Be It Till You See It

Are you feeling overwhelmed by your schedule? Listen to this episode to learn about our rock, gemstones, and glitter scheduling technique. Discover how you can use this method to manage your time efficiently, avoid overwhelm, and ensure that you have time for the things that matter most.

If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at [email protected] .

And as always, if you’re enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.

In this episode you will learn about:

• Celebrating wins from Korea for Balance Body Pilates Tour
• How Allison received an invite for a second interview as her win
• Joanna’s “Remember When” game for manifesting what you want
• The rocks, gemstones, and glitter scheduling method to overcome feeling overwhelmed
• Why take action and have confidence because everything is a win

Episode References/Links:

• Balanced Body Pilates
• Episode 1: How does life get better than this? (ft. Joanna Vargas)

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox.

Be It Till You See It Podcast Survey

Be in the know with all the workshops at OPC

Be a part of Lesley’s Pilates Mentorship

Resources

• Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!
• Lesley Logan website
• Be It Till You See It Podcast
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube
• Profitable Pilates

Social Media

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Episode Transcript:

Lesley Logan 0:01  

It's Fuck Yeah Friday. (Brad: Fuck yeah!) Get ready for some wins.  

Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started.

All right Be It babe. Welcome back to another FYF Fuck Yeah, Friday. Okay, so what's so exciting about this FYF it is as it is coming to your ears while we are in Korea at the Balanced Body Pilates on tour, which is our first time in Korea teaching, it's also Balanced Body's first time back there in three years, so shout out to their win. So I'm really excited because I love that we can celebrate our wins in real time with you anywhere we are on this world. So first, I have to celebrate one of your wins. So Alison, she is an Agency member. super amazing. I love this one so much. If you recall, one of her last wins was pretty badass. So we wanted to give you a little update. And also by the way, if you have wins that are updated, we want to hear about them. That's so fun. We can all follow along in your winning journey. So y'all I applied to position at Washington University in St. Louis on Friday after business hours. On Monday afternoon, they scheduled me an interview for Tuesday, which was yesterday, the time that I posted this, it went great. And they sent me an invite for a second interview before the end of the business day. If you didn't know that is a speed that is not normal for higher education, especially getting invited to the second interview within three hours of the first. I'm playing the Remember When game which didn't resonate with me when I first heard about it on the Be It Pod. But now saying, remember when Washington U was so impressive, they offer me on the maximum salary? It's keeping the imposter syndrome at bay. Congratulations, Alison. I actually have been able to see where this interview journey is going for her and it's pretty badass and it's really exciting. You know what she's talking about there, Which is the Remember When game came from episode one. So if you haven't ever listen to episode one, go back and listen to it. Actually, I would, if you want to really see how I've been being it until I see it go listen to episode one through seven. Because that was a Be It Till You See It really happening in the moment. I'd never interviewed people before like that. And we had some amazing guests as well. It was like nervous as fuck to interview all of them. But Joanna is awesome and she has this like Remember When game, so hers was like remember when Oprah invited us to be on their stage like it's like so you're remembering a thing that you want to happen but as if it had already happened. So it's kind of like a manifestation also kind of getting you really comfortable with something that you want to do that you haven't done but you can actually play it like it's a memory. So anyways, Allison way to pull on that tool that didn't resonate in the beginning, but it resonates now. Freaking love that so much. Okay. My win, so I will be really honest, when I saw our travel schedule for this year, I got a little overwhelmed. Because while we used to travel crazy amounts before the pandemic, we have not been traveling like that in any capacity. And so for us like to look at the beginning of this year and go, Oh my gosh, half of May we're traveling, and then Meridith who you know her name from or the podcast, she's our project manager. She was like, I'm gonna get married right before you go to Korea and in a state that's not on the way to Korea. So we have to add another travel day. And then as you know, from a couple weeks ago, FYI, I just went to Connecticut. So Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Korea, come back, people are coming to town, then we're leaving for Scotland. And then we come back and then we do a tour. And then we come back from tour, we go to Poland. And then we come back. We have a lunch and then I'm looking at the whole year right? And I'm like getting myself so overwhelmed. Because it's like holy crap, like when are we home? and you look at it like that it just like you can just make a big story by the way, then there's Cambodia. And then there's loaded, like three more, three more tours. Right? So I was looking at this and I remember going oh my god, how on earth am I going to get everything done that I have to get done. And here's what I'm so proud of, here's what I'm celebrating. So I love my rocks, gems, glitter scheduling, way I scheduled, right? so we've done we've done talks on this before but how I create my schedule about rocks, gemstones glitter, and I made sure to double dose on my own medicine on that schedule. So I am making, you are getting this FYF and you know what? I have already filmed everything I need to film before I was to come home. So everything that needs to be done for June is done. All podcasts need to be done for June done, everything is done. Because I use my rock Simpsons glitter tool. I didn't go into the overwhelm because you know, you can, it is so easy to waste time in the overwhelm. I did not waste any time there, anytime overwhelmed wanted to like pop on by and see if they could borrow some sugar, I was like, excuse me, I've got a plan for this. And I had so much fun doing it and way more present. We also were able to take on like two other projects that I really was like, oh my god, I can't believe I'm doing this. But look, there's time in this gemstone glitter thing that I've done for myself. And so I share this as a win because I didn't let myself get overwhelmed. I didn't talk myself out of saying yes to things I wanted to say yes to you. And I get to be in Korea, not stressed out about the things that I have to do as soon as I get back because it's already done. So if you don't understand how that's a win, then welcome to the FYF show. Everything can be a win, especially when you do something you say you want to do. Because when you do something you say you wanted to do, it is actually dropping a little, like a big drop really into the competence bucket. So it's so much easier to Be It Till You See It. So if you have a win for us, we want to hear about it, tag the Be It Pod. Wherever you listen to podcasts, or wherever you post on your socials, send it to us so we can share it with everybody and tell other people how to celebrate their wins too. It's so so important. Until next time, you guys. Lots of love from Korea. Have a good day and Be It Till You See It!

That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram.

I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. 

Brad Crowell 1:58  

It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Leslie Logan and me, Brad Crowell.

Lesley Logan 2:05  

It is produced, edited by the Epic team at Disenyo. 

Brad Crowell 3:01  

Theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music, and our branding by designer and artist Gianfranco Cioffi. 

Lesley Logan 3:30  

Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals and Ximena Velazquez for our transcriptions. 

Brad Crowell 4:01  

Also to Angelina Herico for adding all the content to our website. And finally to Meridith Crowell for keeping us all on point and on time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Join Lesley and Brad as they look back at their conversation with Brittany Hodak about turning customers into superfans. Brittany’s approach to creating loyal customers is a game-changer that will benefit any industry. 

If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at [email protected] .

And as always, if you’re enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.

In this episode you will learn about:

• It’s a choice not to be overwhelmed.
• The benefit of asking for help soon enough.
• Support can come in a variety of different ways.
• Any industry should rethink how to improve customer experience.
• Focus on keeping the customers you already have.
• Customer service can be summarized in four words: Be kind and listen.

Episode References/Links:

• Full Body in 15
• Tips For Neck Pull on the Mat
• Shiv Singh (@shivsingh)

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox.

Be It Till You See It Podcast Survey

Be in the know with all the workshops at OPC

Be a part of Lesley’s Pilates Mentorship

Resources

• Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!
• Lesley Logan website
• Be It Till You See It Podcast
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube
• Profitable Pilates

Social Media

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Episode Transcript:

Lesley Logan: [00:00:00] The whole point of having customers is so they get you more customers. So if you actually focus on the ones you got, then they'll be so excited to share their experience with other people, and then you can have more customers and you don't have to focus on both things. You can focus on one thing and the other, and that the results of that are more customers.

Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get [00:01:00] started.

Brad Crowell: And stick around to the very end because we got some outtakes that's been happening. ...(Lesley: There's always outtakes. Um, and the team does collect them for bloopers on the YouTube, but uh, we're adding them into the end of the pod because you know what you need to know that we are not perfect. You're not perfect, and) we're enjoying the process...(Lesley: and we are enjoying that.

So have a good laugh on our behalf. Love you.)

Lesley Logan: Welcome back to the Be It Till You See It interview recap, where my co-host in life, Brad and I are going to dig into the candid convo I had with Brittany Hodak in our last episode.

If you haven't yet listened to that episode, you can pause this, listen to that one, then come back and listen to this one. You can listen to this one, then listen to that one. You can also listen to this on the O P C app. Oh, and it's easy. Really easy to see which episode do you want to choose and you can choose your own adventure and then let us know how you do it.

Um, anyways, today is national No Dirty Dishes day. And, uh, I'm gonna be it till I see it on this. So I'm hopeful and I'm gonna celebrate that I [00:02:00] remembered to do the dishes. And even if I only wash one dish, it's pretty badass. But according to the calendar, make your sink happy. Wash your dishes. Uh, we're currently 

Brad Crowell: in some... wait, did you say make your sink happy?

I thought you said, make your spouse happy. No. Make your sink happy. 

Lesley Logan: Sink happy. No, baby. We'll call my dad over to wash these dishes. He, you guys Okay. This is a side note. My father like has to be helpful and he cannot handle dirty dishes. He hates the dirty ketchup and he picks us up for the gym all the time, and he literally will like, if we're like taking too long, he'll get up and start washing the dishes. Yep. Because he just can't handle any dirty dishes in the sink. It's true. Yeah. Uh, okay. Anyways, we're currently in Seoul and we are at the Allerton Pilates on tour having the best time and yeah, flashcards. So if you are in Seoul, we've got them at the P O T, uh, the right now in real time. Um, Next month is June and we are doing a Profitable Pilates [00:03:00] workshop again.

Um, we're really excited about this. Uh, the topic is, um, T B D, but if you are on the wait list, uh, for this workshop, then you are absolutely going to be able to help us choose, or you'll find out first. Um, but we're doing this again. It's gonna be a different topic than we had before. Profit. P R F I T. So a different way of spelling profit prfitbiz/workshops.

Just go on the show notes. It's right there. Yeah. Uh, July, uh, the UK Mullet tour is, uh, selling out actually. So yeah. At the time that we're recording this, we are half sold out and that is, uh, well, 

Brad Crowell: Amazing. We're so fired up. We can't wait to be there to see everyone. To be up in Leeds to hang with Claire to see her amazing studio.

(Lesley: I know, I know.) Um, and, you know, it's, it's a hop, skip, and a jump, uh, from Ireland, Scotland, and of course, the uk. And it's 

Lesley Logan: also like a train right away from London. So if you're traveling in, super easy, we're coming down from Scotland. So, um, Guy is not coming with us and yeah, and that's why cuz she barks. Um, [00:04:00] uh, then in August we are going to go on a West Coast tour.

So this is super exciting. We're packing the van, we are bringing the dogs on this one, and we are going all up and down the West Coast. You'll want to go to opc.me/tour if you want to get, um, on the wait list so you don't miss out where the stops are. You can get your ticket. Um, September, we are in Poland and you can actually buy your tickets now for that.

That link is also on the show notes cuz it, cuz these links are long guys. So we're just gonna put them in show notes. Um, October. Cambodia. 

Brad Crowell: Cambodia, cannot wait to go back. 

Lesley Logan: Freaking goodness. I was looking at pictures the other day and I was like, yeah, we, we live there sometimes. So, so stoked to go.

Amazing women already signed up on this trip. My mom shout out to my mom. She was so excited to go. ...(Brad: Oh, she's tried so hard). She, she just has to call in sick is really what's gotta happen. So, um, and her, her, her 

Brad Crowell: school's vacation. She's a teacher. Her school's vacation days with a week before we're there.

Yeah. They also 

Lesley Logan: have [00:05:00] other time, paid time off. Like they also have that, you know. Yeah, we, 

Brad Crowell: we talked about it. Yeah, we, we spoke about 

Lesley Logan: it. Yeah. We're gonna we're gonna work it out. Yeah. Uh, November is Miami. I can't think of a better time to be in Miami, but November like ...(Brad: Yeah, it's gonna be nice.) So fun. So, and that's gonna be for the balanced body, P O T and some other stuff that Erica and I are doing there together, um, at some club Pilates.

So, you know, make sure you hit us up so you'd never miss out on these good things. Um, basically like I said last time, ah, see you in real life. So come, come when we're there, because I don't know when we're coming back. Anyways, before we dig into the interview with Brittany, Brad, you have an audience 

Brad Crowell: question?

Yeah, we sure do. Um, okay. This is from Teresa. ...(Lesley: Yeah. OPC Teresa). Yeah. She said I have a strap. And I do use it however I want, I think she's referring to a strap on the mat. On the mat, fyi. If you have a yoga style mat, there's no strap attached to it.

If you have like the really, uh, the firm Pilates mat, it may have a strap on the bottom. So she says,

I do have a strap. Uh, and I, uh, I do use it however, uh, how can I use it or not to [00:06:00] connect more to my inner thighs during the rollup and neck pole. But, uh, uh, something between, uh, do, should I put something between my ankles and feet to squeeze? 

Lesley Logan: So, okay, this is a Pilates question and I loved it so much when we got it that I was like, well, this is a great, we can absolutely talk it on the pod, but also you gotta see it to believe it.

So, um, if you go to the, uh, onlinepilatesclasses.com, YouTube channel, and I'm sure we can put the link to the actual video. We did a live, I answered this as a live question on YouTube, so we'll, we'll find that and put in the show notes. But, um, cuz then you can see it. So here's the deal. If you have a mat with a strap, Um, your inner thigh connection actually has to be something that is innate.

It's natural curing that you have, so your legs will be apart and you can't squeeze them together. But you try, you have this energetic try and this also outer thigh thing. This is so hard to explain on the podcast. This is why I filmed it as a tutorial on OPCs YouTube for this exact reason. But here is the deal.[00:07:00] 

Do not use the strap to push out and squeeze in. You are like, you're actually playing tug of war with yourself and it's not gonna work. So what I had suggested in the YouTube uh, video is this, if you need more outer thigh connection, you use the strap. Nothing else. And what you can do is use a ball or a block between your legs for things like the roll up or other exercises where you squeeze the legs together, spine twist.

This way you're strengthening the inner thigh connection, but then you can use the strap for what it's for on the neck pole, which is to help emphasize the outer thigh connection. And then you hope and pray that your inner thighs remember how to work without a prop. So here's, I love, um, props for flair, for helping you access different parts of your body, but I also like taking them away so we can see if we can call upon that strength without the prop. So that's what neck pull is. Neck pull is asking you to call upon the strength of your inner thighs. Mm-hmm. Without having access to squeezing them and ...(Lesley: Oh, okay.) Yeah. So, uh, [00:08:00] use the strap for neck pull.

I swear to God I like it more. You'll still won't love it, but you'll like it more. And then work your inner thighs and other exercises where there's more access to that, and then challenge yourself. Um, but if this is all gibberish to you, no problem. Totally understand. That's why I made a video. Go watch it.

Brad Crowell: Thank you. Yeah, actually we're gonna, we're gonna put that video in the show notes, um, so that you don't have to like, try to envision this. If you don't know anything about Pilates, you could ignore this whole entire thing. 

Lesley Logan: Anyways, um, we have a, we have a, uh, a three-part series that is free. It's called Full Body in 15. You can go to fullbodyinfifteen.com and I actually teach you how to do about 20 exercises at a level that anyone can do and it will help you kind of understand. It will help you get ready for a Pilates class anywhere, whether it's with me or in person anywhere. So if this was gibberish to you, go to fullbodyinfifteen.com and if you understood this completely, thanks. 

Brad Crowell: You're amazing.

The other thing is too, um, PS if you want to have questions, uh, if you have [00:09:00] questions about your own personal practice and you want. Uh, some expert eyes on them. Uh, join O P C because O P C members get to send in questions every Friday or any time during the week. But on Fridays, our teachers will be reviewing, uh, any submissions from our members and answering them in the private group.

So this is a great reason, uh, to, you know, to be in O P C, (...) Awesome resource and yeah, literally nobody else is doing this. Um, and that's why we're doing it. Yeah. Because why not? Everybody has questions about their practice. So it's a perfect opportunity. And if you're a member and you're not taking advantage of it, you should do it.

Yeah. Um, so, uh, great question, Teresa. Thank you so much for asking that. Hang on, we'll be right back.

Okay. Now let's talk about Brittany Hodak, the Creative Mind behind Super Fans, the book and a powerhouse keynote speaker.

Uh, Brittany is a fountain of wisdom when it comes to customer experience and also gleaning some of her most valuable [00:10:00] lessons of life, uh, from her kids, uh, specifically her son, whose name is kadoh spelled backwards is It's Hodak Hodak. Yeah. Kadoh Hodak. Well, I guess 

Lesley Logan: Hodak spelled backwards. 

Brad Crowell: Kadoh sorry. Hodak.

Kadoh. 

Lesley Logan: It's okay. Yeah, so he's Kadoh Hodak. Oh my goodness, 

Brad Crowell: babe. He's a palindrome. I'm looking at it and it messed with my brain. Yeah, I know, 

Lesley Logan: I know. I asked her, I gotta tell you in real time, I had an interview with her yesterday. And I asked her, she brought up about Kadoh, and I asked her like, where did that name come from?

And she's like, oh, it's Hodak spelled backwards. It's a palindrome. So I was like, That's fucking cool. Everyone's doing it. Yeah. That is not how, like not every last name could be a name like that. So that's cool. 

Um, so I really love that she brought this up and this is actually, I really, what I love really about this is that she got this tip from a course, she didn't even finish.

So for anybody who's ever bought something out there in the world and not finished it and gone, oh my God, I never finished things, I bet you got something amazing. I bet you got a fucking gem from what you did listen to. And so she bought [00:11:00] Marie Forleo's course and really helped her. She said she didn't finish, but in the first couple of minutes she says, I don't, Marie says, I don't do overwhelm. And so she said it, uh, Brittany said it's a choice to be overwhelmed or not overwhelmed. So being overwhelmed is not beneficial. It doesn't help you get anything done better. It doesn't actually help you think of anything to get done better. It's not a good mental state, so she doesn't do it.

And um, I think that's a really cool, like, if it, like, it's like a really cool like choice. Like I don't do overwhelm. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, like, well, I actually don't do overwhelm. So like, what can I do to fix this thing? And you, you save so much time on like, not dealing with, oh my God, I'm so overwhelmed.

You just skip over that. Right. So my creatives, you can do it cuz she is one. Um, I also, uh, she, uh, helped, uh, she had a team help her craft a book. And I think this is really important. We, um, it's really important to understand like most things you see out in the world were not done by someone, by themselves.

Like even an artist who maybe paints the whole painting. [00:12:00] Someone had to make the paint, someone had to do the thing, he had to go, they had to go to a store and get the things like people are, there's an inspiration to the art that if that inspiration had never happened, then they wouldn't have it. So, so get over yourself.

You don't have to do it all on your own. 

Brad Crowell: Well, I, I think also it's like a permissions thing, you know, the reality is we. I mean, she, she specifically said, I didn't ask for help soon enough. Yeah. And, and I thought about, about writing a book. And I thought, that's crazy. I, I don't even know that I would've thought to ask for help.

And I, you know, like listening to her experience, it was like, oh, maybe right out of the gate. Right. And we obviously just had a really interesting conversation with Jake Kelfer because he helps people write books. And imagine having someone help you from start to finish as opposed to, she said she, she literally wrote over a hundred thousand words, which she then shot down to 57,000 words.

So [00:13:00] that's a lot of writing, a lot of effort, um, a lot of thinking for basically chopping literally half of what you wrote, um, just so that it could be like a digestible, uh, message in, in the book and having guidance ahead of time. She finally said, when I did ask for help, I had made this big mess. And then I, my team came in and helped me do it, and then she started talking to a publisher and all this stuff and that, and that, like really streamlined it even more.

So, um, you know, especially imagine had she asked for help before she felt overwhelmed. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah. Well, and I mean, I think that's why she like go, that's probably why she was like, I don't do overwhelm. Right. So then like, you know, you bring on the team. So I just think that like one of the greatest things you could do for yourself with any goal you have is figure out where support can come from. And maybe it's not support on the actual project, like maybe you don't need an editor right now, but maybe it's getting help with childcare. Maybe it's getting help. Like, like remember when I was overwhelmed, um, in 2018, I was just really overwhelmed, [00:14:00] um, cuz there was things I wanted to do for myself.

But that required me to drive three miles across town, which in LA good luck. Right? And uh, and so when the lease came up on the car, we realized it's actually cheaper. At the time, it's not the same anymore. It was cheaper to just Uber everywhere and use scooters and. And stuff like that. So we just got rid of the car so that someone else could drive me around so that I could get some work done.

So like that support can come from a, a variety of different ways. Maybe you do meal orders, like so you can have time. Like we've, 

Brad Crowell: we've done that, especially when we have, we know we've got an insane week coming up. Like for agency. Many. ...(Lesley: Yep. Uh, we, our meals are delivered.) We pre-plan ordering all the meals that week because we know there's not a chance I can even take 20 minutes to make lunch, we need to just sit down, eat and get back to it. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah. So, so anyways, I really hope that what she said there just like really inspires you to like, who can I ask for help? And then also, I don't know, practicing I don't do overwhelm. I don't do overwhelm because I don't do overwhelm, so I'm gonna do this.

[00:15:00] Like, I love that. What did you 

Brad Crowell: love? Yeah. So, uh, she said, uh, she actually, she specifically said, what's so cool is customer, that is, that customer experience is universal. And what I found really interesting is that she actually worked for, uh, the company called experience.com, uh, and she was their chief experience officer for the website, rebuild up experience.com.

So think about that, like she has to be super expert at this in order for the company whose job is experiences to hire her as their CEO chief Experience 

Lesley Logan: Officer. Yeah, but I, I think they call it like a ux. 

Brad Crowell: Yeah, it's ux, yeah. Yeah. Ux, ui. Uh, and, uh, so, but she was the, she was basically in charge of the experience of the rebranding of their website, and that's pretty amazing.

Uh, she said what's so cool is that customer experience is universal. Um, she believes that the industry should [00:16:00] rethink how to improve customer experiences. And, and what she was talking about was, uh, you know, well, it's applicable to any industry. So think about your, if you're a, in Pilates or you're running a fitness, uh, business, how can you improve your customer experience?

Um, she mentioned these kind of problems. Um, new businesses, uh, are constantly seeking new customers instead of actually. Uh, trying to improve the experience of the customers that they already fought so hard to get the first time around. Mm-hmm. We have this weird approach of like, okay, um, I just need to get two 10 new customers a month.

Well, what if you got 10 new customers the first month and then you kept them so that the next month you don't have to get 10 more? Right. And you can really do that with their experience in whatever 

Lesley Logan: busy practice. Well, also, also she has said like, the whole point of having customers is so they get you more customers.

So if you actually focus on the ones you got, then they'll be so excited to [00:17:00] share their experience with other people. And then you can have more customers and you don't have to focus on both things. You can focus on one thing and the other, and that the results of that are more 

Brad Crowell: customers. Yeah. So actually that, that's, uh, exactly one of the quotes that she has in her epigraph mm-hmm.

Uh, in one of her books and epigraph is the quote at the end of a chapter. She quotes a guy named Shiv Singh, who is the CXO, is not ceo, it's CXO Chief Experience Officer at LendingTree. Uh, and he said "the purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers." Hmm. So think about that. Like that is the ultimate.

Um, if you, if you ever go and you study the customer journey, the final step is that they are, uh, basically out there shouting from the rooftops on your behalf. Right. That is like the journey. If you can get them through all of the, you know, the five steps of the customer journey, the fifth step is [00:18:00] that they're helping refer people to you, right?

And so, uh, um, that, that's exactly right, what you just said. Mm-hmm. I love it. Yeah, I think it's great. And you can help get them through, um, those other parts of the journey by cultivating an experience that they just fall in love with. So, yeah.

All right, so finally let's talk about those, Be It action items.

What bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted action items can we take away from your convo with Brittany Hodak? Um, basically, uh, she summed up, uh, in two really helpful things. Yes. The first thing she said is, be kind. Yes. ...(Lesley: Who do these come from though?) Um, well be kind was her kid. 

Lesley Logan: Both of 'em. Her kid, her kid said I think you should say be kind and listen. Listen. 

Brad Crowell: Oh yeah. Four words. Four words. That's exactly right. So her, her son, who, I don't know how old he is. She didn't 

Lesley Logan: say. Five and a half now, but at the [00:19:00] time he's probably four. Right. 

Brad Crowell: Hey mom, I think you should say you should tell everyone to be kind and listen.

And then he apparently ran out of the room. Um, that's right. That's amazing. So her first, uh, uh, be it action item is to be kind and she said it's applicable to everything in life. Um, she also had a good laugh and said, did he just write four words, which is my entire book and I wrote a hundred thousand.

Yeah. Um, even if you don't want to be kind, it pays you to be kind. Right? So you have an ulterior motive. PS for people, especially if you're in customer service or you're in the service industry in general and you have someone who is frustrating you, uh, it will pay off in dividends if you are kind. Um, You know, and she said it, you know, it, it's just not gonna serve you in the long term.

