to obtain these certifications. Some employers or people really value them. They will love them. And they do sound good.

I was one of the very first people to get my Microsoft certification back in 1999 and back then, I was a big deal. Nowadays? Who gives a squat? It doesn't really matter in that realm.

But back then, it was a big deal and I used it to my advantage. I actually had my company pay for me to go to a bootcamp where I spent 13 days just hammering, learning, and taking test to get the certification. And the company tried to pin me into their organization because they paid for this $5,000 bootcamp where I went and got certified. They wanted to make me a prisoner of their organization because they paid for it. I had other job offers because I now had the certification which really meant a lot back then and they were going to pay me a lot more.

So I basically paid my company their money and for the certifications, I paid for myself and went on. That was a great decision for me. But it's a good example of how the certificate benefited me. It made a lot of sense since I also learned a lot. Plus, I met someone who later turned into my future boss twice that brought me into great organizations.

Do I still pursue certifications and/or awards?

No.

As a business owner and an employer, I would actually even put college degrees in this bucket now as well. I really don't care that someone has a certificate in web design to work in my company or care for business coaches that only have to have a business certification from some place. I've worked with some that have certifications who are fantastic but I've also worked with many that don't have certifications and they're just as fantastic. So for me, this is something I don't make decisions on.

I believe the best employees, producers, companies are the people that are just actually doing great stuff. I want to see real results. I don't care about scholastic achievements or awards. It's not always the best who wins the award. So you have to look no further than our pool of presidential candidates. That doesn't mean they're the best in the country or at anything to run it.

If you work your butt off, produce great results, and get an award, that's awesome! You should be proud that you did something so powerful that other people noticed. Your goal should always be to win, to be productive, and to serve your customer.

Getting a certificate or a certification
This may ruffle a few feathers but this reminds me of the movie, Tommy Boy, about guarantees. I'm not certified in a lot of the things I do but I don't care. I'm not guaranteeing something that I have. I would throw caution at the wind that there are a lot of people that use a certification as their business model. So instead of building a business, they go and get a certification and use that as a way to attract business even when they're not really qualified to deliver their product/service. And that's scary!

Getting a certification is not like walking in and spending two weeks at a bootcamp You have to be up for it. Tradesmen and apprentices don't just follow a plumber around for two weeks and become a full-blown licensed, professional plumber and expected to do good work. Especially with doctors and lawyers, it takes time to gain that skill in your craft.

Winning an award
If your goal is to win an award just so that you can attract prospects, it may work. But it's going to catch up with you sooner or later. Your business model isn't going to work.

The Products of Running a Great Business
Wrapping up, there's nothing wrong with awards, certifications, and certificates. Many are well-received and very valuable, and most of them are great learning experiences. But as a consumer, I'm always aware that these certificates or awards just don't mean much to me.

As a business owner, certifications and awards are benefits of running a great business. If you win an award because you're recognized in your industry or community, that's awesome. But that's a product of you doing a great job.

If your people who work for you want to get certified because they want to pursue it to deepen their knowledge and you're able to provide that for them so they can get certified, then that’s awesome. But those are products of running a great business. They are not business plans to get certified and get a job or business after that. So you don't want to be the guy or gal who sold a guaranteed piece of crap just because you have a fancy certificate or won an award. It won't work.

Books, People, & Resources:
I'm researching former professional athletes and how they transition from being an athlete or a new lead athlete into the "real world." I'm interested in hearing about their struggles, their challenges, roadblocks, successes, and everything in between. Sports has always been a big part of my life. I love them. I have a special interest in athletes and specifically the ones that have competed at the highest levels. Do you know anyone like that? If so, I'd love to hear from them or maybe it's even you. Shoot me an email at ryan@Focus53.com.

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Guest Name:
Philip Cooke - Radically Simple Consulting

Guest Intro:
My guest today is Philip Cooke whose lifelong passions are process improvement and helping people achieve their deepest passions in life. His engineering firm helps businesses who can't keep up with their demand for their product or service. They streamline their workflow to get more done with what they have.

Topics We Discuss:
The challenges and successes Philip commonly sees in organizations
The impact Philip provides to their clients: Finding the bottleneck is key
How to tap into people who need help but don't understand the value
The importance of knowing your pain points
When to know your operation is growing in an unsustainable way
Balancing between improving operations and new projects: Getting things ironed out before adding people
The difference between automation and building a process: Make sure you're NOT automating a broken process!
Attributes of great leaders: Daily plan + Execution
Dealing with decisions and tasks performed at a wrong level
What makes a bottleneck?
Find the bottleneck and start finding ways to shift around
Freeing your mind to take things off the plate
Metrics and monitoring the health of an organization:
Scoreboards with 2-3 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Cycle Time
First Time Right
Making sure there's a good market for what you do
The way to build relationships: Providing VALUE
The importance of simplifying your operations: Whiteboards + simple systems

Books, People, & Resources:
Radically Simple Consulting
The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann
The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt
The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

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Show Summary:
Today's show is about making the big leap. This is for all of you that has a side hustle, a day job, and would want to make a big leap.

Just like every show, this is strictly my opinion but there's a big narrative out there of “going all in” and “burning the bridges.” This is dangerous for older people or those with responsibilities. And it gets glazed over too much. I think that's dangerous.

I'm not suggesting it shouldn't be done because I'm a big fan of going all in. And I'm a big fan of going all in when it's calculated and not just because you're sick of your job or you think you have the next best thing.

I'm going to talk about what my mental process is or would be if I were to make a big leap.

How much money do you make?

How much money are you making right now? How much money are you making in your side hustle? You have to be really diligent about this. You've got to add in back in things like your healthcare, cellphone, retirement, stock options, home, mileage, or any other perks that your company pays for. You've got to account for all that stuff because it does add up.

Healthcare is a huge one. If you have healthcare and you're on your own, maybe you can swing it but if you have a husband/wife or kids, you can't play with that. You've got to have that all mapped out. At least be aware of it. You don't have to do anything but if you're already living okay and you have a side hustle and you've been making money, and you're probably doing financially okay, then you need to figure out what that level is for you.

How much money do you really need to make to live and survive? Then add 20% because things could go wrong and there are always problems. Kids will always get sick. Things in your house are going to break. Your cars are going to need repairs. So make sure you know how much money you have to make and don't undercut that number.

How much money do you save?

How much money have you saved? If you've had a full time job and you've had a side-hustle and you don't have any money stashed away, here are three possible reasons:

Not as good side hustle as you thought
You have a spending problem.
You have a cash flow problem.
Any of these will turn into big problems once you start running your business on your own. Cash flow is a really important thing to have. You have to have cash to run a business. You have to have cash to pay your bills. Managing your cash is critical.

The Profit First Model

This means that if your side hustle is making money, that money goes into profit before you do anything with it. Put it in a separate account that you can set aside. How much money do you have stocked up? This is both personal cash and business cash.

If you're going to make a leap, sales are not always going to happen or things are not going to go the way they normally do so you have to have a number of months of cash set aside so you're safe and not in panic mode right out of the gate.

How would you handle slow months?

Of course, it goes back to much money you have saved up but more importantly, could you survive? Could you pay your bills? Could you find auxiliary work? Do you have ways that you could work harder to make more money? How are you going to account for slow months? Because, guaranteed, it will happen (lost deals, economic downturn, holidays, high interest rates, snowstorms, etc.) You have to be prepared for it by having a plan in place.

Have you talked with your significant other?

Talk about your husband/wife/partner what's going to happen when there's a slow month, what you need to do, and what you need them to be aware of. More importantly, ask for their understanding and support. This is very important. It's your responsibility to have this conversation with them. Get them fully on board with what you're doing. It's not going to make the situation any easier but your significant other has to be on board with you.

What sacrifices are you willing to make?

How long are you willing to stick it out for? Are you willing to live off of credit cards? Are you willing to cut your cable bill or sell your car to have cash? Are you willing work weekends or when your kids are playing sports or on holidays? What sacrifices are you going to make?

You have to define this and hopefully, you won't have to compromise on them. You need to account for these but at the same time, you need to be very self-aware and really understand the sacrifices you're willing to make. For example, you can't trade three months into working 7-12 hour days and seeing your family less because you're in the basement or office. It doesn't make sense.

Are you ready to make that big leap?

If you're really going to do this, please talk to your significant other. Please understand what you're getting yourself into. And please seek advice from others that have done it.

With all this being said, I love people who burn the ships and people that go all in. Personally, I am far more motivated, efficient, and determined when my back is in the corner but it's hard to do that when you're in the comfort zone. So I think you're crazy if you have other responsibilities and you've risked it to the extreme if you have not answered these questions because you're jeopardizing your family's well-being.

Maybe you don't need all the things that you have to live now but you certainly don't need to eat ramen noodles with your family or not have healthcare for a couple of months because you're wanted to go chase your dream. Maybe that's what would come out of it, but it's different than not planning for it and not being aware of it ahead of time.

Make an educated decision.

Again, the narrative of going all in and burning the bridges is dangerous, crazy, and exciting for some people. But you need to take a step back. Take a deep breath. Consult with some people. Map it out. Answer the questions mentioned above. And make an educated decision. The decision may be bad down the road. But at least it wasn't blind on going all in. You don't see professional poker players, going all in with their chips, blind. You have to have data and information and be educated. And this is no different.

Books, People, & Resources:

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Show Summary:
Today's show is about if you’ll need to rent your pallbearers and the core of that question is pretty obvious. When you die, are you going to have relationships? Do you have friends and people that care about you so much so that they'll be at your funeral and carry you down in the casket? The root of this is...

How are you making your money as a business owner?

Are you in alignment with your integrity?

Will you do anything for a buck?

Or are you spending quality time with the ones you love?

Are you working to do things that allow you to spend time with the ones you love?

This all comes down to your mission.

What is your mission in life?

What are you trying to accomplish? If you're making a crap ton of money, you've got no friends, and you're doing anything to make a buck and taking advantage of people (or whatever that looks like), if that's your mission then live it. That's up to you. That's between you and your maker and how you sleep at night. Just remember to save some of that money to rent your pallbearers.

However, it will work out better when you align your mission with something more powerful and bigger than just how much money you're making. The irony here is that when you align your mission or what you do with something that's not related to money and materialistic things, oftentimes you end up doing better anyway.

I suspect there are a few people out there that are money-hungry but those ones fizzle out quickly. If you burn enough people, you'll get called out and eventually, it's not going to work anymore or you could end up in jail.

To wrap up the show today, I’ve got two questions for you:

What are you doing to make sure that the people you have in your life will be your pallbearers?
Are you spending your time on the right things?

I'm actually wearing a silicone bracelet to remind me of what's important in life. I get wrapped up in success, business, Focus53, doing a good job, and working hard enough but it all boils down to these three things, which I call my 3F's:

Faith
Family
Fitness
I know that if I'm taking care of these three things, all of the other things will take care of themselves specifically for me.

Books, People, & Resources:

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Guest Name:
Joe Shafer - Joe Shafer - Joe Shafer Fly Fishing

Guest Intro:
Today, my guest is Joe Shafer. We've been friends for 25 years and he's actually my oldest friend that I've interviewed for this show. He is someone I respect a lot. Joe is in the law enforcement but that's not why he is on the show but because he owns a company called Joe Shafer Fly Fishing. He's my client and partner and we've worked together on his website and his strategy.

I'm excited to have him on because he's going to bring a different element to the show. The fly fishing business is really cool and very detailed where you have to know your stuff, and it's a service-based business to the core. The better service you provide, the more clients like you, the better tips they lay down, the more they come back and see you.

Topics We Discuss:
How Joe got into the fly fishing business
The benefits of fly fishing
Building the brand: Promoting his fly fishing guide
Using the website as a teaching tool for people
The importance of translating your knowledge into something people can use and digest
Processes/systems he used: Developing a good game plan
The power of feedback
Joe's biggest struggle of breaking down website content that is easily digestible
Learning new processes regularly to make him better and to put out the best product possible
Having the right mindset, overcoming fears, and building confidence
Monitoring success for business: Utilizing social media as a tracking mechanism and looking for growth areas
Knowing you're competent but you're scared: What do you do?

Books, People, & Resources:
Find out more about Joe Shafer on www.joeshaferflyfishing.com
Connect with Joe on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Colorado Guide Flies by Pat Dorsey

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Today's show is about something I work on with my clients all the time and something I'm always working on. And you can substitute "working on" for "struggling" sometimes and sometimes it's something I'm really good at. It's a form of personal balance - how to know how much time to spend on your craft, product, or service versus the other "stuff" you do in your business, which can be accounting, admin work, marketing, sales, hiring/firing, business development, reporting, etc.

How much of your time are you doing that versus the actual product creation or product development (if you're a “products” person) or services and services delivery (if you're in service business)?

You'd like to think this was an easy answer but we all know we have a limited amount of time to deal with during the day. But I've found it personally as well as with the people I'm working with that being able to put a container around this helps keep you from working 16-hour days and looking back not knowing what the heck have you got done in the day.

Here are some principles I've used to govern how to know what to spend time on.

Bootstrapping
If you don't have money and you're bootstrapping it, suck it up. The exercise here is to only do the important things. Do you really need to work on a social media campaign if that's a stretch for you and that's not important to your business right now? Is that the best use of your time? If you're bootstrapping and can't hire people to do it then you're going to have to do these things.

Setting priorities
Have a great priority identified and set up that you can go through and review to make sure that if you're doing all these things, at least you're doing them in order of priority. Sales and business development should always be at the top of this list. Sales will make up for a lot of wrongs in your other business certainly in the short term so cash flow can account for some of these stuff. Business development is something you can do yourself especially when your business is small.

Hiring
Let's say you do have some money but you still find yourself stuck in the minutia of your business. You should hire out to very specific tactical functions inside of your organization like:

Accounting
There is no reason you should be doing this. Go hire someone. Pay a couple hundred bucks a month. Ask your friends or other people in business who they use and get a referral to get this off your plate.

First of all, your books need to be clean. Your accounting needs to be done well. That has all sorts of downstream ramifications from both being able to sell your company and identifying issues in your business. Get it done right by having an expert do it. It's an easy thing to segregate from your business and have someone else do it.

Hiring/Firing
If you don't have an HR person inside the organization, this is something you need to do. If you have someone in your organization that you think needs to be let go of, let go of them TODAY. I say this pretty sternly because everyone knows there are people inside of the organization that you need to let go but they just drag on.

I saw an interesting stat at this one conference I was at that really resonated with me, which is that:

"A bad employee costs 15x more than their salary."

This seems like a bit of an exaggeration but you can very easily see how it does between bad potential customer service and the loss of additional customers or bad morale or environment for your other employees. And it sets the bar.

Stop making excuses!

When you're running a larger company and have a bit of money but you still find yourself stuck in the minutia and there's not enough time to hand off things or you don't know what to hand off and how to get it to someone else or that you don't want to hire someone. These are just excuses and in fact, this is the biggest pull of people I work with and the environment I'm in.

The reality is, you're lying to yourself. You know exactly what to do. You know exactly how to do it. You just need to do it. And by "do it," I mean getting it off your plate. Either find someone else to do it or delegate it to someone who's already in your organization, hire somebody, or don't do it at all.

This is the giant paradox and what I want to tie this back to is that I work with a ton of people that are working so hard and in the grind and they're complaining about their job and what they're doing. They're working 16 hours a day and doing part of the assembly of their product because they don't have the stones to hire someone for $8 an hour to do the manual labor for them so they can be off doing their own business.

Your Call-to-Action:

If you're really unsure how much time to spend on your craft, product, and service versus other stuff in your business, I encourage you to sit back and reflect on these questions:

Am I happy with everything I'm doing to my business right now?
Am I providing service to my business the best that I can be?
Are you happy? Or are you just working your ass off to get by and that's just all you've done?
Sit back. Take a deep breath. Think about all the things you're doing. And think about whether these really fit into the things you're really good at that you should be doing for your organization.

For solopreneurs out there and you work by yourself and you augment everything with contractors, same thing. If you're the one doing all your Facebook posts and if you have the opportunity to outsource it for $100 a month, think about it.

Books, People, & Resources:

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Show Summary:

Today's show is about a question I received from my business coach. Mark Silverman. He's a great guy and I love him to death. He really knows his stuff so please go check him out. And the question is...

What area/areas do you feel you haven't been doing your best?

This is a pretty deep one. It makes you reflect on yourself and what you are doing versus your expectations. And if you're okay with it, sitting with it for a minute, and really processing it - the goal here is to be brutally honest with yourself.

I'm going to give you what mine were and I hope this resonates with you and will get you to sit down and think where haven't you been your best. Everyone knows, giving your best is important but only giving your best for the right things are important. So this implies which areas should you be giving your best that maybe you are not.

Making good food choices and working out

This is a big one for me and it always is and always has been a struggle in my life. Eating like crap translates into feeling not as good and then this spirals down. So the two big dominoes for me are making good food choices and getting a workout in every single day.

I brought this up on the show a number of times now but the year I trained for Ironman (which was just over a year ago) that I competed in was my best business and financial year (so far) of my life.

A coincidence?

I don't think so. Because it becomes part of your life. You become laser-focused on the time that you're not working out because you're working out so much and you're working out only on the things that are important to you.

The Domino Effect

So this is a massive domino for me and I believe it is a massive domino for everyone. If I am working out, if I am competing for something, it makes me feel better and it brings up the energy, and then I also make good food choices because I don't want to be running with what it feels like a bag of concrete in my gut. I don't want to be swimming with that and I don't want to feel crappy. So these are the two things that I haven't been doing my best at and I know that.

Asking

I am very much a Type A person and I have this weird and crappy belief that I'm working on that I don't ask for help. It's a very prideful thing. I don't ask my best friends for help. I don't ask my family for help. I don't ask much of anyone for anything really. And while that may seem like a good and a prideful thing, the people that love me the most, that can help me out the most, that would love to help me out the most, I don't ask them for anything. So I'm working on this

It's not asking in a way that I'm asking for money, but things like, asking for introductions or if they know anyone that would be a good fit for my business. I've been telling myself this lie to my closest friends and to myself for the better part of 15 years that they can't help me in my professional life.

The reality is they know people that need the services I do and I just haven't asked. And this is just a big, big, black spot that I need to address, which is an area I haven't been doing my best in.

Being bold

This is an interesting one because if you ask my friends, who are stable and conservative and have day in and day out jobs, they think that I'm the boldest guy they know. I have multiple businesses. I travel. I am not afraid to go to conferences or talk to people. And they consider that being bold.

The truth is...

I don't feel like I'm being bold. I feel like I'm playing half-ass a lot of times. Being bold is relative to the person but for me, I haven't been playing my best. I have not been bold. I have been conservative and laid back and that's a focus area for me.

Playing safe

Every week, it changes potentially but these are constant themes I see as I go through. I use the 100 Day Journal as something that my business coach, Mark, gave me for some of my journaling goals and my business goals and this is a common theme I see.

This is a culmination of all of the above areas I've mentioned. Playing safe for me is really this mindset of putting limits on the things that I can do.

From Ironman to now...

I know that when I didn't play safe, I put a date on the calendar and signed up for Ironman when I hadn't trained and when I hadn't run more than 5 miles in my entire life. That's not playing safe. That's being bold. That's going after what I want and I did that! And it feels really good to do that. It feels like you get a new lease of life that you've proven to yourself that you can do something great.

And I haven't been doing that ever since the Ironman. I have been playing it safe on many levels - on a professional level and on a fitness level. This is something I need to work on and this is where I haven't been my best. And I'm looking to change that.

What about you? Where haven't you been you're best?

I encourage you to go deep with yourself and be honest with yourself. Really sit with yourself and stew on this because the places where we aren't being our best and the areas that we want to be our best are massive opportunities for growth and success. And this is very different than, "I'm not being my best at watching Game of Thrones." Being the best at that isn't going to move your life forward.

Where I am definitely doing my best at: Commitment to my family and my faith

What you don't see on this list which I'm very proud of are my family and my faith. I am committed to both of these and I am extremely committed to being there for my family, probably a little too much on the family side. Because if I have to travel for any reason, I get a little frustrated because I want to be with my family. It's probably healthy for me to be gone. But what you don't see on this list of where I haven't been giving my best is with my family. I feel like I'm doing a really good job at that and there's a lit of things that I do feel good at.

But for me to grow, I have to really focus on what I haven't been my best in and these are the things for me right now and I'm working every single day to change that whether behavior changes, daily practice changes, or habits. I'm a big habit guy. So if I change my habits, then I'll change these things natively. And the biggest domino of all of these is getting workout in so that's what I'm focusing on.

Books, People, & Resources:

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Guest Name:
Kelly Childress

Guest Intro:
My guest today is Kelly Childress. She is a dispute resolution practitioner, a certified coaching consultant, and a board certified chaplain with over 15 years of experience in healthcare. Kelly has vast experience working with people who have been blown away by a difficult event, a death, a terminal diagnosis, a tragedy, or some type of crisis. She loves to help build bridges and gaps between what was and what can be. She also have three amazing nieces who light up her world. As a side note, she is one of the sweetest and most genuine people I've ever met.