We'll have the cutting, sarcastic, snarky, you know, remarks that, that go through our head, or the things that like the frustration builds up to. But if, if there is, if you have the chance to take a breath prior [00:20:00] to responding and you know, be kind instead of, uh, frustrated, then it's gonna really help your, their experience, and hopefully you can win them back over.

Now, there are times I think, when you should be drawing a line in the sand, and you can definitely fire clients. I'm not saying that you should just bend over for everybody. You know, like, like, uh, uh. Often there is a miscommunication or the customer is frustrated about something that maybe wasn't clear to them.

And then as soon as you explain it to them, they like chill and everything's okay. Right. But there is that moment of like, you might feel like you're being attacked. Well, and also maybe you can diffuse it. 

Lesley Logan: So also like I always think some of those things as like, it does feel like an attack because I get it, y'all, it feels like an attack, but it's not, it's not personal.

It's like their experience. And oftentimes what I do is I'm like, oh, if someone like, how, where did we, like, let's review, did we actually make sure that we've told this [00:21:00] person seven times? Like we think we told 'em seven times. Like did we actually tell 'em seven times about this thing? And then it's like, oh, you know what?

If they skipped. These emails, I've only read this one, then they didn't see it. So how can we like update it so it's just a bit more, more clear. And so that doesn't mean I have to like bend over backwards for that person, but I can listen to that feedback and use that feedback to increase the, enhance the experience for future people.

And I can be kind and say, thank you so much. I'm going to re-review my systems in this place. Yeah. You know, and so like, it, it's, please don't give, I'm a people pleaser because you'll, your business will actually please nobody, uh, that way, 

Brad Crowell: you know? Yes. But like, and I do, like I said, I do think boundaries are important, but we just had an experience, um, recently that, um, I still have a hard time with.

Um, we started including text messaging into our customer service experience, our customer experience. So sometimes we text like lots of people at the same time and we use our CRM to do that and all the things. [00:22:00] Well, the very first time that we ever sent out a mass text, we had dozens of people. Do what?

What do they do? They, if they don't want text messages? What are you trained to do these days? You reply with the word stop. Well, it used to be that you needed to reply stop in all caps, right? So like, now you can just type stop. If it's alone, that'll, that'll trigger. But we sent out a text message, and I'm not kidding.

A dozen people replied, stop in all caps. And I literally felt like they were shouting at me. I was like, oh my God. Like what I what? And I was like really having a hard time to chill out and put myself in their shoes. What are they doing? They're just getting a text and, and they're probably not pissed.

They're probably not angry, but because they're replying at all caps, I felt like they were shouting. You know? And I was like, whoa. Right. And then I thought, oh wait, I do that too. Like, you know, or I'll reply to an email unsubscribe, you know, and it's not personal and I'm not like pissed at them.

Maybe though. It's crazy is I'm, I've actually been subscribed with more than [00:23:00] one email to an email list, right? Yes. And I'm like, damn it, I'm tired of getting two of the same emails. So one of them, I'll say, unsubscribe. 

Lesley Logan: Right. But if you...(Llesley: you don't say it, you just hit the button.) 

Brad Crowell: No, no. You can reply back like some, sometimes you just reply back.

Yeah. Anyway, my point is like, you know, taking it personally, uh, that it, it might not be personal. If you can put that in their, you know, yourself in their shoes and see what they're doing, it might be as like, insignificant as them be like, oh, I don't wanna make sure get text messages from these people, but I'm happy to get their emails.

So they just replied Stop to the text. 

Lesley Logan: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. And also we also texted everybody on Thanksgiving. So people were like, 

Brad Crowell: what the fuck? Yeah. I forgot to put your name in that text. That was hilarious. Uhhuh. So Noah knew everyone was like, hi Brad. I don't know who you are, but uh, thanks for the really nice.

Happy Thanksgiving message, but maybe you got the wrong number. 

Lesley Logan: Anyway, we basically summed up my Be It takeaway with this whole thing. Oh, I just did. We did, but I also think like, you know, [00:24:00] be kind and listen what, uh, if you, it's the only takeaway you take from this entire episode that is good enough. For today, I think.

Um, so we, we love Brittany, you guys, her book is out. You can buy it anywhere books are sold. And if you did buy her book, um, um, when after you're done leaving us a review, uh, go to Amazon and leave her a review. And here's the deal. Um, it is if you've ever done a project that takes over a year of putting it together and putting it out in the world, the reality is, is that things like podcasts and books, they only get sold and seen by other people if reviews are happening. So take a moment to do it because I bet you you'll have something in life where you want that karma returned and it will come back to you tenfold. I'm sending it out to you right now. Um, I'm Lesley Logan.

And I'm Brad Crowell. Thank you so much for joining us today. You are incredible human beings. I am so fucking grateful for you and I love doing this podcast. It's a dream. Uh, so I, can I be honest? There's so many fucking amazing guests coming up. [00:25:00] You're not, don't miss an episode cause you're gonna be like, what?

Um, so at any rate, ...(Lesley: how are they gonna be?) What, what? Share this episode however you know how. And until next time, Be It Till You See It. Bye for now.

That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram.

I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. 

Brad Crowell: It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan and me, Brad 

Lesley Logan: Crowell.

It is produced, edited by the Epic team at Disenyo. Our 

Brad Crowell: theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music, and our branding by designer and artist Gianfranco Cioffi. 

Lesley Logan: [00:26:00] Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals and Ximena Velazquez for our transcriptions. 

Brad Crowell: Also to Angelina Herico for adding all the content to our website.

And finally to Meredith Crowell for keeping us all on point and on time.

Lesley interviews Brittany Hodak, a famous keynote speaker and author of "Creating Superfans” on this episode. She shares what inspired her to write the book and some personal anecdotes to take your business to the next level and build a loyal customer base. 

If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at [email protected] .

And as always, if you’re enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.

In this episode you will learn about:

• Brittany Hodak's journey of writing her book, Creating Superfans.
• Author identity and how to cope with overwhelm
• The impact of Creating Superfans on different industries
• The role of customer satisfaction in generating referrals and ultimately growing a business.
• The value of audience feedback and adaptability in content creation

Episode References/Links:

• Follow Brittany on IG
• Creating Superfans
• Page Two Books
• Time Genius Online Course by Marie Forleo
• Shiv Singh on IG
• The Big Leap by Gay Hendrix

Guest Bio:

Brittany Hodak is an award-winning entrepreneur, author, and customer experience speaker who has delivered keynotes across the globe to organizations including American Express and the United Nations. She has worked with some of the world’s biggest brands and entertainers, including Walmart, Disney, Katy Perry, and Dolly Parton. She founded and scaled an entertainment startup to eight figures before exiting, and she is the former Chief Experience Officer of Experience.com. Forbes said of her debut book, Creating Superfans, “If you have customers, you need this book. Period.”

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox.

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• Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!
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Episode Transcript:

Brittany Hodak: [00:00:00] I wanna take what I think are all the most important business lessons and package them in a way to where whether somebody is like 17, starting their first job or 70. Whether they love business books or have never read one in their life, will pick up this book and feel like they're having a conversation with a friend.

I wanted to feel like you had a friend who was like, Hey, here's all the stuff that's worked really well for me that I've seen work really well for other people, and the research to back up why that works.

Lesley Logan: Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear.

Each week, [00:01:00] my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started.

All right, Be It babe, I will get ready cuz this is like a podcast where two friends who have never met, basically just share amazing stories back and forth. I am so excited for you to hear the amazing words of Brittany Hodak, the author of Creating Superfans. Um, whether or not you are in business or you want to be, this book is really fun and I want you to hear her journey.

So even if you don't wanna read the book, which you're gonna wanna read it at the end of this podcast, I want you, if you've ever wanted to write a book or start a podcast or start something that has content creation that's gonna take some time. I want you to hear her journey. I want you to hear how she, the twists and turns that were in there.

And then also like what she considered when she was bringing this to [00:02:00] fruition. Because you can see yourself in this story, and that's the point of this podcast, is just like you can see yourself in the different stories of our guests. Also, I just really genuinely think you're going to love her and she is the first guest to quote her child at the Be It Pods, uh, Be It action item.

If you wanna hear that, that is a reason to listen to this. But at any rate, you're gonna love every word that comes out of Brittany's mouth. I'm just so grateful to have been introduced to her by someone else so I can bring her to you. And our agency members got to experience all of her amazing words already, and so amazing people like her are who we love to surround ourselves with because they make us better.

And I am excited to bring her around you cuz you're going to love it and Be It Till You See It

And stick around to the very end because we got some outtakes that's been happening. There's always outtakes. Um, and the team does collect them for bloopers on the YouTube, but uh, we're adding them into the end of the pod because you know what you need to know that we are not perfect. You're not perfect, and we're enjoying the process and we are enjoying that.

[00:03:00] So have a good laugh on our behalf. Love you.

All right. Be it babes. I am so excited. Thank goodness for amazing women who do amazing introductions because today's guest is actually an intro from a past guest that we had, and, um, I'm so grateful that Hillary connected us because I one Brittany Hodak is our guest today.

I'm just gonna like say your name. So I'm gonna say this like fangirling right now. I love your book. Creating Superfans is just so fun, so fun to read. I read it on the beach in Mexico, like I made my whole team read it and I'm just, I think what you're doing is actually breaking down things to make things easier for people to have the business they wanna have with the right fans they wanna have.

And so thank you Brittany for being here. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you're rocking at these 

Brittany Hodak: days? Well, thank you so much for having me, Lesley. I'm so excited to be here, and I'm so glad that you loved the book. These days, I'm out there spreading the word about this book. It was my baby.

I worked on it for so long. It came out into the world earlier this year in January, and I am just so [00:04:00] excited that people are discovering the message. I am obsessed with customer experience. I think it's the most fun, most important. Honestly most exciting thing about business and I am on a mission to help indoctrinate everybody else to feel that exact same way.

Lesley Logan: Yeah, I think that's a, it's almost like the thing that people think about last, which is so weird. They're like, okay, this is the idea I have and I wanna do it. And then they, they don't actually see it from the user's perspective. And it can be as simple as you guys, it could be as simple as your customer experience is like the scheduling tool.

Like nothing drives me like more insane than not having one. Cuz when I wanna book with you. I just wanna book with you. And then if your scheduling tool sucks, I can't. So, um, so I think that's really cool. Yes. So important. We have so much we can get into, but first I just wanna say like, you wrote a book.

Was that like just the craziest thing to endure? Did you have to quit everything to get it done? How long did it take you? 

Brittany Hodak: Well, so it's [00:05:00] actually kind of a funny story. We always like think we have our plans and then life lets us know otherwise. I had started writing this book at the end of 2019 and my second son was born in May of 2020, so I knew that I was gonna be too pregnant to fly for like the month and a half or so before he was born.

So I had my calendar full of keynote gigs from January to March of 2020. And then I was like, I'm gonna spend March and April finishing this book. Like it's gonna be great because my then three year old was in daycare, so I was like, oh, it'll be perfect. And then of course the world shut down and that did not happen.

And so then, not only was I like home with a three-year-old every day, but then when my son was born, I was home with both of them because you know, back then, yeah, everything was still like so uncertain about Covid. We were like, we don't wanna send the older one back to preschool. So I got no writing done, and then at the beginning of 2021 a speaking client of mine who had hired me a bunch of time was like, please, please, please come help [00:06:00] us relaunch our brand. They were rebranding to experience.com and they wanted me to come be their Chief Experience officer. And I was like, well, that does sound very much in alignment with what I do and what I care about, so I spent most of 2021 at experience.com. And so it wasn't until like the end of 2021 that I got back to writing the book. And when I did that I was like, oh, I wanna rewrite everything. I wanna redo all of it. So I ended up writing over a hundred thousand words for this book that is like 57,000 words long.

So there is so much that I wrote so much that I did the. First draft that I sent to my publisher, I sent in like January or February of 2022. And then we were working on it all year long. It printed in October of 2022, and then it was in stores in January of 2023. So it was a really, really long process.

And now every time somebody tells me they wanna write a book, I'm like, have you thought of starting a podcast? [00:07:00] Because there's merit to that too. 

Lesley Logan: I, 100% understand this, and I thank you for sharing that because I think sometimes people. I think most of our listeners have a story similar where they had this plan, they had this beautiful plan in Covid or whatever, and then they had another opportunity that they took and they almost get upset at themselves for not doing the original plan or giving, not giving themselves base space and grace and like obviously you taking that job at experience.com allowed you to even get more ideas, more experience for how you want this book to land. And so your book was born when it was supposed to be born and also at a time when people can have customers that can experience something, you know, and all those things. So I think, um, I think it's just really nice to hear from someone that it's not a perfect journey and like there are some detours and they actually enhance the thing that you wanna do.

And yes, as someone who wrote a book 10 years ago, uh, it's only in this last like few months and I'm like, okay, I could [00:08:00] fried another one. Like it's say, gimme 10 years to go. 

You know, I think I'm healed. I'm from, I'm not journey. 

Brittany Hodak: Yes. Well it's so funny cuz people are already asking me like, when's your next book coming out?

And I'm like, uh, 2027. Mark your calendars because it's like once you write it, I feel like, first of all, I feel like right now we're at this moment where there's so many people who are like, I'm gonna write a book. And they wanna do it as like a business card and they don't put a ton of thought into it.

Or they hire somebody who does a lot of the work and there's nothing wrong with that at all, but, like those people aren't looking at the long game like they're saying like, I wanna have a book, not, I wanna have her book and promote it for years and years and years. (Lesley: Yeah). Like part of why I was so excited for this book to come out in January is so that all year long, I can call it my new book.

Like my new book that came out this year because you know, as customers when you find out about something, it's new to you. [00:09:00] Like it doesn't matter how old or new it is. Like I just started watching some series on Netflix the other day, uh, called You with Penn Badgley, which is like very fascinating.

He's a serial killer. It's. Very ...(Lesley: Oh, oh I was up my alley. I'm excited.) Yeah. No, it's a, it's a really good show. Um, but I was like telling some of my friends and they were like, yeah, Brittany, the show is like six years old. And I was like, I know, but it's new to me cuz none of you ever told me about it, even though you apparently were all enjoying it for years.

So it's the same with the book. Like, I wanted to write a book that would be really approachable and really accessible and feel really timeless so that if somebody was reading it when it came out, or if somebody's reading it in like 10 years, it still feels like it's really, you know, applicable to what's happening.

Lesley Logan: Yeah. I mean like the, um, As I was reading it, what I loved so much is that there, there are so many different things you can take out of it. Like I said earlier, we're having people on the team read it. They don't actually run the company, but if they can understand the process, you talk about like with apathy, like I literally [00:10:00] have like on my computer, it's like a post.

Like where can apathy like are you like, are you like that for apathy? And so it's like I just want the team to understand that process so they can go in this part right here that I'm responsible for, this is where apathy can happen, you know? And I want the people on the team to think about that.

And that doesn't matter if people are using AI now or if people are doing things in whatever metaverse they're trying to force us all into. Or if it's like in real life that is, that word is transcendent. So I think you did a really good job there. Um, and that way it can be your new book all year long, but it could be someone's new favorite book next year, you know?

Brittany Hodak: Well, thank you. Yes. I hope lots of people will continue to discover it. To discover it. The thing that's been so amazing. And like so touching and so exciting is how many people have told me kind of like you, like I read the book and then I bought it from my team, or I read the book and I ordered it for my clients.

Or people are telling me like, oh, my friend her who heard about it from her friend who heard about it from her friend told me [00:11:00] to get this book. And so it's just been really, really cool. It's, you know, like watching your little baby go out there into the world and make ripples. So yeah, it's been really fun.

Lesley Logan: So I. I wanna go to like, cuz it's like a whole new hat to wear, right? Like, you have, you, you have had incredible journey and we don't, I mean we could talk about your incredible journey for hours cuz you've just done so many amazing things. But you know, going from like, Like chief experience officer of all these amazing places to I'm gonna put myself in a room and write a book that takes like a, that's a whole different identity. Um, was it an easy identity to step into? You're like, yep, I can sit down and write this book, I'm so ready. Or did you struggle with any mindset things going on there? 

Brittany Hodak: So I think a little bit of both depending on the day.

Um, I have always loved books so, so much like when I was a baby, I took books into my crib with me. Like it's funny, I was a baby in the eighties where it was like how many pillows [00:12:00] and padded things can we put in the cribs just like these little, like sleep death traps. Um, but I never wanted to take toys into my crib with me.

I always wanted to take books and I had my favorite books and I just have always loved love books. So I've wanted to be an author like my whole life. Like my mom was sending me pictures of my school book where it's like every year you had to say what you wanted to be. Mine was always like author and astronaut.

Like, that was what I wanted to do. So I'd been like ready. And I think because of that I had put so much pressure on myself, like I'd built it up over like decades and decades and decades and decades to where when it was time to write it, I was like, it has to be so good. And I also didn't ask for nearly as much help early on as I should have, and I worked with an amazing publishing company called Page Two and they really helped me through like the different rounds of edits and design and thinking about like how we wanted the book to feel and look. But early on I was like, I have to do this myself. Like I thought like to be [00:13:00] an author it meant like you're doing every single part of it entirely on your own.

And then I realized that was like very unsustainable and luckily I have an amazing chief of staff named Alex on my team who was able to like get into the draft and be like, oh, I think this point would do really well like in this chapter that you're writing or, oh, you kind of talk about this and you say like research to follow.

Like do you want me to give you some options for research that would really like back up this point? So between Alex and the team at Page Two, I quickly realize that like if you're gonna step into that author identity, it means asking for help and having a really great team around you, which I think is honestly true of like all things in life that are worth doing.

Right? 

Lesley Logan: Yeah. I was just thinking in like, Um, I had just interviewed someone, uh, earlier today and she said, like I said, what are the five mistakes you see people making in like their business? And she said, oh, trying to do it all themselves. Like, I think so often people, and people also project this on, I'm sure this happens to you.

It happens other times. Like, oh my gosh, you do so much. How do you do it all yourself? And I'm like, [00:14:00] I really don't. Like when our websites went down, they were down for. Whole six days. Like, no, like six days, like is like 1999. No, no way of doing. You couldn't go on our website. They did not exist. And um, people are like, are you doing okay?

And I'm like, well, I can't actually fix them. So I'm doing pretty great cuz I have a really awesome team. I trust them a lot. And I'm over here just like fielding the customer service stuff cuz I can actually talk to people. I know how to do that, but I can't, can't stress about those things. And so I think people will look at you or look at people that they admire and go, oh, they did it all on their own, even though you have a whole team. So I think it's great that you were able to lean into them and see how they could enhance the whole experience too. 

Brittany Hodak: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I think it's so key for people to have those teams around them, whatever that looks like, whether you're just starting out and that means you have like a virtual assistant a few hours a week, or maybe you have full-time help, but y you've gotta have that.

[00:15:00] And something that I wish I had done years ago, uh, you know, Marie Forleo. ...(Lesley: Oh yes. Oh yes.) So for year, like a couple of years, people were telling me like, oh, I took Time Genius, which is one of the courses she offers. And like, it was so transformational. And I just always thought like, isn't it about time management?

How could time management course be transformational? So I never did it. And then right after my book came out, I was flying all over the place. I had, I think I had like 17 events in the first eight weeks of the year. Like it was bonkers. Oh gosh. It was like, my gosh, I would wake up and I was like, what city am I in?

What city am I going to? I actually had an Uber driver take me to the wrong airport once because I was somewhere in Pennsylvania and to get me to the next place, it was like, I was going to another city, but I told him the wrong one. I said like Lancaster instead of, 

oh my goodness. ...(Brittany: Something else.

Lansdale 

or something else.) Yeah. So I was in Hershey, Pennsylvania and I went to the wrong airport to get to like, I don't [00:16:00] know, Boston or wherever I was going. So anyway, it was stressful. Yeah. Dallas, I don't even know where I was going. Um, so anyway, I was like very overwhelmed and so I signed up for Time Genius, which is like an online course.

And at the beginning there was something that Marie Forleo said that totally was a paradigm shift for me that I was like, oh my gosh, I wish I had heard this years ago. So I've been repeating it everywhere I can, and it was just the simple mantra of "I don't do overwhelm." Like, so when you find yourself starting to get overwhelmed because of time, because of your schedule, because what you have to do, just reminding yourself that it is a choice to be overwhelmed or not overwhelmed because worrying in the moment about like all the stuff that you can't do right now, I. Is not beneficial. Like it doesn't help that task get done better. It's like not great for your nervous system. It's not great for your mental state. Like it's just not great. So when you find yourself starting to like freak out about all of those things, you know, kind of telling yourself [00:17:00] like I. Right. I know and I'm gonna address those when I have time to address those, but right now I'm making dinner, or right now I'm playing with my kids or doing this client meeting or whatever.

So those four words, I don't do overwhelm, have like changed the way I think about my schedule and I wish I had heard them years ago. 

Lesley Logan: I am, I love this so much. My brain, my brain was like thinking of something else that this all kind of goes to. So I'll, I'll take everyone on the journey my brain just went to, first of all.

Yes, I love that because you, your brain doesn't wanna be in dissonance. So like when you say that, and if you say, especially if you say out loud, like you're, you can't start doing overwhelming stuff cuz you just said, I don't do that. The other thing is, um, a lot of times, um, As we are going outside of our comfort zone, which like 17 trips and like so few weeks and all these things, like if you're not used to doing those things, it's like outside of the comfort zone.

And yes, it's exciting. Yes, it's everything you want, but there's the book, the Big Leap with Gay Hendrix. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but he talks about the things that we do to upper limit ourselves. One of those things that's worrying [00:18:00] or stressing or starting to list all the things that are going wrong.

Like just because something is going right and so you can start to do this stuff and by saying, I don't do overwhelm, you can kind of stop that whole upper limiting moment and get yourself into some sort of present being like, I am cooking right now and when I'm done cooking I can go think about that thing.

That is overwhelming, but I'm not doing that right now. I love that. What a great, what a great course that's, I'm sure there's more to it, but that's really helpful. 

Brittany Hodak: Yeah, there was a lot more that was like literally like the first five minutes and I don't even know if I finished the whole thing. I'm really bad at like signing up for things and then doing part of them, but that alone was worth the cost of the course for me. 

Lesley Logan: Okay. I, um, I want to kind of go to, like, I wanna go back to this reason for writing the book because wanting to be an author is like, you know, Admirable and it's amazing. There should be, I hope there's more and more authors and more and more books out there.

I want us to all go back to reading them. And I love that this is a hard back. It's my first hard back in years, so thank you. Uh, but what were you, [00:19:00] like, why did you wanna write this book? What was the, because you could do a podcast or you could just go into a bunch of interviews, I'm sure you have. So like, what was it that the book was solving a problem for that you wanted to have out there?

Brittany Hodak: Well, the answer is twofold. One is, you know, I never planned on becoming a keynote speaker. It kind of was like an accidental career that I fell into. Um, I was an entrepreneur. I ran my own business for several years, and because we were invited to go on Shark Tank, I started getting all of these speaking requests.

And the more I did it, the more I got feedback from people saying like, you should really do this more. You're so good at this. And. So like, one reason is when you are a keynote speaker, it really helps to have a book because it helps position you as a thought leader. It helps you sort of crystallize your thoughts.

It helps you put something out there that people can be like, oh, okay, I get it. I know what you're about. So that was part of it. Um, but really the other part was, so I, I read all the time. I mean, I read like dozens and dozens of books a year. My husband reads like a book a [00:20:00] year, and he doesn't like business books.

And so many of my friends are like, I've never read a business book. I've never read like a personal development book, a professional development book, and like, those are my jam. Like I don't read like fantasy novels or you know, Sci-fi, but I love a good non-fiction book. And so as I was talking to people who told me that they weren't readers, I started to ask them Why, like, why don't you read business books?

And people are like, they're so boring. There's never any real takeaways, like, it's just such a waste of time. Or I try to read but I fall asleep. So my mission was to write a business book that didn't feel like a business book. I was like, I wanna take. What I think are all the most important business lessons and package them in a way to where whether somebody is like 17, starting their first job or 70.

Whether they love business books or have never read one in their life, will pick up this book and feel like [00:21:00] they're having a conversation with a friend. I wanted to feel like you had a friend who was like, Hey, here's all the stuff that's worked really well for me that I've seen work really well for other people in their research to back up why that works.

And so that was why I really wanted to write the book, was to be able to prove even through some of the creative choices, you know, like you were talking about, like all the song titles and using color and using like funny pop culture references. I wanted to prove that you could make a business book feel fun and exciting and like something you would recommend to your girlfriend.

Lesley Logan: Yeah, I 

mean, well done. You did it. Um, y'all, if you're, if you're not watching us on YouTube, cuz her, her book is in the, in the background. Um, let me just say like, I literally laughed as I was reading the book because the different chapters are, I think one of 'em is, uh, a title that we've made an, uh, Pilates class on OPC.

So I was like, oh, this girl's my jam. But you, you know, I think that you hit something really important. You ask people questions about why they didn't do [00:22:00] the thing that you were wanting to create. And I think that's a great thing for anyone. Maybe you don't wanna write a book, but maybe you wanna start a podcast or maybe you want to, when we, actually, I'll just do a real ex life example.

Brad wanted me to create onlinepilatesclasses.com. It's a pilates platform. And I was like, well, they already exist. Like I'm on one, I'm on the number, I'm on the the top one. And so why would we create something that's already out there and. So I just started asking people, do you use it? Like, what do you like about it?

What don't you? And people were saying things like, well, I have it, but like, I don't do this, or I don't. And I started to figure out like what was the reason for not having it or why they weren't using it. And I was like, well, if I was gonna create something like it, how can I solve those things, those objections.

And so it's very similar and it makes it a, it makes it a lot of fun cuz now I'm solving a puzzle, like how do I create the thing that they, they could like, you know? So, um, that's a really cool experience like, journey that you went through to get the book out there. Um, and so then what are you [00:23:00] like now that you've got this book out,

I mean, you birthed the book, it's out there like that probably had to feel so crazy cuz as you mentioned, you've been working on it for years. Um, what are you excited about, uh, this juncture? Like where are you going with this all next? 

Brittany Hodak: Well, I'm just so excited to get feedback from people, people who work in all kinds of different industries who have reached out to me and have said we've changed the way we do our patient experience at our hospitals, or we've changed the way we do the onboarding of our employees.

Somebody told me that they work at a prison and they're like, we need to think about the way that all of the prison employees treat our inmates. And so, ...(Lesley: oh my gosh, Brittany) all these areas. I like never in a million years like would have thought like I was writing a book for this. I met somebody the other day that does industrial concrete polishing, which was, I'm not gonna lie an industry I did not know existed.

Um, so it's really fun to hear people say, just like you're saying, like, oh, I felt like you [00:24:00] wrote this book for us. The cool thing about customer experience is it is universal. Like if you have customers or want to this is important and like you should be thinking about this. And so it's been really, really fun to hear all those stories and honestly, I just am excited to continue spreading the word about the book and hopefully helping people change the way they think about their customers and make more money.

Lesley Logan: Yeah, and also like when you, and, and, and, and also for those of you who are like, are like, oh, scared of money. The more money you make, it means the more lives you've changed, the more hearts you've like helped. Like it's ...(Brittany: the more people you've helped.) It's, I know, I mean like, I think people can get a little like, um, I'm making money and it's like, especially like the, some of the women I talked to and I'm like, profit is not a bad word actually.

Uh, of the curse words that are out there, profit is not one of them. And also like, it's a sign of helping people and like, Every person listening to this podcast wants to help people in a very specific way. And if you figure this out, that you've, you've so well written, [00:25:00] you figure out the customer experience so well, um, you get to help more.

I mean, one of the ti I just got this question in my dms today. And it was like, um, should I, what are your thoughts on referral programs? And I was like, well, hello, I don't coach in the dms, you know, blah, blah, blah. Um, uh, but I said, just so you know, like you really just can't pay people to talk about you.

So if this is like, this can't be the first thing that you're thinking about when it comes to referrals, and it's because people want referrals, but they think they have to reward people for those referrals and like, There people were referring people to things well before rewards programs were out there y'all.

So like that's what I think is so great about your book is it actually helps people see, like you don't actually have to pay the people. You don't have to come up with some great, awesome discount for them. You can actually change the customer experience, so they can't wait to talk about you. 

Brittany Hodak: Well, thank you for saying that.

And yeah, it's a hundred percent true. It's, I think anytime somebody shares a referral [00:26:00] offer or an affiliate offer, there's always a little bit of hesitation of like, is this a hundred percent genuine or is this person sharing it because they like it and they're gonna make 15%? And so there's always that like push pull.

Um, and it's funny, like I actually. Is like a little bit random. Um, I, I took my car in, uh, yesterday and like, just for an oil change and they always do this inspection like where, you know, they like send a video of like all the stuff that's wrong. And so the guy was like, oh, you're gonna need to replace your back brakes and you're gonna need to replace your front brakes.

And there was like something in the middle of the car that I'd never heard of, like an arm or some, some sort of arm. Um, ...(Lesley: you're like, is the car gonna run right?) And I was like, my car is six years old and it's got like 40,000 miles. Like, it's not like, It's not like what I would think of, my mind is like an old car.

So you know, I'm in there for the like hundred dollars oil change and filter change and whatever, and they're like, oh yeah, so like, these are the services we recommend, and it was gonna be like $2,300. And so I immediately was like, I. I [00:27:00] should just buy a new car. Like I don't wanna spend $2,300 on this car that I like, don't even like, um, that I just got cause you know, I like needed a car cuz I'm, I moved from New York to Tennessee and I needed a car and that was, that was like, okay, here's like a dealership, I'll get this car. Um, so I was like, oh, I should buy a Tesla. And I went on the website on my phone. Like, I was just like, oh, I wonder if Tesla has an SUV.

Like if they've got to, right. And like 10 minutes later I was like, oh, I just bought a Tesla. It's like, I didn't even mean to like, I was just like, oh, like I wonder what it would cost. And it was like, oh, I, wow. I can like do these wheels. I like this. I like this. So I literally bought like a very expensive car, or s u v, like, like on a whim because everybody who has a Tesla loves their Tesla. Yeah. Like it's all about the evangelism, it's all about that advocacy. And it's so funny cuz I was texting my husband, um, cuz they, this is another very annoying thing about the car company, even though it was [00:28:00] my car when we went together, they put his name and they were like, oh, like we're gonna finance it together.

And I was like, I don't know, this is my car. And every single time I do anything for that car even though I've like asked them to change this, it's always under his name. So I'll go in and I'm like, Hey, I'm Brittany. I'm here for an oil change. And they're like, oh, we don't have it, Brittany, could they be under another name?

And I'm like, is it still under Jeff? Like, is it, have you not... You're like this customer experience, you just, just so you know, I don't feel seen at all. 

Yeah, exactly. Like, exactly. So it was so annoying. So I, I was just like, oh, I'm just gonna buy a Tesla. But it's funny because, um, as I was doing it, I was like, wait, I think they have a referral program.

So I texted one of my friends and I was like, Dave, do you have a referral? Like I want to like get you credit or whatever. And he was like, oh, I don't even know, like, let me check. And he went into his Tesla app and he was like, it looks like they're only doing it now for solar panels. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry.

And he was like, but you should definitely buy one cuz they're awesome. And I was like, okay. [00:29:00] And then when I, my husband's at South by Southwest to speak, so I was like, babe, I bought a Tesla. And he was like, did you go test drive one? And I was like, no, but I've like been in some, um, like, I'm sure it'll be great.

Like, look how pretty it is. 

Lesley Logan: So, but you know, okay. I love this story so much because first of all, here's these people who are like, oh, we're gonna upsell this person on these things. And, and you're like, if I'm missing $2,300, I may as well just buy the, the car that I really want. And like, obviously the experience with them isn't good enough.

That makes you wanna keep coming back to them. So you're like, I'm just gonna get this thing over here that everyone raves about. And, um, I, I too, I mean, they, that's what they want. They want us all buying cars off of the internet now anyways. I mean, that's why there's a vending machine of cars by the freeway that I drive past.

Um, so, but I also think that's true. Like we, uh, you know, obviously people ask me about Pilates equipment and I, I have to say, I'm like, look, I will be completely honest with you, um, the company that I'm going to say I like, I am also an authorized person to say that I like it. So I actually [00:30:00] k will not tell you that things, but I'll be really honest why I like this one and I will get paid if you use this thing.

So just so you are cl fully aware of like all the things around that. Um, obviously my joy and my love for it extends past like the getting paid for it, but it's true, people do wanna make sure that the referral is for a good reason and, and genuine because, and also the people that are now, like nowadays, I think a lot of people are afraid to sell their friends on things after like, you know, the eighties and nineties of MLMs selling their friends of baskets 

Brittany Hodak: and makeup, tens of MLMs in the 2000 twenties of MLMs.

Right. I know they a bunch of people who still have some of those ugly leggings. Oh, were they called LuLaRoe? 

Lesley Logan: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Talk about, talk about a UX experience for their sellers. That's a word. That's a interesting documentary to watch y'all. Um, but it's. It's so true and, and I, and I, I get why people ask like, what are the best referral programs?

Cuz I do understand that they're like trying to get their clients to talk more about the [00:31:00] things. But what I've always believed, and this comes from the first person to ever talk to me about when I was a Pilates instructor, this teacher came up to me and he said, do you want one of the best advice you could ever have for business?

And I said, sure, tell me. He says, get focus on getting one client and making them like your best number one client, and if you get them all the results that they want quickly, you will have a full book of clients. And I was like, okay. So I got this my first client and they're like, oh, I have to reschedule next week.

I'm like, can you come Thursday? Can you come? I like, just like I like took that advice to home and then sure enough, they just started referring me people, because people noticed they were standing taller, noticed that they had more flex, like their friends noticed that they were more active, so their friends were just asking them, Hey, what are you doing?

They weren't like passing my cards around, and so I think we forget that it's more about the actual people we're helping in the moment and less about the people that we haven't seen yet. You know, like we don't know them yet. And if you can just change your focus, it really can enhance the business and you don't have to [00:32:00] come up with point cards.

Brittany Hodak: Yeah. And I think it's kind of, you know, it reminds me of my, my kids. So I've got a two year old and a five year old little boy, and. You know, like most kids, my five year old, like all like wants a new toy and it's like the most important thing. He's like, I want this toy, I want this toy, I want this toy, I want this toy.

He gets it and he is happy for like, I don't know, 12 seconds and then it's about the next toy. And he doesn't appreciate the toys he has because he wants that next toy. And I'm trying to like, you know, help him out of that mindset. But it reminds me of the way so many people treat their customers. It's like, you're like, okay, if I could only get 10 customers this month, and then you get your 10 customers and all of a sudden it's like, well, I should get 20 next month. And instead of taking great care of those 10 that you have, you're trying to like look ahead to the next, look ahead to the next. So treating every customer as the most important customer you have does exactly what you just described.

Every time. Mm-hmm. And that's why one of the epigraphs, which [00:33:00] that epigraph is a word that I learned when I was writing my book and epigraph is the like quote at the beginning of the chapter when you quote somebody else. One of the epigraphs in my book is by a guy named Shiv Singh, who's uh, right now he's the CXO at Lending Tree, but he's worked for a ton of giant companies in his life.

And that epigraph is the purpose of a business is to create a customer who creates customers. And that's exactly what you just described. And if you follow that advice, everything else takes care of itself. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah, yeah. I agree. And I, I'm sure there's people listening and they're like, Lesley, you have affiliate links. Yes, we do. You can sign up for them if you want to, and you only have to promote them if you want to. But, um, uh, cuz I like paying you when you do. Absolutely. 

But I, um, I think it's, I really have wanted to make it my focus in everything that we do, like how do we just take care of the people that we have and then when we do things to get new clients, new members and things like that, [00:34:00] I want it to be, I want our members to be like, of course I'm gonna share that.

Like I would, I wouldn't even have to ask them. Like that's just always been the thing. And it's not an easy task. Like it sounds easy like we're talking about, like I love that quote so much. And it's like, yes, that's the thing. It is so hard in practice, but if you make that your priority, It becomes easier over time and you can really reap the rewards, um, a lot quicker than just focusing on the next new thing, you know?

So you just did an amazing. Amazing job with this. I'm sure there's be more things that come around with this book. I'm sure they'll be, I don't know, merch or checklists. 

Actually, there's so many, there's so much content that I have, um, in the book I mentioned this URL to where people can go and they can download a playbook, um, to sort of help them go through the five step process that I talk about in the book, which I call the supermodel.

And then there's like PDFs of a bunch of pages in the book. But. As we wrote it, like we kept thinking of more things to add and then readers, like [00:35:00] somebody, somebody sent me an email and then like two days later somebody sent me a DM that basically said exactly the same thing, which is, I wish there was a discussion guide cuz I wanna do this for my book club.

And we were like, yeah, that's a great idea. So we made a discussion guide. So all of these resources that we keep creating, somebody else was like, oh, I love all of your sales advice, but I'm an introvert and I feel like it's really hard to be an introvert in sales. Have you ever thought about creating the sales or the Introverts Guide to Sales?, and I was like, Nope. But that's a great idea. And a week later we had it and it's up. And so in the resource library is what we call, ...(Lesley: oh my gosh.) It's like there's all of these resources in the resource library because of things that people have like read the book and reached out and said like, can you make this?

I That's so cool that your resource library is like an ever-changing organic thing. Um, I, we get that question a lot. Like I'm, cuz my, my husband has, um, a course, like 200 Rejections to Success. He's like, look, he's like, it's a numbers game. You're gonna reject it more [00:36:00] than, than you won't be. But like you, if you get to 200 nos before you have a full schedule, then we really have to talk about you really understand who you're talking to, but you just can't like, just like, you just get better over time.

And then we have people like I'm. I'm an introvert, so I can't do that. And I said, well, let me just be really clear. You get your energy by being alone. So you might be shy or might be afraid of rejection, like, but you, like, I, I also like to be by myself to get energy. It is not easy to be rejected nor those things.

So I love that you created that for people, because I do think some people will see, they go, oh, it must be easy for them, and then there's a reason why they can't do it. And so you're just like, I took that reason away. Sorry. Here you go. 

Brittany Hodak: Exactly. 

Lesley Logan: Oh my gosh, Brittany. Well you are so cool. I am so excited. Um, by the time this comes out, you will already have spoken to our agency members.

Um, so y'all, if you are like what? Um, yes. The agency members got to have Brittany all to themselves, um, and you all have to just go grab this book. I swear, even if you [00:37:00] think I'm only gonna have like a small business at the farmer's market, you will have the best small business, the most thriving small business, um, ever because we've read this book so quick, we're gonna take a quick break, Brittany, and then we'll come back, find out where people can find you, follow you, work with you, and you'll Be It action items.

All right, Brittany, you've given us some amazing advice. Before we get to those Be It action items, where do you like to hang out? Are you on Instagram? Are you on LinkedIn? Where are all the things and where can people buy your book? 

Brittany Hodak: I am on all of the places. I'm @ brittanyhodak everywhere. Uh, I got very lucky when I married my husband for a lot of reasons.

He's a great guy, but, um, one of them was the SEO o my maiden name was Jones. So luckily now as Britney Hodak, there is much less competition for those handles. So I'm @brittanyhodak. Just about everywhere you can be at something. Um, so people can find me there. My website is brittanyhodak.com and if you wanna pick up the book, you can get the hard cover at your favorite local independent bookstore.

You can also get it at Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million or Amazon.com. And if you want the ebook [00:38:00] version or the audiobook version, which I narrate, those are available at Amazon. 

Lesley Logan: Oh, you do your own narration? 

Brittany Hodak: I did it. Oh my gosh. It was so hard. It was like, I thought it would be easy. I was like, I do podcasts all the time. Speak for a living. Recording an audiobook is like a different beast. 

Did you do yours when you wrote your book? 

Lesley Logan: Uh, we haven't done it yet and the team is like wanting me to do it and I'm like, I have to get the editors ready cuz like, Like, I feel like, do you have to say the sentences like over and over and over again or like you just read it and tell you like, don't fuck up?

Brittany Hodak: Um, yeah. Well, so that my audio engineer who's great, I worked with this company called Twin Flames, and Steven, my engineer, was like, your homework is to read the whole book out loud. And I maybe read like, Six pages. Like, cuz I was like, oh, I'll read it when I'm like putting my kids to bed, like instead of a bedtime story.

And they immediately were like, no, mom, not like popping up. This isn't good. Not, not this. Um, so I had not read it out loud. And it's weird, [00:39:00] like you don't think about how certain words sound and you know, like how when you say any word enough times, it just like starts to sound weird. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah. 

Brittany Hodak: That was what recording the book was like.

Like I was like experience, exper experience. Like, it just, it's, it was such a weird experience. So I think it took me like 14 or 15 hours of recording to record a book that's like, I don't know, six or seven hours long. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah. I mean, I believe that only cuz um, one of, one of my, my book is called Profitable Pilates: Everything But the Exercises and just for me to say profitable, like I have to go profit. 

Because if I say it too fast, like profitable, it's seven syllables. It's seven syllables. Right. It's predictable. 

Yeah. It's, and then, and then, so, okay, I, y'all, I have to, I haven't showed this up, this, sorry, on the podcast, but like, this is, this is just like, uh, an example of like what me reading my own book would sound like.

So it was my birthday. And we had this like party at this, it's this really cool old bar in downtown Vegas. And my dad was [00:40:00] there and he had brought a gift, which is so nice, right? And so I had not actually had my drink yet. Like I, maybe I had a sip of it. It was like sitting there and there's this like bright yellow box on the table and Brad's like, well open up your presents.

So then everyone like stops talking to like watch me, like open up my present. So Brad's like, well read the cover of the box. Like I took the wrapping paper off and had like these words on it and I was like, keep sake. And Brad's like, you wanna read that again? And I was like, keep sake. And he's looking at me.

He is like, try, try that one more time. And I'm, look, I'm like, Brad, it says keep sake. Like I can't, like my, I could not change how it looked to my brain. And he said, keepsake. And I'm like, keepsake. Oh, it's a keeps, I could not read that word any different than like, keep the drink. 

Brittany Hodak: I love it. 

Lesley Logan: So I, I feel like that would be me reading my own book besides the word [00:41:00] profitable, happening too many times the like, I just feel like I would say the wrong.

So now all the time, people who are at my party, they'll just text me and they'll go keep sake. Anyways, 

Brittany Hodak: So funny, I l it reminds me, somebody told me, uh, actually when I was recording the audiobook, um, I guess this was like something that was viral on TikTok for a minute, but what is f a t spell? ...(Lesley: Oh, fat).

Yeah. And h e r? H 

h e r, here her. Oh, h e r her? Yeah. 

So F a T h E R. 

Lesley Logan: Oh, that's father. But you may like, did someone say fatter? 

Brittany Hodak: You got Yeah. Right away. It's like most people are like, wait, fat, fatter father fat, fat, fat. Yeah. Yeah, so apparently like the way, so I, I, I think keepsake is a great way to say keepsake and I a hundred percent know what you mean because my brain did that a bajillion times recording the audio books.

There were [00:42:00] actually parts where I was like, can I just change it? Should I just change it? Like, I dunno if I'm, it's been 12 tries, I don't know if we're gonna get much better than this. So you need to either lower your expectations or I need to like change the content. 

Lesley Logan: I, um, I'm one of those people. If I, if I can do it the first time, it's great, but the moment I'm, they're like, can you do that one more time?

It's like, it's never gonna be as good as that was. So 

Brittany Hodak: Right. It's gonna take, or, and then like, because it's so many sessions, they're like, you, like the feedback was always like, oh no, you need to sound a little more enthusiastic. Or like, oh, you've gotta be a little bit slower. So every session would start with the engineer playing.

Like from last time. Yeah. And so then you're like in your head cuz you're like, oh, how many inches was I from the microphone? And like, which way was my head facing? And like, it is, it is a process. So it's, if you're like, which version should I buy? Please consider the audiobook because a lot of time and love went into getting that puppy out in the world.

Lesley Logan: I promise you that's how Brad has digested it. [00:43:00] 

Brittany Hodak: Awesome. Thanks Brad. Brad, you're, you're the best. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah, he is. Yeah. okay. Bold, executable, intrinsic target steps people can take to be until they see it. What do you have for us? 

Brittany Hodak: All right, so I am gonna take a different approach here. Have any of your guests ever quoted their children?

No. 

This is a first. Okay, well, you may know what's coming because I put this in the book as well, but I told you I was very, um, delayed in writing my book. I worked on it for a really, really long time before my second son was born. My first son who was almost three. Um, You know, I was like trying to get as much writing before the baby was born as I could.

I was downstairs one day, I was working on the book and my son like kept coming into the room and I kept sort of like reminding him nicely, like, buddy Mommy's working on her book. You're supposed to be up, but daddy like go in the bonus room with daddy. Like Mommy has to write. And he looked at me and he said, what's your book about mom?

And it was the first time he'd shown like any interest at all. And so I kind of took a deep breath and I was like, well, [00:44:00] and I was trying to explain, the idea of Creating Superfans in a way that a, you know, almost three year old would, would understand fully expecting him to say like, that's dumb. You should, you should write about dinosaurs or something like that.

And instead he looked at me, he got really quiet and he said, mom, I think you should tell the people to be nice and listen. And then he gave me a kiss and he ran out of the room and I was like, Mic drop, like, oh my gosh, did my kid just write my book in four words better than I'm gonna do it in like 60,000 words.

So that is what I wanna share with people, because I feel like not only is it applicable for Creating Superfans, it's applicable for everything in your life. Yeah. Be nice and listen even when it feels hard. Even when you don't wanna do that. Even when you wanna like, be catty or like cutting or like get that, you know, jab, you know, in.

Um, and even when you like wanna talk [00:45:00] and you wanna share like, so be nice and listen. Hmm. Straight from Katoh Hodak. 

Lesley Logan: That is, um, that is beautiful and. I, I love that. And I think it's something we can all do exactly right now in this moment. Wherever you are, you're probably in driving and someone's probably trying to cut you off.

Uh, be nice. Let and listen to this. 

Brittany Hodak: Take a little longer. Let that, let that tractor trailer turn out in front of you. It's fine. Be nice. 

Lesley Logan: Oh my gosh. I'm so grateful for getting to know you for this book, being like, I mean, I, I. I would hope that I would've heard about it. Uh, but having to hear, hear about as soon as it came out, um, it's changing the way that my team can work with our business and our clients and our customers and and, and how we are even thinking about this podcast.

And so I'm just so grateful for you. I hope that I get to meet you when I come to Nashville. Um, and y'all go get this book. How are you going to use these tips in your life? Brittany and I wanna know. So tag Brittany Hodak, tag the Be It pod, and until next time, Be It Till You See It.

[00:46:00] That's all I got for this episode of the Be Until You See a Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram.

I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others be it till you see it. Have an awesome day. Be it till You see. It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. 

Brad Crowell: It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Leslie Logan and me, Brad Crowell.

Lesley Logan: It is produced, edited by the Epic team at Disenyo our 

Brad Crowell: theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music, and our branding by designer and artist Gianfranco Cioffi. 

Lesley Logan: Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals and Xemina Velazquez for our transcriptions. 

Brad Crowell: Also to Angelina Herico for adding all the content to our website.

And finally to Meredith Crowell for keeping us all on point [00:47:00] and on time.

Yeah, exactly what happened? No rain, sleet, snow, except for Thursdays at two o'clock. Yeah. My dad worked for the post office. Exactly and like, he's like, what is.

I don't wanna lose any good stuff o off the recording, but I will say, um, my entire O p C platform is like eighties and nineties, like throwbacks, so like everything. So when you were like doing all these like hip hop song titles for things, I was like, it's like, it's like she wrote a print, like a, a creating super fans book for op p c cuz it's literally like everything we do, all the song titles are like, you know, ba.

Boom. I'm like about to spin around the room here.

In this heartening episode of the Be It Till You See It podcast, listeners can explore the power of a Be It mindset and the significance of a supportive community. Lesley Logan shares inspiring stories of personal and community achievements, highlighting the importance of acknowledging daily wins to build confidence and drive success.

If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at [email protected] .

And as always, if you’re enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox.

Be It Till You See It Podcast Survey

Be in the know with all the workshops at OPC

Be a part of Lesley’s Pilates Mentorship

Waitlist for the flashcards deck

Use this link to get your Toe Sox!

Resources

• Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!
• Lesley Logan website
• Be It Till You See It Podcast
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube
• Profitable Pilates

Social Media

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] It's Fuck Yeah Friday. ...(Brad: Fuck Yeah) Get ready for some wins.

Lesley Logan: Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear.

Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started.

All right. Welcome back Be It babes to another F Y F, Fuck Yeah Friday. So we do these to celebrate your wins, to celebrate the wins of the people in our communities who are also amazing listeners like yourself, and to celebrate [00:01:00] a win of ours, so that we can inspire you to see all the positivity that is happening in your life, all the operations that are happening.

So I'm gonna kick this off with actually somebody who is in our agency group, Caylee, and she had left a post in the I Need A Moment channel, and we have a rule in all of our communities. If you ever need to vent, you can, but you must immediately go and celebrate something in the Wins channel because it's important that you leave on a high note.

So, um, so Caylee said, coming from I Need A Moment, we made a thousand dollars more in March than we did in February, and that was our highest month ever since we opened. So We made a thousand dollars more in March than we did in February and it was our highest month since we opened so close to eating five figures this month. That is humongous Kaleigh. So yes, crap happens, but then like if you didn't take a moment to realize what good is happening, you wouldn't be able to celebrate.

Like you did a thousand more in March than you did in February, and you're actually really getting close to five figures a month. Like that is a humongous win. [00:02:00] So way to go Caylee. Way to celebrate what you are doing. That's awesome. And then we have, um, Rael, um, she is actually one of our Elevate, um, alumnis and, uh, an an agency member.

And she wrote FYF I went to the local chamber event yesterday with a Be It mindset, although I didn't feel ready. She has no website, no business cards. I didn't let that stop me. Um, I, and, and networking isn't the worst thing. Um, she went to a couple events this week where she shared what she does and how she does it, and how she helps people and three people express interest.