Topics We Discuss:
What Kelly does as an Ombuds/Mediator in healthcare institution
The importance of self-care
Balancing transparency versus self-incrimination: Being an internal neutral to advocate for a fair process
Erring on the side of truth: Paying high value in transparency and truth
Factors for playing the blame game: Culture + Discomfort
Practicing a just culture: Taking the story from everyone's perspective and creating positive changes to grow
The power of effective communication: Understanding one's culture and listening
The attributes of a good medical practitioner: Technical excellence + emotional intelligence + communication expertise + open heart
The value of compassion: Treating people as human beings + smiling can be healing
Who do you really want to be in this world?
Dealing with stressful circumstances: The medical institution as a world unto itself
How to be more receptive to care: Willingness to share, listening, participating in creating the right conditions to get well
How to cultivate effective communication: Being an expert in your field.
Being open to being coached: Listen to what's being reflected back to you
Never underestimate the impact you have on people
Planting seeds of compassion, kindness, and forgiveness

Books, People, & Resources:
Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
The Code of the Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani

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Show Summary:
Today's show is a quick, ad hoc one. I just had a conversation with people about sales quotas and sales goals. I wanted to dissect this a little bit and talk about them. It really depends on your perspective, what organization you're in and how your company is set up and what you're trying to do but I'll offer some words that may ruffle some people's feathers and that's okay.

Does Your Drive Compromise Your Morals?

Follow what you want but when someone sets up a sales quota or sales goals, goals are fine. Quotas when they're tied to compensation elicit drive in people that, in my opinion, allows them to compromise what's right for the customer.

Let's talk about the sales quota and say you have to sell $100,000 worth of widgets and you have three different types of widgets. But when you talk to a customer, they don't need the widgets. They don't need your widgets. But you're okay selling them with these widgets.

The same thing in the service-based business. You really know they don't need your website. You really know they don't need your technical services, your writing services, your auto services, whatever that looks like, and you still sell it to them because you're driving to feed you family. You're driving to make a sales quota.

I know why companies put them in place because of this very reason. It drives people and motivates them where I have a big, big, big set of conflicting struggles since these people will compromise their morals to sell someone something that they don't need. The excuses I hear are: "They're big boys and big girls. If they don't really need it, they should say so." That doesn't work for me. If you tell them they don't need it and they still bought it, then that's maybe a different conversation

But if they're buying something that you know they don't necessarily need or they don't get the best value out of, or there is a better alternative and you're just selling it because you make a higher margin on that product, that is wrong!

I get why companies and organizations do that since that's the only way to drive a lot of people and motivate them. At the end of the day, that's what it's about, especially publicly traded companies. What's the topline? Money coming in.

Take a step back...

Sales Goals and Extra Bonus

Sales goals - They are 100% valid, accurate, and needed. You have to have goals to know where you're going to. You have to have a target you're shooting for. Are they tied to compensation? Maybe.

To me, I like the bonus model where if you get to this, we'll give you an extra bonus. Hopefully, that takes some of the angst and desire to sell someone something they don't necessarily need.

Playing the Long Game

At the end of the day, I want to play the long game. I want to build relationships. I want to have the customer or the client know, like, and trust me. If I had signed some of the deals knowing that it wasn't the right deal, the number of clients or websites I've turned down because I didn't think it was the right fit or because I didn't think they needed my services, it's just not right.

Is your company in it for the short term or the long term? That's the question.

Are you looking just to make a quick sell, to meet some sales quota, to move onto the next thing? Or are you really trying to build a long term relationship with your client?

It's real simple. I want a long term relationship. I want to do the best for them. And I believe from the bottom of my heart, that ends up the best for myself, for my organization, and for the customer. The people that have an immediate need of fix make bad decisions.

Books, People, & Resources:

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Guest Name:
Alla Barova

Guest Intro:
Born and raised in Russia, Alla worked as a registered nurse for 13 years in Russia. But guess what? She came to America in 2003 and she brought her son and her mom a year later with her. She's a little different than most people I've had on this type of podcast but I'm excited because it has a big parallel to what business and life is about and we'll talk about that. Ala and I have have been been able to spend some time together in the past and we'll talk about what that means. She is currently a real estate broker and also, a student at Quantum University of Honolulu, going for a PhD in Integrative Medicine.

I have more admiration for the things she has done in her life, moving from a place that she didn't like to live and came to the U.S. That's why I wanted to have her on and how that parallels to the business. She set a goal and a destination and a journey and she didn't stop until she made it there no matter how hard the trials were between where she started and where she ended. She set out a really, really big goal that probably most, if not all people listening to the podcast right now have not done. There is a ton of admiration coming from me and a bunch of other people for the journey that she made.

Topics We Discuss:
What her life in Russia was like: Born in a family of teachers and dealing with money struggles
Her biggest driving force to move to America: Wanting to give her son more than she had and not wanting her son to be drafted to the army which was mandatory
Coming to America with literally nothing and not speaking the language
Being able to bring her son and mom within a year and dealing with immigration stuff to apply for political asylum
How she assessed her priorities every single day: Clarity, Focus, and Freedom
Making the most money in the fastest way to be able to buy a car and to save money for her son
She recounts her story of flying to the America and escaping from the hands of slavery just in the nick of time
Surrounding herself with the right people through trial and error
Being 100% in what you do: Love it and make others love it through you.
Trusting the GPS in your body: Do what feels good to you because your heart will never lie.

Books, People, & Resources:
Alla's book recommendation: The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

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Today's show is about the "Expert's Dilemma" - a phrase I've been using. I don't even know if it's out there or someone else has coined it but I'm going with it.

I see it all the time. I see it in myself. And I see it all around the business world as well as with solopreneurs (a lot!), people that run their own one-man businesses and I also see it with small businesses.

What is an expert's dilemma?

Somebody got into business to do whatever they're gifted at or their zone of genius for their craft, for their trade, for their product. However, they grow their business and the next thing you know, they spend more of their time doing the things that they are not their expertise or their zone of genius. In more times, they do things that they hate - accounting, marketing, HR, hiring, firing, etc.

This then starts to erode them. Their business starts to erode and they start hating the thing that they really love and the reason they got into business in the first place. And it causes all sorts of problems.

A gradual shift

This doesn't happen overnight. It's a gradual shift. Right when you get into business, say you are a plumber and you love plumbing. You're the best plumber in the whole land. You then start doing it, doing great work, and making good money. You spend 90% of your time doing plumbing. But over months, quarters, and years, that 90% of plumbing and 10% of business administration and the other side of the business shifts. The next thing you know, you're doing 50% of the plumbing and 50% of running the business. Then you start hiring people, dealing with issues, marketing taxes, accounts payable, accounts receivable,books, etc. Eventually, you're no longer doing the thing you love the most since most of your time will be spent dealing with issues on your business.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

It's seen in big and small business alike.

The sad thing is I see this at big Fortune 100 companies. People get into a specific role. It's their zone of genius, they may get promoted or they move to somewhere the grass is greener and they spend all their time doing things that isn't their zone of genius.

I see it in small businesses. A business owner may be doing well. They've hired their staff, they're set up and rocking well. The next thing you know, this business owner is in the weeds doing things that are not business owner-type tasks.

My personal experience

This is the expert's dilemma. You are basically spending more time on things out of your expertise or zone of genius. I have done this. I do this and when I do, I notice that I become frustrated with what I'm doing. I become angry at the type of work I'm doing and I become resentful for the type of work I'm doing.

One of the things that I do outside my zone of genius is general marketing. So I literally stopped doing any type of marketing (social, blog posts). The only thing I really do is this podcast. And the reason I stopped is because it's literally outside my zone of genius. I don't like it. I'm not good at it. I have an atrocious looking face so when I shoot a video and look at myself, I'd go, "My goodness. Who is going to watch this guy?" And so I stopped.

I found myself sinking back into it every now and then but it's really about the FOCUS.

What's the fix?

Surround yourself around people that are going to call you out on this. Be aware that you have an issue. Acknowledge the fact that you are not working in your zone of genius and it's not making you happy. I've heard so many times that that's the cost of business. Well, that's not the cost of business. Yeah, there are some things you need to do as a business owner that you don't necessarily like but that doesn't mean you should hate it. It also doesn't mean you should go out and hire a platoon of people to take over every little thing you don't like.

The real fix - Awareness

Are you aware of what you're working on? Of what you should be working on? Of what's the best use of your time? And of the tasks and the things you focus on during the day? Do they align with your zone of genius?

Your challenge

Go look at work or tasks you've done last week. See how those align to what you think you are and what you think you aren't. I guarantee it will surprise you and that includes your zone of genius at work, the things that you hate and the things that you do to kill time. Go look back one week, 7 days and take a look at what you did. I bet it doesn't align with what you want. It doesn't align with your zone of genius. It doesn't align with the things that you would say "this is who I am or who I want to be."

If I plagiarized anyone else's term with this expert's dilemma concept, I apologize. But we all get in it and it's really powerful when we're in it. We do some of the great work. It feels like it's the easiest thing in the world. And on the flip side, when we're outside of it and doing things we're not good at or continue to be uncomfortable at, it's not fun. It turns our businesses into work and that's not what we want.

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Show Summary:
Today's show is about what should a solopreneur or a small business focus on first. I often don't talk about startups and this doesn't necessarily apply to that but I think it's something really important for a startup or a solopreneur. A solopreneur is basically a one-man wrecking crew.

Focus on CASH

So the first thing to focus on is cash. I don't run into too many businesses that are in trouble and have a healthy cash flow. However, that's not to say that you're running a good business if you have a healthy cash flow. These two are not mutually exclusive but they cash could be an indication that you're doing something right, that your products or services are received in the market, you're making money, and you don't have really thin margins.

Save cash.
For startups or existing businesses, you have to save cash. I know this is really hard for a lot of people because they want to pour every single dollar back into the business but I believe in the Profit First model.

The Profit First Model

In its simplest form, it means that when $100 comes in, you automatically set aside a certain percentage of it that goes to a savings account so you save cash for your business. Then have another account for your business taxes. Therefore, your $100 gets sliced up immediately.

The Advantages of a Profit First Model:
It allows you to see how much cash you have and you will always have cash on hand to weather any storm such as if you lose a big contract or if business is slow for month. Whatever that looks like, you know you're able to handle that from cash.

Obviously, driving more sales is another way to top into that. But what that looks like for you and your business is a whole another topic specific to your business.

Manage your expenses.
This is important because expenses literally take away your cash. You may not think your extra $25 a month cellphone bill is a big deal but when you add that up over a year and you're diligent with your money and have it in your savings account, that is cash in the bank.

Cash Is King

Hands down, cash is the number one thing to focus on. During a recent networking event, someone asked me about what I'm doing and who I'm working with as well as some of the big struggles I see. And they asked me what to focus on first.

So if you're generating cash for your business, you are doing something right. You should be excited and you should be proud of yourself. However, you have to be aware that it may dry up so you need to have things in place to account for slower times. But whatever you're doing to generate that cash, pour a little fuel on that fire and generate more.

Cash is king.

It will always be king. It is going to be king if you need to ever get financing or if you ever need to get an investor or when the customer you thought had went south and there are problems.

Be honest with yourself and look at your account, personal or business. If there's cash in there, then it just reduces a level of anxiety just by seeing it in there and knowing you have it. It allows you to not be needy.

Books, People, & Resources:

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Today's show is about focusing on results only and not the path and the journey. I see this a lot and it basically comes down to people being so enamored with this one goal they set for themselves, which is typically a pretty powerful goal, and they compromise everything along the way to get it.

I'm going to use two analogies here:

Building a business - I will use my coaching and consulting side of what I do as a business example.
Baking cookies with your kids
And as we go through this, hopefully, it shows the challenge that we face when we try to apply a single metric, goal, and focus to our business.

There is value in learning from your failures.

If you're so enamored with the final result or goal that you don't learn from your failures along the way, then you're missing out on some tremendous knowledge and experience.

The same with cooking with your kids. If they don't learn to measure using the right measuring utensil or learn to measure with the right numbers then they just don't learn and experience the value of learning from their failures.

There are so many other benefits besides the single result you're looking for.

If I'd just look at my business, where I'm at today versus where I was at 6 months ago, and if I were to only focus on top line sales and I ignored all these other benefits...

... of all the great relationships I've had and set up,

... of all the business opportunities that came to me,

... of all the great people I've met,

... of all the great conferences I've been to,

All these things have been just blessings in my life. Had I only been focused on driving sales, I would have missed those and that would be really bad. That would just be really bad for my business and it's just really bad as a person and a human being. I wouldn't have been able to offer or serve other people along the way, had I been only focused on that.

Same thing with baking cookies and you're only worried about that you have the most perfect cookie. And you're not rocking the benefits with your kids along the way. You're not enjoying being with them. They're not having fun with you. You're not engaged. You're not giggling. You're not appreciating your time with them. You're not appreciating what that time together is about. Who gives a crap about what the cookies come out like really? The value is spending time, cooking cookies, and being together.

Sure, you want good cookies. Who doesn't? But if you take that same approach and apply it to your business, I wonder if we really dive in on a single goal or focus too much at the expense of other things as we're going along the path.

You are blindly attacking this desired result so hard that you compromise everywhere else.

This is one that probably will sting a little bit for many people. This maybe hard for you to hear (and sometimes for me too) but you worked so hard to close these deals that you basically have no pipeline after you hit your magic result.

I see this all the time in the corporate world as well as with small businesses. They're driving for sales number. They get it. Lord knows what kind of carnage is left behind of what they did. They hit their number and they're happy for 20 minutes then they realize the next quarter, the next month, or the next 6 months, they have a sales goal or they have business that they need to bring in. And guess what? They have no pipeline. They have no people left to service because they just burned through everyone trying to hit this goal.

This is equivalent to baking cookies at 700 degrees in your oven with every single ingredient in your house and then at the end of it, maybe you have some cookies that cook fast and they're good. But at the end of it, you certainly can't bake anymore.

So the pipeline is crushed and you just blindly attacked it. Head down. No holds barred until you get to this goal and result without really appreciating the process.

What is the solution?
To me, it's having a clear understanding on a few key metrics for your business that allow you to achieve your goal without compromising the important things in and around your business or life.

Metrics for cooking cookies:
Is my child having fun?
Are they learning?
Have I taken the time to really sit back for just a couple of minutes and just look at them and enjoy our time together and what they're doing?
Are they engaged?

Metrics for my business
How many people am I serving?
How many people am I actively coaching and consulting with?
What are my conversations like and how do I feel about them?
Am I continually learning?
Am I serving in the most powerful way possible?

These are metrics that I literally keep track of and that I diagnose, look at, and reflect on. So as I continue to grow my business, those are what are important to me.

It is critical to have goals. I think everybody knows that. But it's also brutally painful if all you do is focus on that goal and not the process to get there.

If you look at where you're at today, no matter where it is, no matter how successful you are, stop and look back and think to yourself,

"If I only wanted to get to where I'm at today and I didn't learn or experience all the things behind me that had gotten me here today and I didn't get the value out of that, think about how difficult it would be to go forward."

The moral of the story:
Absorb, soak in, and appreciate the things along the path because those are the things that are going to take you to the next level for your business.

Books, People, & Resources:

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Guest Name:
Randy Williams - Talley & Twine Watch Company

Guest Intro:
Randy Williams is an entrepreneur, author, and speaker based in Hampton Roads, Virginia. His most recent venture, Talley & Twine Watch Company has been featured in Black Enterprise, The Network Journal, and Inside Business. Randy is passionate about inspiring other entrepreneurs to take a leap into business ownership and believes that service is at the heart of everything we can do. As a side note, he has a beautiful, young daughter. He's a new dad so he and I like to talk about that.

Topics We Discuss:
Talley & Twine's business model: A direct consumer watch company that cultivates lifelong relationships with customers
What influenced his drive to build relationships with customers: Seeing it as a strategic advantage
Systems and processes in place: Social media presence and looking at customer service emails so they can speak directly and sending out personalized video emails
Biggest challenges with running the business: Inventory management/Cash flow
Learning what to do: Maximizing what little amount of cash he has and selling a few watches at a time; choosing to spend money on the things that have the best return
Assessing new projects versus existing projects: Using information from the emails received from clients to determine what products they should create or offer to clients at the right time
The power of market research: Do an Amazon search for their top selling items, look at the things that are already selling, see how you can improve upon that, and create an even better product.
Key metrics that drive his business: Monitoring your daily financials or run rate (number of products you have to sell per day) and cash flow (seeing how much money is in the bank vs. expenses)
Vanity metrics: Are you sure you're turning them into customers?
Focus on your actual business versus your vanity metrics
Hiring for greatness: A heart that cares and recognizes the value of delivering the gift on time and connecting to the human element of it

Books, People, & Resources:
Talley & Twine Watch Company

Randy has a special gift for Focus53 listeners. Just go to the Talley & Twine Watch Company website. Enter in Focus53 upon checkout and receive $10 any timepiece.

Randy's tool recommendation: Shopify

Randy's book recommendation: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield

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Show Summary:
Today's show is about FEARS. I'm going to try to keep this in the business context but as you can imagine this bleeds all over the place.

Fear, for me, as I work on myself, on my business, and my mental, spiritual, and personal sides of the house, I've noticed that fear dictates and controls a lot of what I do, and more specifically, what I don't do.

There are all types of fears and I'm going to cover a few of them here.

Fear of failure
We don't appreciate how much this controls us. I see this with a lot of business owners, individuals, and businesses I work with.

One of the ways I see fear of failure happening is you will work with anyone that comes to your business. Your fear of not making money takes over so you'll just work with anybody and that will kill you in the long run.

In a more traditional sense, it's the fear of doing something because you're afraid you're going to fail, of what you'd look like if you failed, and of how that would feel to you.

Fear of success
People do have the fear of success for some things. You project yourself in your head that you're having a certain level of success but that success comes with other things like making more money than your friends or you're making enough that your family is going to ask you for money or you have to pay more taxes - any of these other things that come with success. More pressure is another thing. In the corporate world, success often equates to more responsibility, more travel, more hours, etc.

Fear of rejection
This would come in the form of whether you’re being rejected by your peers for not being a thought leader, or being rejected by the common audience for not pleasing them, or for saying something to somebody and afraid that they'll reject you so you instead say what they want to hear. This fear of rejection is what keeps you from being your true and genuine self. You're not going to hear yes every time.

Honestly, this is a big one for me as I am a people-pleaser at my core. As I continue to coach, consult or work with people, I find that the more genuine I am to myself and the more I serve somebody with no fear of them rejecting what I'm doing or saying, the better I produce for them, the more genuine I am, and the better results they have. They may reject a thought or an idea but I don't visualize it as thinking that I'm a bad person, which is often the case.

Fear of missing out
This comes all the time in the business world. You might call it the shiny object syndrome or the new project syndrome or the "I can't keep my shit together and focus on a project" syndrome.

There's a new project, a new idea, a thought, a new customer, etc, and if you don't go do it or spend time on it, you're afraid that you're missing out on something.

This is the biggest problem. You're not focused. You're afraid of missing out that you spend all this mental energy on what could have been or what you've missed out on while you're missing a really good opportunity with the business you already have.

Fear of what others may think
You have this sense of fear that what you say, do, accomplish, or don't accomplish will not be good enough for them. They may think down upon you. This is a combination of all the fears put together. Probably 9 out of 10, this is your own fear in your own head and doesn't truly reflect what you think.

For example, if I started a business and it went south, it's not that I was afraid of failure, but I was afraid my best friend or my wife would think that I am a loser. The reality is, they won't. Because that's just not how they are. They don't view a single failure in the sense that you are a failure. These are two very different things.

I still care about what my wife or best friend or other people think but I don't have fear that my actions done in the best of interest, with the best of mindsets, are going to be something that persuades them to dislike me. They may not have liked my actions or business ideas, but I no longer have any fear that they may think I'm a bad guy because a business didn't go well. This may manifest with you in a lot of different ways and I see it manifest in business and business owners I've worked with.

Having the Athlete's Mindset

You seldom see this kind of fear in the sports arena, specifically on the field. You don't think about what the person next to you thinks about you in the heat of the battle. This is the mindset that you want to get into.

Now, once you go out of the field and back to the locker room to watch films, that's when fear begins to hit you as you're sitting there being peer-reviewed. Your fear of what others think comes into play when you slow things down and you begin to think a little irrationally. The funny thing is you're sitting there in fear of what the other person sitting next to you would think while he's also thinking what you are thinking. The reality is... no one really gives a crap.

The same analogy applies to business. At the end of the day, the more fear you can let go of, the more fears that you can identify, the more you're able to sense their true meaning in your life and not let them control what you do, the better off you are.

This is a big focus for me to work on the fears, the things that guide my thoughts, and more importantly, the things that prevent me from taking action where a lot of them are fear-based.

There are more different types of fear and different ways they're being manifested inside a business and life in general. Hit me up if you want to know more about them.

Books, People, & Resources:

Download the 15 Most Popular Tools Business Owners Should Be Using

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Guest Name:
Chris Blair - Blair Financial Planning and Rocky Mountain Business Forum

Guest Intro:
Today's guest is Chris Blair. Chris is the President of Blair Financial Planning as well as the Executive Producer at Rocky Mountain Business Forum. Chris and I shared a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, had some great conversations about service, business, giving back, and much more on a deep business level. We see eye-to-eye on a lot of things.