It's helping her feel more confident sharing about her business, and people can decide if that aligns with them, but if I don't tell people, I won't be able to help them. Boom. That is exactly right, Rael. Thank you so much Rael and Caylee for sharing your wins with us this week. Uh, I'm just really proud of what you're doing.

You're doing things scared. You're taking the messy action. You're not waiting until you're ready and you're also not letting the bad things keep you from recognizing what the good things are. So I hope their wins have inspired you to celebrate one [00:03:00] today, and you can tag the Be It Pod so that we can see what you're up to, celebrate you as well and share it on our next F Y F.

All right, my win. Okay. This is a team win. I'm gonna be really honest. Um, but we just launched the O P C app. And, it launched last week on Pilate's Day. And to be honest, this is like truly, uh, just, it's a dream that I thought would be years in the making. I really, every time we'd searched for apps to be built, um, because of the hall of the things that we have to do, it was like we're talking to $30.000 or $40,000, which if you ever like built a kitchen, you know that the budget says five, but you really are gonna spend 10 or whatever it is.

So even though they're like, it's $30,000, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a lot, I mean it's a fucking ton. Uh, but I was like, oh, it'll be an app people can use. But I was like, well, what if it's cost more and what if it doesn't work? And all these things. And so we just kept putting on the back burner thinking we'd have to wait till we had more members till, I don't know, magic flew from the sky.

And actually somebody [00:04:00] magical did come in, not from the sky, but into our inbox, and he helped us create an app for O P C. You don't have to be a member to use. Anyone can use it. You can go download it today, either on the Google Play or the Apple App Store. And, um, it allows you to watch our tutorials. It allows our community members to chat with each other in the community.

It allows people to take classes. You can listen to the podcast in the app. Um, It's just really, really awesome. So there is a version for you if you're not a member, that you can go in there and use. And there's a bunch of free content, free tutorials, like thousands that you can play with. And then there's obviously if you're a member, you log in and you can access all your stuff as a member.

But this win, um, I'm so freaking stoked for it. Not just because yay, we have an app and here's my promotion. But really, um, the team did such an incredible job working so hard to allow this to happen as fast as possible. Um, It was not on our timeline for this year, so it was not in the schedule or the budget this year.

And, um, the team really came together to make this happen. And I share that as a [00:05:00] win for the whole team because I'm just so freaking stoked, um, that we're a family and we're all on this mission together of more bodies doing Pilates. And so thank you to all of you. You as a listener, you as a member, whatever capacity you engage with us in, you need to know that you were part of this APP being built and now more people all over the world can access these tutorials, access our classes and our mission of more bodies doing Pilates. So that's why I win this week. What's yours? We wanna hear it. Tag the Be It pod. Um, so we can share that in our future FYF episode. And remember, you can celebrate a win every single day because this is how you actually recognize that you're doing a freaking good job. You're doing a much better job than you give yourself credit for. And I bet you if your friends were to tell me what your wins are, they could, they could talk nonstop about you. So you need to seal one of those and celebrate yourself a little bit more.

Thank you. Have an amazing day, and Be It Till You See It 

That's all I got for this episode of the Be Until You See a Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future [00:06:00] listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram.

I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others be it till you see it. Have an awesome day. Be it till You see. It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. 

Brad Crowell: It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Leslie Logan and me, Brad Kroll.

Lesley Logan: It is produced, edited by the Epic team at Deeno. Our 

Brad Crowell: theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music, and our branding by designer and artist John Franco Trophy. 

Lesley Logan: Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals and Samina Velazquez for our transcriptions. 

Brad Crowell: Also to Angelina Harko for adding all the content to our website.

And finally to Meredith Crowell for keeping us all on point and on time.

What is James Patrick's secret sauce to success in the photography industry? Lesley and Brad dive deep into this phenomenal conversation with James, who deeply believes in the power of specialization and embracing imperfection.

If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at [email protected] .

And as always, if you’re enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox.

Be It Till You See It Podcast Survey

Be in the know with all the workshops at OPC

Be a part of Lesley’s Pilates Mentorship

Waitlist for the flashcards deck

Use this link to get your Toe Sox!

Resources

• Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!
• Lesley Logan website
• Be It Till You See It Podcast
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube
• Profitable Pilates

Social Media

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Episode Transcript:

Brad Crowell 0:03  

You should absolutely be leaning into your differentiators because it's going to attract the clients that you want to be working with, and that's gonna allow you to set yourself apart from your competition.

Lesley Logan 0:08  

Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Melissa Logan, Plaza's instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt, my friend, friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and be it till you see it. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started. 

Brad Crowell 0:46  

Oh, and stick around to the very end because we got some outtakes that's been happening. 

Lesley Logan 0:18  

There's always outtakes (Brad: laughs) and the team does collect them for bloopers on the YouTube, but uh, we're adding them into the end of the pod because you know what you need to know that we are not perfect. You're not perfect (Brad: and we're enjoying the process.) and we are enjoying that. So have a good laugh on our behalf. Love you.

Welcome back to the Beat Till You see interview recap, where my co-host in life Brad and I are going to dig in into the intuitive combo I had with James Patrick in our last episode. If you haven't yet listened to that interview, feel free to pause us now. Go back and listen to that one and then come back and join us. Can I just say, if you are listening to this through the onlinepilatesclasses.com app, it's actually really easy to like pick the episode before because it's, they show up as, like, a playlist.

Brad Crowell 2:06  

Yeah, they show up in order you can just tap on it.

Lesley Logan 2:07  

Unlike your other apps that shall not be named. Because they listen. Who if you have to like go to the show to click the three dots, go to the show, go to all the episodes and go oh, I want to listen to this one. And then it goes, are you sure you want to listen to that one? Because you were listening to this one. It's like I just wanna listen to the episode. So anyways, shout out to the OPC app. You guys, today is National foam rolling day. Seriously, who knew? I'm sure all the foam rollers. So rock your foam rolling. Not me.

Brad Crowell 2:45  

Yeah, this week is my sister's getting married on Saturday. So Leslie and I are going to be flying to feel that of yeah, we're going to be looking, we're going to help to set everything up, getting, we're actually I think, I don't know if we were part of the mowing the public lawn in the public sphere. But since we're at a city park, they're literally in a bus that has a lawnmower before we all get started.

Lesley Logan 3:14  

Oh my god, we're gonna mow the lawn.

Brad Crowell 3:16  

Yeah!

Lesley Logan 3:16  

You know I used to mow the lawn. Like I used to trim the hedges around tombstones in a cemetery. Because your family has to do that. And so I would just trim it around my families and I would just like keep going...(Brad: Yeah, sure.) Because otherwise it just gets over ground. Anyways. I didn't know that we were gonna mow the lawn at her wedding. Interesting. I don't know if you and I actually...(Lesley: I'm sure your family will do those things.) Shout out to Meredith shit you hear on the credits and we're so excited for her boyfriend Kyle to become brother in law Kyle.

Brad Crowell 3:49  

We can call him a fiance. He's allowed to be that...(Lesley: but no, he's gonna be her husband.) Right? He's currently a fiance though.

Lesley Logan 3:55  

Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. I would love to know from the listeners. How many of them felt weird saying fiance...(Brad: I felt weird.) It felt so weird and you did it twice so like it still felt weird. Sorry!

Brad Crowell 4:09  

I think at first I hardly said it.

Lesley Logan 4:13  

Yeah, it's weird anyways, but their marriage is not, we're so excited for them.

Brad Crowell 4:16  

Yeah, so a big congrats to her and my soon to be brother in law. I guess our soon to be brother law. Kyle.

Lesley Logan 4:22  

Yeah. I don't know how that works if I'm already an in law, but I'm sure it works out just fine. Anyways, I'm sure there's people who like do charts and can tell us what that is.

Brad Crowell 4:31  

Yeah. Next week.

Lesley Logan 4:32  

We are flying to Seoul, Korea. I mean...(Brad: how about that?) I know...(Brad: I can't wait.) I'm so excited. People are like, you're going to Seoul. I'm so jealous. I'm like, I know. I'm jealous of me too. So we'll be teaching Pilates on Tour in Seoul. We'll have the flashcards there and then we're taking a week off in (...) which I'm so excited about. July we're going to be in the UK and BT dubs at the time that we're recording this our UK Mullet Tour Workshop is half sold out. So at the time you're listening to us, there may only be a couple spots left.

Brad Crowell 5:05  

Yeah. So if you were thinking about joining us in the UK, you know, I heard it's a quick flight from Ireland. I heard it's a quick flight from Poland from other places like in, you know, we got people talking about coming in from Paris. So if that's you, don't sit on this because those weekend passes are selling out and there's only 16 spots. 

Lesley Logan 5:25  

And we chose Leeds because, one, we love Claire Sparrow, shout out to her episode, but also like everybody does London, and it's so important to find and see new places. And we are so excited. So join us there ,the link is in the notes. August. It is not our dog, but the actual month of August. We have our summer West Coast tour, so you can actually get on the waitlist for this at opc.me/tour. Yeah, and then we'll be announcing all that information. Pretty soon. Pretty soon.

Brad Crowell 5:51  

We got a couple of great tour by sponsors that we can't wait to brag about...(Lesley: Yes.) Coming up. September...(Lesley: Poland.) Oh, yeah, we are coming back to that side of the world. We'll be in Poland go to lesleylogan.co/Poland. It's what September one, two and three years attempt to do it...(Lesley: yeah) it's the very beginning of September.

Lesley Logan 6:12  

Very beginning of September, I'm actually teaching private sessions there. I've got a couple workshops that are bringing the flashcards and I'm not the only one. There's a couple other teachers there. Jill Crosby, Karen Frischmann. And then Jay Grimes, our teacher will be joining virtually...(Brad: Yeah) this is a really special tour and also our special conference. And it's also small, so absolutely wonderful.

Brad Crowell 6:30  

And, by the way, this is like a kind of a trial for this, you know, this event. And it would be amazing to sell it out for the host who is doing a lot of work to put it together so that we can repeat these kinds of events in the future.

Lesley Logan 6:46  

Yeah, and let me just like sign up, if there are things you're like, oh, I want to go. But I'll go next time. Just ask yourself many times you're saying next time because events like this actually are a lot of time and a lot of money.

Brad Crowell 6:58  

Though it's also, there's like a lot of excitement and fear. Because like this is a first time host for this kind of event. And there's a lot of risk involved in that kind of a thing.

Lesley Logan 7:07  

So much risk on her end. So you guys, I know I say like, I don't know what the next thing will be. I really don't. And I don't know that we can hit the same countries every year. In fact, that's probably not true. Because we have to go to other countries. And I don't overwork myself anymore. So we do like four outings a year. There's a lot of countries. I don't know what I can say yes to these ones again. So definitely make them a priority. October. So another way you can make a priority is our retreat in Cambodia...(Brad: Cambodia) that's how they say it. So lesleylogan.co/retreat. You guys, this is amazing. We are selling out this retreat, and it's just going to be a frickin blast. 

Brad Crowell 7:23  

Yeah, I've been chatting with the people who are like, trying to figure out their plane tickets and what is their whole trip gonna be, we've two women who are going to join us who are actually making it a full blown world tour where...(Lesley: Oh my God) Japan, and then Singapore...(Lesley: I wanna go with them), and then I think Turkey, and then they're going to (...) I mean, it is like, so amazing. They're just gonna keep on going and what an epic trip that's gonna be, you can absolutely make Cambodia a stop on your trip and come join us for our retreat when you're doing your world tour. So I love that.

Lesley Logan 8:16  

Yeah. And then November we got Miami. Yeah, give you more information on that later. All right. We're gonna get to James in just a second. But first, do we have an audience question?

Brad Crowell 8:26  

We sure do. Let's see this week, Kim Jung wrote in, she asked apart from teaching OPC classes, what does the rest of your exercise routine look like? Do you add it on after you teach? I am a teacher and I struggle with how much I should exercise in a day and how to fit in all the rest. 

Lesley Logan 8:44  

Yeah, so you need rest day. So Kim, thank you so much for asking this because I love questions like this. I hope this helps you. First of all, I do not demonstrate when I teach my regular clients, like my in real time stuff. I really try not to demonstrate, just because I want to save my body and you know, some days or if I'm sick, and I want to have like my clients are reliant on me. So those sessions like those that time is not any exercise at all. Filming though, I actually try really hard to not use filming as my own personal workout, because it's not, I as much as what's great about OPC is when I do teach it I can share when I'm feeling in my body as it's happening, but I cannot be as present in my body because I'm actually being present in the OPC minds like I'm actually seeing the class from their perspective. So it's not a it's not a workout for me. So I have a week each month that I film and so while those are workouts they're so not my personal workouts and I don't tend to work out on top of those, but I just I just don't go oh, I worked out myself out today. I like give myself other ways to connect with myself.

Brad Crowell 9:53  

What do those things include?

Lesley Logan 9:53  

Oh, I have my red light with my zone of space red light that I love that I meditate with that. And I also have this new little gadget that I'll tell you more about that we're working on getting it as a discount link for you, that is really helping me do that I have a pemf mat that I give myself some recovery time.

Can you say that again?...(Leslye: Pimf mat) that's P E M F

Yeah, for higher dose, we actually do have an affiliate link for that.

Brad Crowell 10:20  

Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes.

Lesley Logan 10:22  

So on my filming weeks, I do those kinds of things for myself, just because you do need to have time for you to pour into your own self. And so that's how I do that. Now...

Brad Crowell 10:31  

But you also exercise outside of...

Lesley Logan 10:32  

Correct, thank you. So that's, so just one week of each month is for filming, the rest of the weeks are my own personal thing. So here's what I do. I do 15 minutes to an hour of Pilates five to six days a week, I do weight training three to four days a week. And that weight training includes. It's kind of like CrossFit light, a couple days a week, a hit training kind of style. And then I do barbell with you, you and I actually do these together. So yeah, so here's the deal, though, ladies, I use an app that allows me to know what kind of intensity my workout should be on a given day based on my cycle. And it's really important because I don't, I'm not going to skip my weight training class on a day that says I shouldn't be going in very intensely. But what I just do is I go slower, I like or I don't use as heavy of weights like I, I use the app to let me know. So I don't overwork myself out because you can build up too much cortisol if you're over doing all these things. And we as women have to stop treating our fitness based on like, what men's workouts are they have a 24 hour cycle, we have a 28 to 31 day cycle. So using a tool that lets me know, based on my hormones, how much I should work out, and you know, and then as far as rest days, go, guys, you can do Pilates on your rest day, it's a low impact exercise, you can do even yoga on your best day. You can do intentional walking on your rest day, it's rest days don't have to mean like I lay on the couch and do nothing. You should still move intentionally every day. So that's kind of what my and I try to work out in the morning mostly, but I'll be really honest. It's not always possible. Some my strength train is at night. So it's not my favorite. But I like my trainer and I like her husband, and my dad and my friends they are so that's my workout routine. So I would say three to four days of strength. Five to six days of Pilates. I walk twice a day every day.

Brad Crowell 12:21  

Yeah...(Lesly: Did I miss anything?) I don't believe, sometimes we sprinkle in yoga. We do occasionally. Not nearly like it used to be, but it's still happenin.

Lesley Logan 12:32  

I miss it.

Brad Crowell 12:32  

I really miss it too.

Lesley Logan 12:33  

I have an app I'm going to try out. I really love our teacher but 8am is not ideal.

Brad Crowell 12:37  

It's tough. It's tough for me.

Lesley Logan 12:40  

Yeah. So hey, thank you for the question. You guys send your questions and we love answering them. They're so fun. I'm sure if somebody wants an update on cactus daddy. So like, you know, send them into the Be It Pod. 

Brad Crowell 12:51  

Yeah, because right now everything is blooming.

Lesley Logan 12:54  

Oh my gosh, it's crazy. Insane.

Brad Crowell 12:58  

Awesome. 

Okay, now let's talk about James Patrick, a passionate photographer who has not only mastered his craft, but also deeply believes in the power of specialization and embracing imperfection. Beyond his photography, Patrick is widely recognized for his entrepreneurship and unyielding dedication to helping others succeed in the creative field. And he's been doing that by hosting crazy events. And he's got a podcast and he's got all his stuff.

Lesley Logan 13:41  

So cool. Very creative. I feel like we like we don't I'm not we're not photographers. I feel like in some ways, we both, we all do the same amount of work. So like we all have, like some plates spinning. He's just so cool. 

Brad Crowell 13:55  

It was really fascinating to listen to him. 

Lesley Logan 13:57  

Yeah, I met him through Kareem.

Brad Crowell 13:59  

Yeah, yeah. Well, because of the because of the fit (...) right? 

Lesley Logan 14:03  

If you are listening to this in real time, I think you could probably still sign up for that. So you should do it. Okay, so what I love, there's a few things I love that he said, I mean, it was just a phenomenal interview, like it could just I could have kept going, we'll probably have to have him back. But I really love it. We talked about goals, and like how we should actually look at our goals, and what is a success versus what's not. And so he talked a lot about like goal is progress. So this way, as I said it the more you break things into manageable pieces, the more confident you are that you can get things done. So oftentimes, we see this all the time with our agency members. The longer they're in agency, the less they do this, which is so cool. Like typically, when someone's an agency the first couple months are like here's my goal for the month and I was like literally more things in there that are days and I'm like, You are not gonna get the website done this in a month, like, you can, it's possible if you have a lot of team but like, just you know, so breaking things down into manageable pieces, and it's made me think of Jillian Flodstrom, from who we had on, and she like breaks down her goals into tasks, it could be in two minute, so that she can actually get them done. Because whenever you have two minutes, you can just like look at a task that she has. So, so breaking them down.

Brad Crowell 15:18  

And that takes so much planning though. And I think that's one thing that I feel like, we don't talk about is the, there's like a prep time where you're simply thinking, you have to spend time thinking and, and what but but it's when you spend the time to think and prep and plan, then the execution becomes just the do it, bang, bang it out.

Lesley Logan 15:44  

Yes. And also, like, what you have to be careful is that planning is not perfecting, so you're not, you're not trying to overdo it, like there's a balance there. And then some things you won't know until you get into doing the thing. But also, this is another important part of goals, you have to set goals that you have control over. So if you say I'm gonna have my website done this month, but you're not the one building your website, like, you actually don't have control, like your, like someone else does. Or if you're like, I'm gonna get three new clients, well, you actually don't have control of when three people decide to give you their money, you have control over the steps that you could take to get clients to even know about you. And so if your goal is to do Pilates every day, that is something you have control over if you also have control over your schedule, or if you have control over like the way you schedule your time. And so it's just really, I really loved the way he talked about like, creating achievable and realistic goals. But and not setting too many or getting too ambitious, but like just like, Okay, I want to do this thing, and then breaking down a manageable task, and then making sure that the goals you have for yourself, you have control over. And so it doesn't mean like you don't make a goal because you don't have control, it was like what part of that goal do you have control over? He wanted to be on covers. He actually cannot decide if he's chosen on a cover, but he can make sure he's pitching himself.

Brad Crowell 17:07  

Right. Yeah. And I think that's the, like, there was a couple of things where he was talking about this. He said he started making his goals sheet, something he revisits more frequently, because he found himself in this like, sit down on January one, write out a year, set the goals and then revisited January one 365 days later and be like, Oh, I forgot to write that down. Did I do this, that this even happened? As opposed to that, he now has like a living document. He calls it like a living will. But it's like he revisited you know, like, every month or even every couple of weeks. And he's just reassessing all the time. And I thought that was really cool. And then, you know, like you said, making it like breaking them down when he was like, I want to host an event. And then he's like, Oh, I was gonna host I was gonna do it next month. I haven't even started. I guess I'll just bail on that. You know, that's a bummer. You know, and so, you know, looking at, that's why spending the time to break things down, allows you to work your way to that goal. So totally, this was really great. And then...(Lesley: also he created like a journal.) Yeah, I was just gonna say he actually...(Lesley: I'm on it.) (...) turn it into a hard a hard copy. So he has a free PDF that you can download to check, check it out. And then he also turned it into an actual book that you can get on Amazon. So

Lesley Logan 18:32  

One thing I know about our listeners is that they love a hardcopy. I want to see your pictures of you using this thing. I just think that I like how curious and observant he is in his own practice so that he can like share this with others. I think it's helpful to know because I think we could hear some good 700 covers, oh my gosh, everything he touches turns to gold. It's like actually, like, everything he touches is because he did the work. What did you love?

Brad Crowell 19:00  

So the thing that I was really digging this, because this was super applicable to me. He said, we often are afraid to lean into our differentiators. Right? And because he like think about photography, you know, if you aren't familiar with the field of photography, you just think, oh, they take pictures. But he said, Well, what about what if you take action shots? And once you do, you know scenery? Or what if you do food, you know, or product photography, each one of these things are so different in that realm. And he said people have fear that they're actually going to be somehow turning away business. If they're not, you know, if they they want to go wide, instead of going narrow and deep. And he said the reason is because they have this fear that they're gonna be missing out on opportunities. But he had this perfectly logical argument of think of it from the clients perspective, oh, we need, we've got an event coming up. And we need to hire a photographer. So are we going to hire the guy who says hire me, I'm a photographer, or the guy who says, I am the best event photographer that you've ever met. I only shoot events. I'm amazing at it. I've been doing it forever. I've got 800 of them under my belt, which is the same price. Which one do you think they're gonna hire? 

Lesley Logan 20:24  

Even if the other one's more expensive, I'm still gonna hire the one that I'm most worried about, right?

Brad Crowell 20:29  

Because they're only gonna do the event one time, it's like, you can't mess it up. You know? So there's, there's risk there on their part. So they'd be willing to pay for the expert. Right? So he's, he's his argument is, you should absolutely be leaning into your differentiators, because it's going to attract the clients that you want to be working with. And that's going to allow you to set yourself apart from your competition. Right? And so just an interesting way to flip that on, on on your head. Right? And I, you know, that that for me was personally, that was really helpful when I did my strengths test, which you all have heard me talk about 50 times, if you've heard me say it once. But once I understood my actual strengths, from the strengths finders quiz, that I was able to lean into those things and able to confidently say, oh, I can absolutely be the ops person for you. Because ABCD I am this, you know, and I'm great at this thing. And it really allowed me to move forward in my, my career, you know, and so this is something that like, I feel we, when we're coaching our clients, we often, people have the hardest time dialing in, their ICA their their ideal client avatar, right, they don't know how to, you know, connect with the people that they want to work with, and then modify their marketing language to connect with that that person, but this argument is exactly why you need to do it. Right? You cannot be let's, let's just use the one we hear all the time. Whenever we host agency, many, inevitably, somebody says, Oh, I have clients who are 17 and 83. You know, so I guess I'm just gonna be my, my avatar is females, right? And it's like, wait a minute.

Lesley Logan 22:15  

You know, we actually I just answered this question for somebody because they were like, I just feel like, maybe I'm niche down too much. You know, like, what about these other people I could help. And I said, Well, something that I talked about with the podcast demographics, as I say, our demographics are women, mostly, and a few good men between the ages between the mid 30s to early 50s. And those who think they are. That's cool. And the reason I say that is because we do have a ton of women shout out to(...) and unmarried and all those who are over 55, you know, plus about like, they act like (...) they totally act like they're in that age range. So that's I say, but also when you when you are very clear, and very specific there are people who aspire to be the person who you're talking to. Yeah, they still come because they can picture. I don't like country music, but I hear a country music song. And I can picture what they're singing. And it makes me think of this thing that I wanted or did or had. And so it's just like, be specific, it attracts people, and it makes you more tractable.

Brad Crowell 23:23  

And James even had an example. And he said, You know, I am a I shoot magazine covers, you know, and however, and he said, I'm not a pro photographer, however, I learned that a product photography gig, because I had a relationship and somebody knows me, and trust me, you know, so I still am getting those clients, even though that's not the person I'm really intentionally trying to land. So you know, saying the same thing, you will inevitably get clients that aren't your, quote unquote, perfect market, you know? And that's how that's how it works.

Lesley Logan 23:55  

Also, you can say yes to them. I think this is what's true. Is that and you think, Oh, if I only talked to these people, then I can only help these people. No, you can. I never ever ever advertised to athletes, ever. I had mostly athletes. Why did I have them? Because a one on one relationship that got me one that got me the rest. And so I just kept getting them doesn't mean that I of course, I wanted to teach them but that wasn't why I got into teaching. And I had a lot of fun teaching them. So I think we, we sell ourselves short. I also think we're in fear that people will, what if the people that I want, I'm talking to say no to me? rejection sucks, but also get used to it, you'll be rejected more times than you won't in this whole life. It's a numbers game.

Brad Crowell 24:39  

It's a game. I had a quote I wanted to read to just wrap this up. That was he just had a couple of amazing one liners in there. He, James, specifically said, not specializing on something is almost a guaranteed way to lose out on opportunities that you are hardwired to be getting.

Lesley Logan 25:01  

Oh my gosh, we have to like shout this out to our agency members. Also, this whole conversation if you're enjoying it, I was on James's podcast and we go deeper into this kind of thing...(Brad: Oh, cool. Yeah. Awesome. How about that?) I know. We'll get the link. We'll put it down there. 

Brad Crowell 25:18  

We'll find out link for you. 

All right. So finally, let's talk about those Be It action items. What bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted action items can we take away from your convo with James Patrick? He said he kind of rolled it all into one, but basically, not to rely on reactive approaches. And he specifically made an example of reacting to emotions or reacting to the market or business development or launch strategies reacting. Instead, he suggested being proactive.

Lesley Logan 26:20  

Yeah. Yeah, I think I mean,

Brad Crowell 26:22  

Like, take charge, be in charge of the situation. Proactivity, he says is the key to success. Now. It's kind of what we're talking about already, in this entire episode, think about, if you are able to plan ahead, to spend time thinking through the project, before you begin executing the project, then you're going to, that's going to set you up to be proactive. Yeah, instead of being reactive. Now, you still may have to be reactive to things life's life's right. We like to say, shit happens. But imagine if you were able to think through things prior to getting it done, and then executing that, you know, it will help you achieve your goals.

Lesley Logan 27:01  

I mean, okay. For those of you who were part of our journey back in March of this year, we had a very reactive situation, right? Like, our servers were crashed. And our OPC website, when we brought it back to life was at 1999 speeds of the internet. And so we actually had to be reactive and that we had to fix the site right away. However, the team, you and the team still sat down, planned it all out, and then made the changes happen in it as fast as humanly possible with a website with like, what over 1000 pages?

Brad Crowell 27:38  

So we're between 750 and 1000? Yeah, it's a lot.

Lesley Logan 27:41  

So it's a lot so. So even when you have to be reactive, taking a moment in time, unless someone's falling off a cliff, then please reach out and grab them. But if like, because none of us are actually like in the emergency room having to make a split second decision, take a beat in the reaction and like really explore like, in what you're reacting to, how is this actually an alignment with your goals? Sometimes we react to things because of FOMO. Because we see someone else doing something we should be doing it. Even if you're inspired. Well, even if you're inspired by somebody else's thing, like let's say you, your friend is doing Pilates, and you're like, I want to do Pilates, and you react to that, that's fine. But then also go to your calendar and break down when you're going to do those things and take a moment and don't just like, you know, fly by the seat of your pants. I know some people like to do that. And I'm sure it's working out well for you.

Brad Crowell 28:34  

That's not true. I mean, you know, things can still go, you know, and we are big fans of taking messy action to0, but the purpose of taking messy action is so that you're not stagnant. Right? You're not, It's not paralysis, right? there does come a point where you have to move. But if you can give yourself the time to think through things first, that and then when you get in the mix and things aren't going quite as smoothly. Take that messy action. The combination of those two things that's going to be a win,

Lesley Logan 29:06  

Messy action is not reaction...(Brad: That's true.) That's true. That's a new thing. We just came up with it. Is my turn. Yeah, okay. So Okay, put something out in the market put it out there. It's better to put an imperfect idea than wait for a perfect one. Putting an idea out in the market allows us to receive feedback. You guys, this is so great, what he said, feedback is valuable for refining, improving ideas, is important to overcome the fear of imperfection, take action and be willing to make adjustments and then embrace (...) projects is what he also said so here's the deal. This kind of goes back to what we were saying but like you gotta like get things out there. If we tried to perfect something like let's just go back to the website. If we tried it, we we did the frickin best we could. We made sure it was like as as as good as it could be to our eyes in a dev situation. And then you put it out there. And inevitably there is going to be shit that has to be dealt with. You won't know about that until you put it out in the market. Yeah, and you need feedback. You need people to say, oh, on my Android, it doesn't do this thing on this it is this thing. It is better to put that stuff out there quicker. So you get that feedback faster. So that you can, you can actually make those changes, if we waited and noodled around until we thought okay, we've done every I and every T is crossed. Everything is perfect. You guys put it out there and in my bio it says thing instead of think, it's okay. It's okay. No one's...(Brad: does it really?) Yes. I might, have we been putting that bio out everywhere at the wrong? because it's like a copy and paste, right? Anyways, that's fine. Yeah, so same with our app, we put it out, right, and it's not perfect and I was just scrolling like oh, this is a blank page. It is way better to get feedback because most of the feedback is frickin positive. Yeah, most of it is positive. So this I had it on Forever Fridays podcast again and she did a like a what do you call those things? A speed ball a fireball.

Brad Crowell 31:12  

Speed ball 

Lesley Logan 31:16  

What do you call those like quick questions? Like rapid fire!

Brad Crowell 31:19  

Rapid Fire 

Lesley Logan 31:20  

There we go!

So she said, done versus perfect. And I said, like literally Oh argue with you to the day I die, but Done is better than Perfect. And except for like, please don't just marry any random person. Like that might be the I'm not saying wait for the perfect person. But like, don't just marry someone. So that way, the only time that I need like a little estrus, but

Brad Crowell 31:57  

Let's just put it in the lane of projects

Lesley Logan 32:00  

Done is better than perfect, and oh my gosh

Brad Crowell 32:05  

Although, you know, I have heard people refer to their spouses as a project. So...

Lesley Logan 32:09  

Those people like a project. I'm not, I'm like, if you call your husband that and you're still married to them, then you love a project. Yeah, right. Um, all right, I'm Lesley Logan.

Brad Crowell 32:23  

And I'm Brad Crowell.

Lesley Logan 32:24  

You know we fucking love you. Yeah, you're amazing...(Brad: this is so fun) this podcast, can you believe it? What is this episode 200 and something?...(Brad: Yeah. 209.) 209. And that was my old area code 209. And we have FYF on Fridays, which you guys are loving and we want to share your wins. So you have to send them to us. 

Brad Crowell 32:42  

Yeah, make sure you're connecting with us, letting us know. 

Lesley Logan 32:44  

But also, we are in the top 2% of podcasts because of you...(Brad: what?) I know. So please keep sharing the pod. My goal, that I have no control over. Right. So it is. So all I can do. All I can do is add to the FYFs, I'm adding to the FYFs, I'm getting more and more amazing guests. And also I've improved big time. So I'm controlling what I can control. But my, all the things I'm doing with this podcast are an effort to get to that top 1% Why? Because that means we're helping more people be it until they see it and when you take messy action, new ditch perfection, you are winning in life and more people get to enjoy the fruits of how awesome you are. So thank you for being a listener of this podcast. Thank you for sharing it. Make sure you tell us how you're being it till you see it and have an amazing day.

Brad Crowell 33:32  

Bye for now.

Lesley Logan 33:32  

That's all I got for this episode of the Be Until You See a Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others be it till you see it. Have an awesome day. Be it till You see. It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. 

Brad Crowell 33:32  

It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Leslie Logan and me, Brad Crowell.  

Lesley Logan 33:32  

It is produced, edited by the epic team at Disenyo. 

Brad Crowell 33:32  

Our theme music is by Ali at APEX Production Music, and our branding by designer and artist, JGianfranco Cioffi.

Lesley Logan 33:32  

Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals and Xamina Velazquez for our transcriptions. 

Brad Crowell 33:32  

Also to Angelina Herico for adding all the content to our website. And finally to Meredith Crowell for keeping us all on point and on time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Join Lesley as she interviews renowned photographer James Patrick on the advantages of specializing in any field. Discover the importance of embracing imperfections and how failures and feedbacks can lead to professional success in this informative podcast episode.

If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at [email protected] .

And as always, if you’re enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.

In this episode you will learn about:

• How James overcame imposter syndrome
• Career benefits of leaning into your unique differentiator
• Breaking down goals into smaller, manageable tasks
• The importance of progress over perfect
• Taking action and audience feedback

Episode References/Links:

• Follow James Patrick on IG
• James Patrick's Legacy Planner
• Chef Robert Irvine's Book

Guest Bio:

James Patrick is an award winning photographer, best selling author, business coach and media specialist based in Phoenix, AZ. He’s the founder of Get Published LIVE, an annual conference for entrepreneurs to earn media as well as the publisher of ICON REFINED, a media network celebrating the modern entrepreneur which includes a digital platform, multiple print publications and a top charting podcast. James’ mission is to create both art and opportunities for those he connects with.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox.

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Resources

• Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!
• Lesley Logan website
• Be It Till You See It Podcast
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube
• Profitable Pilates

Social Media

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Episode Transcript:

James Patrick: [00:00:00] So when we start to break things into these manageable pieces, we actually start to get things done. And the more we start to get these little pieces done, the more confidence we are building in ourselves that, yeah, I can actually do this thing, that this, this idea, this can come into fruition. Like as I start to tick off these little boxes, I can start to move forward.

And it, it then becomes this self-propelling momentum in how we get things done.

Lesley Logan: Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear.

Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, [00:01:00] intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started.

Hey, loves, how are you? Okay. Today's guest is actually someone I really just enjoy having conversations with. Uh, I. I met him through Kareen Walsh, who you all remember from one of our earlier episodes, and she is just phenomenal. If you haven't listened to her, we'll put that link in the show notes because she's a badass and she loves to help you be a badass.

Um, but she introduced me to James through an email and I was, and he asked me if I wanted do something and I said yes. And then, and then because I said yes, I did something. And like he's like, Hey, you wanna be on my show? And I was like, yes. And then we had them in the best conversations I've ever had in life.

And so of course I was like, well, you know, if you ever wanna be on my show, I would love to have you cuz like we have way too much fun talking together. And y'all, he, uh, only is not going to disappoint you in his amazing, [00:02:00] inspiring, wonderful, honest answers about life and work and how you can Be It Till You See It, but we get into a goal setting, and it's one of my favorite goal setting conversations I've ever had. Um, if you are an agency, uh, you get to meet him in our group because he's speaking to our group. And if you're not an agency and you're like, wait, what's that? Well, that's where we coach people on how to do their business.

Um, but, and anyway, this episode, I'm really, I really can't wait for you to listen to. I hope you can understand what he is doing; and, and you are going to want to go into the show notes. And if you don't know how to find them, you're gonna do this little swipey up thing. And you're gonna find the links in the show notes because he has an incredible physical thing that you can use to make your goals of reality.

And I know if you are listening to this show, you're like me, you'll like a physical journal. I can't read my own handwriting, but I still love one and I still buy them. So at any rate, here's James Patrick. 

Oh, and stick around to the very end because we got some outtakes that's been happening. There's [00:03:00] always outtakes. Um, and the team does collect them for bloopers on the YouTube, but uh, we're adding them into the end of the pod because you know what you need to know that we are not perfect. You're not perfect, and we're enjoying the process and we are enjoying that.

So have a good laugh on our behalf. Love you.

Lesley Logan: All right, Be It babe. I'm super stoked for our guest today, James Patrick is one of the most favorite people I've actually ever been interviewed by. One of the most fun conversations I've ever had on his podcast. And he said this amazing thing that he's gonna share with all of us. And I was like, well that's absolutely necessary for our Be It pod listeners.

Um, cuz we're all about goals here, all about taking action and also like actually trying to accomplish them at the same time. So James, will you tell everyone who you are and what you rock 

James Patrick: at these days? Well, thank you so much for having me on. I always get a little like overwhelmed with imposter syndrome whenever I have to describe myself.

Um, and I think that goes back to when I was trying to build my career as a photographer, which spoiler alert, I'm a photographer [00:04:00] and I was working in marketing at the time trying to build this side hustle as, as a photographer. And whenever I'd be at networking events or, or socials or things like that, someone would say, well, what do you do for a living?

And I would chicken out. And I would not say I'm working on being a photographer. I'd always go with the safe route. Say, well, I'm working in marketing. And it wasn't until I trusted someone enough not to judge me that I was comfortable saying, oh, by the way, I'm also trying to become a photographer. And at some point, uh, I, I think it was around 2006, 2007, uh, I was at a networking event.

Same question was asked, and I said, I'm a photographer, and that right there was a light bulb moment for me that made me realize, oh, I need to quit my marketing job because I'm actually willing to own this posture of being a photographer. So I've been shooting now for 20 years. I, I've shot close to 700 magazine covers.

Um, but I also tie in a lot of my background in marketing in press production, and helping my [00:05:00] clients leverage the power of earned media to amplify their brands, to generate new leads for their business, and then how they can, how they can build an entire ecosystem from there. 

Lesley Logan: Oh my goodness. I love how in your intro you somehow managed to make sure we heard how you were being it till you saw it.

Like, like you, you struggled to say that you're a photographer, but when you said it, it was like, oh, well now I gotta let go of this thing. Mm-hmm. Like, and I actually can relate to that in a lot of ways, so I, and I'm sure some of our listeners can too, it, I remember when I became a pilates instructor, it felt really weird to say that because I had come from, Being this top manager in a, a very famous boutique, uh, from like that people around the world knew.

And then I was gonna say, oh, I'm a Pilates instructor. And it felt really weird to say it, but then it's really interesting. And I don't know if you got the same thing once I said it just like, like there's this moment like, oh, I am this person. But people find it very intriguing when you get to be something that's like, not the typical route that someone could go, they're almost a little jealous.

They're [00:06:00] like, wow, you, you, you're, you do that for a living. It's like, yeah, 

James Patrick: I do. Yeah, no one asked any follow up questions when I said I worked in marketing. Like, okay, that's great. Um, but when I said, oh, I'm a photographer, well, that peaks curiosity. You're absolutely right. I never thought about that, uh, until you mentioned it.

Lesley Logan: Yeah, it takes a, a good kind of curiosity. I'm sure like lawyers and doctors always get those follow up questions, but the, being a retail manager, being in marketing, it's like, oh, okay. Like it doesn't, okay. 

James Patrick: Yeah. Okay. As if they look over your shoulder to see who else they can talk to in the Yeah. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah.

Especially in LA uh, it's just why I had to like learn how to get seen in, in the world. So you, you said it like over 700 covers and you're doing all these things to help people build their brands. How did that come to be? Like, was that something that you kind of fell into just one step at a time?

Was it something that you had a dream about doing? How did, how did this all kind of come together 

James Patrick: in regards to photography or shooting covers? 

Lesley Logan: [00:07:00] Uh, let's shooting covers. 

James Patrick: Um, it wasn't a plan until at some point I counted it and realized that it was pretty substantial. My, my first job as a photographer was working in media.

Uh, I was working at a newspaper and prior to that I was a journalist. Um, and I don't know whether the newspaper I was working at, if the publisher hated my writing or loved my photography, but he, he said, I can't be a writer anymore. I needed to be a photographer. So he put me in the photo pool as opposed to the writer's pool and I started shooting, uh, for a few issues, and then there was an opening to be the photo editor of the, of that newspaper, which I, I landed. Now to be clear, photo air doesn't mean I edited photos. You don't really edit photos for newspapers. What it meant was I managed the photo department. I had to quickly learn what photos worked, what photos did not work, and where to place images within the print publication, uh, that led to me getting a job [00:08:00] as a photo editor at a startup magazine. Same thing. I have to manage a team of photographers. I have to assign out the, the, the projects and then I have to cull through all these images to determine which of these images are commercially viable that are gonna help sell this magazine.

So when I launched out my freelance photography business, I stuck with what I knew, which was shooting for media production and it just made sense that I was shooting lots of magazine covers cuz I knew what images to take to make a magazine cover that moved units. And at some point, uh, someone asked me, well, how many of these have you done?

It seems like a lot. I think at that point it was like 500 or something like that. I was like, oh, I should actually keep track of this at this point. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah, that's so, um, that's, I love that because I think sometimes people can forget the strengths that they learned along the way. Mm-hmm. And like having those opportunities just allow you to hone in your skills of photographer when you're taking pictures. It was like, well, this is something that's gonna actually sell the thing that it's on top of. Like, it really does matter. [00:09:00] I have, I, I have to do that sort of for myself with newsletters. I'm like, that picture, why would you choose a picture?

Put that picture away and it's like, I clearly need a photo editor and that's fun cause I don't wanna be that person. But those, it matters for whether something, uh, fill, take, goes off the shelf or sells a book or sells a product versus it doesn't, you know, it doesn't really matter if the product's amazing, if no one will look at the picture 

James Patrick: that's on it.

I think so often we're afraid to lean into these unique differentiators, uh, because it's like, well, I don't want to turn off some clients if I, if I only focus here then other people are not gonna be too interested. And my opinion is no. It's when I focus here on on, for example, media production for myself, it was really hard to compete with me on that when I said I don't just take photos.

Anyone can take a great photo. I can make an image that I know is gonna work. I know is going to move more units. I know it's gonna sell more ads. I know whatever it is, I [00:10:00] know this is going to work. So while everyone else is taking photos, I'm gonna make an image that works now if the goal was not to sell magazines.

If the goal was not to move magazine units, if the goal was not to get published, there's no reason to look at my work. There's no reason to hire me there. There are other photographers that that can do better in other areas, like for example, um, Events. I am atrocious at shooting events. I, I would be the worst person to hire for it.

It, it causes me physical pain and anxiety to even think about shooting events. Um, food and beverage, I absolutely love shooting food and beverage. I would not consider myself even remotely, uh, commercially competent to shoot food and beverage. Um, whereas other people would absolutely decimate me should they bid against me on a food and beverage, uh, uh, campaign.

So I, I've really tried to stay in what I believe I excel at and use that as my unique differentiator because there people cannot [00:11:00] compete with me. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah. When, well, and I, you know, what I love is like, the more you actually, as you say, lean into your unique differentiators, the better it is for you because you become the best at what you it is that you do.

Mm-hmm. But so many people are, are so afraid. What a, what? I mean, you've probably seen it along the way with the people that you coach and the people that you work with. What is, what do you see as the fear that they're like, if I, if I put myself in this position, I like am alienating all of this. So like, I'm just gonna be for everybody, which we already know is not gonna work.

But why? Why is that fear so great that it's keeping 'em in the place of thinking that it's going to work when it doesn't and we already know this? 

James Patrick: The assumption is, is that they're going to lose work and they're gonna lose opportunities that that opportunities within their specialty are too finite for them to build something substantial out of.

And when I launched, my photo business was right around the recession in 2008, and I had the problem where I was quite, um, Ubiquitous in trying to do everything. You know, I could shoot [00:12:00] fashion, I can shoot editorial and I'll shoot, um, you know, events or whatever, whatever would pay, I would say yes to. But when budgets are very tight, which they were, uh, and by the way, budgets are always tight.

There's no such thing as, as, uh, uh, like a big budget. I've never had a client, like, I always get the email. It's like, well, our budgets are really tight right now. I'm like, I'm just waiting for the email to say, Whatever you want. The, you know, throw, throw, throw the biggest, uh, number you can at us. But, um, budgets were tight.

And so if, if you have a very, a very limited amount of money, and let's say you're shooting a fashion campaign, are you gonna shoot the person who is competent enough to shoot the fashion campaign or for the same budget are you gonna hire the person who specializes in fashion? Yeah. You don't have money to redo this.

You can't mess this up. Who are you gonna hire? You're gonna hire the specialist, the person who you trust to do this project right the first time. Then it became, well, I just need to be a trusted resource for that. So when it comes to [00:13:00] being trusted for this style or this approach, or this, this vision, yeah, I'm gonna be hired for that.

Now does that mean I lose out on some campaigns? Of course it does. Yeah, that's fine. But it doesn't mean I lose out on everything. Uh, last week I was shooting, uh, a product, uh, right across from me and my office. I, food and beverage. Actually, I have to shoot product labels for a food and beverage company.

Now, why did I get that? Because I, I built a relationship with that person, not because I, I, I might be the best photographer to, to, to shoot this, uh, but because I have a great relationship with that client and that's why they hired me. So this idea that we're gonna lose out on everything is just not accurate, and it's never proven to be the case.

But not specializing in something is almost a guaranteed way to lose out on opportunities that you are hardwired to, to, to be getting. Hmm. 

Lesley Logan: Oh, everyone. Rewind that. Listen that again. I love that so much because it's true. Like there are some things that you'll get by based on relationship that happened in my business as well.

Mm-hmm. [00:14:00] And, but also, like even for me, I, I am a small business. We're trying to be a big business, but we still have budgets for things. I love my photographer that I work with, she's phenomenal. I, she does events really, really well. That's how I met her. But she's a personal branding, uh, photographer, but she does not do the photos.

Even with the relationship I have with her for my flashcards, my exercise photos are a specialist. He specializes in shooting movement. He specialize in shooting, shooting athletes. So I can actually keep moving while he takes pictures. I don't have to hold every exercise as it's going. And it's just because you, you gotta, you have to make sure that you are hiring the best for, for something when, especially when budgets are right, but when you have a purpose for that product.

And so the more we lean in, you're, you're, I. I love the way you actually said, it's like you're guaranteeing that you're gonna get the jobs that you're the best for instead of losing out on on the ones that you could have been the best for. Um, so you've been a photographer it sounds like, for, oh my gosh, you're almost at 20 [00:15:00] years in this business of solo doing photographer.

Obviously your job has, your role has evolved and you're doing these other things. What are you most excited about doing right now? 

James Patrick: I, I don't know if I could distill that. It's kind of like asking what breath I'm excited to take next. Um, every ...(Lesley: Choose your favorite child.) Yeah. Every day I, I go to work. It's, it's different.

Like today I get to spend time with you recording this podcast. And the only other thing on my agenda today is I get to post process, uh, a handful of, of projects I was working on. So photo editing, um, I'm excited about that. You know, I, I get, I get my cup of coffee. I, I, I get to put on some music in the background and I just get to kind of zone out in this meditative state while I just work on this.

And then tomorrow I, I'm doing copywriting all day and, and I'll have fun doing that. And Monday I'm filming content, uh, where I have to be on camera cuz we're going into a launch. I have to film a bunch of, uh, sales videos and marketing videos and I'm gonna have a, a crap ton of [00:16:00] fun doing that too. I would rather just not do work that I don't really feel lights me up.

Um, I choose to work, I choose the work I do. I choose to work very hard, and I also choose when I'm not working. Mm-hmm. Um, um, so, You know, that's not to say, and I don't want to sound like I'm on a soapbox where, you know, I just never, I never have a bad day and I don't, I don't find things that, that frustrate me and, and stress me out and cause me just massive amounts of, of paralysis and anxiety.

Um, but that's not the goal. The goal is to, to love what I do. Um, I would say, One of the things I'm, that's been lighting me up a lot recently is I started, I started, uh, taking my podcast and incorporating a lot more video into it. Uh, and I started doing it at the start of the year, and that has been just such a joy to do every week to, to be able to go live, uh, and have people tune into my show, live and be a part, uh, an active participant in my show live.

Um ...(Lesley: that's so cool.) [00:17:00] It's, I just, I had wanted to do it for years and I got tired of trying to make it perfect and I just did it and it's been great and I've had so much fun with it. So, and I think maybe that's the reason that comes to mind right now is just cuz it's the most new thing that I've been doing.

So, 

Lesley Logan: yeah. So I, I agree. Like I, um, There are, there are days where like, even in my job, it's like, ugh, I just don't really wanna work today. Mm-hmm. But when I actually start working on the things I'm like, I really do, like, I do actually like writing my own newsletters. I, I love copyright, I love writing a sales email.

I'm not the best person at it, but I like, have fun the way I write it, that it does really well. So I enjoy all the different parts that I do. However I can remember back to when I was like in 2015 trying to make the thing I'm doing now, the thing I was doing by myself, like making all the money and doing the job that like was the j o b just over budget, paid the bills, had the security of the healthcare and all that stuff, and trying to bridge the gap of like how taking that eventual leap while living in [00:18:00] LA and paying exorbitant rent and some parking tickets, um, because you just never got out to your meter in time. Um, so, you know, for me, making those goals, that was easier to break 'em down and, and, and, and finally get to this place where I, I get to do what I chose to do and I'm really excited about it. For those listening though, what are, what are like your, like what is you, how did you break your goals down?

How did you make sure that like, that you could have this job or like you get to do everything you 

James Patrick: like to? So I was running into this problem a number of years ago where I would set goals every year because I knew. So every book I read said it was important to set goals. So I'd set goals for myself and then I'd forget about 'em or, or I'd, you know, file my goals into a, a folder that would go into a final en cabinet that I wouldn't look at until the next year.

I'm like, oh, did I actually do that? No, I guess, I guess, guess not. Um, and even goals that I did [00:19:00] remember wanting to do, I never really conceptualized how I was going to do it or what that process would look like. So by the time I would come up to when I thought this would be done by the more insurmountable that goal became and, and the more stressful that goal became, it was just easier just not to do it.

So what I decided to do was to create a living document that I looked at regular. That I would catalog my goals at, and I would check in with on a routine basis, because at least now I'm not leaving my goals, collecting dust in a drawer for, you know, 11 months. I'm looking at it monthly. Or, or every other month, or even weekly, you know, and I'm trying to see, okay, what do I need to do?

So it, this was an Excel spreadsheet I started like a decade ago, a little over a decade ago. And then every year I would refine it a little bit and add a little more context to it and break the goals down a little bit more. So [00:20:00] that, let's, let's take, like I've been hosting events for 10 years. Let's take, I wanna host an event this year.