His value proposition conveys why I've really enjoyed my time with Chris and why I wanted to have him on the show. His value proposition says this:

Our Value Proposition is Simple – We help you…

Align your Financial Choices with your most important goals & most deeply held values
Get your entire financial house in order & keep it that way forever
Have confidence that no matter what happens in the markets, the economy or the world, we will strive to help you achieve your goals

Topics We Discuss:
The two greatest gifts Chris could give to his two kids
Product versus performance: Service-based proposition
The music conductor analogy: Working as a financial conductor
Getting the clarity as to where clients stand relative to where they want to be
Process and systems in place: Working with teams + 3-meeting process with clients
A walk-through of their goals conversation with clients: values, specific goals, timeline, numbers, a picture of their ideal life
Hiring for greatness: customer service, hyper-organization, creativity, attention to detail
Challenges they face: Messaging that resonates with people and overcoming customer objections
Knowing how to stay retired without any stress: Making the right decisions
Who are not a good fit to their company
The model of vetting clients: Finding if it's a good fit
Developing a process around networking
The value of recording your meetings

Books, People, & Resources:
GoToMeeting
Blair Financial Planning
Rocky Mountain Business Forum

Send Chris an email at cblair@moneyconcepts.com

Chris' book recommendation: Traction by Gino Wickman

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Show Summary:
Today's show is about REGRET, inspired from a short Facebook video I saw a couple of days ago going around where he discussed regrets and it showed an elderly person on their deathbed and talked about what they regretted.

Unanimously, older people will tell you that things they wish they could go back and change and had regrets about were not playing all in, not going all in, following their dreams, doing their passions, those types of things.

So it got me thinking, and I've thought about this a lot, particularly as I'd turn 40, maybe it's a midlife crisis (that's what my wife would say and maybe some of my friends).

Truthfully, I really don't have probably any or many regrets, maybe none at all. Where I'm at today is because of the decisions I made along the path of life. I have a very blessed life so I can't really turn my nose up to that. But if you take regrets and say, "Is my next decision based on a regret or something that I would want to do?"

So I try to flip it. I don't like the word "regret" necessarily but I think it's powerful and I think it works. But I like to think of it as...

If I were to look at myself five years from now, would I be happy with that decision or would I have made a different decision?

So I use that filter to go through some of the things I do or where I commit my time to or where I put my energy and focus to. It really changes how you proceed and a small example of that is professional success.

You climb the corporate ladder and you have a lot of "success" on the corporate level or a normal job.
Go to school. Go to college. Graduate. Find a job. Get better. Get promoted. Have two and half kids, whatever the number is.

Aligning Your Decisions with Your True Values

I heard this great line at an intensive I was at:

"You climb the ladder of success only to realize your ladder is leaned up against the wrong building."

You can call that regret. You can call that, "I didn't know any better." But at a certain point in time and it happens to all of us I believe. You get to where you're aware of your decisions and the impact that will have on your future and on your family's future and on your well-being.

Then you ask yourself,

"Holy crap! Should I be doing this in the first place? Is this right for me? Is this really aligned with my true values?”

And when you're at a point where you're making decisions like that and you're projecting it into the future, your future self, that's really when you start to get this concept of regret that resonates deep inside of you.

It doesn't turn into regret at that point because you're aware of it. It turns into this fear or disappointment because you're not living what you know is the right thing for you. This is not only a professional thing but it's also with your health, your relationships with family members, your fitness and exercise.

Regret as a Blessing
If we're at that spot where we are taking our thoughts and we’re questioning what we're doing because we're projecting what it's going to do in our life 5-10 years from now, our kids, our legacy, here’s an exercise:

Consider this a blessing.

I've been enlightened with a notion that I can think about what I'm going to do today and how it's going to affect my life going forward. That is a gift and a blessing. A lot of people don't have that option or they don't have that vision.

When you have that thought or awakening, my hope for myself and for everyone else is this:

Make a decision based on what's right for you and your family and your legacy going forward so that 2, 3, 5 years from now, you don't look back and have that regret, thinking I should have done this differently.

Whether it's your job, training, career path, smoking, diet, not going to the doctor to take care of a lump on your back, whatever that looks like for you, my hope for you and for me is the intestinal fortitude to stand up for it. Think about it and do what's right. I think deep down inside we all know what that is.

Regret is a very real thing and hopefully it's a blessing for all of us.

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This show is about pricing models and to make it simple, this is a podcast so we're not going to have a bunch of Gantt charts and spreadsheets and all sorts of funny business. We are going to talk about value-based pricing. For this, we're going to focus on service-based businesses as well, just to keep it nice, simple, and clean.

There are basically a couple of pricing models:

Value-based pricing model
This is the way you value your service that you deliver to your customer based on value. That, in and of itself, is tricky and this is certainly the model I like.

Hourly-based pricing model
You’re trading your time for a set dollar amount.

Project-based pricing model
You have a certain amount of time or a certain deliverable and you deliver a project.

There are benefits to all of these but I believe there are less benefits to the hourly model for the position in life I am. For someone that needs a predictable income and they need a guaranteed linear rate of what cost me $2 an hour to provide this and I know I'm making $15 an hour, therefore, for every hour I provide my service, I'm making $13. This works for some people.

Looking Into Value-Based Pricing

My position or argument today is that if you haven't, I hope you can or look at or consider a value-based pricing model. I don't have rose-colored glasses on. I realized that this just doesn't work for a lot of businesses. You can't just value something or price something based on value. However, there are circumstances and the businesses that do justify it, I really believe that it should be considered. I also caution you to think outside of the box a little bit.

For example:

The first car that rolls-off where it's sold costs way more than $40,000. You're paying way less than the first value of that car as a rolls-off. However, for the 5 millionth car that you bought, you're paying $40,000 but its cost went significantly down. In a little form or fashion, you're paying for the value-based pricing of that vehicle.

If you're a service-based business, I challenge you to look at what you deliver and how you deliver it. If you're really in tune or in touch with what you provide to the customer, see if there is a way that you can base your services on value.

So if you're a house painter (something that's commoditized) or someone that does roofing, it's hard to do value-based pricing. The person simply gets a roof in the house. However, if you're a disaster recovery service, the value of what you provide to them in the event of a disaster is far more than just if you were there cleaning carpets. There are opportunities for many different types of businesses to be value-based.

I look at VALUE in two separate categories:

You're leaving a pain.
Let's use disaster recovery service as an example. So the house floods or the basement has isolated fire, that's a negative thing that happens and you come in to fix it. I don't like to have those types of business models where I'm making money when things go bad in someone's life. It's not my style. There's nothing wrong with it but it's just not something I can deal with. So this type is the "victim," if you will.

People get tremendous gain from what you provide them.
You see this a lot in the consulting industry or in the architectural realm or even in the artists. You pay a ton of money to have a speaker, performer, or an artist, or an elite coach. They deliver the same message but the value they provide is much higher or perceived higher. Therefore, they demand and get a much higher premium for their time or services. So I challenge you to look at your business in that way.

Another way to think about this is not to take this big, giant leap from charging, say, $20 an hour to $10,000 for you to do your thing. But what if you created a premium product or service that was only marketed to very select people who are the top of the end and was value-based? It wouldn't hurt your business but you may catch someone that's great.

For example:

You're a personal trainer and you have standard personal training rates. You teach people fitness and exercise and you have your standard rate card. What if you had a value-based one that is really, scare-the-crap-out-of-you expensive?

Bottom line: This pushes you to be okay with a higher price but also, you're providing value to them.

Think about what is it worth to this person to lose 40 pounds and be in the best shape of their life? What in their head would make them think that this is the best spend of $7,000 in their entire life?

If you asked people that can afford it and probably people that couldn't,

“What's it worth to you to lose 40 pounds and be in the best shape of your life? Would you pay $7,000 right now to trade a body and physique that are 40 pounds less and you're in the best shape in your life?”

People would say, "Hell yeah, I would!" So I challenge you to have that same type of mentality with your businesses.

Is there something that you can do that would have the same effect both for your customer and for you to challenge how you deliver your service, how you think about your service, and the value you associate it with your service?

To me, one of the biggest traps is exchanging time for money because at some point in life, you're going to realize your time is so much valuable than whatever money you're exchanging and the value model works much better.

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Guest Name:
Coralie Sawruk

Guest Intro:
My guest is across the pond and although she's French, she lives in London right now. Her name is Coralie Sawruk. Coralie helps ambiguous organizations regenerate their team dynamics. She works with those who believe that having the right people performing as a single cohesive unit is the ultimate competitive advantage for growth, innovation, and customer service. As I've said, she is French. She lives in London and she's super sweet and really nice.

Topics We Discuss:
The elements of a critical-sized business
Assessing a business: Current status, structure, revenue streams, and people alignment
Dealing with silos: Recognizing the biggest threat and finding the weakest links in the chain
Coming into an organization: Building relationships as key to building trust
Balancing new and existing projects: Recognizing time as a commodity and impact assessment
Finding the best investment for your project: People, capital, or equity
Hiring for greatness: Starts with trust and focusing on the behavior
New role vs. revisiting team structure
Getting the existing team involved in the selection process as a powerful catalyst for motivation
Disturbing the collective alchemy as more time-consuming to resolve than growing people
Interview tips: Asking real-life questions and looking for long term potential
One of the biggest mistakes in hiring people: Treating it as speed-dating
Monitoring operations: Setting goals, reviews, and numbers
Understanding the value of analytics: Trends, impact, course correction, and predictive action
Setting non-negotiable blocks in your schedule to preserve mental space and clarity

Books, People, & Resources:
www.CoralieSawruk.com
Dropbox
Evernote
Sococo - Virtual coworking space

Book recommendations:
The Entrepreneur’s Solution by Mel Abraham

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Show Summary:
Today's show is about circumstances for success. It's not that hard to be that good. A number of times, you'll deal with clients or colleagues or even friends wherein they ask what I do or why I've found success in the things I've done. And the reality is...

In playing football, you learned real quick that there are a lot of little things, if you do them right, you'll get yourself lined up. You'll be in a great position. And you're already set up for success. You don't have to be this stellar, stud athlete of which I am definitely not. But you're set up for success. You've created a circumstance for you to be successful.

This is no different than it is in the business world - for the business you own, the people you lead, in entrepreneurship - any of these things, it's all the same. If you're an employee just trying to get a promotion or a raise or bigger accomplishments professionally, this works as well.

So what are these circumstances for success?

Being on time
If you're on time all the time and you're a little early, it shows your desire to be successful. It shows your desire to be committed to the organization. And it also sets the tone for everyone around you whether you see it or not. I know it's new wave to be late or just sort of strolling when you want but I don't care how new age this organization is. If people inside of the organization see people strolling in, five, ten, or twenty minutes after when they're supposed to just rolling in whenever they want. That is not for me. There are circumstances where I like to have people come in, it's not a stickler for time. It's just a matter of being on time, ready to go, and moving. My personal style, as many of you know, is I have to be earlier or on time. I wasn't the best athlete so I didn't want punishment for being late. And being on time was an easy way to stay off the radar.

Being honest and doing what you say and saying what you do
I know this sounds simple but you'd be surprised if you really listen to your employees or really listen to your coworkers or really listen to your partners and vendors. You'll find that a lot of people say they'll do this or that and then they never do it, where they never respond back. They're just blowing smoke or just talking to make themselves look bigger.

The people that say what they do and provide that value back to whomever it is inside of an organization, create some circumstances for success. You become reliable and dependent and people could count on you. And it's not hard. It doesn't have to be like, "I'm going to launch the next space shuttle at your organization." It's really small, obtainable task that would add value to the organization that you commit to that you provide and deliver. And it's not blowing smoke and not doing the work.

Making eye contact
I can't tell you how many people I meet with face-to-face won't look me in the eye when they're talking. In my belief, it shows a lack of confidence in the things that they're discussing. Whereas if you look someone straight in the eye and you tell them, "I do know this." or "I don't know this." and you pair this with that honesty part, it is very powerful.

Your customers love to look someone in the eye and feel confident that they're working with someone that they can trust, that they can be a partner with for long term or even for short term. It does something emotionally with them and it does for all of us. You're just confident and you feel it and they can sense your honesty and your candor. So eye contact is a big deal.

Building relationships
Building relationships is the core equity you have in your business. And that goes with anyone, people that work with you, people that work for you, or you want to work with you - your customers, vendors, contractors, employees, peers, peers' wives. Building relationships is so critical to an organization. But to me, it's the only thing that really matters. And when you build good relationships, all these other things behind you fall into place.

If you're building a good relationship, if you have an eye contact in your conversation, you're saying what you do and doing what you say, and all those things happen in alignment so that you can build a great business. But more importantly, it's because that's what you want to do. You want to serve and be a value to people and you do that through building relationships. There are businesses obviously that are one and done. They come into your place and buy your widget. And likely, they won't come back and buy from you again. I still don't think you should skimp on the relationships. The relationships are key to me.

Circumstances for success are these easy things. These are all easily attainable. Everybody could do this but if you look around the people that you work with, the people that work for you, and the people that you're surrounded by, do a quick inventory. Are people doing these things? Are they doing them well? I would put money on it that they're not. They're falling down in one or two of these areas. So to be above everyone else, you literally have to just do these things.

It's been a big part of my success and I didn't really realize it until I sat down and looked at what I'm doing. As I look back through my work history, I do those things and for me they just became circumstances for my success. It wasn't that I was trying to do these things so I could get a raise. It's just these are the things I thought a good employee or a good business owner did at that time.

Books, People, & Resources:
eye9design - A boutique web design and WordPress agency that just celebrated 10 years in business (an eternity in the web design space). They built hundreds of websites for businesses of all sizes. Finding a web design company is hard. There are lots of options, lots of good ones but lots of bad ones. Let the team at eye9design take care of you. If you need a great website for a great price, visit www.focus53.com/eye9. Mention this ad and get 10%.

Download the 15 Most Popular Tools Business Owners Should Be Using

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Guest Name:
Lauren Gaggioli - The College Checklist Podcast and The Unsexy Side Podcast

Guest Intro:
Lauren Gaggioli is someone I spent some time with at Tropical Think Tank back in March. She's a serial entrepreneur. She is a mega podcaster between the ones she's already doing and the one she's going to run. She is a homebrewer and loves beers as well (one of the coolest girls on earth!). She has a mission to raise $300,000 for her progressive MS research. So if drinking beer and doing podcasting aren't enough, she wants to support her foundation for TeamBobbyV.org. We're a big fan of that.

Topics We Discuss:
Projects she’s currently working on: Higher Scores Test Prep, an online SAT and ACT prep company, The College Checklist Podcast, The Unsexy Side Podcast (and The Wayfaring Homebrewers soon!)
Selling for the money versus genuinely helping people
Putting out quality content through the lens of the people
Keeping an analog mirror of your online to-do list
Investing in a high quality website and the power of following up
Lauren's insights into bootstrapping: Keep it conservative and get cash flow positive first!
Figuring out how to have two different presences (Higher Scores and College Checklist side of things versus the entrepreneurship side of things)
Delegating specific tasks to people who are good at them
Balancing new projects versus existing ones: A cycle of absorbing information, creation mode, and refinement
Stepping away from business by taking breaks to let it be and let it fly

Books, People, & Resources:
www.laurengaggioli.com
Catch Lauren Gaggioli on Facebook
Higher Scores Test Prep
The College Checklist Podcast
The Unsexy Side Podcast
Calendly
Trello

Book recommendations:
The Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo

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Show Summary:
Today's show is about how much to share before you charge. The real answer here is it depends, of course, but for me this falls into two different buckets.

One is a business where if you do something one time and that's the entire value of what you do, obviously, doing it for free may not make sense (with a caveat).

However, for your service provider, if you're a business coach, a consultant, a technology advisor - any of these things where ongoing service is part of your business model, I'd argue that you probably can't give away too much for free.

There are limits that you want to put in place but they're really paying you not necessarily for the knowledge. Most people know what to do, they just don't know how to do it or they don't know how to do it themselves. And they look at you as the information you give them for free as your résumé.

The Getting Naked Model

So I follow more of the "getting naked" model for all of the things I do, this podcast for example, over the people I work with. I give everything I have when I'm up in front of them and I don't really think I'm going to hold that back if they become a paying customer. For me, it's about long-term relationships, about long-term business, about long-term plans with that customer. However, if you have an information product, you don't want to give away the entire product or else you just won't make any money.

For the people that want to defend it like, "I gave them too much and they went off and did it themselves." Well, guess what? Those people aren't the people you'd want to work with anyways, right? If they harvested information from you from an hour conversation, went off, and did it themselves, they could have gotten that information from somewhere else or they could have found it on Google or YouTube or would have found another vendor to provide it to them. So I don't get hung up in that. I don't think that skews my judgment on how I want to help people.

My focus is to find the people that I want to work with in these conversations and by giving my all, that becomes true and real to me. However, during that conversation, if I feel that they're harvesting, I don't want to work with them anyway. So it's sort of a win-win. It doesn't matter and it helps you provide great value, great service, and maybe they don't use you but maybe they'd recommend you because of the great work that you had done and the great information you provided.

My belief is...

Provide as much value as you can. Obviously, I wouldn't schedule 9 straight one-hour or two-hour coaching/consulting service calls with someone for free. There's got to be some sort of limit and you know what that is for your business. But by and large, giving 100% of yourself to your prospective client or customer is the right thing to do.

Download the 15 Most Popular Tools Business Owners Should Be Using

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Guest Name:
Lee Cockerell - Creating Magic

Guest Intro:
Lee Cockerell is the retired Executive Vice President of Disney World Operations. Before joining Disney in 1990, Lee held executive positions with Hilton Hotels for 8 years and Marriott Hotels for 17 years.

Topics We Discuss:
An overview of the size and magnitude of operations at Disney: A city in itself
Lee being the "mayor" at Disney
Hiring for greatness: Stamina, attitude, discipline
Hiring leaders: Leadership, strategic thinking, management skills, good relationships with people
Balancing new projects and operations: Time management, hiring the right people, training, culture
Lee's three-pronged foundational approach: Right people, right training, great culture
Focusing on the "people" side over the technical stuff
Observing performance: Managers spending 80% of their time with the employees
The power of clarity
Common struggles of businesses: Bureaucracy, guest-friendly and employee-friendly rules and regulations, policies, procedures, and operating guidelines
Three things to consider when making decisions: Customers, employees, profit
Key metrics: Guest satisfaction scores, analyzing finances, watching labor everyday
Learning and gaining wisdom through travel and experience

Books, People, & Resources:
Visit www.LeeCockerell.com

Lee Cockerell’s books:
Creating Magic: 10 Common Leadership Strategies from a Life at Disney
The Customer Rules: The 39 Essential Rules for Delivering Sensational Service
Time Management Magic: How to Get More Done Everyday and Move from Surviving to Thriving
Career Magic: How to Stay on Track to Achieve a Stellar Career and Survive and Thrive the Ups and Downs
Check out Lee's podcast, Creating Disney Magic to get snippets of advice on how to behave yourself, how to do a better job, and how to be a better

Lee Cockerell’s Leadership Thoughts
Creating Magic - Leadership & Coaching on the Go! iPhone app

Book recommendations:
Peter Drucker books
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Zero to One by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel

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Show Summary:
Today's show is a concept I call acceptable level of failure and specifically how every company has it in nearly everything they do. This is often an area where the culture of the company is challenged or your employees or people's expectations aren't met and there's a lot of contention in this area. I've seen this both as a leader, as an employee, and as a coach or contractor. I've seen it from multiple angles.

There's this acceptable level of failure that employees need to understand or be communicated to as well as bosses and managers that need to be aware of and how to communicate it. Coaches and consultants need to be able to sit in the middle of that and be able to appreciate and understand both sides of it.

What is acceptable level of failure?

Here are some working examples:

Scenario 1:
Tech support: A voice prompt that tells you the next available operator can help you in say, 53 minutes. That 53 minutes is their acceptable level of failure. They don't have people to answer every single phone call on the first ring. This falls down to your expectations as a customer not being able to meet their acceptable level of failure.

Scenario 2:
You work at a company and your work is never done. You go on a vacation and you come back feeling punished for leaving. Your organization has an acceptable level of failure that you accept as part of your business.

It's not reasonable to expect that there's always 1-3 extra people with nothing to do for the times you're in the office to cover when you're gone.

The real ownership of this is that the business owner, the manager, and a leader has to do the best possible communication to enlighten their employees or customers on expectations.

If you're boss says okay with you being behind and catching up when you come back then that's okay. But when there's a disconnect between what you think your boss should be expecting of you and what your boss expects of you because of this acceptable level of failure, that's when problems happen and relationships erode and people just start hating their job.

Communication is key.

When you're faced with a challenge or hear someone talking about something, see if that's associated with an acceptable level of failure that's defined clearly (which I doubt) by your company or philosophically or that's just the way it's set up and handled. Make sure you address it. It doesn't mean you fix it but address their concerns. Make them aware and have them understand.

Non-communication is what erodes relationships, cultures, and employees.

This is a case where you do your best. You keep a great attitude and keep your effort. Make sure your boss is aware or your customers. Hopefully, they communicate with you and understand why there is some level of failure accepted in your organization. Every organization has it. They have to or else they would not make any money and you wouldn't have a job. It's their job to explain that as leaders so you don't have communication and employee issues.

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Guest Name:
Michael Knouse - The Startup Sessions

Guest Intro:
Michael Knouse is a business performance coach for visionary entrepreneurs and the creator of The Startup Sessions podcast. I was introduced to Michael by way of his podcast a couple of months ago and him and I hit it off. I thought it would be great and a total shame if we weren't able to share some of his words of wisdom with you.

After 14 years in the corporate and startup world, he made the decision to shift gears and focus on what he loves he most, coaching entrepreneurs to be unapologetically performing at a high level. Michael empowers business owners to execute on their ideas, implement effective strategies for growth, and have the most profitable year of their business. Michael lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Jill and he loves being outdoors.