Well, that is a really big idea. Yeah, and the closer you get to, well, I wanna host an event by July, and now all of a sudden it's May 31st, and you're like, I got a month to get this thing off the ground, and I've never hosted an event before. I don't even know what to do, so I'm just gonna cancel this, this, this goal is just, and that's, that's unfortunate because that could have been an amazing event and you are now robbing all those people who could have attended that event the absolutely phenomenal experience of being a part of seeing your idea come into reality. So I started to break these goals down into, well, what needs to happen this quarter? All right, what needs to happen this month? What needs to happen this week, or what needs to happen this day? And the more granular I made the goals, two things happen.

Number one, it drastically reduced stress because now I'm not thinking about building an event. I'm thinking about [00:21:00] this month alone. I just gotta find a hotel to host the event. That's all I gotta do this month. And then next month, then I can figure out food and beverage, and then the month after that, then I can figure out speakers and sponsors.

So I'm now segmenting my attention. I don't have to worry about speakers and sponsors right now. I just gotta find a great hotel and I can put my energy into that in this moment, and all of a sudden it allowed me to refine my focus and everything. And not just in business, but in, in, in my personal goals. Like, you know, I wanted to take two personal trips.

Uh, you know, in, in a year, well, taking a personal trip you can break down as well. Well, what does that mean? Well, I need to research places to go. I need to book airfare and hotels. I need to book, uh, experiences on these trips, and I can now put this into different months or different weeks as I lead up to this trip.

So that, oh, I said I was gonna go on vacation in August. I'm [00:22:00] now in July. I don't know where to go. You know what? I'll just cancel it. Now. I've robbed myself of a great vacation. So when we start to break things into these manageable pieces, we actually start to get things done, and the more we start to get these little pieces done.

The more confidence we are building in ourselves that, yeah, I can actually do this thing. That this, this idea, this can come into fruition. Like as I start to tick off these little boxes, I can start to move forward and it, it then becomes this self-propelling momentum in how we get things done. I am 

Lesley Logan: so glad you brought up the confidence part of it.

That is why so many people listen to this podcast. And then why I even created this podcast is most people are like, Lesley, you're so competent in everything you do. And I'm like, well, I actually have a lot of imposter syndrome. Most of the things I do, cuz most things I'm doing I've never done before. So I'm flying by the seat of my pants.

But I am someone who loves to work backwards. I learned that many years ago and [00:23:00] I, and it is the most helpful way to take on a big project and also, You said confidence, but also it kind of guarantees you're gonna do the thing you're scared to do because you've already done all the work, you already booked the hotel, you've already reached out to the sponsors.

You almost get yourself into a position where you can't back out. Cause it's harder to back out than it is to do the scary thing. And so, um, but when you said you're robbing people or you're robbing yourself of an experience, that to me is one of the most important things people can take away from this right now as you're listening, every time you are too scared to share who you are and what you do and how you rock at it, or every time you skip out on something that is gonna change people's lives or your own.

You're, you're preventing the, everybody from having this experience, they could change their life, could absolutely, that vacation that you were gonna take could have been the thing that allowed you to end up meeting the person that was your best friend or meeting the meet, getting a different job or, or just maybe moving, like, I almost skipped out on not going to Cambodia cuz my husband wanted to go there [00:24:00] for our honeymoon. And I was like, really? That's where you wanna go on our honeymoon? Can we add an island in there? Can we just, but as soon as we landed I was like, oh my God, this is my favorite place in the whole world. Right? And if we, and we did the same thing planned the honeymoon cuz I had nine flights in 14 days cuz my husband's an ex, ex musician and he's like, oh, we'll just go on tour.

You can see people see three countries in a week. No problem. And I was like, really? That's how you do this? But it's those little steps each time so that it builds up and becomes the goal that you had in the first place. I, um, you've said you've been doing this for 10 years. Have you been able to help other people see how to break these things down?

What about the people who are like, they don't know the steps in between, you know, like that, breaking it down to small pieces, they're not sure the steps in between or the order of those. 

James Patrick: That's such an important question because this approach does not guarantee success and that, that I really want to, to be clear on, [00:25:00] but the goal is not success.

The goal is progress. So when I first host an event, I had no idea host how to host an event. So of course I got things wrong. That didn't matter the event still happened. And every year, you know, we're going into our ninth year of this, of this conference, and every year it has improved. Um, even, even going into this year nine, there were things in year eight that we didn't do right. Right. Quote unquote. I, yeah. We didn't do as well as we could have. Every year we're learning. Uh, so, so this, this idea that I need to perfect something before, before I begin. Mm. No, that, that's another great way to always keep something as an idea. Uh, it, it is about testing. You won't know what works until you try something.

Um, and, and I love how you said that. Even, even where we're at now. We're still not confident that things are gonna [00:26:00] work out. I, as long as I've been doing this, I, I, I still am terrified that something is going to go awry or something's not going to work, even if I've done it a hundred times before. I was launching a new brand couple years ago and I was feeling a little nervous, a lot nervous about it, and I, because of that, I was getting a little testy at home.

My wife always says, why are you, what are you worried about? I'm. Well, I'm putting a lot of time and energy into this. I'm putting money into this and what if this doesn't work? And she just looked at me and she's like, well, then you'll do something else. Oh, okay. I guess you're right. And you know, spoiler, whatever I was launching did not work.

I lost money on it. And, and, hey. Check my pulse. Yep. Still here and still doing okay. Um, so the goal is not perfection. The goal is progress. As we start to work incrementally towards this, there's no way for you to know how to do everything or how to perfectly reverse engineer, but that's not an excuse not to try.

Yeah. [00:27:00] Um, 

Lesley Logan: Yeah, that's just, I Thank you. That's a really good point. Um, you know, we work with a lot of athletes, uh, not athletes, excuse me, um, uh, fitness instructors on their goals and their business, and they'll, I can, I can see when they've missed. They, first of all, too many times I see people, but too many goals on that are unachievable for one person in one month.

So I'm just like, too many goals and it's like, I love all these, but we do, you have 40 hours a week to work on these, like these, you know? So giving yourself achievable goals is really great. But also when you set yourself up like that and you don't do them, or you don't get 'em all the way because a roadblock came up, I see people shut down.

Oh, I missed the goal. I failed. And it's like, actually, how could you have known that your website would need all this copy? If you've never built a website before, how could you have known if you, uh, To put a scheduling tool together was gonna take you three weeks instead of two weeks. Like, you can't know these things.

[00:28:00] So we put dates on things because it helps us get them done. Right. Prioritizes, yes, it puts in a priority, but getting it done, uh, perfectly is not the goal. It's the progress. It's like moving the ball forward, not kicking it down the road, but like actually moving it down, moving it forward with that, with that information that you learned.

And so sometimes you have to reset the date. 

James Patrick: So, um, couple things I wanted to say on this because you brought up a few important points. One thing about setting goals, I would, I would encourage people to set goals that they themselves have control over and that are not required to have another party or another, uh, company be the decision maker.

So, for example, it would be frustrating if I were to set a goal on. Oh, I don't know, uh, number of, uh, new stand covers I want to shoot in a year. Uh, cuz I don't actually control that. Mm-hmm. There's another company that chooses whether or not [00:29:00] my work gets put on that cover. So let's say I say, oh, I want five new stand covers this year and I only get three.

I might feel bad about myself, but that didn't mean I didn't work my ass off to get these covers, so why should I feel bad about that? Instead, I could shift that to, I want to send off 10 pitches a month. I want to, uh, send off a hundred podcast submissions per quarter. I want to record 20 YouTube videos, uh, per year.

Now these are things I control and I'm working towards goals like shooting new STEM magazine covers, but I'm not setting my, how I view success or fulfillment upon conditions that I don't have control over. And that's something that's helped me just reduce some of the, just stress I might feel if I'm not hitting something that I don't control.

Um, like I wanna launch a website, okay? I can set a loose date of when I wanna launch a website, but if I'm not designing the website and someone else [00:30:00] is designing the website, I can only control my aspects of it, how fast I write the copy, how fast I turn around the edits, how fast I upload all the materials, how fast I purchase the domain.

Those are the things I can control. I can't control when a designer says they're gonna get their work done. So that, that I think is important. And the other thing is, um, we have this, this way of the closer we get to finishing something, the more we find wrong with it. Um, when I worked in marketing, uh, I, I was doing professional service, uh, business development.

So I, I pursued public sector work for, uh, architecture and engineering and in pursuing these projects, On the regular, were six to eight figures. Um, when did the project manager come into the room to assess their opinions on the pursuit? Did they come in at the beginning or did they come in at the end?

They came in at the end like, well, I don't know if I like the team this way, or, I don't know if we're, we're highlighting the right past projects, or, you know what, maybe we need to bring into this [00:31:00] other subcontractor. And my response is, holy shit, are you way too late on this? Because we have to turn this submittal in tomorrow by five o'clock.

Or we don't get this project. Now, if you would've come in at the beginning of this process, then all that stuff could have been factored in. This is why we're trying to reverse the engineer at the beginning. So guess what? All this stuff that you're gonna do is gonna do one to two things. One, it's either not gonna happen and we're gonna submit as is, and maybe we get it, maybe we don't.

And number two, we're gonna try to squeeze all this in and we're gonna miss the deadline, and then we're not gonna get it. Okay, so coming up with these objections or these, these alternatives or these scenarios, worst case scenarios at the beginning can help create some, some ideas on how to work through if these things ever do surface or if these things ever do arise.

It's like we have an event happening at my studio next week, and it would be [00:32:00] very counterproductive if my business partner came in and says, oh, we need to change the, the order of the speakers and we need to shift around, uh, you know, how we're doing registration, or, you know what, all these people who bought tickets, we need to adjust what, whatever this scenario is, that would be a bad time to do it.

Okay. But if they were to do it at the beginning, Now we can work this through. It's, it's, it's just a way of, once again, allowing perfectionism to delay actually getting something out the door. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah. I, first of all, both points: love. And the second point, I really, um, can, from my own experience, it is really funny how the closer we get to like something seeing the light of day, we like start to nitpick noodle or like all of a sudden have this reason why, ugh, this actually shouldn't be like this.

I remember when prior to this podcast launching, I had recorded, you know, you have to have like 11, whatever, who knows what it is today, but back then I could launch with 11 episodes, so. Mm-hmm. And I thought that was a lot. And, um, but I remember like doing them, um, I [00:33:00] didn't, I'd never interviewed people like for a podcast before.

Really. I'd been on the other side. So I'm doing the best I can. And right before it was supposed to launch, I listened back to some of them and I was like, this microphone we have is terrible. Mm. Now wouldn't it have been a good idea, prior to actually interviewing all those people, to check to see if I like the sound of the microphone?

I didn't, and I had sat there for like a week thinking about what am I gonna do cuz like, I don't wanna re-interview all these people, but I'm not really sure I love the sound and as I was about to just stop myself and like stop myself from moving the ball forward, from having the goal of launch of the podcast on time.

Thankfully. Well, someone I look up to in this world, I'm sure you've actually shot her a cover several times. I listened to a podcast, she launched some friends, and their audio was so crappy. I thought, if these women can put that out, I'm gonna put mine out and I'm just go buy new microphone. So episodes 14 and on have a different sound and we're just gonna go with it.

But I really did that perfectionist. [00:34:00] That's why I said I'm a recovering one. That perfectionist almost got me to stop and now if looking back I can see what we made a mistake on and now for other things I can, I love this idea of like, let's think about the things that we might wanna change. We might, that could go wrong at the beginning.

So we actually put the lead time in to deal with that now we have the time before we don't have the time. Genius little addition in there. 

James Patrick: How many people, um, complained about your audio quality? ...(Lesley: No one has.) Okay. Just checking. Uh, people will overlook a lot or they won't notice things or they don't care as long as the content's good.

Uh, you know, it's, people care about outcomes and results, uh, when they're investing even. Time and energy. If, if the content's good, if they are getting the outcome that they wanted out of it, they're gonna, they're gonna ignore so much. You, you're 

Lesley Logan: 100% correct there. Because even when, so now it's probably eight, nine years ago when I started on YouTube.

This is like before, you know, before I could, before [00:35:00] getting access to like, you didn't have AirPods or wasn't there. And so like getting a a lapel mic was pretty difficult. And my husband's like, he's like, you have to be on YouTube and I was like, insert all the imposter syndrome of why I should be on YouTube over anyone else.

But anyways, we did it and it was, you know, pre tripod. We hadn't even, like, we were like taking messy action, should we do this? And so he is like trying to hold the camera really still while I'm like filming an exercise. And of course it's LA So then an ambulance goes by. Mm-hmm. And you'd be like, stop, start again.

Those videos though are still getting views today. No one's complained about the audio. No one's complained that there's not a tripod. We got better along the way. But when the content is, what is answering questions people have, they will, they are more forgiving. Um, you know, and then, and now today there's like so much access for so many affordable prices to noodle and, and, and do things better.

So we can, but, um, you know what a great reminder that like, if that, it's okay if the, if what you're doing is actually great quality, in other [00:36:00] ways people will overlook some things. So give, give yourself some space 

James Patrick: and grace. I always get nervous when someone asks a question. Um, what's the best microphone to get?

Um, what is the best recording platform to use? What's the best camera to purchase? And I'm just, I don't care. I, I don't know. Um, whatever you use, I, it doesn't matter. I, I, um, speaking about podcasts, you know, early on when I started podcasting, there weren't as you said, is accessible of gear or technology. I mean, we didn't have Zoom.

We had to drive to people. So I would, from Arizona, I'd drive to LA to go interview people because I, I desperately wanted them on my show and I was using these old crappy microphones. I actually just found it. It might be behind me. Yeah, it is. Um, I found it in a, in a, in a case in my studio, uh, that's like 15 year old microphone.

Um, It's a USB microphone, and I didn't know that [00:37:00] you couldn't plug more than one SB microphone into a laptop simultaneously because they record at different speeds. And thus you will have this terrible audio quality from one of your guests. And here I am in Los Angeles interviewing this, this big, you know, fitness celebrity, and you can't hear her through the microphone.

So we have to pull her audio from my microphone, which is across this table. And by the way, we're recording in this giant auditorium. So there's this massive echo all around because we didn't know about soundproofing back then. And, and you know what? That episode did very well for us. It was fine. Yeah. It worked out.

Um, yeah, so it's, once again, this is, We're, we're hitting upon this beat that the more we try to perfect something, the more we are delaying getting feedback on whatever it is we're trying to put out. Our audience will tell us that they want it different. Our audience will tell, you would never have known your audio didn't sound great until you listened to it.

And, and ultimately you decided, okay, we're gonna put this out and then we're [00:38:00] gonna make a shift. Um, I would never know how to refine my events unless I launch my event. We, we learn in the process of, of releasing things to market and allowing, allowing feedback to enter into our ecosystem. Well, absolutely.

Lesley Logan: Um, the co team membership we have now just turned, it's about five and a half years old at this point, but when. Seven years ago, I launched something very similar, but I perfected it. I made sure everything was ready to go. I went, I launched it, and guess what? No one actually bought it. No one did, because I didn't get feedback along the way.

I actually wasn't talking. I wasn't even talking about it along the way. So no one even knew it was even coming because heaven forbid I tell anyone and then they ask me a question and I like start to doubt myself and my imposter comes in. So I protected this goal. All by myself, did it all myself. And then, and then guess what?

I got to keep it all to myself. Cause no one wanted it. And so after six months of trying to make this thing work, uh, we took it all apart. We broke it [00:39:00] down to pieces and I did what I should have done, which is just put one piece of it out. See if people liked it, get feedback on it, put a different piece of it out, see what happened.

And what ended up happening over the next year and a half is what we found people really liked. We put that together, made a membership out of it, and now we've coached over a thousand people with it. So, you know, like ...(Patrick: That's amazing.) It, it's amazing. And with the smaller version of, we've coached over 2000 businesses with it.

So it's like, what is so cool is I definitely had to learn the hard way, but since learning that now, it's always like we put the thing, I'm thinking of doing this out there. What's the feedback gonna be? What are the questions people are gonna ask me? What weird stuff am I gonna see out there so that I can go, oh, okay.

People either didn't understand what I was saying or they loved it, or I can do this. And it really helps you know where you should be spending your time so that you can take your amazing way of goal setting and work backwards before I spent another year on something that nobody knows they want. 

James Patrick: I think what's [00:40:00] important to take from this is this ability to launch and to put something out there.

It is not a talent. We are not born with this. This is not innate to anyone. This is a skill. This has to be developed. Um, you, you developed this through podcasting. You developed this through, through trying to launch programs. You developed this by, by putting yourself out on YouTube, you had to learn and exercise this muscle that taught you to.

Test things out and to put things out and to try things and to get feedback. I had to learn this as a journalist. Um, that's why, you know, I, I started, uh, my career in journalism as I mentioned, I didn't have the benefit of ever experiencing writer's block. Weren't allowed to have writer's block cuz you had deadlines.

So writer's block was not a thing. You had to write, you had to turn in and you had to get it into, into print. You just wrote, you don't know what to write. Doesn't matter. You write, it's filled, theirs, doesn't matter. You gotta send it in. [00:41:00] And having that experience of it, it has to go in. You cannot, I worked in a newspaper.

It's not like you can put out a blank page in a newspaper. You have to turn something in. Um, you get really used to this idea that it's okay, you can put it out. And then work on the next thing. Mm-hmm. Um, so I think this is, you know, for those listening, you're like, well, I just don't have that in me. Well, you don't because you haven't yet.

Mm-hmm. Um, it's like when someone says, you know, well, I don't have a background or any experience in marketing. I says, no one does. No one has a background in marketing until they market. Like no one has a background in sales until they sell. No one has a background in anything until they do it. You don't have a background in shipping things out the door until you start doing 

Lesley Logan: it.

Yeah. He made me like think of like, you know, Seth Godin? He talks about how like writer's block, he's like, do you have talkers Block? Have you ever had that? No. You, you don't have writer's block, you just have like an imposter. Like you just have this fear of being rejected and that's why you're not putting on the [00:42:00] page, but you.

You hit the nail. It's like we have to be nice to ourselves and like it's like you're, the goals you have in this life you wanna (...) Be part of every single goal that you don't know how to do. Otherwise you wouldn't even have the goal cuz you could just freaking do it. And it's like learning a new skillset set at a gym.

You have to learn the muscle on how to do it. You don't have that experience. And so of course you'll have imposter syndrome around it. Of course you're gonna have fear around it. You're new to it. Mm-hmm. And so having some grace for yourself to be new and to learn something and to make mistakes, that's how you learn.

The best lessons I've ever learned in life is every failure I've ever had. And also, we are the worst people to judge the content we're putting out. Because some of this stuff. Some of the episodes that I was like, oh, I don't know how that's gonna land. People thought it was the most amazing episode.

And I was like, oh, okay, well then who I, who am I to judge? Cuz clearly I am not the audience. So I think, you know, we get in our own way and we're, and, and to use your words again, we're robbing people [00:43:00] the experience of, of what we have to put out there, if we just pick it apart and make it so perfect before we 

put it out there.

James Patrick: Yeah. I, I just think we have this disproportionate fear of a fallout that even when things don't work, and I've had plenty of things that, that did not work as, as I hope they would. It is not relative to what could actually happen. Mm-hmm. Or how bad things could actually be or really not be. Um, you know, I've, I've never had to go hungry.

I've never had to sell my car. I've never had to live, you know, sell my house because, because something didn't work. I'm just fine. Like it's okay. There's enough things that do work. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah. And also like the reality is nothing has ever goes as bad as we think it's gonna go. Or as great as we think it's gonna go.

Yes, yes. It's just like, it just you, it's okay to to have those both extremes and just know, okay, if I land somewhere in the middle, it's gonna be pretty darn good. I 

James Patrick: get so mad every time I [00:44:00] read a book where some, some jackass is like, you know. So I launched the website and the next day I woke up and I couldn't believe it.

There was a hundred thousand dollars in my bank account. I'm like, screw you all that piss. Uh, the thing that I saw, I saw this last week and this really chat my ass where it was an online coach. I don't know why, for someone who works as a coach, why get so upset by other coaches. But they were like bragging about how much money they've made thus far in the year and like, here's how much money I've made thus far this year.

And, and I apologize if you've done this. I, I, I don't know if you have, but, um, I was like, okay, why are you doing this? And then it was Carousel and they were talking about, okay, I've made this money this year, here's how I did it. But it was all a bunch of kind of bullshit advice. Like I showed up every day.

Okay, and you're saying this to people who are working their asses off. This is so cruel and what you're doing is, one, you're creating this misperception that if you show up every day and these people are already working 12 to 14 hours a [00:45:00] day, they cannot work any harder than they're working. And that, number two, that you must know something that they don't, so they should be giving you their harder money.

I'm like, what you're not talking about is the fact that the reason you're making this much money within the first two months of the years because you've put in 10 years of background work that allows you the relationships, it allows you the access, it allows you the opportunities. It allows you the insights and the perspective and the hindsight to know what works and what doesn't work.

Like it is so inappropriate to, to cast that in front of someone else and, and, and use it in just such a braggadocious way. So why did I put on that tangent? Oh, oh, 

Lesley Logan: success. Yeah. Yeah. I, but thank you for sharing that. And I think everyone needs to listen like, You know, first of all, I've never posted like, this is not much money I made and just show up every day.

Fuck that. Like, no, I use math. I use like, I also, I also think it's like, one of the things I think maybe is why people like me, um, and I'll just brag a little bit. It's like I'm very fucking [00:46:00] honest and very direct. Mm-hmm. Like the reason I'm really good on camera is cuz I took a commercial acting class.

Okay. Like, that's why I can look at the dot as an elder millennial and think of it as a person. That's why I can picture the humans on the other side, cuz. Somebody somewhere said you should do commercial acting. And you guys, I was a, I landed all the jobs and then I took this class and I never landed a single one after that.

However, I was so good before, however, It allowed me when I got the opportunity to be on camera for fitness to actually, like I have done many a live news show because I am not scared to look at that post-it that they said, this is your eye line and like picture the audience because I had this opportunity.

That is not a natural strength that anyone has. You have to learn that and you're either gonna learn it the hard way or you're gonna learn it by taking a class and hiring someone but you, it's just not your like natural. To like do those things. And so I think just to your point, it's like anyone you're looking at who's saying all these things and you wanna have those things, you should know that [00:47:00] there was a million other things that got them there.

Some things were by chance some things were relationship and thumbs thingss were skillsets that they might not even realize helped them get there, cuz maybe they haven't done that work. But every step along the way, along your journey, James, along mine, along those of you listening, is like, it all leads you to where you are so you don't have to discount anything you've ever been through.

Like the jour, the, the left hand turn that was the wrong way or the goal that didn't go the way you wanted. Just like James said, you this, this process isn't a guarantee that you'll hit every single goal you've ever wanted, but it is going to progress you somewhere. 

James Patrick: Mm-hmm. I, I was, uh, recently reading Robert Irvine's new book, chef Irvine.

He did that show Restaurant Impossible. Uh, I, I got a copy of his book cuz he was on my show and, um, no, he'll never listen to us. It was okay. Uh, but the thing that I appreciate the most about it was this one line that says [00:48:00] I make decisions on my business based on fact, not emotion. The balance sheet does not lie.

Mm-hmm. I was like, oh shit. I am so guilty of letting my emotions decide how I feel and what decisions I need to do based on. Well, I'm feeling a little nervous about this, or, you know, uh, I'm just not sure, you know, maybe I need to pull back the reins or, or I'm ignoring my balance sheet.

I'm like, oh, things are going great. You know, and, you know, may maybe things are, are are dumpster fire. Um, the balance sheet doesn't lie. And for so many years I was so afraid to look at my balance sheets because I didn't want to look at the truth of what I was doing. Once I started doing that, and it was very uncomfortable by the way, to look at my balance sheets versus how much time I was spending on my business, uh, how much we were taking in on the top [00:49:00] line, what we were taking in after expenses.

Um, but once I started doing that, once again, this was a muscle, I started making such better decisions about the future and the direction of, of the work I was doing. But it required accepting, looking at hard data and fact. Um, so I I love that you brought up your, that, that, you know, your balance sheets, you know, you can look at the math and I was like, oh, I just read that.

That was so good. Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Lesley Logan: I, that's, that is such, that's a, a hard skill set for people to learn because they, they're so passionate about what they're doing. But, um, you know, my husband and I held some in-person events at our house. There were business retreats. Her fitness instructors and the first one was phenomenal.

Sold out, no problems, no issues. The second one was like fucking pulling teeth. And we knew it was a great thing. Like I loved doing it. He loved doing it. The people who came, we had 24 testimonial videos that were 10 minutes long, like [00:50:00] so great, but for whatever reason, we couldn't get the second one to go.

And so when you look at the balance, she's like, this is a great idea. That requires a bigger wait list than we have. And so to do it again, we need to build that wait list up and give ourselves another year before we do it again. Like just give ourselves a time because I do love doing it, but it also has to pay for itself and then some.

So cuz otherwise the IRS is gonna call me a hobbyist and not gonna let me keep going.

James Patrick: Yeah, I, I remember the first year I launched my conference. Anyone that's attend at my conference, I've told this story, uh, it didn't work the first time we tried to launch it. We tried to launch it in June of 2015, and about a week before the event I had sold two tickets. I had, uh, five times as many speakers as I had attendees.

Um, I had a hotel reserved for this event. Uh, I had a deposit. I signed a deposit. [00:51:00] Um, obviously I cannot host an event for two people as I have 10 speakers. This is not going to work. So, um, you know, we, we ate a little bit of our investment on the hotel, and we bumped the event by three months. Uh, we sent a extremely, uh, like sorrowful mea culpa to all the speakers apologizing that we have to bump the event and, and please accept our sincerest, uh, you know, apologies for, for having to push this. And we hope that they'll join us when we redo this event in October. And then I did a massive, uh, overgiving of service to the two people who, um, you know, with the canceling event, obviously we refunded them. I did one-on-one coaching with them.

We gave them free passes to the, to the event where we hosted it. But it required a re-approach. Like we needed to redo this, we needed to do this differently. We needed to shift how we were marketing. We were, we were very reactive in our marketing and very [00:52:00] reactive in our approach, thinking that our clout or our, our, our, our network or whatever it was, was just gonna be enough to move this, this along.

And we realized, no, we have to really put forth some energy into, into moving these tickets. And three months later, the event was sold out. Hmm. Packed house. Not a single seat available, but it required that failing. Yeah. In order to realize, oh no, we need to shift our approach here. This needs to be done differently.

But once again, we didn't know. Yeah. Not cuz we never host an event before. 

And 

Lesley Logan: also like you would not have learned those things if it had half sold out. If it had half sold out ...(Lesley: good point.) You would've probably gone through, you would not have known what worked or didn't work, and you might not have ever had another event again.

She's like, well that. It was like, okay, it was okay. You know? Yeah. So I think like, um, I, I just to like bring this back to the goals, it's like, it is not about the perfection of achieving the goal, it's about the progress along the way, and it really does force you to change who you are [00:53:00] along the way to become the person who can do these goals.

James, I could talk to you forever. I think this happened on your podcast as well. So you all, if you wanna just continue, you definitely have to go to Beyond the Image pod and listen to my episode on there. Before I let you go, we're gonna take a quick break and then we'll find out where people can find you, follow you, work with you, and your Be It action items.

All right, James, where do you like to hang out on the socials? Where can people go to an event, maybe get this, uh, can you have a, a way for them to understand how you do the goals, the way you do them, anything like that? Yeah. 

James Patrick: So, um, I, I like to make things super easy for people. So, you know, Instagram's home for most people.

So, @jpatrickphoto on Instagram, um, I did take this approach to goal setting and about a year ago, I decided I just wanted it in a P D F for myself because I got tired of working in an Excel document. And then a couple of my clients saw and they said, well, can we have that? I said, sure. So I, I packaged it and, and sent it out to about 50 of my [00:54:00] clients and said, well use it for a year and then let me know what you thought about it. Um, and they did, and then we, we packaged it into an actual planner. So it's called the Legacy Planner, and it's available on Amazon. Uh, you know, you can get a hard copy, you can get a 

Lesley Logan: paper back or Oh my gosh, my peeps are going to love that. They can buy a hard copy of a planner.

James, do you know? Well, I'm, I'm all 

James Patrick: about tactile, like, I like writing things down. And the way it works is you build out your vision for the year. Then from your vision, you build out all your annual goals from your annual goals. You build out your quarterly plans. From your quarterly plans you build out your monthly actions. From your monthly actions you build out your weekly sprints, and from your weekly sprints, you build out what you do every day of the week. So it's a, it's an annual to daily planner. Um, and, uh, this is what moves us forward in our, in our, in our goals. So, yeah, you can get it on Amazon or, uh, if you just wanna try it out, go to jamespatrick.com/legacy.

I just uploaded the PDF of it. [00:55:00] You can download the parts you want, print it out, try it out, and just see how it works, uh, because I'd rather you customize this and make this your own. Uh, as long as it means that, that you're moving forward and you're actually exercising this muscle. 

Lesley Logan: Oh, I, I'm not kidding.

Like I can tell you right now just because at the end of every year inside my coaching community, like what are your favorite goal planners? I like this one. I like this one. And I was like, I can't, I can't read my own handwriting though. I don't have, but I want yours, so I'm gonna go to Amazon and get it.

Um, Imma I'm gonna have it primed over tomorrow so I can take it to Mexico while I'm, while I'm on vacation thinking about things. James, um, before I let you go, You've given us so many amazing tips, but bold, executable, intrinsic, targeted steps people can take to be it till they see 

James Patrick: it. 

The first thing is not to rely on reactive approaches to, to anything.

Don't rely on reactive marketing. Don't rely on reactive business development. Don't rely on reactive launch [00:56:00] strategies. You have to be proactive, and that's so much of what we talked about today is how to set a goal, how to reverse engineer that goal and how to put things into motion to test to see how things work in, in the refinement.

And then that kind of leads into the second thing is a perfect idea will be infinitely less successful than an imperfect idea that was actually put out. When we put something out to market, we get feedback. When we get feedback on something, we know how to refine it, how to adjust it, how to make it better. We need to stop looking at things as static.

Even this planner is not static. I can change this at any point and release a new edition. Even though this is a print thing, I can always revise this. Things are dynamic and we need to treat things as such. Mm-hmm. 

Lesley Logan: You are amazing. James. We're gonna, I mean, we're gonna have to have you back cuz I just really enjoy our conversations and learning so much from you. Y'all, how are we gonna use these tips in your life? Are you gonna get the planner? We'll have all the links in the show notes below and make sure you tag [00:57:00] James Patrick and the Be It Pod with your takeaway. Send this to a friend who needs it and until next time, Be It Till You See It. 

That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram.

I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day.

Be It Till You See It is the production of the Bloom Podcast Network. 

Brad Crowell: It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan and me, Brad Crowell. 

Lesley Logan: It is produced and edited by the Epic team at Disenyo. 

Brad Crowell: Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production, music, and our branding by designer and artist Gianfranco Cioffi. 

Lesley Logan: Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals and Ximena Velazquez for our 

Brad Crowell: [00:58:00] transcriptions.

Also to Angelina Herico for adding all the content to our website, and finally to Meridith Crowell for keeping us all on point and on time. 

Come on

trying to come into the podcast room as soon as the podcast starts.

I was on a call in my office and the girl on the call was like, is there a storm? Because their palm tree is like really blowing over behind you. And I looked back and I was like, that is so crazy. The sun was just out. And she was like, oh yeah, no, I saw that. And then all of a sudden I was like, wait a minute.

And I looked and it was snow, just like snow. And I was like, I'm so sorry. I have to go outside and take a picture of this. I've gotta, I'll be back.

Yeah. So it's just, yeah. Well, hope it's gonna be cold on. I'm going to Mexico next week. I gotta get outta here. I gotta get, I got seventies. Oh, good for you. Yeah, it's, it's time. I, I gotta, I gotta see some sunshine. I gotta get some heat. [00:59:00] I didn't move here for 32.

Any questions? Nope. I am completely at your mercy. All right, wonderful.

In this inspiring episode, Lesley shares uplifting stories of women who've overcome significant challenges to achieve business success, emphasizing the power of persistence, embracing rejection, and setting intentions. Find out how celebrating small victories can lead to significant growth in this FYF episode.

If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at [email protected] .

And as always, if you’re enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox.

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Resources

• Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!
• Lesley Logan website
• Be It Till You See It Podcast
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube
• Profitable Pilates

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Episode Transcript:

Inspired by a powerful conversation with Javeno McLean, join Lesley and Brad as they share key takeaways highlighting the significance of genuine care and recognizing untapped potential in others.

If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at [email protected] .

And as always, if you’re enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox.

Be It Till You See It Podcast Survey

Be in the know with all the workshops at OPC

Be a part of Lesley’s Pilates Mentorship

Waitlist for the flashcards deck

Use this link to get your Toe Sox!

Resources

• Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!
• Lesley Logan website
• Be It Till You See It Podcast
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube
• Profitable Pilates

Social Media

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Episode Transcript:

Javeno McLean, a fitness trainer from Manchester, tells his motivational career path, emphasizing the importance of encouraging others to enjoy exercise and uplifting those who face obstacles. Javeno talks about the value of authenticity, gratitude, and pushing the boundaries to redefine what is possible in this episode.

If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at [email protected] .

And as always, if you’re enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.

In this episode you will learn about:

• Javeno McLean's unique approach to fitness
• How to fall in love with exercise, regardless of your circumstances
• The importance of treating everyone as equals
• Working with the disabled population
• The importance of authenticity in the fitness industry
• Family, personal passions and staying true to oneself

Links and Social Media:

• Follow Javeno on IG
• Check out Javeno on TikTok
• J7 Community Health Centre website

Bio:

Javeno McLean, a former professional athlete, focuses on spreading smiles through his unique fitness approach. As an expert trainer for disabled, elderly, and vulnerable individuals, he owns the UK's busiest workout classes and the ."Gym of the Year." 

Drawing from his cricket experience, Javeno inspires others as a weight loss specialist and motivational speaker. His inclusive approach is recognized through the global record for the largest impaired exercise class and features in publications like the Manchester Evening News

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox.

Be It Till You See It Podcast Survey

Be in the know with all the workshops at OPC

Be a part of Lesley’s Pilates Mentorship

Waitlist for the flashcards deck

Use this link to get your Toe Sox!

Resources

• Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube!
• Lesley Logan website
• Be It Till You See It Podcast
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan
• Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube
• Profitable Pilates

Social Media

• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Episode Transcript:

Lesley Logan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt, my friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear.

Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started. 

All right, loves Get ready. Um, first of all, um, this is a little warning. Um, I'm a fast talker and our guest today isn't excited and, uh, and meets my speed, um, and has a lovely accent. So, um, if you normally listen to things on 2.0, may I suggest a [00:01:00] 1.5, 1.25, or 1.0. Um, I cannot wait for you to hear

our guest today, Javeno McLean because this man is doing some incredible things in this world. Um, I have been watching him from afar as a, as a diehard follower. And, um, it made the, it meant the world to me. Like it was, I'm not, I didn't tell him this. I went to DM him to be him on the podcast and I was like, oh my gosh.

I had this like, look like a moment of imposter syndrome, like, Well, what if he says no? And then I was like, well, what if he says no? Then I'll just ask him again. I'll just wait. I just thought I was like, maybe his people will block because like we're a smaller podcast. We're not that small, but we're smaller in this world of podcast.

And I had the story that I told myself and I was like, dang it. I just spent an hour watching all of his videos. I just spent an hour smiling and with tears of joy in my eye, and I was showing him to Brad. I'm going to just DM him because the worst case scenario is he probably won't even see it. I'll just be in purgatory in his dms.

And you know what he said? Yes. [00:02:00] And I cannot wait for you to hear in this episode why he said yes. And I also hope that this episode is a reminder to you that you are the only person who can do what you do the way that you do it, you're it, and to be true to who you are and being it till you see it is 1000%.

You stepping into that each and every day. And it's not gonna be easy, but ooh, it's harder to be someone else. So, without further ado, here is Javeno McLean. 

All right, Be It, babe. I have been stalking this guest for quite some time. In all the best ways, shout out to Steven Spinelli and my besties husband who sent me a reel from this man. Um, and I have been like sitting by going, I gotta just ask him. And when I did, he said yes. So you guys, McLean is our guest today.

, will you tell everyone who you are and what you 

Javeno McLean: rock at? Oh, Les. Well, I hate doing things like this, but [00:03:00] I'm . I'm just a 38 year old man from Manchester, England who likes to make people happy. I like to try and put a bit of love and joy in the world, and a little bit of exercise while I'm doing it.

That's it. That's it. The rest of it you can find out yourself. Google it. 

Lesley Logan: I love it so much. Okay, so you're from Manchester. Um, I guess I wanna start with like, how did you get started because you, I mean, obviously you're a fitness trainer. You do these amazing things, but you're more than that for people. And I think anyone listening to this, we have a lot of fitness and professionals who listen to this.

They get into this wanting to be more than just moving people and working people out. They, my story is like, Pilates change my life, so I wanna just help everyone change their lives. But at some point sometimes you get derailed, like you get distracted, there's things, but you seem to have been like really sparking joy in making people shine through what you're doing.

So how did you get started in 

Javeno McLean: it? 

To be honest, Lesley, it was, it was an accident. It was, it was something that, it [00:04:00] wasn't the plan. The plan was always, always from day one to just show people that exercise when it's done with the right environment, with the right music, you get me? The right vibe. Anyone can, can enjoy it.

I can make anyone fall in love with exercise if the environment's right and a long time ago, well, and the crazy thing, Les, is everything that's happening for me recently, I've been doing the same things for 22 years. I just never, I was never a social media person, and I felt like we became a bit of a, I'm not sure what it's like in America, but in England sometimes, is it called clout chasing, where people will film things.

Let's say if he's a homeless man, instead of just giving that person a sandwich or a cup of. They have to film. Look what I'm doing, I'm here with Lesley, and it kind of dilutes the message. It takes away, you should wanna do things from the goodness of your own heart. Yes. So I've been doing it for so many years.

I've been [00:05:00] training disabled people, elderly people, cancer patients, stroke survivors for free for 22 years. I've never took a penny of them. And it was purely because I understand people. I feel like we money, money controls the world a bit too much and money's not my God. And if I want to help someone, From the purest part of my soul, Lesley, there's no atm, there's no cashbook, there's no, there's no checkbook.

If someone's got cancer, if someone's got dementia, the least, the least I can do is make that person smile. Make that person remember me, make that person want to come back to me, and I'm not bothered about the money because if I take you money, that means I'm, I don't really want to help you from the goodness of my heart.

I want to help you because I want to get financial gain. I've never, ever took a penny of anybody disabled or elderly, and I've just never, ever, I've had people try and, uh, make me turn into the other person where I'm basically taking [00:06:00] my top off all the time. The typical pt, when I'm just trying, I'm not trying to sell sex.

I'm trying to sell inspiration. I'm not trying to set, I don't have to take on, you'll never see me, Lesley, ever with my nipples out. You know, guys. 

Lesley Logan: You know, , I, I understand that cuz like, um, I will see people even in my own industry and they'll be doing things and like I could do that. I could also do in, in it with a sports bra on.

And little shorts and, and put the camera a lot closer. But that's not how I live my life in general. So that just feels fake to me and I've never been a fake it person. I'm like, this is, this is, I do my Pilates in these clothes today. Yeah. So this what you're gonna get and no, I don't have makeup on today and that's just cuz it didn't happen today.

I like to be as real as possible, so I appreciate that you're like, no, I'll, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do it in my own way, ... (: 150%) and I'm gonna do it in a way that feels he saw the video. And I think that totally comes through. Because when I, y'all, I, what happened was I got sent this amazing reel of you helping [00:07:00] someone do something that like probably no one would ever think they could do.

Uh, or they would just go, well, that's the best they can do. So this is, you know, and you were just encouraging them and showing them. And I think no matter who you are, no matter what's going on with your body, we all wanna be a little bit better, a little bit stronger than we were yesterday. We all want that.

And so, and then, I was, you came up my feed and I showed my husband what you were doing. And then he just went through like, I was like, look at this one, look at this. The kid putting the ring another. And I was like, no way is he gonna get it to the higher one. And then he got to the higher one. I was just like, this is incredible.

So what you are doing is inspiring people cuz I left your feed inspired to go do whatever I was gonna do in that day. Um, obviously our listeners are going to wonder. How you actually like pay your bills. So are you also like training people who can pay you? Are you, are you, like, how is that happening so that you can give to these other people who need 

Javeno McLean: it the most?

So, Lesley, um, I struggle and my, my wife and my, my mother, [00:08:00] everyone, they're trying to help me at the moment. I'm a very humble person. I hate talking about certain things, but I train. I, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a wicked trainer. I train elite athletes. I train elite champion athletes. I've got a community that, uh, my community gym that I, that I own, it's for the neighborhood.

So I get people coming in every day from the neighborhood, regular people. It's just a section of my work, which is a disabled, and the people that need the most hope are the ones that I've never charged. Mm-hmm. So my bills as sorted with my regular customers. Yes. If that makes sense. Yep. Uh, but I don't really broadcast that as much as I should because I just...

I wanna showcase magic and amazing in other people. You see what I'm saying? That's, that's what I really, I feel uncomfortable, like even in the last two years with all the things that have been going on in my life, sometimes the best I can do, Lesley and I, sometimes I, I fear that people will feel that I'm arrogant is the best [00:09:00] response is sometimes will say, oh, thank you.

Because I love, I love, I love finding somebody out. Let's say somebody that you've seen on the videos, who's got, uh, who's in a wheelchair I've, I believe I'm gifted Les. And what I mean by that, Lesley is uh, I don't mean it big edited, I don't need it both fully. Your gift is what you can do better than everybody else.

Your gift is what comes easy to you. So Michael Jordan, his gift was, we all know what that was. Any day, any time. He's rock it anyway, anywhere you doing it. Who else? Mike Tyson. Anyone? That's their gift. On any day, they can perform better than anybody else. And I've always felt from a young age, Lesley, there's not a person on this planet I can't make fall in love with exercise. And when it comes to somebody with a disability, or, and again, Lesley, a day in my life, just to let you know, I have some of the, [00:10:00] some of the most tricky situations on planet earth to deal with. I, I have people who have got terminal cancer, I've got people who have got conditions that they're not fixable.

They, they're not gonna get better. They're degenerative, where as they get older it will get worse and worse and worse. And some of the conversations that I have with people will, will, will, will break any man's soul, any person's when there's, when someone's got, we're lucky, like I'm from, I'm from Jamaica.

So when I was, I'm from an island that we, there's, there's not much going on there. So with me personally, I've always been very grateful. And every second, every second that God's given me to do this, I'm happy. I've got clothes on and I can watch, I can drink and look, I've got, aftershave, I've got cologne, I'm, I'm blessed.

We're so blessed. Mm-hmm. But when you speak to somebody who doesn't realize how great life is because [00:11:00] the cards that they've been dealt. They've got a, they've got a countdown to when they're taking their last breath. Think about that. Yeah. I have people recently who have come to me with terminal cancers and terminal illnesses.

They know that they've got a countdown, but yet they wanna spend it with . anyone can me that gift, best believe that every second you spend with me, I'm gonna make you smile, girl. I'm gonna make you happy. I'm gonna make you, I'm gonna put every bit of me into that session because you've chosen me.

Yeah. And I believe that my gift is, anytime I've ever come across anybody with whatever situation I've already said to them, gimme 20 minutes. Give me 20 minutes. I bet you I'm gonna make you smile. I bet you I'm gonna take you out of whatever your reality is right now. If you don't feel too good, I guarantee you that little 20 minutes with me.

I guarantee you I'm gonna put a smile on your face and make you wanna come back. And that's all I can do. And I've never failed. Yeah, I'm, 

Lesley Logan: well, gosh. I mean, I have chills and I believe [00:12:00] it. And what I, what I think is so cool is like, first of all, for that person to even seek you out shows that they want to make the most of every breath that they have.

Yeah. And I don't know who's luckier, those of us who don't know when our last breath is, or those who do, um, And I, maybe that's the wrong word to use, but there is something about someone choosing this is, this is where I'm going and I'm gonna make sure that I spend it with . I'm gonna, cuz he's gonna show me what I'm still capable of.

...(: Yeah, definitely). And like it to me, what, what I love is that you make them feel so seen, which is like huge for me. But also you show them what's so much more possible and I think the, the rest of the world. Make like go, oh, poor them. Or, I'm so sorry for them. That's so sad. What they're going through and, and what I get from what you're doing is like, and this is what you have and here's what we can do and we can still smile [00:13:00] and we can still step over this.

This poll, so it's just really amazing. I wonder like, when did you start working with this population of people? Was it from the beginning of your training? Or was it like happenstance? Can you take me back to what that was? Yeah, 

Javeno McLean: so it was many years ago, Les, I'll tell you the quick story. Uh, many years ago was one thing with me Les is always about normality and redefining boundaries. I've always been that person. And I think normality is the most powerful thing on this planet. And I realized a long time ago when I tell you the story in a second. No matter who you are, whether you are, no matter what your condition, elderly, disabled, whatever it is, all anybody wants is to be treated normal. And me, now I'm a father of two young boys, and God forbid if anything was happen to my little boys. All I want is the world to treat my babies normal. Don't feel sorry for them and don't [00:14:00] pissy them. Treat 'em normal. And years ago, that was, long story short, I was, I used to manage sessions. We call it the council in the usa you call it the government baby.

So, so I used to work for the government and I used to do sessions all around the city in Manchester. And I had a, I had people that worked for me and I was watching a session with the young guy, one of my, one of my members of staff, and he was teaching this young boy in a wheelchair. This young boy was, he was so bored. He was so, so bored.

He was 19 and I watched the session and he stayed in his wheelchair Les, and then when the trainer went to go to the bathroom, this boy got a part of his chair and he walked over to, uh, where the water and the drinks was, and he pour himself for drinks. So I came in the room and I went crazy at him. I said to him, don't you ever let another man or another person dilute your power.

Don't ever let nobody tell you that you are meant to be in that chair. Like that chair defines you. I said, I'll just watched you for 20 minutes. [00:15:00] Lift the two pound weights, big strapping rugby player, boy. And he was lifting weights that he knows he can do more. He, and then he could get a part of his chair. He could walk like a lot of disabled people or a lot of people in wheelchairs.

They're not always, uh, in the wheelchairs forever. A lot of them can actually get up and move. And I said to him, don't ever let nobody dilute your power and tell you that you have to stay in that wheelchair. So when the trainer came back in, I said, you know what, you go home. I said, I'm gonna take the rest of this session and for the rest of this session, I made him stand up.

Cause I knew that he could. And even if he couldn't, I said, I've got your, I said, you're going to push yourself. You're 19 years old. And I said, you've got all this life to live. You can't live an attack life. By just being locked in your little box and letting the world and people tell you, you stay in your wheelchair.

You do. I said, no. So I made him stand up for 20 minutes and he did it. I made him lift the, the bigger dumbbells. Nothing crazy, [00:16:00] but a little bit heavier than what I know he could do. And at the end of the session, and this is what changed for me Les, this is where it was a little bit awkward, where it, this, this little boy's parents was in the room and his dad was massive. That's, his dad was huge. His dad was so, his dad was so big and he walked over and I thought, I dunno what's gonna happen. I dunno when we had it. Cause I didn't know. And he came over and he just started crying and me and him hugged for about 20 minutes and in him and his wife, and we cried.

And he was explaining to me everything that day, everything that I was saying to him, people are scared to say to him cause of his, wheelchair. And he said, they tell him every day that you're lazy, you can do more, but because his mommy and daddy doesn't wanna listen. And he said, I was the first person to ever talk to him and treat him normal.

Because the world when it comes to people that are disabled or elderly or vulnerable, they've got a thing where they don't wanna [00:17:00] offend and they don't wanna tell him anything. So they said to me, I was the first person to treat him normal. And they, they couldn't. They loved it. They loved it. And I said to myself on that, Look, cause you're in a wheelchair or disabled, you ain't no different from me or you or anybody else.

So, uh, that was my approach from there. And it just, from there, people just started talking about me. It, it went a little bit crazy. And then in the last six years when I opened my own facility, it's just gone absolute craziness. It's just, yeah, I've never publicized it. I've just, only six years ago was my first time that I posted a video.

I've been doing it for 22 years and I've never posted a video. Cause I didn't want to anybody to think that I was exploiting people or I was trying to showcase me or what, do you know what I mean? 

Lesley Logan: I was so, I do, I think so many people can be so quick to judge these things. Yeah. Like, and it's like I, what I, I think we forget that there's intention behind things and I think that like, You're a perfect example of like, when the intention is good, [00:18:00] then, um, that it, it, it, it, then it sh it should shine through and there can be people, there'll always be people who see it differently.

But what I, what, what I think that is really amazing is that you're showing people what is possible . And also like that whole thing you, I'm sure you've told your kids is, at least my parents did in the States, is like, never judge a book by its cover. Never judge a book by its cover. And what you're showing is, you're not judging a person in a wheelchair by the wheelchair.

You're looking at their heart and you're looking at what's possible. You're figuring out what they want, and you're showing them they could be even a little bit more than what they are. And then they, and then guess what? Tomorrow's a new day. So you can be a little bit more than yesterday. Who that we, there are people who don't have disabilities, who don't have terminal life illnesses who need to hear that.

There are people who are air quotes normal. Because of the world's judging them or because what they've been told, they live in like, well, this is as good as it's, as it gets. And, and you, it, it sounds to me like your, [00:19:00] your mission is really just to show people that there's always something more that they can do with themselves no matter who they are.

Javeno McLean: Hundred percent. There's a lot of my clients who are trained to this day. Guess what? I don't know their disability. I don't have the conversation Les, apart from certain people where I need to know medically. Certain professional things. A lot of people who I trained, the first thing that I say is, I don't care.

I don't care about your wheelchair. I care about you. I don't care what you can't do. I care about what we are gonna do right now. Mm-hmm. And I, I, I've never, I've never been afraid because, I know what I'm doing. I know that I'm not a bully. You, you know what? You've seen the training who just shout and scream and just use the ego and I've never been that person.