Topics We Discuss:
Transitioning from corporate to coaching
Designing your business around the life you want to live: A 12-week vacation built into his life
Coaching clients over a longer period of time
Integrating adventure and play into his deep immersion days of coaching clients
Leveraging systems and processes: Mindset, Focus, Strategy
Coaching as an individualized thing but having a flexible framework
How to make progress: Slowing down to speed up
The power of delegation and outsourcing to be able to focus
Asking questions to gain insights that drive towards the vision you want to create
New, shiny objects versus existing projects: Parking the idea to fit into a future plan
The power of having a coach: Calling stuff out on you and looking at things in a completely different way
Hiring for greatness: Values alignment and trial period
Tracking system: Knowing your numbers and how they got there
Creating a range versus a specific number: Having a good, better and best number

Books, People, & Resources:
Budget Nerd
YNAB
The Startup Sessions

Book recommendations:
The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks

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Show Summary:
Today's show is a dedication to one of the most critical elements behind my success personally and professionally. Aside from my friends and family, football and sports in general have really been the biggest positive influence in my life. It's a big part of how I grew up and of who I am. A lot of the things I've learned from sports, football specifically, are things I carry over every single day which I think are important to bring up.

I always know how much I loved playing sports, being in the locker room, competing, and challenging myself. As a kid and even now I'd love to play sports and watch sports. And everyday, I use the skills that I acquired through sports in business and in my life. For a long time, I didn't know, understand, or maybe appreciate other people that didn't play sports in their life.

So this show is about getting back to my roots to where the number 53 in Focus 53 came from to some of the true skills we need in business to be successful for which people are lacking in so many of them.

Short memory
You've been burned, made a mistake, and move on quick. You can't be thinking about the last play or 15 plays ago. You don't have time to be distracted otherwise it affects you going forward. This is the same in business. Just allow yourself to let go of mistakes.

How to lose
You learn how to be a gracious loser and how much you need to grow to get better. Losing is super powerful. If you're not willing to lose, you're not going to win in the long run as well as learn in the long run. Learn how to lose and how to learn from losing.

How to spot leaders
In the huddle, you can spot a leader as well as when the chips are down at practice and you have to run and push yourself. There are leaders in the huddle and the business situation that you spot, that you can identify with and want to follow.

How to be a leader
This is not only limited to leading others but also leading yourself. You have to take control of yourself to be successful. Being a leader is leading by example.

Controlling your emotions
It means not getting too high and not getting too low. This has been an enormous asset for me in the corporate world or in owning a business. Getting fired up, saying things you shouldn't, and taking actions you shouldn't only hurt you in the long run. Controlling my emotions has allowed me to get through a lot of situations. It's also a skill that a lot of people don't demonstrate.

Setting, working for, and achieving goals
There is something so powerful in working your ass off to get to a goal. And there are a lot of people who have never really set goals in their life or never had a vision for themselves or wanted to accomplish anything. Set a goal. Go after it and take a tremendous amount of pride in your effort getting there. You enjoy the process of getting up, giving your best, and working as hard as possible to achieve this goal.

When I'm going off course or not feeling I'm doing my best or what I'm capable of, I always attribute it back to what are my goals, what am I focusing on, and what am I trying to get out of this?

Life isn't always fair.
You can play the best football game of your life and your team loses. Shit happens. Life isn't fair. Acknowledge the fact that you can only put in the best effort you can possibly do and learn from that. Be aware of this and you shouldn't let it control your emotions or let it take you away from your mental cycles as your run your business.

Having people in your life that demand the best from you - they make you the best
All high performance athletes have coaches. That's how they get the very, very best out of themselves. The same is true in the business world. To get the best out of you, you need people in your life that will tell you how it is, demand the best of you, and show you the blind spots.

Hard work
Success requires hard work. This is not working 80-hour work weeks but hard, focused, dedicated, committed work to what you're doing in your craft.

Knowing who you are
Know your strengths and weaknesses. Have honest, self reflection. Do not lie to yourself and be candid about the things you're good at. There are zones of genius that if you're really self-aware, you can find. And if you can find your strengths, you can make them better.

The true measure of how good you are in your strengths and weaknesses come from how you play the game, how you practice, and how you come out when the chips are on the line.

Imagine a camera on you for 75% of your day and then the next day, you watch and see what you did on camera the day before. It is oftentimes humiliating but immensely humbling.

Discipline
Do the hard stuff day in and day out, even when you don't feel your best or don't "feel" like it. You have to put in the effort and that effort is driven by your discipline.

Responsible for yourself
Take ownership. Be 100% in control of what you do, how you do, what you don't do, and how your life is turning out. The decisions you make day in and day out dictate where you're at today. You don't see this a lot in the business world. Most of the time, where you're at is because of the decisions you made in the past.

Are you taking care of your work and making sure your boss is taken care of? Are you being a good person to work with and around? Are you taking care of your customers and putting in the effort to stay on top of your game? Are you being responsible for yourself?

Managing time
Part of this is being punctual and doing the little things to make sure your time is managed well. The same concepts apply in business. there is absolutely no reason to be late. Early is 15 minutes early. On time is 5-10 minutes early. If you showed up late, you get punished and this has been ingrained in my head. Being late is being disrespectful because you're not appreciating and taking care of their time. Everyone's time is valuable. It's time that they're away from the business or from their family.

Focusing on what you can control
I can control two things - attitude and effort. This is something I have to repeat to myself and we all do to a certain extent. If you're laser-focused on these two things, they will drive you to places you never thought possible.

In the business parallel, what your competition is doing does not matter. You can't control it but work on your attitude and effort to fix it going forward. People worry about things outside of their control that are rare to happen and even those that are probable to happen. Who cares? Acknowledge them and focus on your attitude and effort.

That's it. Thank you so much for your support and for making this an awesome podcast. It's been a blast. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me and appreciate your support and feedback. This puts a wrap on my favorite number and show - show 53. Here's to another great 53 together. I appreciate you!

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Guest Name:
Phil EuBank - Eastern Hills Community Church

Guest Intro:
Phil is the Lead Pastor at Eastern Hills Community Church. Phil grew up in the mid west and after spending the last eight years in Seattle, Phil and his family have relocated to Aurora, Colorado where I live. He joined the leadership team at Eastern Hills.

Phil served in a lot of different areas of ministry and his professional background in technology gives him a passion to reach people through cutting edge technology. He builds systems that maximize the impact of his personal investment and that also positive impacts the team he's a part of.

Phil's ultimate desire is that hope can be delivered to people that think they're beyond the reach of anyone who cares enough to help. Phil is a deep, deep man of faith and that's clearly evident in the fact that he's a big Cleveland Browns fan.

Topics We Discuss:
What Phil does as Lead Pastor: Vision and Preaching
Lead pastor versus senior pastor
Phil's systems and processes in place: Keeping ahead, setting big goals, focus, and intentionality
Evolving the process constantly: Finding granular and specific feedback from people you trust
Putting in the work: Spending 8 hours focused on message preparation
The two lanes of development: content and communication
Hiring for greatness: Flipping from volunteer to paid staff
The 3 C's: Character, competency, chemistry
Hiring too quick and firing too slow
The impact of mentorship and investing in young leaders
Creative education environments to inform the experience component of success
Monitoring operations: Annual metrics, quarterly reviews, monthly board meetings, weekly dashboard data

Books, People, & Resources:
Visit the Eastern Hills Community Church website on www.ehills.org
Know more about Phil EuBank on www.phileubank.com and connect with him on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook
Basecamp
Evernote
Slack
Google Calendar

Cool app recommendations:
Ceaseless app - a cool tool that gives you an opportunity to pray for people
First 5 app

Book recommendations:
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Teams That Thrive by Ryan T. Hartwig and Warren Bird
The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lenceoni

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Show Summary:
Today's show is about serving versus searching for approval and the distinction between the two. On the surface, they may appear to be the same or even overlap. But the core, they're fundamentally different.

Let's start with searching for approval.

When you're in business, the basis of what you're doing is to provide a viable service and get compensated for it. No rocket science there. But this is where the distinction happens.

For many of you (something I've been guilty of before), your service or the value you provide is tied directly to getting your customer's approval. You want them to like you or you want them to say yes. This may seem fundamentally sound but it offers challenges.

By seeking the customer's approval first, you may be missing what they really need.

You may be aware of what they really need as well. But you're searching for what they want to hear just to win their business. It's my experience that this type of business may be successful but they may also be struggling. This could be one of the reasons they may not flourish.

If you're really honest with yourself, pleasing the customer is good but it's not great. And if you're intentionally not giving them what they really need, there is a little bit of disservice here - a disservice that may cost you in the long run.

If I'm working with someone and my goal is to please them, I'm only really doing that so that I get their business. If I'm really not serving them then they won't get the results they want. Somebody may later on come by and give them what they really need and lose the relationship.

To me, the worst thing is the feeling that you're holding back, that you're not really giving them what they really need. You're not really solving their problem. You're just saying yes to whatever they think they want or you think they want to say yes to.

In sports, the best coaches don't give the players what they want or what they want to hear to make them better. They give them what they would need to make them better, to make them the absolute best players for the team.

We're talking about a real, true coach that wants to get the best out of a player and make the player the best person or human they can be.

How does this compare to the core of serving?
Serving, to me, is giving everything you have and holding nothing back. Saying what needs to be said to serve them in the most powerful way. This is not always practical for all businesses and certainly not practical to go from a business of meeting needs or pleasing customers to serving. You can't just make that jump because it will be a shock to your business and probably wouldn't be healthy. But there is a progression every business should consider.

When does serving in the truest form make sense?
Your decision to truly serve has to be tightly coupled with accepting the fear of losing a customer. If I was more concerned about winning the business than I was to serving, that I was in a bad spot. And if I was being really honest with myself, the true motivation was the fear of losing the customer and the money, and not really serving them.

Serving the customers means not seeking approval or positioning how or what to say to them only to get them the yes. Serving them means being bold, saying what needs to be said and holding nothing back. Obviously, this is all done with kindness, sincerity, and respect. Be kind and serve them 100% transparency and still be very professional about it.

Serving the customer with the values you offer will create the best results and the best relationships.

When working with people, I've switched from being afraid to losing clients or losing money to going bold, deep, and partnering in their success. I'll tell them I'm not looking to be friends and I'm not looking to get their approval, that I'm certainly not there to belittle them or berate them but I'm also not looking to say things that I hoped they would take and turn into something that they just liked me more. That's not my goal.

When I'm with a client, I'm there to say what I might even be afraid to say or at least uncomfortable to say. That's how I get to serve them the most and how they get the most power out of our conversation. My best football coaches said a lot of things that were uncomfortable for me to hear but they served me.

And when you respect someone and they serve you like this, they help change how you see the world, how you see your business, and how you see yourself.

This is where the biggest value of service can come from - by serving them.

How do you work with your customers? How is your business built? Are you pleasing your customers or are you really, really serving them?

Download the 15 Most Popular Tools Business Owners Should Be Using

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Guest Name:
Jody Maberry - The Jody Maberry Show

Guest Intro:
Today I'm chatting with Jody Maberry. Jody is a former park ranger turned podcaster. Jody and I met maybe a couple months back now at a "networking event" here in Denver.

It was pretty clear right off the bat that Jody and I were destined to meet since we're both not really the "networking" type like shaking hands and kissing babies. So I really enjoyed my time with Jody. We sat, shooting the breeze for 75 or 80% of the networking event that we didn't network at and we're totally fine with it. So that was awesome.

That's why I wanted to have Jody on here and hopefully before the end of the show, we'll get into why people throughout the western U.S. are still talking about his running with the squirrel. We'll get some of that information shared.

Topics We Discuss:
Jody’s transition from being a park ranger to an entrepreneur
How being a park ranger applies to business
Re-embracing being a park ranger over getting an MBA
Having your own story that others don’t have
Jody’s three-legged management system
Putting systems in place within Dropbox
Hiring for greatness: Cold calling still works (if done the right way)
Breaking projects apart and tracking them
Maturity in turning down customers and projects
The balance between the volume of projects and understanding your limit
Measuring the success of your podcast: Feedback and Questions (Are download numbers important?)
Soft ways to measure what you're doing: Reaping what you sow in 9 months

Books, People, & Resources:
Connect with Jody Maberry on www.jodymaberry.com and check out The Jody Maberry Show
Jody’s “squirrel story”
Disney World Magic with Lee Cockerell
Wunderlust
Dropbox
Google Calendar
Trello
Audio Technica ATR 2100 Microphone
Toggl.com

Book recommendations:
Time Management Magic by Lee Cockerell
Creating Magic by Lee Cockerell

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Show Summary:
The show today is about high performers, more specifically a couple of the painful secrets high performers have.

You may be a high performer and may already be aware of some of these pain points. You may be ignoring these pain points. Or you may just be in the dark as to what these are and how they affect you. Or you may not just understand or know it all and this will all be new to you. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy this.

What is a High Performer?

A high performer to me is somebody that excels at their chosen area, they've made a commitment somewhere along the path to pursue this and found a lot of success.

Life for a higher performer is the same as ours. They have struggles and stresses and things in their life they wish were different. But in many ways, it's different. There are books written about these isolated "things" high performers deal with. Although this will be a brief show, know that this is only scratching the surface.

Painful Secrets of High Performers:

Feeling lazy or less productive
This may come to a shock to some of you but many high performers deep down inside feel lazy or they aren't producing enough. In the outside, they look busy, super polished, and like they're really working hard (many of them are). But on the inside of these people, there's a voice in their head judging them and saying to them that they're lazy and not doing enough.

Many of them have found success by doing what they do at the level they do it and it comes so easy to them that it doesn't even feel like they're working at it anymore. They are so successful that they feel they're not putting in an effort at all. They are being blindfolded, messing with them emotionally. Deep down inside, they're feeling they're not giving anywhere close to the effort they could or would like to.

Being often surrounded by YES people
This means being surrounded by people that either work for them, people that are yes men or women or family members that are yes men or women. This is a dangerous place. This is someone who freaks out about saying no for the first time or what appears to be the first time for something so remedial or basic that their behavior doesn't match what is being asked for.

This highly successful person has done great things throughout their life and for so long that the people around them think they can't do anything wrong or only interested in pleasing them so they're yes men or yes women. This is what plays out for celebrities and athletes all the time. They're dominant and get all they want their whole life. They rarely hear the word no and have people kissing their ass all the time.

This is what happens when successful business men or women, business owner, high performing athletes, and even high-performing employees - they're deprived of candor and honesty. And that causes issues. They're less likely to open up with people around them and the people around them are wanting to say what they need to hear most, sometimes before it's too late. They've gone so far as being a yes person and someone can't serve them in time to save them from the destructive road they're on.

I do have this second one, not because of anything I've done wrong but because I've been fortunate and blessed and that people around me including my family and friends support me.

This is why having a business coach and peers in the industry is really important for me so that I don't get too far down this Yes factor.

They may not be right. But it changes my mind and my perspective about the things I'm doing. A lot of times, what I need to hear is no and that I need to check myself not just business-wise but on a personal level as well.

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Guest Name:
Bill Roth - Basics Team

Guest Intro:
I have the distinct honor and privilege to chat with someone I have a lot of respect for. Bill Roth is a Denver-native, a University of Missouri graduate, and he has a ton of professional experience. He's the General Manager at Colorado Athletic Clubs, the Vice-President/General Manager of the USFL Football Team, the Denver Gold (which I used to love when I was a little kid), the President of G.A. Wright Marketing, COO/CAO of Mount Saint Vincent Home, and is currently the Founder of the Basics Team where he helps guys and girls run their business better and be better professionals.

Topics We Discuss:
Bill's career timeline: What Bill learned from Ron Blanding of the Colorado Athletic Clubs
Creating the Basics Team, a coaching company
The Basics Team scholarship helping young adults out of foster care or released from the military
Studying biographies of hall-of-fame business people
The Basics Team coaching platform as a suite of 40 systems and processes creating career development, professional growth, personal development, etc.
Their 3 core programs: attitude, goal-setting, discipline
3 qualities Hall of Fame business people share: discipline, high energy, healthy ego
How Bill's goal setting and tracking system works
Balancing new projects versus existing operations
Hiring for greatness: integrity, high energy, and good intellect
The power of cash flows and getting a really good book keeper
Paycheck versus culture: How you can keep A-players in your company
The number one reason startups don't make it to 5 years

Books, People, & Resources:
Basics Team

Book recommendations:
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman

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Show Summary:
The show today is about what I really suck at. I'm sorry Mom. (My mom is not the biggest fan of the word "sucks.")

The reason I want to do the show is I've been guilty of wanting to fix all the things in my business or with me that I was really bad at. I work with clients all the time that aren't being all they can because they're so worried about focusing on or fixing things that they're not good at.

A little backstory: When I started Focus53, I actually sent out a survey to 15-20 people that were either friends, former co-workers, former employees, former bosses, former peers from an executive level and I wanted them to tell me what my 8's and 9's were. I didn't want to hear about my 1's and 2' s and 3's. There's plenty of those. But I want to hear what my 8's and 9's were because I want to make those 9's and 10's. I know that's what people pay for, that's my zone of genius. That's what I wanted them to give me feedback as to what they thought it was.

Today, I'm paying homage to the things I suck at, the things I didn't ask me to give me feedback on, the things I know that I'm crappy at, but are really important for me to be honest with and for other people to hear.

My bigger hope is you'll take away that it's okay to admit there are things that you are horrible at. Let them go. Delegate them. Or just eliminate them from your life.

It's important to know that there are things to me that are non-negotiable that you should still be great at or striving to be great at all times.For me, these are my 4 F's:

Family
Faith
Fitness
Friends

If you're a shitty father, you better get your ass working on that. If you're a shitty husband, you better get your ass working on that. If you're not taking care of your health, you better get on that. You get the point. Those are non-negotiables.

So if you're crappy or sub par at those, those should never drop off your list. You should always be striving. And even if you think you're good then you should be working to get better. I know that fits me. I can get better in all those categories and I try to hopefully every single day.

So here are the things I really suck at:

Structured presentations
I'm not a bullet guy, sentence-click-sentence. I really hate structured presentations. It's just not my style. My brain isn't organized well enough to handle those types of things like the fine details of a project execution. That's why I have a project manager or admin staff or people to help me with that because I either suck at it or don't put in effort to be good at it.

Traditional sales
I am an absolute dogshit at this. I used to work at Cutco, a knife company. I did not learn traditional sales and I wasn't good at it and I didn't enjoy it and I still don't.

Being motivated by work, customers, projects, etc. that are uninspiring, that are not a good fit for me or that I don't understand the goal
This makes me unmotivated, unfocused, and non-committal so I'm bad at this environment.

Providing step-by-step guidance for new employees and teams
This is something I've had to work on quite a bit as I've grown as a leader. I acknowledge the fact that you need to have solid training. I'm the person who doesn't necessarily need training. I can be given a direction and go but I understand that's not the case for a lot of people. So having a structure in place to train people not only keeps things on the right path, and it ensures that there is better quality for your organization, it's also important for being able to get new people up to speed without causing you a lot of stress or overhead. That's something I acknowledge and I do better at now but I'm not good at putting it together and haven't been.

Food choices
I can hammer a jug of Nutella. If it's in my house at 10 pm and for any reason I see it in the pantry or see a Nutella commercial or even get it in my head that there is some in the house, I'm all over it and I'll knock it down.

Moderation
Moderation is not my strength and this goes along with food choices. If I have one chip, I nail the whole bag. The same thing goes for work, jobs, things I love. If I get involved with it, I have the tendency to go all in. It's not necessarily a bad trait. It's a good trait in many regards but from the Nutella standpoint, that's a really bad one. Even for business stuff, if I go all in forsaking all others, it could damage my four F's above and that's not good for me.

Graphic design
Anything you see that comes out of my organization is not something I did. Guaranteed, I'm really bad at it.

Cutting little kids' fingernails
I know this is more of an off beaten path but I cut my daughter's fingernails when she was a couple months old (she's 10 now) and I cut her skin. I actually don't know if I'm bad at it but I refuse to do it as it brings back bad memories and I felt bad hurting her.

Reading comprehension and spelling
I wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer but I was able to cheat my way around reading comprehension and spelling throughout high school and college. Now I'm paying the price for it. I can't read worth a squat. Thank God for Audible. It takes me a couple times for the the things I read to get through. If it's not something interesting, I just get lost and start daydreaming.

Empathy for those who make multiple bad decisions.
I'm working on this through faith and I'm getting better at it. But I have a hard time sympathizing for those that are not willing to put in the effort needed to get out of whatever circumstances they are and all they really need is some effort. And I'm working on it through faith and I'm being judgmental but that's something that I really suck at. Not a very Christian-like thing and I'm working on that.

I don't suck at this but it's something I do and I'm focusing on...

Lying to myself
I lie to myself all the time. We all do. I lie to myself that I'm not good enough at things. I lie to myself that I'm not giving my best. I lie to myself that I don't have an element I need to be successful when I know deep down that I'm 100% in control of myself, my success, my future, and my life.

I may not be in control of the day-to-day things and I'm on a path by the Big Man upstairs but I am in control of the decisions I make and the journey I'm on and I lie to myself about that. I have lied and do lie to myself and I work on it everyday.

The purpose here is not to belittle myself. I know I suck at things but this is for me to express that for some of them, I'm okay with while for some others, I need help or tools with. I work on some of them but for others, I could care less about.

The moral of this story:
The things that are unimportant to you and turning those into 6's and 7's are not the best use of time most likely. Know what you suck at. Embrace the suck. And work on being great and what matters most.

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Guest Name:
Tom Schwab - Interview Valet

Guest Intro:
My guest today is Tom Schwab. Tom knows how to build an online business. Marketing at its very heart is starting a conversation with someone who could be an ideal customer. Tom helps small business owners, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs get featured in leading podcasts, their prospects are already listening to. Then he shows them how to turn those listeners into customers.

Topics We Discuss:
Tom's career timeline: Engineer turned business owner and marketer
The power of an instruction manual in running a successful business
Leveraging podcast guest interviews to get in front of your audience
How to get on podcast interviews: Success is in the system
Numbers versus focus: The fish in the barrel analogy
Two key things when getting on a podcast to reach your target market
How to reach out to a podcast host: It boils down to giving value!
Your goal is to make the podcast host look like a genius for having you as a guest.
Lead conversion: How to convert podcast listeners to being visitors to your website
Having all the steps in the process to make the system work: The car and cake analogies
New projects versus operations: How to deal with the "shiny object" syndrome
Hiring for greatness: Character as the litmus test (plus talent and passion)
Building businesses: Transactions versus relationships
Monitoring success: The dashboard analogy

Books, People, & Resources:
For more information and resources, visit www.InterviewValet.com/Focus53
Asana
Connect with Tom on LinkedIn.

Book recommendation:
The Science of Success by Charles Koch
Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

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Show Summary:
In today's show, I'm talking about change request, customer request to changes, feature request - a general concept of you have something you either do or produce (product or service) and you've been asked via different mechanisms to change it, modify it, or incorporate something new. We’re going to talk about the process that I put around that and the mentality you should have when you're getting these types of requests and changes.

This is something near and dear to my heart as a leader inside of mini-organizations. Especially on the software development side, this is a lot of my job managing change request, feature request, and functionality request that came in. So this is something I have a lot of insights on that I hold near and dear to my heart and something I was horrible at managing early on which backfired a lot. The key here is communication.

What is a change request?
It refers to whenever a customer, a co-worker, a vendor that wants to change x in your product or service. X could be as simple as a color change or a big fundamental change in the product you're delivering.

Regardless of the change itself, understand what the change means for you and your organization. What's the cost of doing it? How much is the cost in time, resources, and money?

Very quickly alongside that, you need to know the cost of not doing it. Is this change so significant that if you don't do it, fixing a problem for example, it will have a negative impact on your business? The cost of not doing it oftentimes outweighs the cost of doing it. It's very important you look at both and understand what they are.

Have processes in place to manage these change requests or the things coming in.
Have somebody or something receive a message. As a consumer, if you're using a service or product and there's something fundamentally wrong with it or an improvement you'd like to see, you'd like the ability to be able to suggest that or have someone to address it for you if it's an issue.

Have some recurring time to assess all of these things that have come in and figure out which ones are worthy to be worked on.
This is a deeper dive into the cost of doing it, the cost of not doing it, and the ramifications and their impact to your business and customers, and all those things that go into good business decision making.

Close the loop with the asking party.
This doesn't mean promising something is going to get done. It maybe as simple as,

"Hey Susie, we received your online inquiry about this function of our website. Thank you for the note. We appreciate and value customer feedback. At this time, we're going to review it and it make our list of things to do but there also may not as we continue the build a great product for people to use. But thanks again for letting us know. We know that our customers mean everything to us and to know that you care means the world to us. Thank you."

Something like that is closing the loop with them. That makes them know that you accepted it. You're looking at it and you're considering it. And it may not be done. There is nothing worse than getting a request and the customer has this belief in their head that this might get done and then it festers slowly.

What is the flip side to this?
What happens normally and naturally is dangerous and these are knee-jerk reactions. When there is an issue or a great new thing that came out, there will be a knee-jerk reaction oftentimes from a competitor or someone inside of your organization, or someone you really respect. It could be your boss or a boss in a different division. They send you a thing and then tell you that you need to do it right away. This is a change request so this has to be looked at with the exact same due diligence that you look at anything else. What's the cost of doing it? What's the cost of not doing it? It's very important that you understand that you don't just knee-jerk to it. The same thing is true with customer-driven ones.

Have a process to accept, log, and acknowledge the changes.
By grabbing them by a customer service agent and saying you're going to do it won't cut it. You need to have a way to accept them, log them, and acknowledge them. Logging them is valuable as it enables you to look back at those things you decided not to work on and see some trends that you can take action on. This is powerful stuff.

In individual instances, a new feature or product may not make sense. But over time, with multiple people asking for that same thing, it could be a business opportunity. Have some form of logging mechanisms that you can go back and look at them.

Have a way to evaluate what you work on next.
These could be changes or not. It might be something you can ask your users to help you out with and it might not be. How much time do you spend in operations improving what you have versus new products? I find this mentality and process that people go through to assess very interesting. You get a lot of different perspectives on it but the core is you have to have some way to evaluate whatever comes in on a regular basis.

My last point here is that you must close the loop with whoever requested it. Don't just think about external customers but also, internal customers, employees, peers, etc. You must close the loop and put some sort of definitive snap - you're doing this, you're not doing this, or you've seen it and this will be reviewed later. It will save a lot of problems in the long run.

Close the loop in communication. Do not react to a knee-jerk thing. Just because one user that you have a lot of respect for requested something doesn't make it the right thing to do your business. Don't torture your employees with that. There is nothing more frustrating than to assign something to an employee and the reason for doing it is because some rich or influential person thinks it's a good idea. I guarantee you, you will not get the best work out of your employees when that's the reason for doing something so heed that warning.

Books, People, & Resources:
Eye9design - A boutique web design and WordPress agency that just celebrated 10 years in business (an eternity in the web design space). They built hundreds of websites for businesses of all sizes. Finding a web design company is hard. There are lots of options, lots of good ones but lots of bad ones. Let the team at eye9design take care of you. If you need a great website for a great price, visit www.focus53.com/eye9. Mention this ad and get 10%.

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Guest Name:
Doug Sandler - The Nice Guy

Guest Intro:
Today, I have a real treat for you. My guest is Doug Sandler. Doug has over 30 years of business experience as an entrepreneur and a leader. His book Nice Guys Finish First is ranked number one as an Amazon Best Seller. That's pretty freaking cool.

As a podcaster, Doug has interviewed Arianna Huffington (who is really famous and popular, if you guys don't know, from Huffington Post), Dan Harris from Good Morning America, the White House Chief of Staff, and dozens of other celebrities.

He specializes in teaching others the How To's of building relationships and strengthening connections. So as you could tell, I probably need him for than anybody. I'm glad to have him on here.

Topics We Discuss:
A brief timeline of Doug's career
His best system in place: The Nice Guy 30
The power of returning communication and being genuine with it
Following up is critical
Managing day-to-day efficiency: Writing down all your responsibilities
Developing your schedule based off your priorities
Giving yourself permission to walk away from emails and social media
Major challenges among organizations: Communication and Relationships
Creating relationships focused on problem resolution over money
How to deal with small margin businesses: Be more human.
Hiring for greatness: Empowering employees, trust, personality over resume
Getting data from customers and your frontline employees: Simply ask
How to run good customer surveys: Preparation is key.

Books, People, & Resources:
The Nice Guys on Business Podcast
www.dougsandler.com
Zombie Loyalists by Peter Shankman

Book recommendation:
Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson

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Show Summary:
Today's show is about how much and when to invest in yourself. Let's break this down a little bit. First, the why and the when.

When do you invest in yourself?

Immediately. If not, sooner.

Back in 1998, I was on the help desk answering tech support phone calls for a company called Perot Systems, which is Ross Perot's old company. I had the opportunity to go to a Window's boot camp because this was a big deal back then. It was new cutting edge technology. I was going to be certified at the end of it. It was a two and a half-week intensive where you studied and took test type of thing. So I went there and I was investing in myself and although the company paid for, it's was a significant time investment.

Passing the test and getting certified were valuable but the one of the people I met there became my manager a couple of years later because of the relationship and investment I built and just being a good person. And that same manager became my manager fifteen years after that, the first time I met him again at a second company. Investing in something doesn't always bring good immediate results.

Hopefully, everyone realizes that you are reaping what you sow. The seed you plant now will be the fruit and the food you get later on in life, two or three months from now. In my case, it was 15 years from the time I've met Dave.

Therefore, immediately is when you should start investing in yourself. It doesn't have to be a boot camp but hopefully that illustrates the power of investing in yourself and it certainly has for me.

Why invest in yourself?
To reap rewards you never expected

How much?
Be careful to not be only a consumer of this information and always on the hunt or always consuming it that you're consuming it so much that you'll rot and you'll never take action. You're always wanting to learn more or think you need to learn more to get in the perfect place before you do something, this podcast being a good example. It actually took 6-8 months before I actually took action. I read a lot of blogs and people and tried to model a lot of them. I was consuming too much that I should have taken action sooner.

Be mindful of the dollars. Especially now with all the info products, digital downloads, and webinars, etc., you have to be mindful of how much money you spend. It is easy to get wrapped up and get caught with $5 or $6, $200 or $99 programs that really aren't that valuable information that you could have gotten otherwise or something you just don't need.

Make it a part of your daily practice. Find some free things that you can integrate in everyday to reap rewards later in life or later in your business.

How to integrate this into your daily practice:
Learn why you're on the go. Be aware. You don't have to sit down and read a book to gain knowledge or invest in your own education.

When you're out with your family, be aware of your surroundings.
When you see advertising on billboards, wall, or phone, know what works about it and what doesn't.
When you walk into a retail store, notice how it's laid out, notice the customer service, the cleanliness, how you feel about it.
When you interact with people at a professional place, notice how you feel, what they look like, how they talk to you.
Get the sense of how you can integrate that into your life and business. You can always be learning.

Ways you can invest in yourself:
Listen to podcasts.
There are tons of awesome podcasts out there and gain a lot of value.

YouTube
This is a fantastic resource for any information. Find some legacy ones or just old stuff that doesn't come across well-written. Videos are great especially if you're a visual person like me. They are great for training and investing some time and they're free.

Books
You don't have to read them from cover to cover. Pick out the parts you like. Find books that speak to you. Find books that are in your business. Find books that other people recommend. I love books!

Mastermind Groups
There are free and paid versions of mastermind groups which I've talked about before. With mastermind groups, you get to surround yourself with like-minded people. Just be aware of the things you can't control:

Members
Skill sets
Openness
Just get in there and see if they're a good fit for you.

Accountability Groups
You come and say what you're going to do. You go do it or not. You come back and then the people in the group call you out on it. It's like a subset of a mastermind group. They are good for people who have focus issues so you can hold them accountable. These groups are often free.

Conferences
Watch people. Meet new people. Hear different stories. Oftentimes you can listen to 7 or 8 really good presenters or really good stories in a few hours. They also allow you to go elbow-to-elbow with other people in person than just watching them on YouTube. This can go from really inexpensive to spending thousands and thousands of dollars. They usually have a wide range of experiences and topics. If you don't already, at least check a couple out. Go to some local ones that don't cost that much to get a sense of what they're about.

Coaching
Hire a coach to see your blind spots to tell you what no one else is telling you. Successful people are surrounded by people that support, love them, encourage them, or for the really, really successful people, people that are just yes men. No one challenges them or their thoughts or get deeps with them. Coaches will help you see those blind spots and change your perspective on how you see things. It's literally life changing!

Personally, I went from no endurance training to doing an Ironman. In short, I wanted to go from point zero to point 100 which was finishing the Ironman, which is a massive feat. The same holds true for a business or life in general. You start at a point and you want to go to point 100. There is no way in the world that I would have been able to do that without a coach to help me see my blind spots, to get me through the struggles I had, to encourage me. It was my own accountability knowing that I had someone that I would let down or disappoint if I didn't take care of my business. It was more of me feeling accountable to him that I owed him my best because he gave me his best coaching.

Coaching to me, in any way, shape, or form, is beneficial if you get the right coach. There is no mystery that the greatest athletes in the world, the greatest business professionals in the world, the greatest anyone in the world have coaches to help them see their blind spots, tough spots, and things they normally wouldn't see. Invest in a coach. It's the best thing you'll do with your money this year.

That's all for today. I hope you invest some time. Slow down. Smell the roses. Check out a book. Check out some YouTube. But, don't let that consume you. Take action and focus.

Books, People, & Resources:

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Guest Name:
Jason DiNunno - Digital Authority

Guest Intro:
My guest is Jason DiNunno. Jason is an entrepreneur and a family man. He runs three companies currently and has been in business one way or another since he was 18. He isn't that old so don't let him kid you but it's still longer than a couple of years.

Three years ago, he was running a financial advisory practice through MetLife. His daughter was born with special needs which brought him to the need to pivot and so he needed to be able to change what he was doing and get an online business. He needed some flexibility.

Now he helps other business owners transition online, establish their businesses and authority in their industry, and he does that with content and social media. His company is Digital Authority and you can find it at www.digittalauthority.co.

Topics We Discuss:
Shutting down his financial advisory practice to pivot to the marketing agency
His best processes and systems in place: The SOP's for SOP's
Biggest challenges: Teaching and hiring fast to scale
Hiring for greatness: Trial job, Culture vs. technical
Referral program as the best process for learning
Balancing between new projects and operations: Focus on Digital Authority
Stashing ideas on Evernote and physical notebooks
Speed as a critical element of business
Monitoring operational health: Looking at the numbers and ownership in day-to-day operations
Being in the present
What Digital Authority does on social media
The joy of problem-solving and talking with like-minded entrepreneurs
The biggest mistake he has made: Trying to start the process before he had it figured out

Books, People, & Resources:
Check out their website www.digitalauthority.co
Find Jason on social at Jason DiNunno on Twitter, Snapchat, and Facebook

Tools Jason uses to run his businesses:
Unroll.Me
Slack
Feedly
Evernote
IFTTT
Email filters

Book recommendations:
Work the System by Sam Carpenter
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
The E Myth by Michael Gerber

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Show Summary:
Today's show is about why I'm going against "the experts," why I’m stopping my quest to niche, and why I'm doing less marketing.

For the last three months in the podcast and months prior, I spent a tremendous amount of time on the concept of niching down and you'll hear it said many different ways out in the industry. "The riches are in the niches" or "If you don't niche, you don't know who your audience is" and so on and so forth.

Niching Down Is Not for Me

When I was really doubting in my avatar, I was focusing on my niche and I struggled with it. I've had a really hard time with it mentally for me. I just didn't feel like I was the expert in underwater basket-weaving or anything similar and that's where I wanted to focus. It just didn't feel right.

I felt very strongly that my strength is in the wit of my knowledge and my ability to work across multiple businesses, multiple verticals, and different business units like technology, operations, customer service, people and process, etc.

I've fought hard to fall the commonly stated wisdom of a mile deep in knowledge and an inch-wide versus mile-wide and an inch-deep. I've come to the grips with the reality that for me, I'm a half-mile wide and 2-inch deep. I'm not either one of those and trying to force myself into that has been limiting.

Niching to me has been so limiting that it's hurt a little bit. It's limiting in the following ways:

Who I should work with
How and what I say
What my value is
So I’ve decided not to niche down and it felt awesome.

But let me be clear...

Niching is important. It really is an important thing for marketing. You have to know who you're talking to. I should have known my "why" early on. But I have learned along the process so I want to share this with you.
Dipping My Toes into a Very Noisy Space

I'm not a marketer and more importantly, I'm not wanting to be a marketer. I don't enjoy it that much. So the business coach/the internet entrepreneur space is so crowded. There is such a low bar of entry and it's really noisy with crap and mounds of information sprinkled with some good stuff.

The space has been so noisy over the last three months and being in it, I've been able to see how crowded it really is and been able to observe that the concept of "best coaches and entrepreneurs" are really just marketers. So you see a massive flood of online courses, webinars, workshops, digital products, intensives, digital downloads, etc. They're not all bad. There are some great content out there and a lot of it serves a very specific purpose. But majority is created by marketers with good marketing copy.

Experience versus Marketing Tactics
And when you peel back the layers of whatever you signed up for, you just see great sales copy, great marketing narrative, and some information that won't likely transform you or your business. It's created by somebody that doesn't really have a depth of experience in whatever you're looking for but simply creating something because they think it will sell and they're savvy enough to know how to get to the right "niche" to deliver that. They put their nice sales copy around it and they're able to make some sales.

That's just not for me. I'm not an expert in basket-weaving nor a marketer or my goal is to sell a well-designed marketing product to ten thousand people.

So it's taken a couple of months for me to really get into the space, see it, and understand it. The reality is it hasn't taken that amount of time for me to feel it. Part of my struggle was going against what the "experts" say or common convention and I didn't pick a passion or a niche, create an avatar, a product, and market it towards them. I was a bit of an outlier even then.

This isn't a knock on those types of businesses as some are successful. Some create very good content. Some create content used by people and they become successful at it. This is not a knock on the good ones but it's just sadly so noisy.

Finding A Quick Fix
People look for quick fix when there is no quick fix for a lot of the problems. So these people are sadly trying to create a windfall with a product or two and live a boomer bust lifestyle going from product launch to another when they don't have a depth in knowledge of. There's nothing wrong with it but it just doesn't work for me.

The 5-Minute Journal
So I keep a 5-minute journal that has my goals for the day, what I did, some accomplishments, things I'm happy about, and things I need to work on. I've been documenting my struggles with this for a while since even before I started this podcast.

A few things I documented:
It didn't feel right.
I didn't feel like I was serving my purpose.
The good news…

These feelings are very normal which are the same feelings you get when you're leaning into something that's out on your uncomfortable zone and that is where all growth happens. It's how I felt when I did my first podcast. It was very uncomfortable but that's where growth happens.

So it's normal, natural, and something I needed to do to go through these learning experience if I really needed to niche down, create an avatar, and focus on basket-weaving. I've learned it and set back and realized it's just not for me.

My Endeavors Moving Forward
Podcast
I'm still doing the podcast and interviews. I love to do this. I also love to be interviewed. It improves my communication skills and the audience learns.

Little to no niching
The show is focused on: Business operations, process and people
I will continue to help out companies that are a good fit for me.

Virtual Chief Operating Officer
I help people run their businesses better.

High impact coaching
Directly working with high performers to help them reach massive goals.

I ask really tough questions.
We dream big together.
I get them to view their world in a different way than they saw it before.

Less marketing
Less videos, less blog posts, less social media management, less emails, less caring about subscribers, likes, downloads, open rates, website traffic, etc.

What I'm going to do now is more of what I'm best at and that's connecting with people, learning about them, learning about their business, about their struggles, challenges, goals, shoot for half or most of them, setting their visions and goals, helping them find or solve issues, taking them to the next level.

All of this aligns much better with my why, what I want to do, and how I want to do it. Niching down felt so constraining and it's just been a massive relief not to care about it.

Key Takeaways from this episode:
This is not a "pivot" but a course correction for myself.
My main why or purpose is to help people out. That's my vision and how I'm getting there has changed a little bit.

Self-reflection
Create a space in your day, in your week, in your life that you can sit back and reflect on how things are going and how you felt. Really sit back and look at what you're fundamentally doing and understand what's going on. An important part of that was making sure what I felt and what I was doing fundamentally matched up with my purpose.

Creating raw content
I do love powerful content but trying to get into the fast lane of the marketing chaos is unproductive for me.

Being true to myself
A lot of coaches and digital entrepreneurs are faking it until they make it. They come with their courses and products straight right out of the rear. That's not how I want to run my business and not what I'm trying to build. It's a game I don't want to win and a game I don't want to play.

I'm just going back old school.

The same principles that have allowed me to be successful in the corporate world and with the web design company are the same principles I'm going for here.

I'm just going to be Ryan and I'm going to be delivering my services, my value, and the things I hold near and dear to my heart and the things I consider myself excellent at.

Books, People, & Resources:
The Prosperous Coach by Rich Litvin and Steve Chandler

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Guest Name:
Flynn McLain - GolfTEC

Guest Intro:
Way back in show 10 if you recall, I had Joe Assell who's the CEO of GolfTEC on the show and we talked about how critical operations were to the success and growth of their business. Well, we're lucky to have one half of the dynamic duo of operations from GolfTEC here today.

Flynn McLain is the Vice President of Franchise Operations at GolfTEC and someone I consider a good friend. We shared more than a few beers together. He knows, loves, and breathes operations. I'm grateful he's on the show with us today.

Topics We Discuss:
What GolfTEC does for golf enthusiasts
Growing the company originally from 7 locations to 200 locations, operating in 5 countries with 650 coaches
Handling the franchise operations in US, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong
Their best systems and process in place: The Operations Flywheel
The five components of Operations Flywheel
Biggest challenge in operations: Shortening the learning curve
Handling new projects: Execution guides to protect the time of their coaches
Hiring for greatness: Passion for golf instruction
Filling in the recruiting pipeline through the PGA/PGM schools and PGA professionals
Operation health checkups: Lessons per active client & quality of lesson experience
Managers working with coaches
Having a one-stop shop access to all data from all 200 locations
Getting excited for GolfTEC's international growth

Books, People, & Resources:
www.golftec.com
Connect with Flynn through sending him an email at fmclain@golftec.com.
Check out GolfTEC on Facebook.
Dropbox

Book recommendations:
The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson

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Show Summary:
Today's show is about how lonely it is or it can be being an entrepreneur, being a solopreneur, or being a business owner and some of the ways to cope. I don't know if lonely is the right word but I'm going to continue to use it in these circumstances.

Here are a number of reasons this feeling happens:
No one at your same level to have deep chats and interaction with
You're the boss and you may have employees that you work with but you don't have others at your same level. If you're a good boss, you don't talk about your stresses and anxieties with your employees. You're the leader so the stress, responsibilities, and all these deep emotions and the challenges you have are very different than what your employees are dealing with.

The person you can interact with doesn't know what you do or understand it
Your family or your partner in life may know what you do but you can't have deep conversations about it. Your closest friends may not have business experience or be in your space and really don't understand or know it. Talking business with them can be different.

How to deal with loneliness being an entrepreneur or a solopreneur:
Go to a remote workplace.
Go to a coffee shop, a park, a library, etc. and just have a different four walls that you're working in. You will find this invigorating. I love remote workplaces. I love Starbucks for their internet speed and that's important. Other coffee shops have crappy internet that you could feel like you're struggling more than you're working. So make sure it has good quality high speed internet and let it rip.

Schedule everything.
This includes timely breaks, workouts, dropping the kids off to school or activities, taking a break with your wife for lunch, etc. This is something I do fairly well. I literally schedule out everything.

Join mastermind groups.
You're actually in with like-minded people who are battling the same battle you are and that you can share deeply some of your challenges, issues, and successes with. Mastermind groups are fantastic. If you're not in one or have never tried one, I highly recommend them.

The benefits of mastermind groups:
They are eye-opening as you get to see things through other people's eyes.
You get feedback.
You get to see how other businesses are run.
You get the interaction you're looking for.

Get yourself a coach.
If you don't have a coach and never had one, get a coach to help you not feel so lonely and have someone to talk to about your struggles and help you through it.

Join online communities.
I recommend Youpreneur for personal branding companies, coaches, solopreneurs, and consultants. It's by Chris Ducker and I'm a big fan of him. He's a great business person and I like the community. There are thousands of communities out there so be sure to find one that fits your personality style, your business model, and the style that you like.

Caution: An online community is great but then you're still wrapped up online with no real talking.

So here's what I did...

From Youpreneur, we spun off a really small mastermind group that I do with three other people wherein we do video-based meetup, which is another good tactic.

Do video-based meetups.
If you're cooped up in your basement or office and it's all you see, having a video-based interaction would be great.

Join accountability groups.
I've never had one but these are people that hold you accountable for the things you say you're going to do. All the accountability groups I've ever had have come as a by-product of a quality online community or quality coach or mastermind group. But there are separate accountability groups out there.

Group work environment
Here you'll be in the same room with other people. The disadvantage though is the possibility of being distracted. But when everyone's on their headphones (with a little chitchat) and everyone's focused, just being around other people and the feeling of another human in the same room as you is therapeutic.

The harsh reality is... it is lonely and you're going to go through things, challenges, questions, issues, and problems that you're not going to know how to address. You're not going to see people everyday. Or if you're a leader in an organization, you just can't share with other people. So find people you can share things with that can help you through it and schedule your time to be away from that environment you're in all the time.

Books, People, & Resources:
Youpreneur

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Guest Name:
Kevin Basham - Plastic Expert

Guest Intro:
My guest is all the way from London although he's a traveling beast. He's all over the world. Kevin Basham is an entrepreneur who co-founded Plastic Expert, a seven-figure recycling business from the ground up. He managed to do this with basically no money, very little experience, and making a lot of mistakes along the way. That's what we all do, is make mistakes and that's why he's on the show is because he's candid about that and the way he goes. He's also a business coach and he helps companies with things like marketing, sales, and digital presence. Kevin really shines at helping traditional businesses operate in a rapidly changing economy in digital world.

Kevin and I met at Tropical Think Tank in the Philippines and I was really attracted to his knowledge and what he knows because the offline business and the digital business oftentimes don't merge and he's an expert in both and has powered through both sides of it. I'm excited to have him on the show.

Topics We Discuss:
An overview of the Plastic Expert - a buy and sell business model
The best systems and processes they have in place: Highrise as their lifesaver
How they're using online technology being a traditional offline business
The importance of splitting skill sets with your partners
Understanding the fundamentals and outsourcing the skills
Hiring for greatness: Matching the company's offerings versus employees' expectations
Having a good mixture of ABC players
What things motivate people other than money
Different challenges they're facing: CRM integration with their accounting software and overall communication between partners, customers, and supplies
Handling new and existing projects in seasons
Monitoring the operational health of their business: Input vs. output
A brief portfolio of their clients around the globe
The importance of risk management

Books, People, & Resources:
Connect with Kevin on www.kevinbasham.com or tweet him @kevinbasham

Highrise
Skype
Basecamp
Clear Books
Slack
Teamup Calendar

Book recommendations:
Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek
Chris Ducker's Virtual Freedom

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Show Summary:
Today, I'm talking about handling price objections. I do not consider myself anything close to a salesperson. Not that there's something bad about most salespeople. I have done sales and I just do sales as everyone is selling at some point in time. I've sold multiple million dollars of services in the last five years and handling price objections is part of it.

I have a system or process for it, which isn't necessarily the minute they bring up the price as an objection but it comes before that.

It's not about the price.

This is the most important thing you have to understand. To your customers, it's about the value or the value of the problem you're solving for them or the value of the opportunity that you're helping them with.

Price is important for a lot of people but it's relative to the value that you're providing. Keep this in mind. It's not just for the customer but this should be your mindset as well.

Here are some pieces of the process you can apply:
Give them a glimpse into the pricing upfront.
If your sales cycle takes a while or it's someone you work a lot with, make sure they understand this at a high level, if not explicitly, your pricing structure upfront. Don't waste your time to wait until the end of the conversation before you say your price and they'd just be shocked. Getting them down the funnel and springing the price on them may just frustrate them and get them upset. What was once a potential customer now becomes someone who doesn't like you and will go tell people about that. Buyer beware for yourself and beware to them that the pricing upfront or some version of it is important.

Be aware of your competition's pricing.
You don't need to bring this up but you need to be aware of where you sit in the market. If you have a premium product that you set above the price for your competitors then that's fine. But you have to be aware of that and be able to represent that in your value as well as when you're discussing them. Make that acknowledgement that you're a premium product.

Please, PLEASE do not make it a race to the bottom for pricing.
In many cases, people start out at a price point and then race to the bottom with discounts sales, and negotiations in pricing because they either feel sorry or they badly need to make money.

Why you should not race to the bottom for pricing:
- It totally erodes your business either from doing business in the future with that person.
- It erodes your sales process and the value perceived with your organization.
- If you do it once, I suspect you'll do it again and that person will tell other people.
- You cut out your profits and it causes more problems than just holding firm on your price.

Keep discounts at a very moderate rate and rarely.
Discounts make sense from a marketing standpoint. But if you discount, do it at a very moderate rate and at rare or defined circumstances (like a repeat customer). Discounting is a very slippery slope. Don't build your business on them. It sends out a signal that you're really just fluffing about your value or that you're ripping your customer off the whole time.

Price vs. budget
You have to build value upfront so that you're really just talking about value. If it's a dollar amount, wiggle on it with some type of small discount at best but then it really turns into a budget issue.

Two really big distinctions - your price and their budget. Your price is what it is. If it doesn't match their budget or their perceived value then let them figure that out.

So hold true to your price. Prove your value and allow the customer to make the decision based on their budgets. Discounting is bad. It's not ideal.

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Guest Name:
Tucker Max - Book in a Box

Guest Intro:
I'm honored to be joined by Tucker Max, the Co-Founder and CEO of Book in a Box, a company that's turned book writing and publishing into a service which is really cool. His three #1 New York Times bestsellers have sold over $3 million copies worldwide and he is only the third writer after Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis to every have three books on the New York Times Nonfiction Best Sellers List at once. So this is a big deal because a lot of people say they're best sellers but they're not New York Times Best Sellers.

Tucker has received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1998 and his J.D. from Duke Law School in 2001. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Veronica, and son., Bishop.

Topics We Discuss:
How Book in a Box was conceived two years ago
Shortening the time writing a book from years to hours with their process
Writing and structuring a book as two different tasks
The challenge of creating the process step-by-step
The difference between creating and running a process
Creating a process: Conceptualizing what you want to accomplish as first step
Figuring out the constraint and working backwards from that
What is the process tool for?
Recruiting freelancers and employees through funnels
Pairing clients with the right people in their team
Hiring people who can really do the job
Authors judging the company by their relationship with their publishers
Sales is like dating: Both sides agree to work with each other rather than one trying to sell the other
Monitoring the health of their business

Books, People, & Resources:
Trello
Slack
www.bookinabox.com

Book recommendations:
Cameron Herold's Double Double

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Show Summary:
Today's show comes from a question I received from Ask Ryan on my website. The question is what type of systems and processes I have in place around Focus53 and other things in my life. So that is a great question and I don't know if it was meant to be cynical but I think someone might have been checking to see if I'm eating my own dog food. And I do.

I have a lot of things going on and at some point in time I'd like to do a show on how I get it all done and part of it is the things I use in these systems or processes podcast. But there are a lot of other things that I do that are unique in how I'm able to get things done.

Current processes I have in place:
Podcast production
Write script for solo shows plus a little ad lib with bullets
Hit record button and chap out any major mistakes
Save it and send it off to someone who does the audio editing and another one who does the show notes.
Asana - includes a very detailed checklist consisting of every single step of creating a podcast
I have a virtual assistant (VA) who takes care of everything there
Screen capturing software - recording every piece and part of it (coding actual mp3, adding image, blog post, posting on iTunes, publishing, etc.)

Social media
IFTTT (If This Then That) - It's a software that you can tell it to "if this event happens then do this." I have this running against 50 different websites curating content from all sorts of topics all over the web.
Dump content into a Google spreadsheet
Scan them, delete, and approve articles then my VA takes it and slaps it into Buffer, our social media publishing tool choice
Schedule posts a week at a time

General content creation
Map layout of what each week looks like
Google Docs
Video creation, newsletter, blog post
Alana takes care of this (except for video which I'm doing myself)

Web design
Sales process tool: KarmaCRM - great CRM system if you're looking for nice, easy, customizable one
Process for new customer sign ups
Project management tool: Basecamp
Project management process
Project management checklist
Website go live checklist
Check all links
Test all forums
Confirm if site works responsively (mobile, etc.)

My daily method of operation:
Waking up early and stretching
Reading (motivational or spiritually)
Coffee
5-minute journal (specific goals, gratitude, what would make today great, etc)
Reviewing my calendars
Trello - to help me with organizing
I take my 3-5 tasks and put them on the 3x5 card
Kicking my day off
What I don't do: Facebook and TV
A handful of 2-10 minute tasks I use to fill in any gaps

Combination of tools I use to run my business:
Basecamp for project management
Asana for team communication and task ownership
Dropbox for file sharing
Skype for overseas communication, video conferencing, and podcasting when recording guests
Trello
Evernote
Google Drive and Google Docs for collaboration

And that is how I run Focus53, the web design company, my life, a little bit of everything there. I hope that was helpful in giving you some real world examples of some of the processes and systems I have in place. If you have questions or comments about processes or things you could systematize, this is really where I dive in with businesses and customers.

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Guest Name:
JV Crum III - Conscious Millionaire

Guest Intro:
Mr. JV Crum III. JV helps entrepreneurs grow six and seven-figure conscious businesses that combine making high profits with making a positive impact. And that's really why I like him and I'm attracted to JV and what he does. He's also in Denver here which is another really cool thing.

He's a speaker, coach, Huffington Post columnist, and bestselling author of Conscious Millionaire: Grow Your Business by Making a Difference. He hosts the top ranking Conscious Millionaire Podcast and is the founder of ConsciousMillionaire.com, which is a global coaching and wealth product business. He holds an MBA, JD, Master's in Psychology, and has built and sold successful companies.

Topics We Discuss:
The three things he does with people that his coaching revolves around:
Bigger, laser-focused vision
Strategies
Systems thinking
Running everything virtually based on systems
The three primary systems you need: Product, Marketing and Sales, Distribution
Having manual pieces in your systems
Dealing with really getting clarity as the business owner
The power of delegation: Getting rid of things holding you back
Balancing between new and existing projects: Conscious Focused Action
Less is always more
Making money on three avenues: Coaching, product, and media
The biggest mistake many entrepreneurs are doing: Doing too many things
Focus, focus, focus
The kinds of people you want to work with
How you can become a millionaire:
Hard work, smart work, commitment
Giving yourself time frames, having a clear vision, a plan, and systems in place

Books, People, & Resources:
JV's book, Conscious Millionaire: Grow Your Business by Making a Difference
ConsciousMillionaire.com
Conscious Millionaire Podcast

JV is giving away a free deal to Focus53 listeners. He is giving away the Conscious Millionaire Journal with over 100 coaching exercises worth $126 and he's giving it to you free. Just go to consciousmillionaire.com/yourbook.

Tools JV uses:
Leadpages
ClickFunnels

Book recommendations:
Everything Counts by Gary Ryan Blair

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Show Summary:
I'm sticking with the website and technology theme for today's show. It's about what website platform or technology should I use for my site? More specifically, I'll discuss the process by which I assess and I hope you will asses and figure out which platforms are right for you.

Assuming you have a service-based business and an existing website, the first thing as you go through this is to ask yourself this very first question:

Where are you at with your website now?

Specifically, here are the questions you need to answer:
Where does your brand sit?
What is the functionality of your site? Does it talk to your customer?
How does that compare to your competition?
How much traffic are you getting? Where is that traffic coming from?
You need to be acutely aware of what's happening on your website and what your customers see your website as relative to your competition.

What's the reason for your change?
If you have a website already, is it not serving a purpose?
Is it old technology that you can't update? Is it brand new?
Do you want a new design?
Are you looking to track a new audience?
Maybe it's isn't even one that you're aware of and this is pretty common.

What are the specific goals of your website?
I can't express to you how important this is. You'd be shocked to understand or see the people who just want something because they want something and there needs to be a very specific goal to it. And the reason is that goal dictates and drives the decisions downstream.

What do you want people to do on your website?
How do you want to serve them?
Do you just want to give them information? Functionality or only content in certain types of forums?
Does your value proposition get reflected in your website? Do they see the value of your company? Do they see the value of the services you provide to them?

From your goals, identify the core functionality of your site.

What pieces in how you want your customers to interact with you will affect what type of website platform you use?

Two main routes you can take:
Existing CMS or Content Management System - ex. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, SharePoint
Custom Application - custom-written

How do I decide if I want to use an existing platform versus custom?

Let’s use WordPress as an example here.

Using an existing modular plug-in
Do you need something so custom that there already is an existing modular plug-in that you can use and modify to meet your business?
A modular plug-in is a piece of code applied to a WordPress site that serves a very specific function (ex. eCommerce, membership, contact us form page, chat)
Is there not already something out there that you can use and leverage that meets your needs?
Customizing off-the-shelf products
Take a modular plug-in and then customize it to fit your need. But this can be risky when they update the core plug-in and it can affect the functionality of what you have.
Develop everything custom
Start from scratch and go create and write your own.
In my opinion, you only go custom if you can afford these things such as the development staff forever. It sounds scary but that's how it is. If you have custom core components of your website, you will need someone to take care of that for you forever. It means you have to have resources available to you that can handle it. You have to make sure you can afford staff forever.

Will the functionality of your site give you a defined competitive advantage?
This is the linchpin of whether you do something custom whether it's the entire website or a custom module inside of a WordPress site.

Figure out if this is something that's really custom for you that you would get immense value out of.

Understand that doing custom takes longer time to develop. Basically, there may be issues that could come along such as staff, support, bugs, expertise, training, administration, and other stuff that need to be accounted for. Hence, you need to have people to support it forever. You have to understand this is a commitment.

Using WordPress
WordPress is a really powerful tool. A significant number of websites in the world are run on WordPress.

The advantages of using WordPress:
It's user-friendly and has a massive following.
Resources are fairly easy to come by.
There's lots of pre-made modules and plug-ins.
They're always improving from the standpoints of security posture, functionality, and usability.
Things to be careful with on WordPress:

Security
You can easily get out of control with the functionality which could make you slow down, makes it harder to manage, and be more vulnerable to security risks.
Note: Always remember to backup your website. Back up everything.

Things to consider when deciding what plug-ins to use:
Security
Backup
Spam prevention
Core functionality
Page designer
*Remember you really have to go back to assessing your goals and needs for functionality.

Is what you need so critical and important or is there a plugin that can already handle it? If there is not, then you may have to use a custom modular plug-in. Again, I caution customizing things because they will break once they're updated.

Key Takeaways:
All this said, my core belief is that unless there's something very core to your business that distinguishes you over your competition significantly or is actually part of your service, use pre-made modules and execute on them. This may require small process changes in your organization but they're much less expensive than the cost of customizing code and managing it.

Make sure what you put in is absolutely needed. You have to make sure it fits your need and your business and you're willing to accept the risk of doing so.

A WordPress framework with a number of modules can accomplish basically anything. Customizing 10% of your website is way better than customizing the entire thing or building it from scratch.

Make sure you follow some form of process to really assess what you need. Define your goal. Define what the functionality needs to be and that will help you decide all of these other decisions beneath and make sure they're in alignment with your overall goal.

Books, People, & Resources:
WordPress
Joomla
Drupal
SharePoint
F53-010: Dominating The Market - Growing a Global Golf Company – GolfTEC - Joe Assell

Eye9design.com - A boutique web design and WordPress agency that just celebrated 10 years in business (an eternity in the web design space). They built hundreds of websites for businesses of all sizes. Finding a web design company is hard. There are lots of options, lots of good ones but lots of bad ones. Let the team at eye9design take care of you. If you need a great website for a great price, visit www.focus53.com/eye9. Mention this ad and get 10%.

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Guest Name:
Mark Asquith - Excellence Expected

Guest Intro:
What a great show I have for you today. My guest is from the other side of the pond across the Atlantic. Mark Asquith is a serial entrepreneur. He has built globally successful design, marketing, and SaaS (Software as a Service) businesses and this started since he quit his job in 2005. He's a passionate podcaster, a perpetual learner, a helpful bloke. Mark has an adoring wife, a giant dog, and an embarrassing beard.

Topics We Discuss:
About Excellence Expected in its new format and a curriculum put together for business people and entrepreneurs
Why Mark stopped his podcast and made it a catalyst for the relaunch
Building a system around what you can do to be the most effective on any given day and any given business you need to work on.
Planning out just using a pen and paper
Biggest systems and process challenges: Getting everyone on the same page
The power of having systems and processes in place: Saving 30% of the stress he was under
Looking at the business from a macro level: Learning how to properly delegate
Hiring for greatness: Hire for aspiration
Tools for monitoring stats: Trello and Slack
The "starter" mentality
Just being yourself and not trying to please everyone

Books, People, & Resources:
Excellence Expected

Tools to run his business:
Slack
Trello
Process Street
Evernote

Other tools mentioned:
Zapier
Apple Pencil

Book recommendations:
The One Thing by Gary Keller

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Show Summary:
The show is about something I hear nearly all business owners face or ask me about and it's how often should I upgrade or update my website. It's not about how often to update your website but why do you want to update your website? I think that's missed a lot.

So I have some guiding principles that I use in scenarios where it makes sense for a website redesign or reprogramming.

The framework you're on is not supporting updates or changes.
You have to be able to publish content to your website. Add images, blog posts, videos, podcast, or other content elements that you have. If you're unable to do that easily without having to pay a programmer to do it for you, that is a big red flag to get a new website. It just has to be something that's part of your business and part of your content production.
New branding
If you have a new logo or a new vision for your organization or if you have new colors, you want your website to match all of that. From a look, feel, and design standpoint, you want those things to align really closely.
It's not mobile friendly.
A lot of SEO companies say this is the carrot for a lot of organizations. There are a lot of people using mobile devices to access websites or there are some business where their users are not mobile. SEO companies also say you'll drop out of Google rankings if you don't have a mobile-friendly website. That is only true for mobile searches. Google has made clear that if your site is not mobile-friendly today, your normal desktop searches won't be affected.
Your site is so out of date and your competition is just crushing you.
If you're a competition in the industry and it's serving its purpose, you want to have a better reason than just the fresh looks.
Adding a major component to your business
Some business owners have added a new element to either their website or their business model. Common things are membership or an eCommerce function to their website or new major service they're offering. They're teaching a new service out there of they're selling a new,, major product line.
Security issues
If your site is getting hacked frequently, this is something important. Websites get compromised all over the world. Websites do get hacked and compromised all over the world. You have to make sure you and your family are.
A new, fresh look.
A new, fresh look tied to an ownership change or new leadership in marketing department so they have a clear vision or new direction for the organization.

When does it NOT make sense to redo your website?

If you don't have a clear vision or goal.
If you aren't addressing a very specific problem or not trying to capitalize on a very specific opportunity, changing your website is not a good idea.
If you're not committed to it
It takes a lot of work to be the client as a new website or design is being built. There are different things you need to consider like design approvals, content gathering, new images, SEO considerations. All these things need to be approved and acknowledged or worked on by the organization.

Systems and processes in place:
1. Have a clear plan and vision for your website and executing on the website.

Make sure whoever you're working with on a website has a process to extract or detail the main reasons or goal for your website.

Books, People, & Resources:

Download the 15 Most Popular Tools Business Owners Should Be Using

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Guest Name:
Carli Franks - Merage Foundation

Guest Intro:
Carli is the Senior Marketing Strategist for the Merage Foundation, where she oversees all strategic marketing, planning, as well as press relations, communications, the websites, social media efforts. She does everything. Her goal is to help elevate the great work at the organization and its partners.

Carli has more than 10 years of experience in marketing communications in both the association and nonprofit sectors and she's also currently an executive board member of her college alumni board at North Central College where she got her Bachelor's degree in Organizational Communications and Organizational Leadership in 2005.

Carli and I have been working together for a number of years now and she's near and dear to my heart as a customer and as a friend. She's fantastic in what she does and I'm excited to have her on this show.

Topics We Discuss:
An overview of the Merage Foundation as a consortium of nonprofit entities, their respective focus areas, and some projects they have funded
The value of setting expectations for each project and setting priorities
Using the basics to track projects: Excel spreadsheets
Systematizing their processes: Prioritization, weekly check-ins
Content generation as a major challenge for them in showing their industry leadership
The impact of telling your stories and great work to the community
Balancing new and current projects - Finding a way to always make it happen!
A look into the Hot Pockets story as the basis of the work they do today - An entrepreneurial approach
Hiring for greatness: Looking for the long-term fit and setting expectations
Monitoring strategies: Monthly dashboards, monthly core team meetings, quarterly meetings
The importance of collaboration and building relationships versus hardcore negotiations
Books, People, & Resources:

Merage Foundation - Read more about David and Laura and the organizations they support

Andre & Katherine Merage Foundation

Sabrina Merage Foundation

Jonathan Merage Foundation

Chef America

Projects:
Equitas
Black Cube

Tools they use:
Slack
Meltwater

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Today's show is about Focus53 and what I do. Anytime I've been asked this in the past about what I do, I've been very vague and by design I tell them I'm just a geek. I've done this for a couple reasons. I basically had a side hustle my entire life and when you're in a professional environment and you say outwardly that you have a side hustle, it could be career-limiting and so you have to be careful with it. So I've been super vague to a point that I'm really crappy at really saying what I do. So this is part of myself expressing here on the podcast about what I do. This podcast is my way to give back and learn. It's the big lead generator and it's what I use to talk to people.

Three categories of what I'm currently focusing on:
A web design company
Consulting/coaching
Focus53

Podcast as a learning tool
I use this podcast to learn, having spoken with a lot of really cool guests from whom I've learned a ton. There is no better way to literally get in the ears of your prospect than being on someone's podcast that has a great audience.

I've been on people that have thousands of downloads in each show. This means thousands of people listening to what I have to say about myself or my business or the things I can provide. There is no better use of your time than having a podcast and it's a really good way to reach out to cool audiences and share your message.

My purpose of the podcast is just to be immensely valuable, to provide a ton of valuable information.

Consulting/Coaching
This is what I have been doing professionally for the last 20 years. This is where I help business owners with about anything under the sun. These business owners have a great product or service and they are awesome at it but they need help everywhere else. They don't know how to market, run operations, do customer service, or they are doing them but struggling.

People I'm looking for are those who are:
Committed
Driven
Motivated to do great work and run a great business
Self-aware and know they need another set of eyes

What I do with my clients:
Strategy
Business diagnostics (Process breakdowns and system breakdowns)
Making introductions between businesses

How I work with my clients:
Weekly coaching calls
Working on the vision, values, what they want to do and stand for
Focusing on goals (short-term, mid-range, long-term) and milestones
Going through wins and losses
Course correction and addressing issues

As a Virtual COO:
A deeper dive of my coaching/consulting and a more active role in their organization
A win-win situation
I've become very diligent about who I work with in this capacity because I am hooking my trailer to them. I want them to be successful and I could spend 40 hours to help them.

Attributes of these clients I'm working with as a virtual CEO:
Great product/service
Really good at their craft that they're sought after
They know they need help
Having the willingness to change and put in the work
Commitment to do the right things to grow the business long term
Happy and pleasant to be around
With the highest standards and moral integrity
Well-respected and well-liked
Good, genuine, down to earth, above the table

Focus53's road map in the future:
Helping people to get listen to the podcast or be part of the coaching/consulting area or be part of the COO group
Speaking opportunities
Hosting seminars and workshops
Webinars

I'm still very much working on my story, what I do, and how I communicate it. It's a work in progress. It's not perfect. But as I wrestled with this and figuring out what's my true purpose and what's my true calling, am I going to be in the corporate environment for all of my life and make all the sacrifices required, am I just going to sit and be stagnant, I knew that doing nothing wasn't the answer. I wasn't able to crack the code on taking what I'd think I'm really good at and turning that into a product or service. But I've taken the steps to do this podcast, the coaching and consulting, and the virtual COO. There is nothing better for me in the business side of things than helping someone, seeing them succeed, and be an invested partner in their success.

Download the 15 Most Popular Tools Business Owners Should Be Using

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Carla and Emma Papas - The Merrymaker Sisters

Guest Intro:
This is my first duo interview and I can't tell you how excited how I am to have the Merrymaker Sisters, Carla and Emma, on the show. They're actually the first two people that I've met on the Tropical Think Tank conference.

They're passionate entrepreneurs, health and fitness advocates, and health coaches. They have a massive reach of over 200,000 people every month with real food recipes, positive mindset advice, and ways to help you find and follow your bliss. That sounds like something I need.

Throughout their merrymaking journey, they published a healthy cookbook, Make It Merry: A Healthy Cookbook, created a merrymaking club, an online community membership that makes healthy living, podcast hosts of the #MERRYBIZ, where they inspire thousands to live their best life, and they've partnered with some really cool international brands like Reebok, Microsoft, Fitness First, and they inspire like-minded people to get together. They've been featured across international and national media outlets such as Foxtel, mindbodygreen, The Age, and Burgen Australia.

Topics We Discuss:
Growing an online community by creating great content posting great recipes
Creating The Merrymaker Club, online membership including monthly webinars, meal plans, and training modules
How they're able to drive massive traffic into their website: Consistency and Content creation
Creating a money-making machine on top of your content machine
Some elements of their success: Authenticity, being different, listening to your audience
Implementing their best systems and processes in place
Giving your podcast guest something to share across their social media profiles
Outsourcing their admin work so they become their own growth engine
Focusing your efforts on projects that best excite and energize you
Trusting your intuition as a critical part of running your business
Creating an "ideas" board to keep note of new ideas
The value of getting a business coach and surrounding yourself with like-minded people
Three must-do things to make a successful partnership:
Open communication
Listening
Respect - Not taking things personally

Books, People, & Resources:
The Merrymaker Sisters
Make It Merry: A Healthy Cookbook
#MERRYBIZ podcast
The Merrymaker Club
Trello
Google Docs
Jing - for recording their processes
Canva
Drip - email automation
Latergram - Instagram scheduling
Edgar - for Facebook and Twitter
OptimizePress - landing page creation
XTheme - creating amazing website
Slack - for communication
CamCard - for checkout pages

Book recommendations:
The Heart of Love by Dr. John Demartini
The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
Content Machine by Dan Norris
Wayne Dyer books

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Today's theme is solving the right problems, which is really what I do frankly in all the businesses that I work with where I walk my clients through:

Solving the right problems
Why it's not the right problem
How to solve the right problem
Why this is a common challenge business owners or even employees have

A Case Study:

I'm in a mastermind group and one of the guys brought up the new branding they've done on their new website, spending tons of money, having a new sales process and the whole work. It's been a couple of months but they're not getting any traction and thinks the salespeople aren't doing a good job.

So I asked some questions to dig into this:

What problem are you trying to solve?
What is the actual problem?
How do you think it's breaking down?
What specific problems need to be addressed?
Is the new website not getting enough people into the top of the funnel or as many as it did before thus it affects the things at the bottom?
Are the people coming to the new website not getting the information they need?

When you release a new website or have a new brand or new sales, there are lots of places that this could be faulty and how you know where the problem is could be fascinating.

Ultimately, we discovered that the problem was not getting enough qualified sales leads coming in because they didn't have enough business development time set aside to go out and acquire these things.

Key takeaways:

Understand the reasons behind the problem you're solving.
Have the right metrics, tools, and software in place to be able to monitor, track, and have to be aware of them.

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Guest Intro:
Austin Netzley is the founder of Epic Book Launch where he set out to solve the problem that authors like to write but they don't like to market themselves. The fact is, many authors don't make a lot of money or get their books out to as many people they'd like and they certainly have dreams of doing that. The average self-published book sells less than 250 copies per year. (I found that stat amazing.) And over half of the self-published authors make under $500, which is again another travesty based on the amount of time they spend. Austin is on a mission to fix that problem and started the Epic Book Launch training and Done-For-You service. Austin is an author and a podcast host.

Topics We Discuss:
Transitioning from being an engineer to becoming an author
Publishing a book and getting over 36,000 downloads in the first 36 hours
Deciding to open a book marketing business in early 2016
Creating a marketing plan with a 45-day launch schedule
Selecting the people they work with and the challenges of scaling the business
Building the 561-step, 6-phase process for a book launch
Standardizing their process to solve client management issues
The big shift from a solopreneur to CEO
The importance of having a trial period in hiring people
Three key people you need to hire on your team
Measuring the success of business: Numbers, numbers, numbers
Networking and outsourcing
The biggest failure that you can do in your business

Books, People, & Resources:
Epic Book Launch website
The ONE Thing by Gary Keller
Built to Sell by John Warrillow
The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack
Work the System by Sam Carpenter
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
Asana
Slack

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Show Summary:

This is a general, straight-up talk for a business owner that runs his/her service or product-based business.

You have to have a way to review your numbers. You must have somebody doing your bookkeeping and providing your financials. I've seen this so much and it's so disturbing that people don't even have the most basics figured out and they really manage business through their checking account and that is just so scary.

Why is knowing your numbers critical?

To fix issues
To prevent issues before they become out of control
To measure your success and to have goals
Having your head in the sand is not an option. You need to be an expert in your business and in tune with what's going on in your business financially. Let's jump into some of them.

Revenue
Be aware of how much money is coming in your business, otherwise you will never be able to know how much money is going out and how much you really have to spend.

Expenses
Know all of your expenses (rent, labor, utilities, annual expenses). Know when your money needs to come out. Accuracy is super important.

Cost of Goods Sold
What's the cost to you to provide your service or build your product?

Inventory Levels
As an investor, every time you walk into a store room and there's inventory, it should be making you excited because it's turning over and making money or it should make you sick because it's money you spent but just sitting there. Make sure you manage your inventory levels so you remain profitable and be able to move your product.

Profit Margin
You don't know what your profit is if you don't know your expenses. Know how to reverse out your profit margin.

Cash Flow
You need to be acutely aware of how much cash is coming into your business and how much is going out that you've committed to. Many companies don't know this so they're giving cash squeezes because they're not able to manage the cash flow process or they don't have cash on hand. Cash is king. You have to plan for higher unforeseen expenses. Plan on a slow-pay or no-pay customer. You have to have cash on hand to account for that.

Other numbers you need to know:

Profit and loss statement
Balance sheet

From a business operation standpoint, here are some things you should consider:

Cost of Acquisition
How much does it cost you to acquire a new customer? How much advertising or money are you paying to acquire one new subscriber?

Customer Retention
If you're acquiring a customer, how long are they staying with you? If your retention is not able to outrun the cost of acquisition, then you're losing money by getting a new customer. This is a bad business model.

Marketing and Sales Funnel Efficiency
There are a number of spots in the sales funnel that affect your business.

Raw leads (a reflection of your marketing and business development outreach)
Qualifying a lead (a reflection on your marketing message and lead nurturing and business development prospecting)
Prospecting
Proposals
Customers
Here's a metric you can follow:

If you know your leads are down 60%, there is a chance your sales is going to be down 60% soon if you don't do something to fix that.

Breakpoints
Know what your break point or capacity is (physical space, operating hours, number of staff, etc.). If your team is not set up properly or your processes are not in place, you lose quality. Hence, your capacity can dictate the quality of your service delivery for the rest of your products.

Other KPI's:

Renewed customers
Total number of clients contacted

Here are some metrics I monitor in my business:

Webinar attendees
Podcast downloads (Libsyn)
Leads
Subscribers to all social channels
Email subscribers
YouTube followers
Website stats

The financial side of a business can intimidate so many people but you have to understand what's going on in your business. If you're not aware of your numbers, it will come back to haunt you.

Key Takeaways:

Make sure to keep accurate books. Hire a bookkeeper. Get an accountant.
Review your key numbers weekly, monthly, or yearly or whenever is necessary for that specific metric.
If you need help, do whatever it is to get help.

Books, People, & Resources:

F53-010: Dominating The Market - Growing a Global Golf Company – GolfTEC - Joe Assell

Download the 15 Most Popular Tools Business Owners Should Be Using

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My guest today is Nathan Chan. He is the mastermind behind Foundr Magazine, which he started in 2013 with nothing but a laptop and a few dollars in his pocket. He created it as a digital magazine for young entrepreneurs, by young entrepreneurs, and delivering materials straight from the mouths of the world's greatest entrepreneurs where he's had some great ones.

Foundr quickly went from a business magazine with a few hundred readers to something that's a multi-faceted digital media business, spreading the love of entrepreneurship through its podcast, magazine, and training platform.

Foundr Magazine is now enjoyed by thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurs located all over the world. Nathan started Foundr dedicated to the mission of helping entrepreneurs build and grow successful businesses and that mission still hasn't changed.

On another note, Nathan is a beast on Instagram with over 750,000 followers as of today.

Topics We Discuss:

Breeding a culture and commitment to their community that they do whatever they say
Foundr Magazine being a content powerhouse
Leveraging on outsourcing and timezone
Stand Operating Procedures (SOPs) broken down into 27 steps
Being always 3-4 issues ahead by scheduling interviews ahead of time
The magazine as a repurposed content of the podcast
How one interview can be turned into multiple pieces of content
A walk-through of their podcast production process
Releasing a value-based, epic, in-depth blog post every Tuesday
The key is quality, consistent content at scale
Automating systems
Being intentional about picking the people to work with and how to motivate them

Books, People, & Resources:

Foundr Magazine
Manifesto for Foundr Magazine
Foundr Magazine on Instagram
Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million No Time Flat book by Michael Masterson
SweetProcess
Trello
Latergram
Edgar
Upwork

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Show Summary:

Today's show is about consultative sales and this is the approach I use being a non-salesperson. What I am, however, is a consultative person and having that kind of approach most likely leads to sales.

What is consultative sales approach?
Any customer, organization, or business owner I work with, I approach them the same way I do with anything - being honest, upfront, and very direct. Basically, you don't offer them your product, software, or service but you listen to their story and tell them what you think is the best fit for their business based on your experience. Although the process could take longer, but your goal here is to build trust so that the person or organization would trust you. And when they do, the sales process transitions into a deeper, stronger relationship.

The elements of consultative selling:
Listen to what their problems are.
Understand them from the business side.
Offer valuable solutions to fix their problems.
Note: The value you're providing here is NOT the product or software but your direct answers that would point them into the direction that gives the best value for them.

The pros of consultative sales:
They begin to trust you.
They will use you for other things.
The sales cycle turns into the process of trust-building and relationship-building

The cons of consultative sales:
Longer sales cycle
Requires a longer, succinct processes of following up

Ways to follow up:
Podcast - You become top of mind to people who work with you since they hear your voice
Emails
CRMs

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Guest Name:
Brandon Uttley - Go For Launch

Guest Intro:
Brandon used to run a web design company and a digital agency and now he's an entrepreneur. He has a great little story about how he got there which had hiccups along the way. Brandon and I reminisce a little bit about being in business and podcasting as well as some tools we use. This is a good show and I hope you enjoy it.

Brandon is the Founder and CEO of Go For Launch, an educational and marketing resource for entrepreneurs. He is also the author of a new #1 Amazon bestselling book, Pod Castaway: My Search for Podcasting Fame and Fortune. Prior to his current role, Brandon co-founded and was CEO of Command Partners, a digital marketing agency. He was also the Co-founder and President of Carbonhouse, Inc., a nationally recognized web design firm. Brandon became an entrepreneur after a successful career working with several top marketing and PR firms.

Topics We Discuss:
Getting intentional about starting a business
The power of having mentors
Good project management system for small business
The challenges of being a solopreneur
Balancing new projects versus current operations: The 70-15-15 split
Scheduling time and blocking time off to focus on your priorities
The process of hiring for greatness
Dealing with the struggle of giving away your own voice
Writing vs. podcasting
Content creation: Overcoming the "shiny object" syndrome
Filtering emails: Brandon's I.V. rule (Interesting or Vital?)
Getting Things Done - delegation, deletion, deferment
Other cool tools Brandon uses daily

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Show Summary:

I picked out this title for a very special reason. This is a short and sweet show about customer service but I'll dive into more detail about customer service in another show. But today, I want to talk about something very specific which is literally about when anyone from your company is "engaged with the customer."

What do you mean by "engaged?"

Anything you do that affects or interacts with your customer is really engagement
Answering your phones
Tech support
Email messages
Face-to-face communication
Branding or your website
The experience they get when they interact with you and your company
Rules of Engagement for Customer Service:

Always be polite.
Answer the phone with a smile. When you're smiling, they will feel the energy.

Always show empathy.
This depends on the type of business you're in. This is often when you hear an issue from customers. Be empathetic about their problem and challenges, regardless of how silly it is, to make sure you're listening to them and that you don't offend them and don't diminish their need or issue they have with you.

Never engage in an argument with a customer.
Always take the high road. This is really tough but getting fired up, vulgar, or rude is never the answer. Nor would you allow them to get rude or mean with you. Dictate how people treat you.

Do your best to give them options.
One of the best ways to win a customer for life is to solve a problem they have or hear out the issues they have and that can turn them into ambassadors pretty quickly.

Be accountable to your word.
When talking to a customer on the phone or send them an email, or make a commitment on behalf of you or your company, be accountable for it.

Be sincere and genuine.
This could be hard especially if they call up to complain about your customer service but being sincere and genuine is really important.

As a business owner, it's your job to make sure that your customer service team and the culture of your business are dialed into these rules. Unfortunately, some people are not really sincere and genuine. They don't care about the customers and they really don't have an empathetic heart. They could care less if the customer is happy.

If this is your company, DO NOT put up with that.

“One single bad customer service representative can cause a tremendous amount of damage.”

How ironic is it that oftentimes they're one of the least paid people in the organization but they can have the biggest impact.

Remember, your customers pay your bills. They are your biggest ambassadors. They pay your employees. They put food on the table. So they deserve your respect and the best treatment possible.

With not too many new ideas out there in the world today, an easy way for you to stick out is to provide the best service possible!

Let's close on with a couple thoughts for you to marinate in:

What are you doing to ensure that anything your customer engages with the organization is only of the highest quality?
Do you value your customers?
Are you sure all of your people that engage with customers value them?
Lastly, remember that a happy, loyal customer base could be the most lethal sales force around.

Books, People, & Resources:

Download the 15 Most Popular Tools Business Owners Should Be Using

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Rob started in sales at 19, waspromoted to run a franchise with the company at 21 and grew it to amulti-million-dollar business and broke almost every record for anew office in the company's 60-year history. Rob has sincemoved on to consulting for fortune 500 companies working on theirworkforce and training.

Rob then started a 2nd 7-figurebusiness at 23 years old.

He, now runs M.W.F. MotivationPodcast - one of the fastest growing podcast on iTunes - hit #1 in6 categories on New & Noteworthy including self-help andbusiness. Rob’s focusing on growing the podcast to 1 milliondownloads in the first year. His goal is to impact as manypeople as possible, find out what their purpose in life is, andmake it their mission to follow their purpose and live to theirtrue potential.

Topics we discuss:

Beingthe hardest working versus the smartest person
Running different income streams
Outsourcing and scaling to increaseproductivity
Hiring for quality versus hiring forcheap
Balancing between existing and newprojects
Scheduling your day properly based onthe ParetoPrinciple
Looking at your numbers constantly to measuresuccess and improve
Applying Tony Robbin's 2mm changes
Caring more about the people working for youand around you while caring less about being #1

Books, People, & Resources:

M.W.F. Motivation Podcast

M.W.F. Motivation oniTunes

M.W.F. Motivation onFacebook and Instagram

StrengthsFinder - book

Think and Grow Rich- book

The ONE Thing - book

Busy Buddha FoamRoller

Trello

Cutco Cutlery

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Today's show is about hiring. It's specifically two questions I literally received last week talking to a coaching client and these are:

How do I know when it's time to hire?

I have three candidates I really like, how do I choose?

How do you know when it's time to hire?

Reasons that business owners get too far in and haven't hired yet:

Lack of readiness

Lack of funds

Easy things to know when it's time to hire:

You're flat out of time and you continue to drop the ball on fairly critical tasks.

Do you spend more time putting out fires and doing other work that you shouldn't really be doing in the first place? Spend your time on the most critical items that drive your business.

"I can't afford somebody."

Well, you can't afford NOT to have somebody. If you spend your time working 18 hours a day and you drop a ball, you cannot afford not to have somebody otherwise your business goes on a death spiral.

Ways to get staff without breaking the bank:

Use contractors for 2-3 hours a week.

Find interns or someone that can handle very remedial things for minimal pay.

Ask for referrals.- Referrals are really good or someone you've already worked with before that you can just hand over something to with minimal training and they take care of it.

Hire a virtual assistant. - Caution: You can't expect them to fix all the problems you have. You have to spend a lot of time training them.

Challenges you need to solve here are:

Too much work
Not enough time
You don't have to hire a full-time employee to work 40 hours a week and pay them benefits.

Having systems and processes in place:

What are you doing throughout your day that you can systematize or put into a process that you can just do once or twice more and then have to do minimal work for it from then on in?

There is never a perfect time. You're never going to want to give up your money to hire somebody but you have to consider:

Your time

What you're not doing

The cost of not hiring somebody.

I have three candidates I really like, how do I choose?

Here are things you can ask yourself:

Do they all have the technical ability and do they think they can handle it?

Do they match your needs?

Do you need them to be timely and to operate with very little direction?

Do you want them to be part-advisor? You ask them and they give you feedback?

Do you want someone that needs strict guidance and step-by-step but they execute really well?

Do you want someone that only communicates once a week with you or once a day?

Make sure their culture is right.

Find someone that fits with you and not you fitting with them.

Find one that matches your style or your needs.

Know what motivates them. It's okay if they want to do other things not related to your business but it's just knowing what kind of person they are, how they function, and what drives or excites them.

Have them take on a test run.

Give them a test job or a test quote and let them walk you through the process.

Give them a real sample to work through and see the results they provide back to you.

Books, People, & Resources:

Fivver

Upwork

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Guest Intro:

I was introduced to Paul's podcast about 4 or 5 months ago and I really like what he's doing. He has a podcast and also runs a sales organization. Listening to a number of Paul's shows, I realized that he and I see eye-to-eye on a number of things. In the show, we talk about a number of the struggles of running a business and owning a business and just simply being an entrepreneur. Paul offers up some great systems, information, as well as tools he uses to be more effective.

BOSS Academy Radio is a show catering to business owners and entrepreneurs where he shares his experiences and expertise while bringing in guests who provide high-value messaging to give support to the listeners. BOSS stands for Business Ownership Success Strategies upon which every episode is focused on.

Paul is also an accomplished sales and sales management professional. He is currently the President and CEO of Actus Sales Intelligence, a sales intelligence agency known for helping its clients sell smarter.

Topics we discuss:

Investing in yourself and leveraging it daily

Starting the BOSS Academy Radio to take on the entrepreneurial path

Finding the motivation to become an entrepreneur versus a mindset of “being born an entrepreneur”

Managing your email more effectively and keeping processes simple

Making less mistakes by having systems in place

Building a one- or two-paged business plan to build your business

Setting time blocks to increase productivity and deal with distractions

Taking massive and immediate action on new ideas right in the moment

Being flexible in your schedules

Practicing due diligence in hiring people

Taking that leap of faith to start your own company

Doing less and focusing on one niche

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Today’s show is about time management and more specifically one question and one excuse I hear most often. “How do you have time to do it all” and “I don’t have enough time”. Both of these have the same root cause and that is aligning your actions with your Goals and Vision for your personal, professional and spiritual life.

“How do you have the time to do it all”.

I frequently hear this from friends, family and peers right after then tell me how awesome their weekend watching football was or asked me if I caught the most recent episode of Game of Thrones, Empire, Walking Dead, etc. My answer is that I cut out all the noise and optimize my time. I’m actually pretty excessive about it and something I need to work on because when my schedule gets messed with I get a bit cranky. Sorry honey! The very first thing I do is make sure whatever I’m doing lines up with the vision of what I want my personal, professional and spiritual life to be.

Here are a number of things I do, or have done, to free up more of my time for work, family and exercise.

Schedule Everything. If it isn’t on the schedule it doesn’t get done. Workouts, time NOT working, etc.
Be very selective of the meetings you take. I use a tool called ScheduleOnce that only allows 30-minute time blocks for people to schedule time with me and that’s only after I’ve validated it’s a good use of my time. Aligns with my goals/vision.
Cut out nearly all TV. This is a big one for most people. If I watch/listen to sports it's while running or riding my bike. How much time do you spend watching TV. Be honest with yourself, I bet it will shock you when you add up those hours. I do have a guilty pleasure of watching the Walking Dead. I so bad want to have a samurai sword. But I watch it on DVR to cut out the commercials. I don’t watch the news, I think it actually makes us less intelligent.
Eliminate or Reduce Commute time. This has been a game-changer. If you can control how much you commute and/or the hours that you do, you can save so much time in the car. Traveling off hours (really early) makes a big difference. When I am in the car, podcasts and audio books. I have a mobile university as Bill Roth, a business coach I work with, says. Being on top of sports radio vs. listening to a book to help me be a better father, husband, business person and friend is an easy choice.
I have a great team that helps me. I struggled with this for a long time but over the past few years, I’ve really focused on delegating tasks that I don’t need to work on (bookkeeping, all design, all programming, social media, writing/editing (I suck at writing), general admin tasks, etc.).
I do a lot of little things.
I batch all work. Same type of work together
Turn off phone, close email
And I do a lot of ridiculous things…but they add up.
Only take right-hand turns (get gas, make a stop, etc.)
I usually wear slip on shoes
I’m follically challenged but keep my hair really short and low maintenance.
I refuse to go to Walmart for many reasons but time is a big one
I pick my clothes out left to right in the closet
I try to eat nearly the same thing every day
You get the point…

There’s one thing that makes me more productive but it takes time out of the day which is counterintuitive. But that’s working out. I trained for an Ironman last year and I had my best year ever. I was more focused, more intentional with what I spent my time on and had more energy. It's funny really. Up to 20 hours of exercise per week (not including prep and cool down) and it was my best year ever. I know now, I made a lot of excuses on why I couldn’t do something and especially when that excuse was time-based.

I could go on forever on time-saving tips (surfing facebook, what do you do during your lunch hour, etc.) but the takeaways are schedule everything, cutting out the TV and get exercise. You’ll be amazed at the results.

The second thing I hear frequently is “I don’t have enough time”.

99% of the time I can call BS on this. It all comes down to priorities. It’s totally fine if your priorities are different than mine but you have to be honest with yourself and really look at what you spend your time on.

The bottom line is that you prioritize watching TV over getting a workout in. You prioritize listening to talk radio over listening to a Podcast or audio book. You prioritize dicking around on Facebook over closing the laptop and helping your kids with homework. We all do this. I’ve been massively guilty of this in the past. Ironman training has a funny way of making you grow and time management is one way.

How can you fix it? I think it can be really easy. Start with your goals and vision for your personal, professional and spiritual life. Then ask yourself when you go to do something, does this align with my goals and vision?

For example, is my goal to be able to regurgitate the stats from last weeks Bronco game or regurgitate which celebrity is in trouble for doing something stupid? Or is my goal to be a better dad and I listened to a great book on fatherhood.

We all have the same amount 24 hours in a day to get things done. Some choose to use them to their advantage. Others don’t. The good news is the choice is yours.

One note before I go, there are some things you can’t “time save” and that’s quality time with your family and your diet. Hitting the “drive through” on either one of those will end badly.

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In this show I talk to Ryan Gray from Medical Schools Headquarters. Ryan is a dad, husband, podcaster and owner of Medical Schools Headquarters. He served in the Air Force for 5 years and is helping Pre-Meds get into medical school.

Topics We Discuss:

Moving from providing valuable content to pre-med students to being a “podcaster”
Podcasting 175 straight weeks
Helping the long and confusing med-school journey
Biggest challenge starting podcasting
Podcasting process
Different Type of Virtual Assistants (VA)
US Based transcription VA ($.70.minute)
Finding resources on his own and testing them with a small task

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Back in show 13 on Hustle, if you haven’t listened to it, go check it out. I said that was the first time I lined up my show number with the theme of the show. This is the second time and this one I did plan. The show today is talking about how to be everyone’s favorite. No, I’m not talking about me. I’m actually talking about #15. My #15 is my best friend, who’ve I met in 3rd grade when I moved schools. Sam.

I’ll start with the end result and the moral of the story and work backwards. Sam is, without a doubt, the kindest, most respected and well-liked person I know. He’s not a business owner, an entrepreneur or a networker. He’s pure and genuine.

As I look back I must give myself credit. In 3rd grade, I must have had some type of spidey sense about this. I was a little round mound, a short chubby round mound that just moved to a new school. Fairly awkward, pretty shitty in school (except math) and very goofy looking (not much has changed there). Sam, on the other hand, was popular, good looking, fast (that’s how you use to measure the best athletes back then) and loved by teachers, parents, and our peers.

We get it Ryan, Sam is a cool dude…but how does this tie into business? Well, there are 3 things that have shaped me into being a pretty damn good business person. Playing sports, my family and friends like Sam. Here are a number of things I learned, admired or picked up from Sam…you can judge if they’re important to business.

Being nice to everyone. I mean nice to everyone no matter where they came from.
a. As the new kid, I was a bit of an outsider already, my parents were more on the liberal side, and I used to push the envelope a bit (cursing and screwing around)
b. The reason he was/is liked by so many people is because he genuinely likes so many people. He’s kind. Aside from my old Football coach Frank…you can’t walk through our neighborhood without stopping because Sam knows somebody. He’s like Ferris Bueller.
Don’t Judge. I had great parents but we were basically the Clampett family (of Beverly Hillbillies fame) when my dad ascended through Pepsi. For those of you that don’t know the analogy, the Clampett’s were Hillbillies who struck it rich with oil and moved to Beverly Hills where their lifestyle obviously wasn’t in alignment with Beverly Hills.
We didn’t fit in, my parents had lots of parties, entertained, and were fun. Looking back now, I can see how parents of my friends may have been less than excited to have their kids come over. Soda whenever we wanted, whatever food we wanted, Playboy magazines casually set in the house next to Sports Illustrated as if it were just another magazine. Since I wasn’t popular, or good looking, or athletic I had to do whatever I could to get attention and that came in the form of screwing off. Sam never judged, never left me hanging…he was cool as a cucumber.
Hard Work. Sam was our running back in high school and he struggled with blocking. Sorry Sam, it’s part of a good story. After two-a-day practices (yeah man…2 a day. For you young kids that don’t know what that is. We practiced twice a day. Water was a privilege). He would stay in his gear and take extra blocking. In the off-season before we did offseason training, Sam and his dad would train, work hard and he showed us the value of hard work by doing. Sam blew us all away in our conditioning tests.
Follow Greatness. Now…this is what I learned. I knew that Sam was, and still is, the boy, person, man I wanted to be. I try my hardest to model my life after him. I certainly didn’t get any better looking (hence why this is an audio show and not a video), but I did learn how to work hard which served me well going from a round mound to a decent football player. I saw how to treat people and try my best to have this attitude with everyone I interact with from the CEO’s down to the cleaning lady who just literally stopped by my hotel room. I literally had a 5-minute conversation about where her family is from. She is a sweet lady. 30 Years ago I knew, before all of the fancy self-development narrative, that I was the product of the top 5 people I hung around. And that’s why Sam hasn’t been able to shake me!
Be Genuine…The reason Sam has such a powerful impact on people and the same reason great sales people, leaders, and business owners succeed in the long haul is they have a genuine care for others. There is no agenda, there is no “what can you do for me”, there is a genuine and deep care/love you get when you interact with people like Sam.

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Guest Name:
Garth Rogers – Innovation Strategy Group

Guest Intro:
Garth is currently a Managing Partner at Innovation Strategy Group. Prior to that, Garth spent 20 years at Sports Illustrated and SI Golf Group. He’s held various leadership positions (Finance Director, Advertising Strategy Director, Business Development Director). Garth has worked on some really cool projects like SI Swimsuit and Golf.com. He lives in Port Washington, NY and played over a 100 rounds of golf in his first year building our new business.

Topics We Discuss:
- Wasted Time – meeting & managing meetings
- Failures of big publishing
- Process consulting vs. expert consulting
- Vision and culture – 5 year, 3 year, 1 year, month
- Sports Illustrated – over 10k different versions printed each week
- Centralizing (stifling innovation) vs. De-centralizing
- Businesses too busy in the business, Not ON the business
- Win-win business deals
- Giving away too much info in the sales process
- Hiring with a Customer Service orientated person
- Virtual network of resources
- Making a movie, executing a great project
- Getting more experience at different companies
- 1 Billion in profit – SI Swimsuit Issue

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Let's talk Hustle. Where I come from, the word hustle has two meanings.

1) sports

2) Being a hustler

Sports Hustle

Works hard
Run on the field/court, no walking
Sense of urgency
Intentional – Every move is planned or with purpose
Dives for a loose ball
I LOVE these type of people. They sell out, put in the work, play to the whistle. They're a critical component to building a great team. You can always count on them giving their all. They may come with some baggage but you know when the chips are down they are all in and that they prepared with their hustle.

Being A hustler

One sided deal
Taking advantage of me
A slime ball
The business “Hustle” life, although it may work for some, I do not aspire to have that. I do not admire and/or want to be the guy who works 16 hour days no matter how big of an empire it might build. That’s just me. I think some people define themselves by how “busy” they are. That there is some badge of honor being “So Busy”. I prefer to work smart/less with the biggest results. Don’t get me wrong…I work hard and “Sports Hustle” but it's for a short period of time, or small sprints. I’ve had plenty of 16-20 hour work days in my life. But it’s rare and for a very intentional task.

To the “Hustlers” who work their rear off…I commend you. It takes someone special to be all in like that. But please…don’t blow smoke that you have a “Family First” mentality. I know, first hand, there can only be ONE 1st and if you work 16 hours per day, fly around the world, client meetings, sporting events, etc. I hate to break it to you…your family isn’t first. Period! That’s not passing judgment that’s calling BS on how somebody represents themselves.
Maybe family first in your rule means family first…right after my business. Again, that’s fine, not passing judgment but your actions speak louder than words. I bet if we asked your family what comes first they would say your work, not them.

I don’t know about you but when I leave my legacy I don’t want it to say “Hustler”. I want it to say the best “Husband, Father and Friend”

So…hustle. Sports hustle is important, it builds character and is critical for your team and your business. Business Hustle…how I see it. Maybe a fit for some, but not for me. The good news is…we get the choice and that’s awesome.

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A powerful show about perseverance and turning life's tragedies into a life full of purpose. Gina Harris is truly a champion who has had some difficult life experiences but has shown the will of a winner and has lived a life of purpose.

Gina is an inspirational speaker, nonprofit consultant and the CEO of the nonprofit organization Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. She has shared her story to a wide variety of audiences across the country and has co-authored several books. Gina has been featured in the media including the LA Times, CNN, the Huffington Post, CBS, and local media outlets nationally.

I love her mantra...you can be bitter or better, it's our choice!

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I just spent 10 days at Tropical Think Tank in Cebu, Philippines. It was an awesome event hosted by Chris Ducker. If you love:

Great masterminds
Great Speakers
Meeting a lot of new friends
Getting great information on how to run your business better
TTT is the place for you.

At TTT Hal Elrod, The Miracle Morning author, talked about his Rock Bottoms and how they changed/affected his life. This really got me thinking about some of my rock bottoms. But I don’t consider them that…I’ve always looked at them as events in my life. As Hal spoke, the more I thought about it, I could clearly draw a coloration to who I am now to these events. Everyone has rock bottoms and they shape our life. The good news is that we get to shape what they mean in our life. I was really lucky. Even though I was young, myself and my friends took this rock bottom and turned it into a positive.

In this show, you'll hear my story and how my rock bottom allowed me to learn:

Many of my friends are in public service (Police, fire, teachers, etc.). I can only suspect that the events of this night helped shaped their career choices.
I am very much a relationship person and down deep inside an emotional dude. I really miss friends I haven’t seen for some time and when I leave an event I get a little sad.
I learned that God didn’t pick me, that I’m here for a purpose, and the older/wiser I get the more I want to drive to that purpose…maybe that’s why you're listening to this podcast. I believe that is what Focus 53 is all about for me.
I’ve learned that Dan’s parents really do love his friends, even after all these years, they are proud of us and I suspect feel some of Dan’s love/life through seeing us be successful. The modern miracle of Facebook helps with that.
Life if fragile… you just never know. I’m gaining more clarity on that concept and following my calling, heart and dreams.
The bond I have with my friends from this time in my life will never be broken, they know I’d do anything for them and I know they’d do anything for me. It’s a special group
Go with your gut. My gut told me to run that night vs. fighting. I’m not sure why and believe me, - I’ve analyzed it more times than I care to admit.

How does all this tie back to business? For me, it’s really easy. Knowing life is short, that relationships mean the world to me, that I want my friends to be proud of me, that I want to be able to help them in business, life, etc….it boils down to choosing HOW we spend our time and with WHO. The more I feel I can control that, the better I feel.

This happened about 20 years ago and it's still very much an emotional topic. This story certainly isn’t meant to attract sympathy, it's meant to illustrate the POSITIVE power of your rock bottom(s). yeah, I said POSITIVE POWER. We get to determine, in life, in business, with our career choices, how we react to events in our life. We can’t control the events, but we can control our mind and choices. Learn from the not so awesome events in your life, grow from them and use them as fuel to propel you to the next level. Us the power of the event to harness positive change in your life.

Looking back…that’s what I did even though I didn’t fully recognize it until TTT.

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GolfTEC, a 20 year old golf company has become the world leader in golf instruction. GolfTEC teaches 25% of all golf lessons in the US, with no competitor teaching more than 1%. They dominate the golf instruction market. In this show Joe Assell, the CEO, and I talk about hiring for greatness, customized internal systems, when they created their formal golf coach on boarding process and much more. I’ve had the distinct honor of working with the team at GolfTEC and they are excellent. Their operations team is first class.

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Process breakdowns can be the cause of critical issues in your business. Making more sales is great, but if you don’t have the core processes in place to grow and succeed you will soon find your business in trouble. Finding out what processes are broken, need help, or need addressed immediately is critical. In this show I cover some very basic tactics to finding breakdowns in your business. Finding these should be viewed as an opportunity. For every single process you improve internally, you save that amount of time forever in your business. That’s powerful.

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Processes are critical for creative people. Dan Streeter is very creative and on this show talks about how and why processes are critical for him. Dan is a principal at IMPART! Where they design, develop and deliver highly dynamic curriculum for authors, speakers and business leaders. Dan is also the co-author of the book Old School with New Tools as well as a podcast host.

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Throughout the entrepreneurial journey, you can be assured that the road will not be smooth. Trials, tribulations, challenges, and issues will always be part of owning operating and running a business. These same emotions are common in day-to-day lives as well. What I'm telling you is no secret, everyone faces challenges. The good news is that there are strategies to help. Holding onto emotional baggage will negatively affect your life. I'm a firm believer that there is really no such thing as multi-tasking; especially as it pertains to the thoughts in your head. If there is something you struggle with, and you spend time thinking about it (no matter how little), it is taking precious brain power away from the joys in your life. This isn't a show about reducing stress. It's about letting go. These are two unique and different methods of getting letting go that I discuss.

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In this show I talk with Justin Kruger. One of the main topics we discuss is how he runs a nationwide organization of volunteers. This is a tough business to run. If you think its hard to get your paid remote staff to work hard, what about people who volunteer. Justin founded Project Helping based on his own experiences of using volunteering to create purpose and change in his life. From these experiences he wanted a way to formalize and share these experiences with others. This is the same motivation that lead him to start KyndHub and engage people all over the world.

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Negative reviews, comments, and people are unfortunately part of everyday business. They are certainly part of online businesses. In this show I discuss how to handle negative reviews and comments. It’s really important to handle negative comments and people with class and composure. There is no victory in fighting with somebody on the internet. You must also have the mindset that no matter how good/nice you are, there will be negative people and you can’t let it bother you. Check out the show to learn more.

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In this episode I talk with Aaron Walker. Aaron Is Businessman and Life Coach, he’s inspired many through his leadership, mentorship, and consistent pursuit of excellence. He enjoys helping others and believes experience is a great teacher. 35 years of entrepreneurship and marriage have given Aaron a wealth of experience. We discuss making sure your customers don’t get treated like a process, focusing on adding value, hiring slow and firing fast, and many other great business topics.

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In this show, I go deep on strategies to build relationships even if you're an introvert. Building relationships is critical to any business. To me, great relationships is a critical component to a successful business and a great life for that matter. Some of the strategies discussed in the show are: knowing what motivates them (very important), knowing who they are aligned with inside their organization, understanding their position in the company, getting personal and knowing more about them than just the business side, paying attention to the little things, and taking a genuine interest in them as a person. Relationships are something I consider myself to be great at building. It is a deep topic and something I hope to expand on in the future.

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In this episode I talk with Jaime Jay about new projects, owning any issues in his business, and much more. Jaime Jay is the founder of Slapshot Studio, a boutique digital marketing agency specializing in WordPress development. In addition to running done4youwp.com, which is a WordPress maintenance and support service, Jaime also operates a Filipino VA placement service for entrepreneurs and businesses.

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Jon Nastor is a digital entrepreneur, podcaster, and drummer of punk rock beats. He can be found traveling with his family, working in the local coffee shop, and building cool products online. Jon is the host of the Hack The Entrepreneur Podcast.

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The Focus 53 Podcast in your one-stop shop for all things related to business operations. We focus on the systems, people, and processes needed to run a successful business. If you’re looking to improve your business and need practical business help, this is the show for you.

The Focus 53 Podcast: Business Systems, People, & Processes: Recent Episodes

Ryan Ayres: Business Coach and Strategist