I know I'm so professional in my preparation that I'm never afraid to hurt people. I'm more concerned about how, how many barriers we're gonna we're gonna break. How many and, and more. What I've noticed with a lot of people I train is, the boundaries, their capabilities, they, they set the bar [00:20:00] so low because of the way, cause of the life that they've been given, the cards that they've been dealt. Natural human instinct is to set the bar here. Mm-hmm. So the first thing I do in the very first session is I get a gist of what that person thinks that they can't do. And I say, I'm gonna prove you wrong today. I'm not gonna do it next week. Last week.

Last week, one of my girls come in. Beautiful little girl. Beautiful little girl. She's 18, she's got cerebral palsy. She knows who she's, I'm not gonna say her name. And me and her was talking about press up and she said, I can't do a press up. I said, I said, I'll get, she said, I've never done a press up in my life.

I said to you in half an hour, I'm gonna, I'm gonna show you that you can do a press up. And then she was, Nope, nope, nope, nope. Les, we did 34 press ups that day. And then she left. She left that session. Couldn't believe it. And I said, baby, we're only just getting started. I said, wait till next week. Wait until next week and the week after.

And I think it's about just redefining [00:21:00] boundaries and well, when you do that with a human at any age, it is the most beautiful thing to watch 

Lesley Logan: you. Yeah. You know? Um, and my first Pilates training, They taught me this is what a beginner does for the hundred. This is what a beginner's rollup is. This is a beginner.

This is a beginner. Right. And then, and then I pass that test and you teach it intermediate. So now you take that person and you change the exercise and make it a little harder. You change it again. Right. And the advanced I went to, I was like, this doesn't make any sense. Like I went to a class and they just had me do the excercise.

They didn't have me do the beginner. They just had me do the exercise. And then they offered options if you couldn't do the exercise. Yep. And so I was like, okay. So I went to another training and they taught me this is the exercise. And if you need to change the exercise, cuz someone can't meet it yet, then you think of it as borrowing money from the bank.

You want the lowest interest loan so you can go get, I don't know if you have this in the uk, but here we have these terrible loan places that are called like paycheck [00:22:00] loans where the interest is so high. Once you get it, just you basically, you're constantly borrowing from them because now you owe so much.

Yeah, you have to just go there. That bank is never gonna get me to being able to afford a loan over here. It's never gonna get there. So like I always think of like taking that bar or let me just use the word modification and go, what's the least amount? And that's why I'll end up working with athletes is not because I was actually looking for them, it's because they came in and I was like, okay, let me see what you can do here.

Yeah. Okay. Let's see if you can do this. Until I could figure out where's the barrier, where, where are we limited? Yeah. And then we can go to work. Right. And um, yeah. And so I wonder like. Who trained you? Who taught you this? Like, have you always been this way or like what made, like what, what, what's, what turned that light switch on 

Javeno McLean: for you?

I, I've been, I'll be honest, Les, I've been crazy. I've been crazy since I was small. I've been, yeah, I've been very determined since I was young. I was even, I remember I was 12, 11 years old doing a hundred plus ups a day, 200 sit ups a [00:23:00] day. I was, I was it, I was, I played cricket. I'm not sure if you know what cricket is.

I was a top level cricket player. I played professional cricket for many years, so I bought, I was an athlete myself, and right now I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a power lifter. I'm a team gb power lifter, and these are things that I rarely tell people because again, my, my history of just being an athlete, I've seen what the human body can do, but I've seen the power not of having muscles or being super fit.

I've seen the power. Uh, involving people. Mm-hmm. I've seen the power Les of noticing people I know. I see. I've seen it like a lot of people don't get seen. I think about it Les. It's so horrible. You can have somebody who is the fittest, strongest person, but they still feel depressed or sad because they don't really get noticed.

People that I. My, my main [00:24:00] priority is to let them know, look him in the face and let 'em know, I see you. I ain't seeing you, I ain't looking around you or seeing your, your medication or your wheelchair or your walking stick or whatever. I see you and I think when people notice that you, when they got, uh, somebody in front of them, you actually gives a crap about 'em because I'm looking at 

them.

Javeno McLean: I'm not looking through them all around them. You gotta think a lot of disabled people, people are so awkward. People look around them and they don't wanna notice them. I'm looking right at you cause I wanna know you. I wanna know your story, your history. I wanna know about your cat, your dog, your neighbor.

I wanna know what you're gonna watch on TV tomorrow. I wanna know what you're gonna eat for your breakfast. I wanna know all of that. And when they know that I wanna know all of that, then they can ask me. And then we become friends when we become friends. It's game over. We can do amazing things together.

And I think being noticed is the most important thing and uh, it's the most empowering [00:25:00] thing. And this is not what I realized a long time ago, and this is where many years ago, Les, I had many people trying to, we did photo shoots with a couple magazines I could have had. I'm so happy that the following that I've got now Les, is uh, is so organic and I've done it in my way.

Yeah, I think 10 years ago. Why so many people? Just trying to get me to take my top after to show off my body and things like that, like, like everybody else was doing. And I said to him and people thought I was crazy. I said, you, I don't care how much money you, you, you, you're gonna offer me. I don't care how many followers you're gonna, you think I'm gonna get on these platforms.

I said, you'll never see me with my t-shirt off or trying to flex my six pack, cause I'm not trying to sell that. And I'm so happy that I stood by what I believed and now the world, cause I already said to people, Les, when people see the power of care, like real genuine care, it will be the most powerful thing that you will ever see because how can you not [00:26:00] like it?

Because it's the most organic thing. And I'm happy that I stood by everything that I said all them years ago. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah. I, I think, um, I mean that's ultimate being it till you see it. It's like knowing who you are. Yeah. And, and then just trusting that being who you are is already enough. Um, and, and that it's be, it's better to get to where you want to go as yourself than as being someone else because you can't, you don't get to flip the switch.

You don't get to put that shirt back on. I mean, you can, but the people who followed you cuz of the six pack are gonna be. You know, for, this is a terrible analogy, but many, many people who listen may not know this. Um, I am on YouTube and I have a lot of followers who followed me because I was barefoot.

So that's that. We'll, just, oh yeah. It's a weird world. So, uh, applies exercises. I have that. So then my friends own a sock company for pilates socks. I started wearing them and they got very upset. Because I was now wearing socks on [00:27:00] my feet. So the the, so it actually made my viewership go down. Yes, you all, it was enough to notice it was enough to hit the bank.

But I was like, well, who am I doing this for? Am I doing it for the people who wanna see my bare feet or am I doing it for the people who wanna learn the exercise? So socks are on most of the time. And, um, but like you, you don't, if you've, you have to do things in your he saw the video way, otherwise, at some point, That person's gonna come out and it's either gonna piss people off and deter them.

It could lose everything you built or you lose yourself in the process, which I think is much worse. So, um, I think that, but watching you do it in the way that makes sense to you is just proof that to everyone listening here, however, how, whatever it is that you want to do, whoever it is that you are, you don't have to do these shiny object things that, that get instant gratification to get to where you wanna go.

You can be, you can get there just be being yourself. 

Javeno McLean: I'll tell you something, Les. What's the name of this podcast? ...(Lesley: Be It Till You See It). [00:28:00] One second, one second. So this is the, this is a little bit my, my manager went crazy at me, right? So, listen, I get last la you know that the week that you asked me for the to do the podcast, I got asked by 12 of the podcast, and I'm at the stage where if I don't like your face or your vibe, I'll say NO, So all of these books, right?

And just to let you know, look, I've got best, I've got no fuck thought as well. Look, you guys, 

Lesley Logan: if you're watching on YouTube, you'll see this all, 

Javeno McLean: all of these books here that I've got here, right? These are all quotes, things that I write down that make over the years, over 22 years, things that quotes from people, quotes by myself, that makes sense that I need to learn.

And revise, yeah?, all these things in one of my first books. Guess what it says, ...(Lesley: Be It Till You See It). 

Lesley Logan: Yes.[00:29:00] 

Javeno McLean: So soon as I seen that, I said, hundred percent I need to come on this show and meet this lady. Because that there is, and this is the thing, that's when you see, when you're talking about being organic, anytime I film a video, anytime I'm working with someone. It's never scripted. It's not 3, 2, 1. Do this, do that.

And I've had loads of cameras over the last two years. Big TV companies come in and I've had to explain to 'em, this is not a gimmick. This is my life. These are real people. So anytime people have filmed, I've had to let them know. This is the most important thing is not you guys getting good footage.

It's me making sure that I'm doing my job with the people that I'm training. If you want to film, you film from the outside and capture what you want. But at the end of the day, whoever I'm training, my job is to give that person as most, the most magic, the most amount of amazing in 30 minutes as I can. You just be hard from over there.

And I think [00:30:00] just being organic and being yourself, I'm so glad that people notice that it's just me being myself. Mm-hmm. And that's why you see me in a lot of my videos with sliders, uh, or, or barefoot, I wear in the summertime. I don't wear socks cause I feel more free when I've got bare feet and people always say things.

And even now that my following's getting bigger, you always get the one stupid person. Why has he got no health and safety? Why has he not got ... shut up. Let me, let me just be happy. Let me be happy. I don't wanna wear socks. And I think exactly what you said, just being organic and real. And I think the, the person I'm trading, they see that and feel it.

And it makes them want to give me a bit more because I know that I'm being as real as I can, and then it lets them open up to me. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah, I think, um, one of the best compliments I ever got, um, I was in Australia. I was in a car with some people who hired me to come down and teach, and I wanted to go to this one store.

And I was like, I was like, can we [00:31:00] go? I know that we all wanna go to dinner, but like, can we go to the store before it closes because I really wanna buy this dress, this place. And they were in this car, we're like laughing and talking, whatever, and they're like, you're the same person online as you are, like in person.

Mm-hmm. And I was like, mm-hmm. Yeah. Are people not around you? Like, 

Javeno McLean: no, and that's the crazy thing in our industry, there's so much fakery and people pretending because let's be real. If you pretend to be something that you are not, you're more likely to make some money doing something. And now this is, we're at, we're at the point now where I think the real people need to stand up a little bit more and be heard because that's what the fitness and health is about, fitness, health, and wellbeing, It's about this, it's not about the BS that we see on Instagram every day and it, and it mm-hmm.

And it's, it, it's not healthy. And I'm, I'm so glad that people are noticing real, real influences. Yeah. Not, not, yeah. It's, I'm so happy. I'm so glad [00:32:00] about 

Lesley Logan: that. So I wanna know like where, because you're being it till you see it all the time. So where are you trying to grow next? Like, what is your ultimate dream next?

Like where, what, like we could snap our fingers, we can make it happen, but you're already acting as if it is ,so, where do you wanna go, , with all 

Javeno McLean: this? Can I, I'm gonna be honest. I'm gonna be so, I'm gonna be honest and real. Lemme tell you this, Les,

all that. So every single day I, I get, uh, hundreds of messages from people all, all over the world, from countries that I didn't even know existed. You, Uganda, Botswana, Yemen. Did you know there's a country called Yemen?. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't Yemen, all these people sending me beautiful messages, but I'll never post them because that's a personal, private, beautiful, thing between that person. I get hundreds of videos from people who watch the videos, watch my videos, who are disabled, and they, uh, they copy what I've put in the videos and they send me [00:33:00] to say, look babe, look what you've made me do. So an example, one of, I had to talk about this, this young boy copied the video of me and, uh, Josh, one of my 

youngsters.

Javeno McLean: And he was in his, uh, bedroom holding onto the dressing table that the, the, the closet thing. And he copied and he held himself up out of his wheelchair for 20 seconds. And he's screaming, saying, Jav, look what I did. And he was just crying his eyes out saying, because he watched my video, it made him realize that that wheelchair doesn't define him and he can do what Josh did in the video.

And I've received hundreds of them. So now, how many more thousands of people around the world can I get to do that? How many more people with dementia? How many more people with cancer, stroke, cerebral palsy, how many more people around the world? If I've, if I, let's say now 10,000 people have sent me videos, disabled people from all over the globe say, look, oh my God, you've made me do this.

How many [00:34:00] more millions can we reach? So the plan is to keep on doing what I'm doing and keep on spreading this as far and wide as I can. Because when people see real organic care, real beautiful interactions, wholesome interactions, whether you are able-bodied or disabled, it's the most inspiring thing that you'll see.

Yeah, and I think that's my goal. My goal isn't to, to, I'm not bothered about cars and this and that. My goal is to do exactly what I'm doing now and touch every corner of the globe. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah. You wanna make the, you want your impact to just spread far and wide. Yeah. Um, uh, in your defense, I learned from Yemen from the show Friends, so 

Javeno McLean: Oh, yeah.

Yes. Yeah. 

Lesley Logan: Yemen. So, um, you know, I I I love that. I love that so much and I, like, I wanna ask you, and, and, and if you don't have the full answer yet, then please just let my team know so we can add it [00:35:00] in. When you do. Obviously y'all are gonna listen to this, are gonna share every one of his reels to people, because even if you only have 70 followers, you have the following and those 70 people need to see this.

But aside from sharing what you're doing, is there anything that we can do to support spreading the word and helping you make this impact that you wanna make? 

Javeno McLean: Keep on sharing the videos that, that, that's all. Listen. There's always somebody watching. That's what I realized when some of these videos have gone so viral.

There's always somebody watching. There's always so everybody knows somebody elderly. Everybody knows somebody disabled. Everybody knows somebody going through a hard time. Yes. These videos are so powerful and I'm so, I'm, I'm so blessed that I, I'm in a position where my videos are impacting people so powerfully.

I get grown men every day crying and, and women all over the world crying and I. I'm, I'm just happy that, I'm just happy, Les, I'm happy with everything that's going. And the what, the one thing that I really would love to do is, [00:36:00] do you know about the world records Les? ... (Lesley: The what?) The world records? The 

Lesley Logan: World records?

Yeah. Like Guinness. 

Javeno McLean: Yeah. So I've got, last year, I've, well, I've got two world records. I've got the world record for the biggest wheelchair exercise class, and I've got the world record for the biggest disabled exercise class. I've got an idea for this year. I'm gonna break the, I'm gonna break the world record again, but I'm gonna set it up as a big, I'm gonna do it in a big room, a big like room or arena in Manchester, but I'm also gonna give people around the world an opportunity to join in via Zoom.

Yeah, I'm gonna get a big screen. Yes. 

Lesley Logan: You can have everyone's faces on there, you see? Yes, Leslie. Exactly. Yes. So I'm in, can you get like, isn't there like a big soccer like football stadium in Manchester? 

Javeno McLean: Isn't there like a big... () I'm gonna try, I'm gonna try and we're trying to get into a stadium. Uh, but ideally, whenever, whenever I do make the announcement, [00:37:00] anyone who follows me, I think if everyone could share that and we can, that a world record that's involving disabled people, From around the world, Les, that that'll be absolutely outstanding.

Lesley Logan: Well, please like sign us up for however we can help you and we want to, um, I wish I knew someone who owned a stadium to donate it to you, but maybe I do. Maybe one of my people listening to this can let me know if I'm like, how many degrees away we are. But I love this because, you know, I think people get bogged down by how much shit is like happening in the world.

Like they're so, like any, you, you open up any app and there's obviously people doing stuff, but there's also like, Just these big catastrophes happening to people all over the world. And I think people get overwhelmed. Like, what? I can't do anything about that. Yeah. And I feel that as someone who like has a big heart, I feel that.

And I think it's like it's not about us help. Like you don't have to be the person who's trying to solve all the world's problems. You just have to find one problem that you're so [00:38:00] passionate about. Yeah. And you go all in on that. And what you're doing is like bringing so much light to a population of people.

That have either been written off or underestimated or not noticed because people don't know what to do when, when they're with them. And so I love that because that changes the world if more people feel seen. And this is why I teach, because it helped me connect more to myself. And when you connect to yourself, you can connect more to others.

Like that's really what it's right. Definitely. I do this because I know that the way, if more people are connected to themselves, they connect more to others, there's like world peace. Like we're all of a sudden just better people. You, the more people feel seen in this world. The, the more they feel empowered to do whatever it is on this planet that they could do.

And so I just love, I just love what it is. I just love that so much. And I hope that if, if you're listening, whatever that is for you, it can be anything. It could be any kind of population of people or plants or something, but go all in with this passion and don't let [00:39:00] there be a barrier to it. Like, don't set yourself up.

Like there's a, there's a, a barrier. So you just, I feel like you've inspired me and I hope you're inspiring everyone listening that you don't have to stop just because this is what the RX for something or someone is. 

Javeno McLean: Yeah, and I, I couldn't agree any more or less. And one thing that I really noticed is, look at this now, did you say, let me tell, tell me about your family.

Tell me about your immediate family that you've got now. Oh, 

Lesley Logan: I have uh, my parents, my dad is 70. He deadlifts you guys almost 300 pounds, just so you know. 

Go on 

Javeno McLean: daddy! 

Lesley Logan: Does. I know, I know, I know. Um, and then I have, uh, my mom, she's a school teacher for first graders. And then, um, I have a brother and sister. Mm-hmm.

Javeno McLean: Brilliant. So now listen to this. If Lesley is sad or upset, mommy and daddy feel that pain. Your brother, your sisters. If [00:40:00] you go through something and you are not good, your mom, your dad, your family, they, they, they're riding with you. Every cry, every tear, every bit of sadness that you have, your mom and dad and your family feel that just as much as you coz' they love you.

Mm-hmm. And one thing that I'm so grateful of is their family involvement with what I'm doing. So somebody that I'm training, whether they're in a wheelchair or not, cancer, dementia, stroke. The happiness that their families are now getting is unbelievable. There's every single person who I train their families will message me and ring me and come and see me to tell me that the impact that it's making, on not just the person who I'm training, but that person's family, that person's mom and dad, that person's grandmother, grandfather, that person's husband, wife.

So every single person that I'm training, it's never just about me making that person happy. If I make that person happy, that filters [00:41:00] through the entire family. And before you know it, Les, I've been welcomed into hundreds of new families and it's the most beautiful thing when I go somewhere, when I walk around my local community.

Not even well, to be honest. Now, when I go anywhere in the world and people realize, and people, people can sometimes say things to me, well, let, let's say Manchester and in England when somebody says, I know the person that you trained, because may I, I'm related to that person, you've made my whole family happy.

Because now whoever the person is, is now happier. They're more joyful. They're laughing again. They're smiling again. People have forgotten how to smile. Yeah, because the, cause the world's not in a good place and it's so much sadness. A lot of people don't smile anymore. They don't laugh anymore. So when somebody says, I've made their grandmother laugh again and smile again, and wanna start being showing more of who they are, because a lot of people have lost themselves with covid, with the war in [00:42:00] Ukraine, with the cost of living, with everything that's going on, it's making families happy and I'm so glad that I'm the person that's opening that, that floodgate of love, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? It's powerful. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah. I mean it's, well, to go back to it, it's like we forget that the actions we take to help others are, it's a chain reaction. Yeah. And so your one, your one thing that feels small is actually much bigger than you'll ever know.

And someday, hopefully you'll be in a place like you are, where you get to hear about those that, that daisy chain effect that's going on. Um, , I, you have kids and, and a and a and a spouse and everything. Um, it must be so fun for them to be around you cuz you have so much energy. Are they involved in what you do or are they like your, like, not a respite, but like your time away is with them.

Javeno McLean: Yeah, it's bit my, my, I got two. I've got two beautiful boys and my wife. [00:43:00] And my wife's obviously she knows I'm a bit crazy. The energy...(Lesley: she loves it). She does, she does mean wife. My little boys are crazy. They, they've got my energy les, my little, my, my youngest Leo, he's only one. He, he doesn't, he, he's not got a clue what's going on.

He just wakes up every day, Les. He just goes, ah, all day. That's all he does. All he does. Ah, that's all he does. 

Lesley Logan: He's learning his voice and he hears you yelling. So he thinks he's talking. That's, 

Javeno McLean: he does. My, my eldest son Mason, his energy, and, and to be honest, he's, he's, he understands what Daddy's doing now and he sees how far it's going and how many people I'm helping. And he's very proud, and my wife's very proud as well. And, and that's what it's all about for me. Just making the family proud and making me mom and dad and my wife and everyone proud, and I can only make him proud if every single time I, I'm on a platform to speak.

I'm just as real and as honest and as organic [00:44:00] as I can be. Mm-hmm. And that's all that matters and I'm, I'm just, I'm glad, fingers crossed, it continues and I'm glad that. I'm glad we've always going, man. 

Lesley Logan: Yeah. Oh, well, , I, I wanna talk to you for hours. Um, but you also have a family and it is, uh, getting to be at least dinnertime, if not past it where you are.

So we're gonna take a brief break. Yeah. And then we're gonna find out where people can find you, follow you, stalk you like I did. And your Be It action items. Alright, , where do you like to hang out? Where can people help you, support you, follow you, all those things? Well guys, 

Javeno McLean: I'm on socials. I'm on. I'm, I'm 38 years old, so I'm new to all the social media things, so I'm on Instagram, J seven Health, I think.

What, what's my name? What's my name? J seven Health . I think I'm called on Instagram, on I'm TikTok. I've been on TikTok for about 10 months and it's gone crazy. My TikTok name is what? 

Lesley Logan: Your TikTok name, I don't know, but [00:45:00] your, uh, your Instagram is J seven Health . That's it. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get your TikTok definitely linked below for sure.

Javeno McLean: I can see here. TikTok is Seven guys. Go on there. Follow and listen. I'm not trying to sell nothing. All I want people to is if you like the video comment, say something nice and if you know somebody that maybe would benefit from seeing the video. Pass that joy and pass on that love, and then it'll keep on spreading.

That's all I wish. That's all I want. 

Lesley Logan: All right. You've given us so many things to think about, but bold, executable, intrinsic, targeted steps people can take to Be It Till They See It. What do you have for us? Uh, 

Javeno McLean: Family, I generally believe. If your family about the front of your thoughts all the time, you'll always, always have a reason to be yourself and a reason to not let people down, especially the ones that mean the most.

And when it comes to [00:46:00] being until you see it, I think you need to understand the journey. Understand that people won't understand where you want to go. People are not gonna understand your dream because it's yours. The dream and the vision that you created for yourself and your family or your mission, other people are not going to see it the way you want to.

Only you can see it, and you have to understand that not everyone's gonna be supportive. Not everyone's gonna want you to win, and you need to understand that it doesn't really matter what everybody else wants. All that matters is what you want, and just be passionate about it and don't let do everything that you need to do to keep your passion alive.

And that's one thing that I, I make sure that I do every single day, like an every single day. Les, I listen to Justin Bieber. Do you know why? Because I like Justin Bieber. People look at a big black guy and want me to listen to Snoop Dogg. I don't wanna listen to Snoop Dogg. I want Justin Bieber. I like Bonjovi.

You know Bonjovi, probably walks alone in the [00:47:00] dark. That's my job, Les. But I make sure that I do things every day to make happy. Because it's all about just being as honest as you can for yourself. And I think when you're talking about investing in something and trying to achieve something, just be yourself.

Whether, whether there's a tsunami or a tornado , there's gonna be so many things that are gonna wanna shape your personality and your character. Make sure you stay solid. Mm-hmm. Make sure you stay solid and do what you wanna do and uh, and that's how you really achieve it, I think.. And I think when you like, like the podcast is called Be It Until You See It.

I think there's nothing more powerful than that. That that's that saying. As soon as I seen the name of the podcast, it, I, I can't, it blew me away cuz it's something that I've literally done my whole life and this is why it made sense for me to speak to you as. Mm-hmm. Thank you for the opportunity girl.

Really 

Lesley Logan: do appreciate it. , thank you so much. Uh, truly this was a [00:48:00] dream. And, um, blew, blew my dreams out of the water. It was everything more than I ever anticipated. You were amazing y'all. How are you going to use these tips in your life? I want you to tag . I want you to tag the Be It pod.

I want you to share this episode no matter how, you know how to share it. I don't care if it, you just show it to someone or if you actually know the tech to share it. I want, don't let that stop you from, from taking something that inspired you and giving it to someone else, because that could be the best thing you do for them that day.

I will. I'm so grateful for Steven for sharing your reel with me because that's how we got here. And you always bring a smile to my face and I can tell you're changing the lives of those You're with Soo. Thank you so much everyone. Until next time. Be It Till You See It.. 

Javeno McLean: Thank you, Les. 

Lesley Logan: That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to [00:49:00] introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram.

I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day.

Be It Till You See it is the production of the Bloom Podcast Network. 

Brad Crowell: It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan and me, Brad Crowell. 

Lesley Logan: It is produced and edited by the Epic team at Disenyo 

Brad Crowell: our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production, music, and our brandingby designer and artist Gianfranco Cioffi. 

Lesley Logan: Ch. Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals and Ximena Velazquez for our transcriptions. 

Brad Crowell: Trans.

Also to Angelina Herico for adding all the content to our website, and finally to Meredith Crowell for keeping us all on point and on time. 

Hello? Hello? Hey. Hey, [00:50:00] Leslie. 

Let's do it. Girl. Thank you for inviting me. Let'

In this empowering podcast episode, Lesley highlights personal growth, overcoming the fear of reaching out to influential people, and building valuable connections. Tune in for tips on recognizing accomplishments and embracing opportunities.

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Episode Transcript: