Freedom FastTrack Podcast

Christopher:                         Welcome Freedom Fast Track, here’s to another episode today. We’ve got a little bit of a different show. This show’s going to be about biohacking. It’s going to be about health, it’s going to be about effectiveness. I’ve got Jane Barlow here who’s the CEO of Barlow Herbal and Jane welcome to the show.

Jane:                                          Thank you Chris. I’m happy to be here.

Christopher:                         I know, we were just talking off the air and I had to like nearly pause us because of the amount of excitement I have for the word biohacking and for getting the most out of my body. I mean, the listeners can’t see but right now I’m wearing my blue looking glasses and I’m standing with my vibrant five toe shoes. This morning I was meditating and taking all sorts of different hormones and herbs. I am so into this Jane. I think it’s so critical. Here’s my first question on this. What does biohacking actually mean?

Jane:                                          Biohacking means you’re going to do something with your health, with your biology and you’re going to up-level it. You’re going to slip through a wormhole and do something quicker than the normal population is doing things. Bio is basically your health, so your body. Your biology.

Christopher:                         I think that entrepreneurs need to get any edge they can get. I don’t know about you but I see so many business owners focused on the strategy and the mixed marketing technique but there’s nothing more important than your health and that’s something that you and your family have been focused on for quite a long time. I would love to start off with just a brief run through of your story and of your business before we dive head-first into our … I think it’s going to be an absolutely amazing in a tribute show. If you would do us the favor of letting us know your story that’d be great.

Jane:                                          Okay, yeah. I was born into a family. My dad was a medicinal botanist. That means medicine out of plants and we were raised, I’m second oldest of 14 kids so lots and lots of kids. They’re three adopted but 11 natural kids. It was a big, big crazy family and my dad used to not only have big gardens and we would make everything home made and I grew up in the ’60s and the ’70s so this was way back when people were actually eating a lot of canned food, packaged food. All of the food industry was trying to make it easier for homemakers but my parents, they would have nothing to do with that. What would happen is my dad would have some of his colleagues over for dinner.

There would be like an iridologist and a chiropractor and a acupuncturist and these family dinners would turn into these healing sessions. Where all us little kids would be getting chiropractic adjustments and our eyes read. Iridology is reading the iris of your eye. Yeah, and this was just normal for us. We just grew up that way. My dad started a company when I was about 14 years old and he worked with people from all over the world that were very well known herbalists. He used to lecture at a naturopathic college called Bastir University. That was his kind of stomping ground.

Christopher:                         It’s a chiropractic naturopath college isn’t it?

Jane:                                          It’s a big, mostly naturopathic college. I don’t know. It might’ve evolved into chiropractic, too, but when he was there it was mostly naturopathic.

Christopher:                         It’s interesting. I do know that one of my mentors, Richard Bartlet, who does Matrix Energetics, he got his naturopathic doctorate from there. I didn’t know you could be a doctor of naturopathy, how do you say that? I mean, saying that.

Jane:                                          Naturopathic, or naturopathy.

Christopher:                         Yeah, there you go.

Jane:                                          Yeah, we just had this really unique experience growing up and I kind of felt deprived of all the fast foods and junk foods that my friends were eating, but of course as an adult I realized, “Wow, my parents really gave us a gift.” My dad actually passed away 19 years ago. On Sunday, it’ll be 19 years and I’ve been carrying on his work and his business ever since then. It’s been a huge learning experience for me and sometimes I wish I could sit down with him and say, “Dad you’re not going to believe what I learned that you didn’t know.” I mean, and he was a brilliant man and I say that with a lot of respect, but I have learned so much because my customers are all over the world.

They’re mostly practitioners and we do some things that really change the game for your health. You’re right, as entrepreneurs we need to have an edge and our health has to be at the forefront because if you’re not healthy you cannot bring your best self to the planet that you’re trying to serve.

Christopher:                         It’s so true and you know what Jane? I think, maybe, 15 years ago it was okay to be a CEO and make a bunch of money and be fat, or be smoking cigarettes, or to eat junk food but I don’t know about you, but if I see someone online and they’re making a bunch of money and they’re overweight or they’re smoking of they’ve got some obvious health problem. I just can’t follow them. I can’t listen to them so I think this is so, so much more important than many people really understand.

Jane:                                          Yeah, I agree completely and I think you really have to practice what you preach. Especially when you’re in my field. I can’t say, “Do this, do that. Use this, try this.” This has to come from a complete place of trust. It’s really pretty interesting, but yes I think you’re right. I would never follow somebody no matter what business they were in. What entrepreneurial or big CEO thing was happening if they were having a very healthy life style because, I don’t know, that just shows no self control. It shows a whole bunch of things.

Christopher:                         It really does.

Jane:                                          Yeah.

Christopher:                         It does and it’s something that should be their top priority. I mean, health is really wealth and I think for entrepreneurs, the one, there’s the image and how you need to show up and look but the other thing is we want to get the most of our body. I mean, we talk about hustle is such a big phrase at the moment but if you don’t have the energy to actually hustle and to do that you just kind of burn out and adrenal fatigue is massive at the moment.

Jane:                                          Yeah, I agree completely. I think people are making unwise decisions but some of it is they just don’t know. That’s what I really find when someone finds me whether it’s a practitioner or it’s just a regular person, I find that people suffer just because they don’t have access to simple health education. In fact, if you think about this, this is one of my favorite things Chris is every single indigenous people that have ever lived on this planet they always have their own medicine man. You would go to the medicine man and they would make you a poltus, a tincture, a tea. They would make up a brew for you to take care of stomach aches and headaches and wounds.

There was always this person who was the … I think it evolved to you grandma. Sometimes people said, “Oh, grandma’s remedies.” I think there’s a big wave of that coming back because people want to be empowered to take care of their own health without running to the doctor for every little thing.

Christopher:                         I so agree. It’s almost like what was old got out of fashion and now it seems to be what’s old is new again.

Jane:                                          Oh my goodness, it’s completely true. I’m in my mid 50s and I have to tell you, I don’t worry about anything. I don’t worry about cancer, I don’t worry about any virus or fungus. You know the zika virus, everyone freaks out and I don’t even. It doesn’t even phase me because I know I have the power to take care of it because I have this huge herbal arsenal. It’s really awesome.

Christopher:                         That is awesome and I really want to dive deep in this and so I think we could go in so many different directions but I really want to focus on the entrepreneur who wants to get the most out of their body. The entrepreneur who’s listening to this right now may go, “Do you know what? I am jamming five energy drinks down my throat or four coffees just to get through the day. I’m not sleeping right. I do want to be more effective. I want to be more fired up,” and I would love you just to share. You can just go and whatever you think that this person needs to know in order to really turn themselves into that. How do they really biohack their biology and become that super fast business owner that’s full of real long lasting energy?

Jane:                                          Yeah, that is a big, big question with a lot of answers. You’re right. I mean, really, we could talk for a long time. My very first place to go with this is people need to start their life, start their day being proactive instead of reactive. When you get up in the morning you shouldn’t just eat whatever’s put in front of you. There needs to be a proactive method to the way you biohack yourself or you take care of yourself and you have to educate yourself. You have to be really mindful of what you eat, what you drink, where it comes from, how much. I mean, all of these things are really … I mean, the food thing. Before I started running my dads business I used to own a health club.

I was in the fitness business. I actually still teach classes at the local gym here where I live. Fitness has always been a big part of my life and I think that what happens is if people just simply react to what’s going on in them instead of being proactive then that’s going to mess everything up. Now, I kind of feel like I have a lot of stuff going on in my head I want to share with you so this is where I’m going to go with this because I feel this is a really huge takeaway that your listeners could get because this is really where my expertise really shines. When I was 14 my dad started this herbal company, these were mostly liquid herbal extracts.

He would take the plants, he would actually extract the plant medicine out, he would go through the curing process, the filtering process. Then, even though we don’t do this anymore, he would use all of his children as a work force. We would bottle, we would label, we did everything by hand for a lot of years. I still do it by hand for myself and my family because it’s such a generational, there’s a legacy, there’s something about making your own plant medicine that’s really powerful. We can’t really do that anymore because of compliance and all of that which is fine. When I was 14 my dad had been studying with a very well known doctor.

His name was Doctor E.T. Krebs, Jr and if you have ever heard of the Krebs cycle, then this is the doctor who discovered and developed the Krebs cycle. Yeah, and his dad Doctor E.T. Krebs, Sr was the contract position for two tribes of Indians during the flu epidemic of 1918. You remember the Spanish flu, there were estimated between 30 and 50 million people died during this great flu epidemic of 1971 – 1918. Well the government assigned a contract position to every group around the United States and there’s a Doctor E.T. Krebs who was assigned this two tribes of Indians who were living near Carson City, Nevada. The Washu Indians and during this epidemic not one person from these two tribes died.

When every other group around the world was effected and what he discovered is that they were using this plant that only grows in the pacific north west of the United States. It’s called Lomtium Disectum. Not a lot of people have heard of it. I even talked to master herbalists and people who are big time naturopaths and herbalists and they’ve never heard of this plant.

Christopher:                         Wow.

Jane:                                          Yeah, because it only grows in one part of the world and it’s never been successfully cultivated so what this doctor did is he took this plant back to his practice in San Francisco and he started using it on his own patients and this his son carried on his work and his son is the one my dad spent 30 years studying and studying this plant. When I was 14 my dad developed an extract of this plant. It’s a very concentrated liquid extract so it might be called a tincture or an extract. It’s not very popular, or it’s not very common to see extracts. People are really used to popping things in capsules or pills or tablets.

It seems like a more convenient way that we like to get our herbs but if you get something that’s in a liquid, it absorbs into your tissues. It acts really fast and what this plant does, this is where the total magic is, this plant is a broad spectrum, what’s known as an antimicrobial. It goes after virus, fungus, yeast, and some types of bad bacteria. Now this is cool. I have two sons who are 34 and 35 years old and neither one of them have ever had a prescription antibiotic. I raised them on this plant. Now I’m not against antibiotics. I think in the right situation an antibiotic can absolutely save your life so I’m not anti antibiotic.

Really, I think that’s a really important thing to make note of but this plant has the ability to clear up … Well, I could tell you some stories that would blow your mind. For example, my husband after 20 years with a herpes virus now tests negative on a PCR test for his type of herpes because of this plant. For it to have the ability to change the game for an entrepreneur who wants to biohack their ability to not have to run to the doctor when they get a cold, or the flu, or they get some infection could take them down and take them out of their business for a while. I mean, this is a powerful thing.

Christopher:                         Could you … How do we spell the name.

Jane:                                          Okay the name is Lomatium. L-O-M-A-T as in Tom. -I-U-M. L-O-M-A-T-I-U-M. Low-may-chum is how it’s pronounced.

Christopher:                         We’ll put that in the show notes. Where would they go to get some of this, I mean I’m intrigued to try it.

Jane:                                          Yeah, okay. Well let me tell you. We have it on our website but there is something that’s very, very important for people to know about this plant. It might be why a lot of people have never heard about it and this is the important part. This is the part where everyone, their ears need to perk up right now.

Christopher:                         My ears are perked.

Jane:                                          About seven to 10% of the people who use this plant, especially if it’s a full root extract. If it’s the whole thing, you don’t isolate anything out of it. If you use the whole plant extract about seven to 10% of the people who use it for the very first time will get a full body one-time detox rash. Okay. I have extreme experience using this and seeing … I’ve seen thousands and thousands of rashes. It’s not a dangerous rash, it’s a one time detox. It happens only once. Your skin is your largest organ so what I have come to believe is that there is some type of low-grade virus, fungus. Mostly viral or fungal load that is hanging on in their tissues.

If someone has a little bit of brain fog, they have a little bit of fatigue. They’re overall healthy but there’s something they just can’t put their finger on and they’ve had chronic issues that they might have to go get antibiotics every once in a while. Those people tend to be a little bit more prone to this rash and it is very uncomfortable and it’s really issue and to be honest, it scares a lot of people away when they learn about it. I would say, it’s not anything to be afraid of. It happens only once and it’s what’s known as a healing crisis.

In the medicinal herbal world, your body is doing a very smart thing and it’s healing you.

Christopher:                         Yeah, and I’ve done a lot of study on those sort of things and a lot of the things that we think, the symptoms that we think are flu’s and we won’t use the big C word, but other things that show up in the body. Especially in the digestive tract and other things that are. The symptoms are actually the body healing itself. Getting rid of things, trying create acne to try to get some of this excess toxicity out. I totally know what you mean by healing crisis.

Jane:                                          Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, if you think about when people get a fever your body’s trying to heat up to heal you and when you usually get a fever you usually completely lose your apatite. That’s your body saying, “You know what, I don’t need to be digesting, eliminating, or processing food right now. I need to be healing.” I’m not saying to let a fever get out of control and stick around for a really long time but when your body heats up that is kind of a really classic example of the healing crisis.

Christopher:                         Yes.

Jane:                                          Lomatium comes with the healing crisis in some people. Not everyone. It’s definitely something to be aware of. About eight years ago I developed a formula that was designed to prevent the rash and it has lomatium in it, but it has other herbs that support and detox your liver so that your skin is not going to take all the detox or the potential for the detox but your liver and your other organs are going to be assisting you. It’s been a game changer and a life saver for me personally because I talk to people all over the world and that’s been one of the hardest things for me to deal with as the owner of this company is talking people off the ledge from their lomatium rash.

Christopher:                         You know what I love so far about this conversation is, it’s very rare that someone brings in something that I have absolutely no understanding of but I’m very excited to try out. Usually I have a little bit of an understanding but this has been awesome. I would love to ask, other than that, what are some other things that the entrepreneurs can really do? I mean, obviously they need to have a huge detox.

Jane:                                          Yeah, yeah. Not everybody gets the detox. You know, I think that prevention is something that people need to put at the forefront. You need to prevent rather than try and cure. Don’t wait until you get something. I think that, that is really pretty powerful and along those lines things like, I don’t know if you want to keep talking herbal or if you want to talk about just some of the other things that I do to stay well?

Christopher:                         It’s a good question and you know what I really like is you said it before, that it’s all about being proactive in the morning.

Jane:                                          Yeah.

Christopher:                         I subscribe massively to morning rituals and routines and I would love to hear of some things that you think are important for entrepreneurs to be proactive within the morning. Like, what should they be eating? There’s so much science out there from [inaudible 00:23:28] anyway, I’ll let you go on then. Let’s talk a little bit about being proactive in the morning and how to set your day up right.

Jane:                                          Okay, yeah, and I actually have a pretty good routine and so what I do is I wake up naturally. I don’t ever use an alarm clock and I think a good night sleep is really, super important. I think your room needs to be dark, cool, and quiet. If you’re going to be getting a good night sleep so you can actually be proactive in the morning and have a good morning routine, it can’t happen unless you get a good night sleep. I’m lucky that I don’t have to wake up at a certain time and I think most entrepreneurs have that luxury as well. That if they let themselves just sleep.

The first thing, of course, is a good night sleep and then when I get dressed, I get dressed in my workout clothes. I don’t even get dressed in anything else. That’s the first thing I do is I get dressed in my workout clothes. Then, I write in my journal. I don’t eat. I always have a quart jar of water that’s ready for me to drink in the morning. I do, what’s called hyper hydrate and the first … I’ll drink a full quart of water and it’s usually got a couple tablespoons of apple cider vinegar and a dash of cayenne pepper in it. Just wakes up the digestion and metabolism and all that. Then after I’ve gotten dressed in my workout clothes, I drink my water, I will sit and write in a journal.

This is more like a brain dump. This is not something I’m doing super deep reflection on. This is getting everything out in paper that I, not only need to do for the day, but I also have a brain dump of gratitude that goes right into a journal. Then, once I’ve done that, which might take five minutes one day. It might take 20 minutes. I mean, I really don’t put a limit on it or I don’t say, “Oh, I have to sit and write in my journal for and give three or four pages.” If I get 10 pages, that’s great. If I get half a paragraph, and that’s all I’ve got, you know. I think just simply taking and writing it down, you don’t even have to go back and look at it.

I mean, it’s something that just gets the thoughts in your mind. I think as entrepreneurs, our brains are just always going and always on fire. I think that’s really common and to actually put it on paper, it completely changes the way that you can now interact with yourself. Then after I do that, most of the time, to be honest I don’t eat breakfast. I find that the intermittent fasting, it just works for me. I feel lighter, I feel better, I feel more mentally sharp when I don’t eat something until like 10 or 11, or even noon.

I know that’s not common. I think it’s more common for men to not eat in the morning, especially like high level entrepreneurs but it works for me. I find that, that really works. Then when I do eat, it’s always protein and fat. I like to scrambled eggs in coconut oil.

Christopher:                         This is so great. This is so great, Jane. Like you’re literally describing my morning. I’m not just saying that. Like my morning is, I have coconut oil and scramble eggs at 11 after intermittent fasting and I just think this is so important. I don’t know if people really understand the benefits of this. I mean, I always grew up, people saying, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” As we were force fed like some sugary carbohydrate that just turned to glucose so fast and we had this spike in the morning and then crash at lunch.

Ever since I started eating fats and proteins and intermittent fasting my day is just, you know I zoom through it, sometimes not eating until even 11 or 12. I would love to hear some insights that you have into these things as well as hear more about what it is that you do in the morning.

Jane:                                          Well, you know, to me it’s about mental clarity. I feel like I have to be, well I want to be and I have to be, and I need to be on my game. I’ve really just evolved to this type or routine in eating. It wasn’t always something and if I could’ve been 20 or 30 years ago because I’ve always. I’m like a normal entrepreneur. I’ve always been an entrepreneur, even when I was very, very young. It’s just something that I, you know, just having my own company and driving my own routine without having to clock in has always been my jam for sure but I think that my whole thing is that if I don’t have mental clarity, I can’t bring my best self. I spend a good chunk of my day educating doctors so when I get a new practitioner that finds me and/or is now becoming a customer, they’ll make an appointment with me. They’ll spend an hour and I’ll educate them.

There’s a big learning curve with products that we do. You’re not going to ever see the stuff that I make on a health food store shelf because the learning curve is too big. I spend a good chunk of my day educating and I can’t be, I can’t have brain fog. I can’t be having a card coma. I really can’t. Besides, I don’t want that. I’ve really kind of evolved out of, I don’t eat bread. I don’t eat pasta. I don’t even really like gluten free bread. I just, carbs load me down even if they’re … I do a lot of veggies. I do, I love a good filet minion. It’s local and grass fed. That’s one of my favorite things.

My big thing is, really just think if you don’t have a routine. I even follow the routine when I travel. Like, I’ll carry my supplements with me. I’m a Nazi about water so it’s whenever we check into somewhere, even if we’re traveling overseas, it’s like we land. I’m like, “Okay, where’s the water?” Where’s the water that I’m going to have because I’m staying hydrated I think is … You always hear and everybody always hears, you know, we’re 70% plus water and yet most people are chronically dehydrated. I think hydrating and staying hydrated is, that to me is a simple biohack, so simple.

Christopher:                         Right.

Jane:                                          Yeah.

Christopher:                         It’s something not enough of us are doing. I mean, most of us wake up dehydrated and most of us spend the whole day having caffeine and sugars and not drinking enough. That’s massive. That’s absolutely massive. Hey, we’re going to take a short break Jane. I just, I love the amount of in-depth that you’re going in to with this. Even though, I know that you’re thinking in-depth, I haven’t even started the [inaudible 00:30:20]. This is just vital. Let’s take a short break and have a quick listen. Grab yourself a glass of water. Stand up straight and make sure you’re ready for the final section of this after a really short break. We’ll talk to you in a minute.

Jane:                                          Sounds good.

Christopher:                         Stop and listen to this. I really hope you’re enjoying the show. This is Christopher Duncan here and I just want to let you know that some of you out there need to get started in building your wealth online. Have more freedom, more time off. We’ve got a huge amount of gifts online webinars, trainings, and other actionable things that you can go and learn from so you can get started. Whether you want to have more time off by using outsourced VA’s. Whether you need a system to start or grow your business. If you need more leads, if you need to make more money.

Just by listening to this show, we want to invite you to be able to go and get some free trainings from me and other experts. Go over to the link www.christophermduncan.com/gifts and you will receive everything that you need to have total freedom. Now let’s get back to the show. Write that down. www.christophermduncan.com/gifts and let’s get back to the show. I hope you enjoy it.

Jane:                                          Okay, perfect.

Christopher:                         Freedom Fast Trackers, welcome back. I’m here with Jane Barlow. We’re having so much fun. We’ve kind of found that we’re kindred spirits when it comes to what we’re doing every morning and that makes me feel good because Jane is an absolute expert when it comes to all this stuff. I’m committing right now to doing this detox and taking this amazing herbal supplement from Jane. I’m really excited about that. We’ve been talking a lot about being proactive in the morning, what it is that Jane does. Intermittent fasting, lots of good things. I really would love to ask a little bit about what is the point and why does intermittent fasting work so well to increase focus?

Jane:                                          Well, if you think about when you start eating, if you eat first thing in the morning, your body has actually been fasting all through the night. If you don’t get up and hit the refrigerator in the middle of the night, which I hope you’re not doing but your body has been resting and sleeping and repairing and when you immediately start feeding yourself food. Even in my experience, even if it’s good food, and this is in my experience because I think there are people who maybe can’t get through their morning without some food, but in my experience everybody who tries intermittent fasting.

What happens is you continue in that repair mode, your body doesn’t have to do anything to work and break down food and the literal mental clarity that intermittent fasting gives me is a little hard to describe unless you do it. I think, you find that too Chris?

Christopher:                         Yeah.

Jane:                                          Yeah. Besides that, I don’t count the water with the apple cider vinegar and the cayenne and the reason I do apple cider vinegar, if you’ve not tried it or you’ve not heard of it there is a little bit of a taste bud curve where you won’t like it in the beginning. I actually but it in my water all day long so the electrolytes. If you drink just plain water you should really add even a little bit of Himalayan sea salt to it just to give you the electrolytes and it helps your body absorb it, but apple cider vinegar will do amazing things for your digestion. I mean, there’s probiotics in apple cider vinegar.

I mean, there’s all kinds of things and the reason I add cayenne is because it stimulates digestion, it improves metabolism and it’s just an amazing herb that’s good for heart health. Believe it or not, I have this crazy cool little quick story I’m going to tell you about cayenne pepper. When I was 14 my dad took me, and 14 seems to be kind of an age for me, but my dad took me on a driving lesson. We lived in the country, we stopped at a gas station for gas and when we went in to pay there was an older couple in the line in front of us and almost immediately when we got into the gas station the man literally, classically clutched his heart and fell to the floor.

It, of course, I’m this very impressionable 14 year old. Now my dad kept a wad of cash in his right breast pocket and a one ounce bottle of liquid cayenne pepper extract that he made in his front pants pocket on the right. Immediately within seconds my dad had two dropper-fulls of cayenne liquid extract in this mans mouth and he sputtered and stuttered and about 30 seconds later he sat up. The ambulance had been called and it took about 20 minutes to get there but I have personally seen cayenne pepper stop a heart attack in 30 seconds. This is what happens.

It’s a vasodilator, cayenne pepper is a vasodilator. That’s heart. That’s your vein system. Cayenne pepper is, in my opinion, a very protective for the heart. There’s so many people who have heart disease and heart problems and cayenne pepper should be something that’s part of your daily routine. In my opinion. That’s why I put cayenne pepper in my drink in the morning. Sometimes it’s liquid. I do the liquid extract, in fact most of the time, or sometimes I’ll sprinkle it in with the apple cider vinegar but yeah. Cayenne pepper, everyone should be on that train.

Christopher:                         That’s amazing. That’s one thing I’m not doing. We do have it downstairs, we put it our juices when we juice and things like that. One of our companies is an organic juice delivery company so we use it for that but I haven’t been using it so I’m going to get started on that and putting it in my water sounds interesting.

Jane:                                          Yeah, and you know what just acclimate yourself. I’ve never been a person who’s loved hot spicy foods. I’m just kind of sensitive to them so it’s just like acclimating to apple cider vinegar. You just have to start slow. I put it in a whole gallon and we actually make a liquid extract of 40 thousand heat unit cayenne pepper. It’s really super easy just to take a squirt and squeeze it right into the water and it’s really easy, and really pallatable, and not painful at all.

Christopher:                         That’s awesome. I could just sit here and quiz you for my own self gain forever but I know we’ve got limited time and I appreciate your time so I’ve got a couple big questions coming up for this visit. If you want to get a more in depth description of what Jane’s talking about and understand what to put in your water and what she does in the morning, intermittent fasting. Head over to her website, she’s created a special video, or a couple videos maybe just specifically for us and for this show. We do get some more things so thank you for doing that Jane and what’s the website, again, that they go to?

Jane:                                          The website is barlowherbal.com. It’s B-A-R-L-O-W-H-E-R-B-A-L .com. Barlowherbal.com. Yeah, I’ve got a special video of my morning routine and all the, not just what I do but exactly why I do it.

Christopher:                         I love it and I suggest that we all head over there and have look at it. It’ll be in the show notes as well if you didn’t catch that or you’re driving right now. Just head back to our podcast/christophermduncan.com. I want to ask you two questions Jane that I ask every single person that comes on the show. It really helps that the aspiring entrepreneur understand where they can go and what they can do and how entrepreneurs that have got a business working think. The first question is this: if you lost everything right now, all of your contacts, all of your relationships, all of your money, your websites, your business. You had nothing, just you. The only thing that your allowed to have is your knowledge. How would you go about starting your business?

Jane:                                          That’s a really good question, I love that question. The thing I would do is I would quickly find a niche market of people that I could serve and share my wisdom with. I think, what happens to people is they try to get too broad. They try to be someone for everyone and I think that, that’s a big mistake. I have really found that, that’s really been a really cool thing for me because I, you know, there’s not a lot of people who have faith in natural medicine for the level that I do but the people that do and they find me, it’s an incredible relationship. If I had to start all over again, I would find a niche. Let me give you a good example. For me, it would be prepers. Have you ever heard of prepers?

Christopher:                         Maybe, but I’ll let you tell me.

Jane:                                          Prepers are people, and this sounds maybe a little dramatic, but prepers are people who are preparing for doomsday or preparing for the end of the world. Prepers, they’re getting, they’re making sure they have 100 gallons of water and they have a propane tank with enough gas to heat a tent that’s a special tent if they have no … If I had to start over, I would zone in and find that super small niche market of prepers because I have some things I know they would love. I think you should start with a tiny niche. Don’t try to do everything for everyone and find people to serve. That’s the first thing.

Christopher:                         I love it and great advice. If you’re out there wanting to start a business, maybe you want to look at a niche market that you can go out there and serve and start with. The second part to my question, Jane, is if you were to go back to your beginning of your entrepreneur journey, whenever that is for you, whenever you got serious and you got to spend two to five minutes just giving advice and sharing about what was to come what advice would you give to the younger version of you?

Jane:                                          I love this question because this is so powerful. I would tell myself, “Don’t be so cautious.” I would make sure things were right because I do have a bit of perfectionist personality. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized, “What the heck? What am I doing?” If I could go back 20 or 30 years and tell my younger self, in my case probably 40 years, I would say, “Don’t be so cautious, don’t be so afraid. Be brave and be bolder and don’t be afraid to ask for things you want and do things that might fail.” I mean, that sounds so like, you know, probably a typical answer to that but I found myself a lot of years being really cautious. Even after I restarted my dads company after he passed away, I was really cautious.

I felt like I was stepping into these big shoes and I realized that I had my own. Not just my own gift but I have my own personality to put into this. Like I said, I think I might’ve said this before we started recording but if I could sit down and have a conversation with my dad right now, I know I could teach him some things and that’s a big bold statement but it would be a beautiful conversation. I would say, not throw caution to the wind, but don’t be so cautious.

Christopher:                         Gosh, what a great message. Both of them so big. Don’t be so cautious, take action, find that niche market. You’ve heard it today and I think it came at a perfect time. I wasn’t kidding when I said I could stay here and just ask you question after question on these but we have run out of time Jane and I appreciate you so much. I’d love to ask is there any last message you’d like to leave with the listeners who you think coming up that you want to leave with them today?

Jane:                                          I think entrepreneurs have a special place in this world. I believe we’re the game changers and I think we need to be empowered in our physical bodies to take care of ourselves on a different level because we see the world differently than the masses of people so I think we have a special opportunity to really take care of ourselves on the level and I love that most of us our outliers. We stand on the outside and I would just say embrace that and take care of your health on the level that intuitively as human beings, we know our bodies are designed to be well.

Christopher:                         Yes.

Jane:                                          Yeah.

Christopher:                         What a great ending statement. Thank you again for being here. We’ve just covered so much but I do really want to motivate all of you to go and get that video training and really understand your morning. For me, there’s been nothing more important than having a proactive morning routine and I’ve never called it a proactive morning routine to right now but it really has been. It’s something that I do every day. It’s planned, it’s specific, and it wakes me up in the right way so thank you for reminding me on that Jane.

Jane:                                          You’re welcome.

Christopher:                         Listeners thanks for tuning in today. Please make sure you like, subscribe, and share this episode. Head over to Jane’s website and say hello. In the show notes we’ll have access to where you can go like her facebook page. You can look at all the different platforms, which I’m sure they’re all there. I know I’ve said it, but again thank you for spending some time with us Jane. We really appreciate it.

Jane:                                          It’s been my pleasure Chris, thank you.

Christopher:                         Listeners live with total freedom. Free your mind, free your time, free your life so you can do more of what matters most. Have an amazing day. We’ll see you on the next episode. Smash it. Hey it’s Chris, thank you so much for listening to the Freedom Fast Track pod cast episode. You are the reason we do it. I would love to hear your feedback, I would love to year your support. Please rate this show. Please share it with your friends. It’s the only reason we do it is to get more people living virtually free. To travel the world, make more money, have more time off, and do more of what they love.

If you want to increase your freedom, if you want to make more money, if you want to have more time doing what you love head over to christophermduncan.com. There’s free trainings, gifts, and updates on how you can be expanding your business and expanding your freedom. Again, thank you so much. Please rate and subscribe this show and head over to that site right now so you can get started on your journey to total freedom.

Christopher D.:                   Freedom Fastrack I’m here with Jack Delosa, and I’m so excited. I’ve been wanting to have the man who started the Entourage on for a while. This guy’s a powerhouse. I read his book, Unprofessional, that became a bestseller in three weeks. He’s a guy that I’ve looked up to in Australian business for quite a while. The reason why I’ve looked up to you is not only, Jack, the ability for you to get out and do the videos. Not only the ability to create such testimonials. I’ve met a lot of people that have worked with you. The thing I find so profound with what you’ve done is the movement that you created. Welcome to the show man. I’m so excited to have you on.

Jack Delosa:                         Thanks, Chris, glad to be here, mate.

Christopher D.:                   Dude, let’s get around the pleasure for the intro. I know the Australians will know who you are. Everyone else around the world, I’m sure they’d love to hear a little bit about your story because no one lands on top of the mountain.

Jack Delosa:                         Yeah. I certainly didn’t land on top of the mountain. Funnily enough, for me, my career I suppose if you like, started at the age of 5. My parents rented a non-profit organization called Breaking The Cycle. They’d take long-term unemployed youth off the street. They’d put them through a program, and they’d place them into employment. They were the most effective employment agency for long-term unemployed youth in Australia. That’s the environment that I grew up in, sort of taken youth that were severely at risk, and on and off drugs, and in and out of jail, or from abused homes, and seeing their lives turn around if you like, and then seeing them in sustainable and meaningful employment.

That was my world when I was five, six, seven, eight. I think there’s been a number of things that happened throughout my life, but that’s probably the fundamental one that has sort of shown me the power of education, and the power of, regardless of background into an environment where there’s enough TLC, there’s enough support, there’s enough practical education. They can truly build a future that’s meaningful for them.

I knew at a very young age, I wanted to go into education. At 18, I started my first business. It went terribly. It was a business call center here in Australia, in Melbourne. I made and view those few years as my apprenticeship period if you like. A couple of businesses later, I had a company called MBA Education. That was my real first home run. We would help, you know, we’d advise and educate small to medium size business owners on raising money from investors, acquiring businesses, and building [inaudible 00:03:01] off of the excess. We did that.

To a good degree and to quite substantial degree, we helped sort of shift the needle over here in Australia in terms of small to medium enterprise successfully raising money from investors, and building value, and all that sort of stuff. That gave me the foundation and the credibility to ultimately start the Entourage, which is today Australia’s largest education institution for entrepreneurs. We’ve got about 300,000 members around the world. We’ve also got the Entourage Bang store, which delivers advisory, well, consulting on innovation and entrepreneurship to some of the world’s largest companies like Suncorp, Telstra, universities, governments from around the world, as well as an investment fund that invests in different companies.

Everything I do that is about how do we enable the next generation of entrepreneur and innovators, and we do that through education, consulting, and investment.

Christopher D.:                   I love it, man, and it’s been great to watch. I first heard about you, I think in 2012, from a friend of mine named Andrew Davis. He said he was coming and [inaudible 00:04:06] at some of your events and things. I remember looking at it going, “Wow, that looks really cool.” It’s been great to … I think it was 2012, maybe 2013. I’m not sure. It’s been great to see just how far it’s come and what you’re doing.

There really is a wave of entrepreneurship sweeping the planet, isn’t there? It seems to be everybody is out for it at the moment.

Jack Delosa:                         Absolutely. Entrepreneurship is a rising tide globally. I think people of any age are looking at the traditional way of doing things over the last 50 to 100 years, and really asking themselves the question of why this whole production line of go to school, go to university, get a job, work your ways up. In Australia, the average person retired with $71,000 in their superannuation, which is like their pension or whatever. It’s a disheartening path, the traditional path.

The other macro factor is that there’s also been like this popularization in entrepreneurship, and there’s some benefits and some drawbacks from that. One of the benefits are that 20 years ago on the cover of magazines, you’d see people like Bono or whatever rock stars were around at the time research people like Mark Zuckerberg, or Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey. I think more and more, people are starting to question the old way of doing things, and are starting to realize that to take your destiny into your own hands is not only more intelligent, but also more meaningful.

Christopher D.:                   Yeah, you’re so right. It’s interesting to watch that movement. Obviously, being an entrepreneur myself, there is a lot of things that we need to learn. You, being the creator and founder of the largest education company that actually educated entrepreneurs, I would love to dig in and really discover what entrepreneurs need to learn the most. 300,000 members, what are some of the problems you see over and over again. I’d love to just let you let rip on the biggest problems you see and the biggest things that they need to learn.

Jack Delosa:                         Yeah, it’s one of those questions to go, where do I start. There’s a lot man, and that’s the whole point. That’s why Entourage has been relatively successful and popular is because there is no road map, and so much of it is about failing forward. Common mistakes, I think the first one is around an entrepreneurs biggest strength is that they love to pursue opportunity. Our biggest weakness is that we love to pursue opportunity.

Particularly in early stage business owners, what you find is an unbridled enthusiasm to pursue anything that’s shining. We try and sort of be all things to all people, and maybe start two or three business at the same time, or whatever it might be. We often see where business owners just spread themselves too thin, and not have one focal point of focus on one product, or one business, or one strategy, but they try and build three or four things at once.

I’ve never seen anybody successfully start two businesses at once, anybody ever. I’ve seen people start one business, get it off the ground, move onto the next. I’ve never seen anyone do it concurrently. Even, if you look at Branson. He’s a part owner in 300 companies today. What we forget is that in the 10 years he had one company. It was Virgin Records. He sold it for a billion dollar, that some of that cash helped him float the airline to a greater degree. Then he started diversifying because he had a third of a billion dollars. He was able to employ the best people in the world to go after any play that he wanted to pursue. For the first 10 years, he did one thing.

To that point number one, I’d say the lesson there is pick one thing, and try and become the best in the world at it.

Christopher D.:                   It’s actually huge advice. A lot of people, aspiring entrepreneur especially, they do then. Here’s what I see and I think that you’ve touched on it really nicely is there’s a J-curve in business. When you start off, you first go backwards basically and then it starts to kick off. Starting two or three just means you just get to experience the crappy part of business multiple times.

Jack Delosa:                         That’s right. Again, the J-curve, I love the term J-curve by the way, because that’s really accurate. If you do three business at once and you’ve got three business spiraling down, it’s infinitely more difficult to get that turning point to then get your curve looking up. This is what happens, right, versus the other, to your questions earlier around the mistakes some of the people make, the most common ones is what I think people need to realize is business is hard. Business is slow. Business can be frustrating. It is an uphill slope.

What happens is someone starts a business, and they’re a year in, or two years in, or three years in. They’re like, “Wow, man, I thought I was going to make a million dollars in my first years. I’m still not making money.” Then, “Well, I’ve got this other idea. I’m going to start this magazine. This magazine and I’ve got to move to another state, but don’t worry, it’s complimentary to my existing business. It’s going to be awesome.” It’s this funny thing over there that we’re not yet familiar with the challenges of, but we are very familiar with the challenges of our existing plan. Grass is always greener thing.

Then we go, “Ah, let’s go chase this magazine thing while we’ll keep this plate spinning, but we’ll also go chase this magazine thing.” Then they go chase the magazine thing. Then in two years, three years time you realize that that has just as many challenges as your strategy A. Now you got two things, two plates spinning, and neither of them are profitable yet.

We just need to realize that being on that downward slope of the J-curve is not necessarily a bad thing, and while you want to get it turned around as fast as possible, your best chance of doing that is to double down and focus on whatever it is you’re doing. Now, that’s not to say that you don’t iterate, and change, and be flexible. You do all of that, but do all of that within one play and one path.

Christopher D.:                   It’s such great advice, because here’s what I see a lot of times is yes, the grass is greener on the other side, but also the grass is greener where you water it.

Jack Delosa:                         That’s right.

Christopher D.:                   The thing is, I can just see so many people creating more than one business, and they literally double their amount of problems. Do you know what I mean, Jack? They have this one problem, let’s say-

Jack Delosa:                         Or triple

Christopher D.:                   Sorry?

Jack Delosa:                         Or triple. It’s this exponential thing that goes on.

Christopher D.:                   It’s massive. If one, they have a problem and let’s say leads in one business and they can’t get enough leads. They go, “Oh, this, it must be the business.” They go and start another one. There’s still no leads, but now they’ve got two lots of tax returns, and two lots of customers, and two lot … It can really get to the new entrepreneur and they can really get themselves stuck. Focus, it seems to be the biggest thing of our talk today.

Jack Delosa:                         100%.

Christopher D.:                   Other than that, let’s say the person gets up and they get focused on one thing, what do you find that people keep on coming back to? What are some of the moves and things they need to understand to really get their business working?

Stop and listen to this. I really hope you join the show. This is Christopher Duncan here. I just want to let you know that something that they need to get started in building your wealth online, have more freedom, more time off. We’ve got a huge amount of gift, online webinars, trainings, and other actionable things that you can go and learn from so you can get started, whether you want to have more time off by using outsourced VAs, whether you need a system to start or grow your business. If you need more leads, if you need to make more money, just by listening to this show, we want to invite you to be able to go and get some free trainings from me and other experts. Go to the link, www.christophermduncan.com/gifts, and you will receive everything that you need to have total freedom. Now, let’s get back to the show. Write that down, www.christophermduncan.com/gifts, and let’s get back to the show. I hope you enjoy it.

Jack Delosa:                         I think in the early day it’s around product market fit. You need to have something that genuinely addresses a consumer and market demand, something that people want, something that’s priced appropriately, and something that fits within a business model that could be delivered in a profitable way. While we need to obsess about the consumer, we need to be intelligent enough to work out how to wow and service that consumer while doing so in a profitable business model. If the business model isn’t profitable, then the business won’t be around for very long. Then the consumer loses, business loses, your staff lose, you lose. Profitability is incredibly important.

I think leveraging marketing, like old school marketing tactics of sort of being superseded by a lot more effective marketing channels these days, so whether that’s building your brand through the media in a way, which is obviously free, whether it’s doing it through building audiences and building a tribe on social media, and building an email database so that you can speak to them. When you send out a message or when you send out an offer, they’d buy.

You know high profit marketing sales, they’re having a sales process inside of a business that can be replicable, that you could hire people in to drive sales on your behalf, because you’ve developed and established an actual sales process that walks your customers through a particular journey in order to get to a point of purchase. That’s probably … Then I suppose hiring as well. You need to know the right … Well, you need to know how to hire the right people and how to assess them on their merits. I think those are probably the three or four things that are critical to a C-stage, startup-stage venture.

Christopher D.:                   Those are some huge moves, and I’ve got them written down here, listeners. First is product market fit, then profitability, leveraging marketing, the sales process, and hiring the right team. I want to make a little bit of a shift, because you, like me, have been able to build some successful big businesses. I would really love to hear what your take is on firstly, it’s a two part question, so that you have a bit of time to prep yourself with it.

The first scenario I really want to understand is what you think was the biggest shift that you had to make internally between the guys that was making in the hundreds of thousands, to the guy that had the business in the million. Then the second thing that I really would love to hear from you is about how other people saw you different as you had to have that shift, and how you had to handle the success, I guess. The first part that I’d really love to hear is what was the shift for you to make that big move from hundreds of thousands to millions?

Jack Delosa:                         Mate, that is such a good questions. It’s such a good question. I think I was actually thinking about this the other day. I’m not entirely sure I have a definitive answer. What I was thinking about, and I certainly don’t say this from a place of ego, more probably from a place of encouragement for anybody listening to this is I can’t remember when I mentioned earlier, I started my first business at 18. I remember working at … Someone mentioned a business doing a million dollars a year. I just worked out how much in revenue. I worked out how much revenue that would need to be each week. Obviously, it’s about $20,000 a week assuming, 50 weeks to the year.

Christopher D.:                   Right.

Jack Delosa:                         I just remember thinking like there at 18, sitting there going, “How on earth could anyone ever generate $20,000 a week. That’s just insane. It was like your kid is starting out playing basketball, thinking how could I ever be as good as Michael Jordan. It just seemed like such a distant pipe dream. We started a business last year, and in our first 12 months, we did over a million dollars. It wasn’t … Again, I don’t say this from a place of ego, more from a place of encouragement. It wasn’t that challenging.

What I was thinking was, and the reason I was thinking this recently was we’re in a board meeting recently, and it was sort of the 12, 13-month mark. I remember thinking while at 18 I couldn’t envisage how you would start a business and do a million dollars in a year, today I’m in a place where I can’t imagine starting a business and not doing a million dollars in the first year. That’s not because I’m awesome. That’s just because I’ve been in business now for 12 years, and you’re emotional fitness and your commercial capability exponentially increases each year. When you’ve made as many mistakes as I have, you’d be an idiot not to work out how do things along the way.

I think it’s … What changes from the hundreds thousands and the millions of dollars is scale. You learn how to scale. Rather than the business being you, and maybe four or five staff or whatever it might be. It’s kind of very reliant on you. It’s more about building the right structures, building the right marketing, building the right sales process, and bringing people into an infrastructure that can drive and scale the business alongside and behind you. It’s the difference between viewing yourself as a sole operator or a small business if you like and going, “I’m building an asset here and I need to build an environment, an ecosystem that people can step into it and help drive this business forward, which fundamentally is predicated on process.

Christopher D.:                   That’s such a huge gift. Here’s what I’ve found, and I love that you talk so much about process and systems, because I’m a huge system’s person. We also had a similar result. We just have our last business crept past the million dollar mark in under 10 month. This is what I said to my business partner. I said, “Do you know what? It’s easier now.”

I want to ask you this question, see if it’s the same for you. For me, playing at the higher level, business is so much easier, because here’s what I’m doing as I’m looking at creating that million dollar business within seven months, and creating something fast, therefore I go hire talent equal to the amount of revenue I’m going to create. Whereas, when I was in this startup phase, I was looking at trying to … How can I get people cheaply or how can I do it myself?

Jack, it got easier for me when I made that shift to I actually want to have smarter people in my business. Did something similar happen to you?

Jack Delosa:                         100%, and that’s a really good point. One of the things I often talk about is the bigger the vision, the easier it is to execute. You want to have just a small- and by the way, that’s called, like by the way, I know a lot of people that want to have a business with three or four staff, make a few hundred, profit a few hundred grand a year, have a great lifestyle and spend time with their kids and go surfing.

I don’t judge that at all? In fact, if anything, I’m envious of that. The thought of that is just awesome to me. I’ve want to build substantial businesses. I don’t have kids myself yet, and so I’m able to pour a high degree of focus into business. There’s no right or wrong. By the way, you can also set up a three or four person company highly systemized and have a great lifestyle as well. If you’re going to do a big play, you’ve got that product market fit, and you’re able to sort of demonstrate profitability in the underlying business model, and therefore attract better talent and might better raise getting money along the way, whatever the case may be.

If you can get to a position where you can hire people who are smarter than you, and that doesn’t mean that you abdicate responsibility. You absolutely need to be across every fucking thing that goes on in your business, from your marketing stats, to your sales conversions, to your delivery ratios, to your operations, and to particularly your financial management. You need to be across it all and understand it all to a degree, but if you can employ people smarter than you to build it and help drive it and help form it, yeah, it’s much more enjoyable way of doing business.

Christopher D.:                   Yeah, I agree 100%. I’m with you, man. I’ve done the freedom thing and I enjoyed it, but for me, it really got to that place where I was like, “You know what, I want to create something big, and business is the best place to create a contribution.”

You said something magnificent in there and I need to pull it out. You said, you talked about responsibility. Here’s what I see the people that aren’t succeeding is they hire a consultant. They hire someone that’s smarter than them. Then when something doesn’t work, I hear them pointing the finger.

Now, honestly, I know that some of the time the consultant has done a bad job, but I want you to tell me that what’s it like when you’re absolutely responsible to getting those smarter people and taking responsibility. How do you actually know enough about all those different things that you can manage them? I think I know the answer, but I’m going to see if you think the same thing.

Jack Delosa:                         Yeah. Let me talk firstly about the consultant thing or hiring people, what’s your responsibility and what’s not. For me, it comes down to three letter. CEO. If you’re the CEO or the managing director, it doesn’t matter who made what mistake. As unfair as it is, and mate, I’ve had some terrible highs in the past, and people that have made monumental mistakes that I was unaware of. I don’t say that, that’s a criticism to myself. As the CEO, I was unaware, therefore being blissfully ignorant to it. I can’t then go, “Well, it was this person’s decision,” or, “It was this person that did that.” That doesn’t make sense because this is my ship. This is my business, all of that sort of stuff. Therefore, as unfair as it is, everything that goes wrong in your business is your fault. Everything is your responsibility.

How do you stay across it all. Reports. You need to have a company scoreboard. You need to have a dashboard with all of the company-wide metrics that go like in terms of what are the drivers of the commercial success of your business. If you start over, and every business has five areas, five areas only. Marketing … I’ll walk you through it, a sort of consumer journey metric kind of way.

Marketing, so you go toward market stuff. Sales, delivery, operations, finance. We tell people about something. They buy it. We deliver it. There’s an underlying operations of the company. At the end of the day, we count the money and manage the money to make sure everything happens smoothly. Hopefully, we make a bit of profit at the end of the day.

Across those five areas, and again, it depends on your business and how many staff you have, and all that sort of stuff. There’s probably 15 to 20 different metrics, and they will be summary metrics. There will be 15 to 20 different metrics that would be able to highlight the success, or like the health or otherwise of your business at any given point. For marketing, it will be things like leads generated, cost per leads, lead to sale conversion, cost per acquisition, marketing expand, marketing spend to ROI on revenue generated this months.

Then you go over to sales, and it will be … If you got a sales team, for instance, it might be led to contract, contract to proposal, or consultation, or whatever, consultation to sale. Then you go to delivery. There’s probably 15 to 20 different measures that you need to be across, and they’ll be the macro and underlying drivers of the success of your business, and you get that information coming to you either daily or weekly from the people who own those functions.

Christopher D.:                   Perfect. It’s the exact answer I was hoping for, because I’ve been telling everyone, Jack, on my list. I’m like, “Metrics, metrics, metrics. You got to have metrics.” I’m just so glad that you said that. I want to talk a little bit about your vision, Jack, because here is why. I’ve just noticed some really big trends with massive billionaires. Here’s the things. Number one, they focus on contribution. Number two, they have a simple vision that they can actually really measure with a scoreboard and you nailed it.

For a few examples. Steve Jobs wanted to put the computer into a smart phone. That’s all he wanted to do. Bill Gates want to put a computer in everyone’s home. Henry Ford wanted to make sure that everyone had an automobile. Facebook wanted one billion users. They have this focus. My question for you is what’s your big forward focus vision? Where are you going, man?

Jack Delosa:                         Well, I want to make education effective again.

Christopher D.:                   That’s bad ass. Just every part of my body had to go, “You’re such a badass.” That’s awesome. I’ll leave you to continue, sorry.

Jack Delosa:                         I think that’s … Well, I’d say that’s one of the largest challenges and opportunities that planet faces right now is as the world continues to change, and the rate of change continues to increase faster than ever before, traditional education at all levels, primary school, secondary school, tertiary doesn’t change at particularly the same rate.

That divide continues to widen and we need to … That the private sector. It’s not going to come from governments. It’s not going to happen- Private sector, I believe needs to step into that gap to get better at educating people on the skills and capabilities that are required today, not 30 years ago. Today, and for the next 20 or 30 years.

Christopher D.:                   Right. Brother, I’m so aligned with that. I feel that entrepreneurs are going to change the world. We’re the ones that always have. I’m so glad that we got to connect on this show. I would love to give you opportunity to talk to you about your book. The amount of education that you put into your first book with the Unprofessional. I have read it. I was walking onto a plane, I think in Perth, flying across to Melbourne. I read it in the whole journey and I loved it. It was a couple of years back. You’ve released a new book since then, haven’t you?

Jack Delosa:                         Definitely.

Christopher D.:                   Would you like to share and tell the audience a bit about that book, and what’s in it, and why it’s so important for them all to get it?

Jack Delosa:                         Yes. It’s quite aligned to what you were saying a second ago when you mentioned Gates and Jobs. My entire life, I’ve studied and researched people who have changed the course of history forever, people who have contributed a larger than life legacy. Whether that’s Michelangelo, who was a painter turned sculptor. 500 years ago Michelangelo painted the roofs of the Sistine Chapel. Whether it was Albert Einstein, who rewrote physics 100 years ago, whether it was Nelson Mandela, who lived the anti-apartheid movement more recently, or J. K. Rowling, who is the author of Harry Potter, and is now credited with doing more for childhood literacy than any other person in history. Oprah Winfrey, who’s touched lives of billions, you kind of go …

The other thing is that I’ve met with and I had the opportunity to work with some of these people, like Richard Branson for instance. The further I would go in my career and the more incredible people I would meet, one of the things that was most profound for me was in the discovery of their humanity, was in discovering that they’re people just like you and I. They’ve got insecurities just like you and I. They’ve got vulnerabilities and shortcomings just like you and I. What I wanted to do is sort of go through history, and look at those that have made an impact and ask the question, “How did they get so much out of themselves, and how did they touch the hearts and minds of so many others?”

There’s no system. There’s no … but there are certainly guiding principles that correlate from individual to individual, from era to era, and from field, to field, to field, to field, to field- sorry, approached art 500 years ago, did the same thing as that Richard Branson says about entrepreneurship today in terms of guiding principles at the high level. I found that fascinating. That’s what I’m focused about. It’s not about them. It’s more about you, and how you can step into the best version of yourself to create a vision that inspires you for your life. That might be I want to be a great mom, or I want to be a great dad. It’s not about scale. It’s more about how deeply meaningful is it to you. Then offer some strategies as to how you can move toward that.

Christopher D.:                   I can’t wait to read it.

Jack Delosa:                         You should, man.

Christopher D.:                   Yeah, it’s going to be absolutely awesome.

Jack Delosa:                         Yeah. If anyone is interested, what’s the best thing to do? Probably just go to the, T-H-E hyphen entourage.com.au. The, T-H-E, hyphen, entourage, E-N-T-O-U-R-A-G-E.com.au. You can sort of become a member of the Entourage. It’s completely complimentary. You’ll be able to find something for Unwritten there as well as Unprofessional, which is my first book.

Christopher D.:                   I love it, man. We’ll put all of those in the show notes as well, listeners, so that you can all get that. Brother, I’ve got two questions that I ask every single person I ever see or guest I have on the show. I know some of you, listeners, have skipped to this part. You should go back and listen to the whole episode. It was awesome.

I’m watching my stats and I’m seeing who skipped to this part. There’s two questions, Jack, are really important, because it shows what you would do if you’re in a place of the person listening right now getting started, making moves. Here’s the first part to the question. If right now you got stripped of everything, all of your context, all of your resources, all of your money, you had nothing. You were just coming out. You were just Jack and you had to start out, build your business again. How would you start? What would you do?

Jack Delosa:                         I’d ask myself what do I want to dedicate my life to, and what do I think I can be the best in the world at. That’s not to assume that you’re anywhere near it yet, right, like the world full of people that became great, who started off and when they set off they sucked. You don’t need to be … I’m not really concerned with where you are today, but it’s more about what would you do for the rest of your life if money wasn’t a thing, and what do you think you could be really, really good at? Try and get those two things to align and start there.

Christopher D.:                   What a great answer. I’ve never had that answer before. I love that you didn’t go tactical driven. That’s awesome. Someone has to be the greatest, someone has to be the best. That same someone first didn’t know how to walk as well. Great advice, man. Here’s the second part to the question. If you were to go back 12 years to the start of your entrepreneur journey, and you had two minutes to give the younger version of you any advice, what advice would you give you?

Jack Delosa:                         Your following a nontraditional path in life, therefore you will face resistance, you will face protest, and you will come up against conventional wisdom at every step of the way. That is okay. In fact, it is inevitable when pursuing an untraditional path, so then remember when the voice inside your head is louder than the voice that’s outside your head, that’s when you’ve become the master of your life.

Christopher D.:                   Boom. Dude, I’ve had such a good time here, man. I know that we’re coming to the end of our time. I would love you to share any last thoughts, or anything you want to impress across to people listening today before we do finish up.

Jack Delosa:                         Man, I think we’ve covered it greatly. I loved the questions, and we also had a lot of fun. Just a thank you to you, Chris, for the invite and the chat. I really enjoyed it.

Christopher D.:                   Yeah, me too, man. Let’s get you back on sometime soon. I’d love to hear and get a recap in a few months, where you’re at, and what you’re doing.

Jack Delosa:                         100%.

Christopher D.:                   I’ve got a book coming in the main. It’s whisking its way over here to San Diego. Once I read the book, we can probably get on and talk a bit about what’s in the book, and that will be awesome, man.

Jack Delosa:                         Yeah, that will be great. Let’s do it.

Christopher D.:                   Hey, thank you so much for what you’re doing for entrepreneur. Thank you so much for being on here, and being somebody that we get to look sideways to and go, “We can also get there and do that,” because that’s what I feel from you. I just feel this, you know what, here’s the education. I can do it, you can do it. You lead by example, but also bring other people up. You’re a legend and I really appreciate it.

Listeners, if you’ve been listening in right to the end, make sure that you go and get the show notes. Go and follow Jack and go grab his book. Go get into the Entourage and like, and subscribe to this episode if you didn’t do it. We would love it if you could leave a comment. Live with total freedom and I’ll see you on the next episode.

Welcome Freedom Fast Trackers for another episode today. I’m back with an old friend, somebody that we connected a few years ago, Melissa Krivachek. She’s done so many things. She’s a secret weapon for entrepreneurs and executives that use to achieve more every day. Seven books, she’s released, two or four now are international bestsellers. You know, you deserve so much. Since we first talked, you just don’t stop. You’re like this powerhouse that just doesn’t stop. YOu’ve had a massive transformation. Welcome to the show.

Melissa: Thank you for having me.

Christopher: It’s gonna be a lot of fun. Let’s start … For right now, I want you to really dial in, if you’re looking to just take your life and switch your business to the next level. We were talking about fear a little bit, and I think today we’re gonna talk about really taking that business that’s already started and growing and things.

Just a favor, let’s start off with your story, and where you started and what you’re up to now, that’d be perfect.

Melissa: Yeah. Back in 2004 I started with Walmart, then I grew the ranks, and then in 2008, I became a store manager. Then I got fired, and in 2008, obviously, the world was collapsing, or at least the Unites States was, so I ended up homeless for 36 days. My car got repossessed, I was $50,000 in debt, and then on top of that, I went to jail for six days.

Looking in the mirror, I realized, you’ve gotta choose a different life. You can’t keep doing the same thing and extracting a different result. I think that’s something we always look at when we frame successful people. As I looked at myself in the mirror, I was crying because the life was literally sucked out of me, Chris. I remember being pale white and completely drained. I was at my heaviest weight ever. I had lived the sort of lifestyle of just driving around, not paying any bills, in and out of college. I didn’t care about authority. Nothing mattered to me.

What I did was, I literally said to myself, enough is enough, and I went to YouTube, and I found a bunch of videos. Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, you know, all the greats. I absorbed that.

Then I started reading books. I read thousands of books.

Seven years later, I’m on my second company, my seventh book, and I’ve built multimillion dollar companies in nine different countries.

It’s been an amazing journey and I love what I do. I’m obsessed with sales and personal development and transformation and just being the person behind other people’s success.

Christopher: And I love that about you. I would love you to talk about that huge transformation. I mean, the picture is amazing, but you mentioned off-hand, you were at your heaviest weight ever, now you’re not. Tell us a little bit about that, because it’s just [inaudible 00:03:52], really.

Melissa:                                  Yeah. I used to have these super limited beliefs around weight. That’s specifically what you’re referring to. Like, stupid beliefs. I couldn’t get married until I was 170 pounds, I couldn’t date, I couldn’t be successful, or couldn’t run a business, all kinds of shit. Honestly, it was stupid. But looking back, that’s the mindset I was in. I think as entrepreneurs, we have to focus on our mindset. So over the last 11 months, I’ve lost 136 pounds.

Christopher :                        Wow.

Melissa:                                  It has nothing to do with going to the gym or eating healthy, which, both are important … Drinking water, getting sleep, those are also important. It actually has to do with your frame of mind. You could know to do something and not do it. Whether it’s our relationships, our business, or our health. We know year in and year out, okay, eat healthy, drink water, work out, how simple is that, right? Hard! It’s hard because nobody wants to wake up and go to the gym, nobody wants to wake up and sacrifice holiday parties and birthday gatherings and all kinds of stuff knowing that they’re not going to engage in eating the food the same way they would if they didn’t care about their health.

Christopher :                        Wow. You created that in 11 months, did you say?

Melissa:                                  Yup. 11 months, 136 pounds. Yup.

Christopher :                        You are such a badass. That is so … Good for you. The other thing that you mentioned in your story, and that’s just incredible, because I know what it takes to turn around a frame of mind. I’m gonna dig into that a bit more, but I’d love to understand both your companies. You said you’ve got two companies, nine different countries. Would you share a little bit about what your companies do?

Melissa:                                  Yep. Our main focus is sales consulting and we focus on deep transformation work. Sales is like, you’re overcoming objections, negotiations, all of that kind of stuff. That’s basic sales. I don’t teach basic sales. We work together, you should know something about sales.

I literally dig into your business, tear it apart, figure out were the leaking holes are, and figure out how do we make your family better, your experiences better, your business better, your lifestyle better. How do you have more freedom, more productivity? How do you have less stress and make more? That’s what everybody wants to do and yet all of us in some way or another are struggling because of the story we’ve told ourselves. What’s amazing is that an excuse is just a well plan to lie, and we all have them.

Christopher :                        That’s interesting. So you’re doing sales consulting, but you’re looking at it from a completely holistic point of view.

Melissa:                                  100%. What I have learned in building companies and growing to the level of success that I have grown and just helping different businesses, is that it’s all about the story that someone tells themselves and where they’re at.

Let me give you a couple examples. I have a client in Canada, and when she came to me, she said, “I have two companies, one of them is marketing and one is work development. I need to increase my revenue and I need to learn to sell more.” I said, “Okay, well what’s the real problem?”

We dug into her family life a little bit, and what we found out is, she initiated a divorce with her husband because he didn’t want kids and she did and they made this agreement before they got married. When she initiated the divorce, he ended up committing suicide. Every decision she would make around sales was based on his approval of her actions, except that that was really irrelevant since he was dead, right?

Let me give you another example. This happens all the time in businesses: the owner’s mind is somewhere else trying to solve some major problem or crisis in their life, like not having that deep relationship, or not being able to focus on the things they really want to focus on, or not having the time they really want to have.

Another example is, we have a lady in the United States here, and for her, her boyfriend passed away, and then she took her boyfriend’s son, and that was like her son, right? He ended up committing suicide because of his father’s death. She not only lost her boyfriend, but she lost her boyfriend’s son as well. She was completely devastated, ends up selling her company for a couple hundred million dollars, and says, “I just want a fresh start. I just want a clean slate. I’m gonna do something completely different.” I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. You can’t start completely over without recognizing the emotional attachments that you had to the people and to the results that you just produced.”

I find this a lot with executives. I just had an executive go to India and he has a family crisis. He wants to start his fifth business. I told him straight up, “Don’t start your fifth business without fixing the family problem because you cannot have the family dynamic be a mess and you’re trying to have a successful business, or you can’t have a successful family and your business is falling apart. They are completely intertwined.”

Christopher :                        It’s amazing to hear you say that, because I wasn’t expecting this to be the topic of what we talked about, but I think you’re so right. It’s just such a big part of being in business, saving my relationship with Harriet, and everything else, so while I know that I’m in mess, everything else is working as well. If you were to talk to that person right now, his ears are pricked up, they’re listening to this episode, they’re going, “You know what? She’s right, but …” I can hear them right now, “She’s right, but I just want to keep her out of my company.” If you were to speak directly to them, how important is it for them to get their family and their health and other things in their life, how much should it increase your business to get … Do you have a story around it? Like sorting all of the …

Melissa:                                  Yeah.

Christopher :                        Yeah, okay, go.

Melissa:                                  Yeah. The first thing I always tell people is, “Go declutter your home.” You want to start with your emails and your closet. These two things are completely different, right? People have their emails on overdrive. They have coupons coming in, they have sales, they have all kinds of crazy shit coming to their emails. Then in their closet they don’t even care about their wardrobe. They’re literally just throwing stuff in their closet and maybe it’s there five years later, like, “Oh, I didn’t fit into that.” It’s like this chaos is running through their mind, from the very beginning of the day when they choose to make a decision about what they’re gonna wear.

If our closet is organized, we literally make less decisions, and less decisions increases our productivity, it helps provide clarity, and it gets rid of all the massive noise that’s happening. We have enough noise that we don’t need to create in our homes and our businesses.

You want to be focused on cupboards, your car, your closets, your inbox, your outbox, your mailbox, literally anything that needs to be cleaned, always clean it, because it’s going to help your mind to stay in a calm state. When you’re in that calm state, that relaxation mode, you can literally focus and become that much more productive. Instead of working 14 hours, you can work 4 hours and get the same amount done.

Christopher :                        [inaudible 00:11:42], this is huge for me. I spend so long working, it’s 18 hours, unless, and I see at the moment this word hustle. When I started business, getting hustled was about the same meaning that it is now …

Melissa:                                  Oh god.

Christopher :                        What’s your take on this unproductive hustle vibe that’s getting thrown out in the air? It sounds like you have an interesting perspective on it.

Melissa:                                  I guess that would be the perfect one to ask. Since I went to a wedding over the summer, and the bride wrote ‘hustler’ on my name card. I took a pen out of my purse and crossed it out and wrote, ‘hustler in recovery.’

Christopher :                        That sucks.

Melissa:                                  I don’t deal with hustlers, because I think that what happens is that they want to constantly get a result, right? And let me just say, I hustled off six million dollars in business, and then I literally went to a burnout stage. I called one of my coaches and was like, “Listen, I literally cannot take my business anymore. I’m gonna drive it into the ground, I give up. I don’t want to work with these people. I literally have no desire to wake up tomorrow and do it again. I’m just not gonna do it.” He was like, “Dude, what are you talking about? You can’t just do that one day.” I said, “Watch. Seriously, I don’t have time for this.”

I had to stop and reflect, like, what am I doing? The reality of the situation was I was literally driving myself into the ground because I’m constantly working.

One of the things that we do as a couple is, we love to have fun, but here’s the thing, combined we have seven businesses. He has five and I have two. There’s also two kids, they’re four and ten. When I came into the relationship, I came in like, let’s do a lot of fun stuff, and he’s being super, super, super serious. Like, ridiculously serious, right?

I realized we don’t have to work as hard, we just need to have a little bit more fun. Eventually what we did was trampoline parks, snowball fights, ice skating, I mean, crazy stuff, jumping out of helicopters, all of this actually tripled my revenue. I was like, why wasn’t I doing this stuff before? Oh right, I was too busy hustling.

Christopher :                        I see it more than most people imagine, is that when that entrepreneur just lets go and stops trying to control and enforce it, they experience such a liberal growth that it’s unbelievable to me that the hustle word is still out there. However, there is the other side to it. And it’s funny that two recovering hustlers are here talking about the fact that husting’s not the right thing to do … I look back on it, right, I look back on the four hours sleep, and I’m like, you know what, I’m proud of that guys. It got me here.

Do you think that at the start of their business, do you think they still need that hustle to help get stuff off the ground?

Melissa:                                  There’s way, way, way more effective ways to do stuff, and getting four hours of sleep is not productive, unless that’s all you need. There’s four different types of sleep patterns, so maybe you’re a person that really, truly only does need four hours of sleep, and that’s fine if that’s you, but that’s definitely not me. I can’t survive without nine hours of sleep. The other thing that people forget that … You should take a nap. Just check out during the day, take a nap, and come back. You don’t need to push yourself from meeting to meeting, you don’t need to fill your calendar with senseless stuff. What you need to do is focus all of your attention on where are you spending your time.

One of the exercises that I always have people do, and you can actually find this on my website, is I have them do a time study. Once a quarter, which is four times a year, I have my executives and entrepreneurs do this. They hate me for this, but they print out a piece of paper, and the time is broken in fifteen minute segments. You literally have to write down every fifteen minutes what you’re doing. Are you reading a newspaper, going to the bathroom, commuting, are you talking on the phone, are you browsing the internet, are you wasting time on Facebook? I want to know literally every thing you’re doing every fifteen minutes 24 hours a day for three to seven days. That’s going to tell me exactly what to cut out, who we need to get to delegate stuff to, what we can automate, and how we can cut things out of your schedule that just don’t make sense.

Christopher :                        It’s huge. Doing a time study is huge. For me it was so long before I actually did it, and when I did it, everything changed. Literally. I’m writing down what I did in the past fifteen minutes and in that moment of writing it down, I couldn’t do that thing that was unproductive the next fifteen minutes. There’s not a statement that you could’ve said more that I would agree that every person out there should do a time study at least once a quarter.

Melissa:                                  Yeah, and you know what, you’re gonna hate it too. I’m gonna warn you, you’re gonna hate it.

Christopher :                        You said to download something off your website around there?

Melissa:                                  Yeah, if you go to the online coaching tab on my website, there’s literally seven videos, and under several of the videos, there are working PDFs. That is literally everything I teach my clients to do, and it’s free and available to anybody, because I believe that over the course of creating a successful business, there are only seven things that each of us need to focus on to maximize the results that we get. The problem is that when you’re a start-up, you don’t know what those things are, so you just start throwing darts all over the place, hoping something is gonna stick to the dartboard, but that’s just not how it works.

Christopher :                        I would love to know these seven things. I’m taking notes.

Melissa:                                  Yeah.

Christopher :                        What are these seven things that they all need to focus on? Is one time?

Melissa:                                  One is definitely time. If you don’t focus on time, then you’re probably focused on the wrong them. The first and most important thing, though, is trimming the excess, and I talked about this a little bit in the beginning. You want to just trim all of the excess out of your life, declutter your space. Check your environment, check your emotions, they’re very closely linked. For example, if you’re spending any time at a coffee shop, where people are chattering about others or there’s negative energy, negative vibes, negative talk, you probably want to remove yourself and find a different coffee shop.

Literally, your environments are connected to your emotions, and your emotions are driving your results, and your results, well, they speak for themselves because the numbers don’t lie.

At the end of that, I talk about four different tools that you can use to stress less, and that’s automation, delegation, deletion, and donation. So donate all the stuff you don’t need, delegate all the things that you don’t need to be doing because they’re out of your zone of genius, automate the things you can automate …

Melissa:                                  Yeah, and then automate everything else. Then you just want to focus on the five vital functions that make your life successful and that’s your health, your finances, your relationships, your confidence, and sales. That’s all you need to focus on.

If you … I’ve got this exercise on the website, actually. I tell people, grab a full-length mirror and stand in front of it naked with a marker in your hand, and see if you can cover the mirror in compliments. Most people can’t. They literally stand there, like, “I have nothing to compliment myself about.” Even the most beautiful, drop-dead gorgeous 10s will freeze up, because that’s how much we lack in levels of confidence. My question always comes up, “How are you going to walk into a board room and ask for a million dollar check when you can’t even look yourself in the mirror?”

Christopher :                        Wow.

Melissa:                                  Then you want to structure your day. What often happens is the most successful people have very strict routines. I’ve got an executive, and upon waking up, he prays for 30 minutes. After prayer … And by the way, he prays with his wife, so they don’t leave the house together without prayer … And then they have their morning supplement, they go to the gym, they hit the office. The first three hours of the day are totally dedicated to them together working. They have kids as well. For those people that think this doesn’t work with kids, it does work with kids.

You go to the office, you work for five, six hours at a time, the rest of the time is family time, dance time, or football time, or whatever kind of activities you want to do as a family.

You just gotta keep that momentum going. The thing that most successful companies do, in fact, every successful company, from Apple to, you know, anybody, is innovate. Look at all the things in your business and find out what it is you can innovate. Finally, look at your social circle, your activities that you do, and the places that you spend your time, and you’re going to figure out that your net worth is comparable to the places you spend your time, the people that you hang out with, and the energy that you put around yourself.

Christopher :                        This is so much you just dropped in. My pen has been scribbling like crazy.

Melissa:                                  The good news is, Chris, that you can just go to the online coaching tab and it’s all there for you, so you don’t actually have to take notes for right now. You can print out the worksheets and just do it all, or whenever you want to, I guess.

Christopher :                        So I suggest that everyone gets it. Hey, I’ve got two questions I love to ask everyone on this, and with every time, we just get something absolutely unique come out of it. So here’s the two questions. The first one goes like this, if you were today to start from scratch, you have no money, no relationships, nothing, you’re back in that place starting from scratch, how do you start your business? What business do you focus on? How do you make that happen?

Melissa:                                  Okay. Well, the first thing I would do is walk out into the streets and find something to sell and sell it. Since I have sales skills, and honestly I think all of us have conversational skills, that’s probably gonna be the easiest, because you’re gonna find people outside. You just walk outside, find something to sell, and sell it. Or return pop cans. Do really anything that’s gonna be productive to making money. Then take what little money you have and start investing in yourself and spending more time on yourself. This is where most people fail, is that they will spend all the time working in and on their business, but they will never spend the time to work in and on themselves.

Christopher :                        Great advice. The second part of the question is this: If you were to go back to the beginning, and you were able to spend two minutes looking yourself in the eye, and give yourself some advice or a pep talk, what would you say?

Melissa:                                  Don’t tell your dad to fuck off. That’s what I would say, because I regret the moment that I told him that, but at the end of the day, he was a failed entrepreneur, so I said that out of, like, “Don’t tell me what to do.” And yet, I lived under my parents’ house for three years trying to figure out what I was trying to do. They watched me and like, “Why are you sitting for hours behind the computer? You don’t sleep at night and you’re talking to strangers on the phone. Why are you connecting with these people?”

Is it good to alter close relationships? No, it’s not, but sometimes it needs to be done. I would just go back and say … It’s not something I would repeat again.

Christopher :                        That’s so funny. You’ve just got so much knowledge here, and you’ve written all these books and there’s so much that you can give. How would you like to end the show? What would be some advice or piece of wisdom would you like to give to all the entrepreneurs that have been listening and attentively writing this down?

Melissa:                                  Am I allowed to swear?

Christopher :                        I think it’s too late for that.

Melissa:                                  Okay. My mantra for the entire year is just, “Fuck average, live fearless.” Don’t go out every day and have fear in your body, because if you do that, no matter what mode you’re in, if you’re in scarcity mode or a mode where you don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow, just live fearless. Because at the end of the day, you can’t worry about tomorrow, you can’t be thinking about what happened yesterday, just live today, and give it everything you have.

Christopher :                        That’s a great way to end. Thank you for your time. I would love to get you back on and talk even deeper on some of these topics, because I feel like I’ve been surfacing on how deep you and I could really go on these, but I think that you gave your listing a really good kick in the neck, so I know exactly what it is that I need to do and nothing else. I mean, here you are, running two companies, and you’re only eight years ago being in such a down and out place. Thank you for sharing all those stories and everything on here, and I really, really have appreciated you being on.

Melissa:                                  Yeah, of course. So you’re gonna connect them to my website, correct? Because I didn’t spell that out. I say, “Go get the videos,” but I didn’t give them a URL.

Christopher :                        Well, let’s give them that URL. What is the exact URL?

Melissa:                                  It’s melissakrivachek.com. M-E-L-I-S-S-A-K-R-I-V-A-C-H-E-K.com

Christopher :                        We will definitely have that in the show notes, if you’re like me and definitely couldn’t take all that down. It’s all in the show notes, along with all of her social media. Go and stalk her, she’s very active on Facebook and on the other platforms as all. So get there and up your environment. I think that’s the biggest thing. Be bold, be fearless, and just go for it.

Melissa, I kinda knew this conversation would be like this, I know there’s a lot of information, but just do that, because I know that about you and it’s definitely there. Again, thanks for being on here, it’s absolutely awesome.

Melissa:                                  Yeah, you got it, of course. Thanks, Chris, for having me.

Christopher: Yeah, I love it. Listeners, be sure you subscribe, like, and share this. Go connect with Melissa, go and get the show notes, go and go onto her amazing … it sounds like such an amazing time study, so go on there and do that, and live a total free, free your mind, free your time, free your life, do what matters most. Snatch it. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Chris: Welcome to Total Freedom Podcast, my name is Christopher Duncan and I have Alex Charfen back here again, and it’s such a pleasure to have Alex on the show. This is the third time. He’s the only one that we’ve had back on the show three times. And the reason is this: I really wanted Alex back. I’ve been working really closely with him and, Alex, it’s so great to have you here.

 

If you haven’t caught the other two shows, you need to. Just because you’re listening to this, let me give you a quick intro on who Alex is. He’s everything about momentum. And Alex stands for creating massive momentum entrepreneurs. He’s been featured on nearly every single news medium you can look at. His book “Entrepreneur Personality Type” has been one of the things I actually travel with. There’s only a few books I travel with, and it’s one of them.

 

And I’m so excited to share some things on this show now with Alex. We’re not going to go into his story and things like that today because we’ve already done it, but Alex, welcome to the show brother!

 

00:01:31 – Alex: It’s funny, like from the first show, I don’t remember how long ago that was, but I was just thinking that was like the introduction on how we worked really closely together. It’s interesting to see that evolution.

 

00:05:00 – Chris: And I listened to one free piece of content from you about contribution, and my whole body just went “thank you.” And I remember it so clearly ‘cuz you talked about what entrepreneurs really wanna do, and what really fricking matters. I’m sitting there and I get this piece of advice from you, and you fricking changed my life by putting that content out there. Alex just said one thing: It was about waking up in the morning, getting yourself focused on what you’re gonna be, and you said that there were four things; who do you wanna impact, how do you want them to change, how will you change them, and what’s your scoreboard. And I remember it so clearly because I thought, I may as well do something that makes a big difference. And so I wanted to say, thank you so much, first, for being you and bringing that out to the world, because here’s what I know. Normally, people like Alex just deal with their companies. And they don’t share the inner workings of it. And when you shared that to me, and when you actually did that tiny little thing, we snapped back within three months. We’re doing six figures a month. So, I wanna talk about that today. I wanna talk about momentum based on experience, and I want to just extend some massive gratitude to you and listeners.

 

00:06:32 – Alex: I love you brother. Thank you, Chris. You have no idea how much that means to me because I remember when we were in California and we were in person when we talked about that. And, as an author, and somebody who puts stuff out there, you often don’t know what the effect is on people. And every time I hear something, especially from someone of your level, it just reminds me how important it is to continue putting yourself out there. Because, you know and I know, sometimes, it’s hard to fire up the video camera one more time, light it up and do it again. But it means something when you know that someone’s going through the incredible pressure and life-changing conditions that you’re in. For a video to bring you back like that, it makes me wanna go post more videos. I appreciate it, man.

 

00:07:36 – Chris: Thanks. It was huge. And this is what I got from it, and I want to find this out from you. I found out what really mattered. For so long, I felt lost, Alex. I played basketball internationally, and I always focused on that. Then I was in business, but I wasn’t really in it. It was like I was in it to make a business just to get out of it. Now, I’m in it because I’m in it and I wanna fricking be in it.

 

00:08:20 – Chris: How is it so different from all the other personality types?

 

00:08:29 – Alex: You know, Chris, I think it’s what you said. You said it so many times already. We are physiologically sensitive momentum based beings. You said, “I watched this video you did, and my whole body said ‘thank you.'” You understand. You are physiologically sensitive. We are hard-wired to be looking for momentum; to wanna drive forward, to wanna create progress in the world. And, here’s what’s interesting. I remember the first podcast we did. And you were still in that place where “I got some stuff I wanna do. I’m gonna make a big splash.” There’s a lot of entrepreneurs that I encounter that are in that place, and I always think to myself, “It’s okay.” Because, here’s what happens. When an entrepreneur understands their greater contribution, they’re no longer struggling to work. They just can’t stop. They’re no longer setting an alarm clock. They’re just up 3:30 in the morning. And what happens is, you uncork that contribution in someone, and you can take someone who thought they were in it to retire, make money, whatever, and next thing you know, they’re in love with their tribe. They’re crying about the effect they’re having on people, and that’s not work. The fact is, I think is entrepreneurs, we want to actualize. We want to create success in our lives. While success for people like us is being exactly in that place where you’re making your greatest contribution. And, Chris I don’t think that’s what it’s like for the rest of the world. We’re hard-wired to be like that.

 

00:10:08 – Chris: That took me so long to understand. In fact, since we first met till now, I honestly got off the first call, and I was like, “Everyone’s like that. Isn’t everyone like that?” And then, I went in, and I went to this leadership conference, and somehow I ended up at it. Because of everything, I went through this year, so much generosity, and I wanna thank Jenner and Brad Ballard who invited me to this thing. They didn’t ask me to pay. They sent me to this thing, but I went to it, and it was 2 out of 4 days with everybody that could be there. And the one thing I took out of it, Alex, was I was like, “Holy crap. Like these people are focused on buying stuff and what they’re doing.” I was like; I couldn’t even understand so much so that I made a lot of friends, but I don’t even know how to actually go and hang out with them. No motivation and no momentum to do it. That’s gonna decrease my productivity. I don’t want that.

 

00:11:19 – Chris: So, it was big, man. So, for the people out there who are actually momentum based beings, how do they know?

 

00:11:25 – Alex: We have three awarenesses of the entrepreneurial personality type, but I go about this a different way. We’ve been studying this, and I’ve seen success over a long time. And so, the questions I ask, the way I ask you to self-qualify is different than most. So, it’s three things. The first one is entrepreneurial personality types throughout history, those that are momentum based beings that are meant to do more, put on this planet to change things. The first qualifier is you always knew you were different. So, if you knew you were different from a young age, you knew you were different from the people around you, that is the first qualifier. So, that’s the first awareness of the entrepreneurial personality type.

 

00:12:08 – Alex: The second one, is, do you have innate motivations? Here’s what I mean by innate motivations. Psychology tells us that we have motivation outside ourselves. Like, external or internal, extrinsic or intrinsic, innate motivation is, you’re one of those people that just has got to move forward, wants to continue doing things, wants to make things happen, change the status quo, improve the world around you, get back to the drive. That’s innate motivation.

 

00:12:35 – Alex: And then the third thing, and this is the big one, we call it the “Call of Contribution.” It comes on subtlety. It this voice in your head that says, “Hey Chris, there’s more here. You can do more. You can be more. You can create more. You can contribute more. You can make a bigger change. You can have a bigger effect.” At first, it might just be a little whisper, for entrepreneurial personality types, that whisper becomes a yell, and over time it’s like the only thing you can hear. So if you have those three qualifiers, you knew you were different, you know you have innate motivation, and you’re one of those people that wants to make a greater contribution, then you’re probably an entrepreneurial personality type.

 

00:13:24 – Chris: It’s been the biggest revelation for me. And I said to my mom last night, I was chatting to her about this, ‘cuz she said to me, Alex, she goes, “There’s more outside just your business.” I looked to her for the first time ever, and I said, “Well, for me, there isn’t.” When I said it, I knew she wouldn’t get it. My business is the life and blood, breathing in the contribution, the thing I wanna leave behind, the thing that in a hundred years, will still be here.

 

00:14:04 – Alex: Yeah. Here’s the fact of being an entrepreneurial personality type. The way we’re hard wired, if you don’t admit that your business is one of the most important things in your life, one of the most spiritual undertakings of your entire lifetime, then you’re just denying something to yourself. Because the fact is, that for people like us, when we step forward and we create this thing called a business, when we step into the place of vulnerability of declaring that we’re an entrepreneur and that we’ve now become a commodity, that is one of the biggest and most significant contributions a human being can make back to the tribe.

 

00:14:44 Alex: The challenge for the people who don’t get it, is that they want us to slow down, or back down, or they don’t understand because they’ve never been in that place where contribution becomes the thing that you do every day. They’ve never been in that place where you could connect to you greatest contribution and see yourself moving towards it. Because, when you do, you can’t stop.

 

00:15:08 – Chris: I love it. People my whole life have said, “Chris, you’re too intense. Why don’t you stop?” They just had never understood what it’s like every day to wake up and know that you are helping your clients, to make money, to help your staff, and I love it so much.

15:39 – Chris: You’ve helped lots of people. What are the biggest problems that they face?

 

00:15:45 – Alex: I think the biggest issue that entrepreneurs face is that we’re not good at asking for help. And our biggest challenge is that there’s this mythology around being an entrepreneur that we have to be somehow perfect. And I think that far too many entrepreneurs get to this place where they’re not transparent, they’re not real. They get caught up with one of these people who convince them to fake it till they make it. They get pushed into this place of endless hustle and hard work, and what happens is, you get into a place where you get all that noise. For entrepreneurs, it could be hard to move forward. And I think that the biggest challenge, for me, I get a little emotional about this, but I think the biggest issue for me, for entrepreneurs today, is that there’s this new form of entrepreneurial cannibalism out there where you’ve got these trainers who are now training people nothing more besides just sell stuff to people. And there are literally trainers who will show you how to understand the market, get the market to obsess over you, show the market how to buy, what they want, make them completely dependent on getting your product, by writing sales letters and putting them into a system. But, Chris, I have a hard time finding the person who’s training on how to deliver. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs today is knowing who to trust, how to move forward, and how to create momentum because it is a wild, wild west of advice out there. It’s such a hit or miss proposition these days.

 

00:17:23 – Chris: It’s so much easier to teach people how to mine the gold than actually to be the one that’s mining for the gold. Your post, recently, I really loved. So I wanna ask, you to dive into this. Just yesterday, and you talked about different levels of advice, and why your company gives advice differently. It was awesome. It was so awesome that I sent you a message about it, and then I had to go and do it. I was just so pissed off, about how epic it was, so I’ll let you just roll with it.

 

00:17:55 – Alex: I have this hierarchy of advice because I’ve been around the self-improvement, consulting, coaching world for so long, and understand, I never sold a product online until 2007. Prior to that, I had a long career as a consultant, as a real estate investor, as an advisor to a lot of very important people, and then I got into doing this. And when I started really looking at this, there’s this hierarchy of products. So, here’s the issue. The issue is that most of the products are in this first category. It’s hard work. So, how many products out there, tell people, “Hey, you need to work hard.” Today it’s, “Hustle, hard work grit, determination,” all of this crap.

 

The misconception about grit is that there’s this new research study out, that everyone who’s ever been successful in history had grit. So, in order to be successful, you have to demonstrate grit. Wait a second. If we had a book on how to find stuff, we would interview people who had found stuff? And then they tell us you just keep on looking.

 

The fact is, that everyone who was successful of course, they worked hard! You don’t get there without working hard. The challenge is, this is where most people play. Hustle and hard work. That is the most entry level, rudimentary, training, and communication that there is. Problem is, most of the world plays there. And that’s also where most of the world lives. Most of the world is working hard, but they’re not getting anywhere.

 

So, the second level is motivation. It’s not just hard work. Now let’s motivate you. Let me tell you a metaphor that gets you pumped up and motivated. You know, Chris, this is where I think far too many people have become experts; in bullshit, mindless, endless motivation. How often do you see someone who’s just motivated, but doesn’t know why? You see it all the time these days. It’s like they’re zombies of over excitement.

 

00:20:48 – Alex: It’s because when you get people so over-motivated like we get into this place where we can’t be present. So now, you move up from there. Now there’s this new place: Goals and objectives. There are trainers who will train people on goals, outcomes, but this is dangerous. A lot of trainers won’t do this because they don’t know how to help you get through it. Here’s the real problem; most trainers, they will tell you how to set goals, but I’ve been to very few goal accomplishment seminars. There’s a ton of time spent on setting the goal then how do you get there is kinda brushed under the rug. That level of trainer drives me nuts. And so you take one step up from there, and now you get into some serious consulting and coaching. This is the trainers who are willing to train and who are about perspective and measurement, but this is not sexy stuff. When I start telling people, “Let’s talk about your metrics. I wanna understand your cash flow. I wanna understand your top-line, your bottom-line,” most entrepreneurs are like, “I’m out.” “I want that 90-day, $100,000 thing.” The fact is, that is a tiny percentage of entrepreneurs who even will play in perspective and measurement. And are willing to set up metrics, set up measurement, understand where they are. And then you get one step up from there.

 

00:22:17 – Alex: You get to where we play. And above that sits communication systems. The systems through which you build a business. The systems through which you actually scale and grow. And here’s the fact, less than one percent of trainers will even play here and there’s about twenty percent of trainers that will market to this result and then there’s about another sixty percent, who talk about it enough but they don’t know how to actually get anywhere near a communication system and that’s where people really fall down. Because here’s the fact, there’s three types of systems.

 

[00:22:59]

Alex: There’s three types of systems: the Internal Communications Systems we use…I mean, you look at someone like Tony Robbins, and he has some intense Internal Communications Systems. But they’re proven! They’re spelled out. They’ve been there. Then there’s the Communications Systems we use to communicate with others, and then how do we grow our business? Our team?

 

 

 

Chris: Yeah.

 

Alex: So here’s what’s interesting about us, Chris; I think working with you is very much the same way. We sell the system that makes it so that the entrepreneur can do what they’re best at.

 

Chris: Yeah!

 

Alex: That’s what you’ve recently done with us! You gave us a system so that we could do what were best at, and I think that in the world of growth and scale—like I said, about 1% of entrepreneurs want the Communication System, and then there’s a fraction of that 1% that could even understand how to apply it. So we’re looking for a very high level client, and I’m not saying a high-level cashflow client. I don’t need somebody who’s making a million dollars right now. I’m looking for a client who understands very clearly that, if they have Communication Systems to replace where they are band-aiding with communication skill, their lives would change.

 

Chris: Yeah. And what a great level to play at. What a great level to play at. One of the biggest shifts that I’m seeing out there is this shift through, from the person who’s doing it all, and has got so much on their plate, on their shoulders, right through to the person who’s actually the leader.

 

Alex: Yeah.

 

Chris: And that shift is what I see you providing. We are born into this employee society. We are told to trade time for money, and no one’s sharing what you’re sharing. It’s massive.

 

Alex: Thanks, Chris.

 

[00:24:43]

Alex: I like what you just said, that we’re trained to trade time for money. Even worse, we’re trained not to ask for help.

 

Chris: Right.

 

Alex: When I say Communications Systems, here’s what we do: we help entrepreneurs understand how to, on a daily basis, mine your life for where you need help. And then very clearly, and succinctly, and with an eye on your longer-term goal, understand where to ask for help so that you get there. And I think that, you know—is it okay to talk about the competition you did with us? Because I think that was just such an incredible example.

 

Chris: Oh, I’d love to.

 

Alex: Okay. We just ran this competition. And we had—I think we were expecting about a hundred people. We had almost 300. We read every word of submission, and it was amazing what people told us. And I just talked to our winner. We took it seriously. We read every submission. We talked to a bunch of people, we found out kind of where they were, and we made sure we had the right winner.

 

Alex: I talked to her, and here’s how astute she is as an entrepreneur. She’s got a business that’s doing well. She’s an Amazon reseller. She’s building her own brand. I said, “What’s the biggest thing that you need?” And she said, “You know, Alex, right now, it feels like in the business, I’m doing everything and I have people who are kind of helping, and it feels like our lives revolve around Amazon. And I know that what the business should have is that the world should revolve around the business. Amazon should be a tool, and I want this system so that everyone knows what they’re supposed to be doing, and the business grows—instead of just what we do on Amazon.”

 

Alex: That was so clear to me. I thought, “gosh, this is the perfect winner,” because that’s what we help people do. We help people create that Communications System, minimum effective dose, on the fly, building it as you go so that you can create momentum. We’ve done it with hundreds of businesses and we know we’re going to help her.

 

Chris: That’s so exciting, and what a great gesture as well. I mean, obviously, it’s a win-win for everybody involved, of course, but also for her the most. So that’s good. And I see that, Alex. I see so many people—they get themselves a start, and then the amount of times people come to me and…say, “Alright, Chris, this is my fifth, sixth, or seventh business, and I hope this one’s going to work.” And I look at them, and I go, “Do you know what? You need to fundamentally shift and change your identity for this to actually work.”

 

[00:27:16]

Chris: For me, in my journey—and I want you to help me kind of see how I’ve shifted—but the first part, for me—I was in that first part, man! I was all, like, hard work and hustle! I had to get there, and then I had to get motivated. One of the biggest transformations I had to get pulled rather than pushing myself.

 

Alex: Yeah.

 

Chris: And then I went after the goals, the objectives…but something shifted. And I think there have been two big shifts for me, and I want to hear if this is similar with other people.

 

Chris: The first thing is, I went; “I actually am self-aware enough to know I can’t do this all.” And then I sucked so bad at employing other people, so then I went back and went, “I’m just going to do it all!” Then that didn’t work, and I felt like I was oscillating, until I [went], “You know what I need? I need systems and processes.” But every single part of me hated systems and processes! Now, it’s all I talk about! So I made that shift, and then that’s going to explode into the millions.

 

 

 

[00:28:14]

Chris: How do you see that? Like, when people on their trajectory. Is it true, for everyone else, that they have to let go of their old self and move?

 

Alex: Absolutely. But, you know, not as many people have such a high level of awareness about it as you do, Chris. I think I can describe the transition that you’re describing from a perspective of having watched it with hundreds of entrepreneurs. I think you’re describing, from having to be pushed and motivated and moved forward—because you know what? There’s a reason why these guys who teach hustle and motivation and all that stuff do so well. It’s because there are people who want that.

 

Chris: Right!

 

Alex: And it’s because there are people who are getting up every day and they’re kind of—what happens in an entrepreneurs’ life is that for a long period in our lives, we get up and we try and motivate ourselves to do something. And really, what normally is happening is, we’re running away from the opposite of whatever result it is. You kind of said it before; you knew what you were doing. You were making a lot of money, but you were running away from the result of not having money.

 

Chris: [laughs]

 

Alex: It’s not like we’re really creating anything, we’re—and you even said it! It was the difference between being pushed and being pulled. In our lives as entrepreneurs, we are always, in the early life, trying to get away from something. Trying to get away from the impression we used to be, trying to get away from how we used to feel about ourselves, trying to get away from how people used to judge us. Trying to get away from the poverty or the lack of success or whatever we had—we’re working towards something, right? It’s different.

 

Alex: And I think what happens is, there’s this magical time in our entrepreneur life where we connect with our vision, our movement, that contribution we want to make in the world. We see that it can be real, and rather than running away from something? We start running towards. And when you can connect that and start running towards something, that’s when life takes on a whole different level of momentum. And what’s magical about it is, if you read the lives of enough entrepreneurs, you can see this shift in people’s lives. You can see the shift in people’s artwork. You can see the shift in the way that entrepreneurs wrote. You can see the shift in the contributions they made.

 

Alex: I mean, you can even see the shift in the early days of someone like Henry Ford, who used to publish anti-Semitic documentation about Jews! Anti-Jewish documentation. Who went from the beginning of his life to being a bigot to at the end of his life—after having grown his business—his entire goal was to democratize the automobile so that everyone could have one. He was running towards.

 

[00:30:57]

Alex: And what’s interesting, Chris, is—and, you know, see if you’re feeling some of this stuff—when you start running towards something, a lot less is important.

 

Chris: Yes.

 

Alex: Right? When you start running towards something, your days become a lot more focused. And when you start running towards something, you almost run on this different level of energy, and this different level of propulsion. And gone is that motivation and stuff. It’s almost like a connection directly to what your destiny is.

 

Chris: It’s so huge. It’s so huge. Everything changed for me, when I was sitting there. And I got right back to that morning moment and started going, “Okay, so how am I bringing my end game?” Got my plan back out…

 

Chris: And I just started going, like, “Okay, so that’s how I need to start off with.” Everything was good.

 

[00:31:51]

Chris: We’re going to have a quick break. We have an amazing webinar coming up, listeners, so go ahead and go and listen to that, and we look forward to continuing this conversation just after the break. Alex, I am looking forward to talking to you about what it is that you’re doing in 2017, and how our listeners can get involved. So we’ll catch everyone straight after this.

 

Alex: You got it, Chris.

—

[00:33:13]

Chris: Welcome back! I hope you’ve been enjoying. I’m here with Alex Charfen, and, Alex, it’s been a fun chat so far. We’ve talked about the different levels of consultants, from hard work to motivation to goals, to the coaching, and then right through to what you do; Communications Systems. And I’ve been loving it. I love all of our conversations, actually, I always feel momentum. I’ve got a ton of notes.

 

Chris: I want us to transition into momentum. And the one thing I’ve been talking about, and we’ve been talking about throughout the show is, a morning momentum moment that I had, and how that really got me back on track. So I would love to talk about a few things; first off, why is the morning so important? I would love you to share about your planner. I’ve got my copy right here—and listeners, I go through Alex’s planner every single day. So I’d love to hear about it.

 

Alex: You got it, Chris. You know, I was just in Zurich, Switzerland. I was at one of the most expensive events that there is. It’s one of the most exclusive; Robin Sharma’s Titan Summit. Steve Wozniack, the co-founder of apple, was one the speakers—just to give you a read on who was there.

Alex: Here’s what’s so intense: every time that I go out, and every time I’m at any type of even these days, what we’re hearing about is planning. We’re hearing about creating clarity and understanding how to be present and even meditation. It’s crazy! So for us, the more we go out and we’re talking about how to do those things, it’s drawing people towards us!

 

[00:34:51]

Alex: I’m sorry, what was the question?

 

Chris: I really want everyone to understand why the morning, and what they’ve done—

 

Alex: Oh! You got it.

 

Alex: I think Robin said it best at his conference. He actually said; your focus, your ability to pay attention, and your decision-making ability all peak first thing in the morning. And I think that, for a lot of people, they don’t believe it. Here’s the problem; if you’re not getting a good night’s sleep, if you’re drinking the night before, if you’re dehydrated the night before, if you’re not getting proper nutrition—then, in the morning, you feel sluggish and you feel tired! But the fact is that for the human body, all of our willpower peaks in the morning.

 

Alex: What we found out through neurological study is that the amount of decisions you make over time during the day, the amount of interactions you have over time during the day, the amount of pressure and noise—quiet literally!—that your body is affected to takes your decision making capability down. What we do with 100% of our clients is a process called Planning in Solitude, which is focus time in the morning to create intention for the day and, what’s even more important is, we create a structure to help our clients offload where they are uncomfortable. And people always say, “What does that mean?” Here’s why that’s so important: people like us will not admit where we’re uncomfortable.

 

Chris: [laughs]

 

Alex: Right? We have this Success Mechanism where we will continue to put up with more, do more, try to do it all ourselves—like you said, Chris—and we can slip into a trap at any given time if we’re not being careful. What we do is, we help entrepreneurs offload where they’re uncomfortable everyday by sitting down and going through this process. And you answer two questions. One is, what’s my intention for the day? What am I going to get done today? How am I going to connect with people? What am I going to get out of every meeting?

 

Alex: Then they move on to; where was I uncomfortable yesterday? And that’s the magic question, because if you can start to identify that, you change everything in your life.

 

[00:37:02]

Chris: And you’ve got five ways to measure the discomfort, isn’t it? It’s cash, effort—

 

Alex: Yes! Yeah. So it’s five currencies. It’s cash, time, effort, energy and focus. These are the five currencies we invest for success. So, cash—we all know what that means. Time—there’s no such thing as managing it. It’s an expiring commodity. Your effort, energy, and focus—you know, effort is, how much effort are you putting out? How hard is what you’re doing? How uphill of a climb is it? Energy is literally, how much energy is it taking? Because people tell me, “Oh, Alex, it’s no big deal, you know. It’s not hard to train for a marathon, it’s brainless.” Yeah, but you’re training for a marathon! And the last one is focus. That’s the one that gets people.

 

Alex: I usually go through a little bit of a cascade. If somebody’s really overwhelmed, I’ll say, “Alright, well, let’s take read; where’s cash, where’s time, where’s effort, where’s energy?” Focus is the one that gets us, because if you’re going along in life, and all of a sudden you’re hit upside the head with, like, an event that you had, Chris, your focus is gone. In a heartbeat.

 

Chris: Yup!

 

Alex: You just can’t—you know what that feels like! And so, for me, I do everything I can to preserve cash, time, effort, energy, focus. How do I make sure I’m not overcommitting those? Because if you’re overcommitting those consistently, you’re not going to do what you want to do with your life.

 

Chris: So true. And for me to be able to get back? That was so big. And I had my own way, and I think your way is great. What you gave me was that push to get back into the morning routine. In the book, Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg talks about a ‘keystone habit.’ And I have to say that I think the morning routine and that, you know, as you call planning and solitude, is the keystone habit of success.

 

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. It’s just like hydration is a keystone habit for physiological success, planning and solitude is a keystone habit for success. I love that.

 

[00:39:03]

Chris: Man, I just want to sit here and talk to you, but I know you’ve got a meeting coming up. Let’s talk about these weird glasses that both of us are wearing, because I’m sure everyone is asking about why are two entrepreneurs sitting here talking with these glasses on, inside, and no one’s mentioned them yet.

 

Alex: Yeah, no kidding! [laughs] So, I think we should just let everybody know. You and I are what I think most people would refer to as biohackers. But I think what a biohacker is, in my regard is, a person who does everything they can to get the most out of their body.

 

Chris: Yes.

 

Alex: What I just said, how can I get the maximum amount of effort, energy, and focus every day? And, so, you know—I started wearing these tinted glasses a while ago because they lower the blue light spectrum indoors, they make it so that I’m not exposed to harmful blue light—just like the ones you’re wearing, Chris. Here’s what that does; when I take these off and I look at a computer screen, it feels harsh. It actually feels, like, irritating now, and I’ve realized how much irritation I was putting up with. So by wearing these, I’m lowering the noise on my eyes, my nervous system, I’m not taking on that blue light. And here’s the big thing: the blue light from a computer or from a phone, these kill us. Because when you look at it, your eyes are seeing blue light spectrum that’s as bright as the sun at noon.

 

Chris: Whoa.

 

Alex: And we now know scientifically that our body regulates to light. So here’s the issue; if it’s four o’clock and you’re looking at the sun at noon, and it’s seven o’clock and you’re looking at the sun at noon, and it’s ten o’clock and you’re looking at the sun at noon, what happens is your circadian rhythm in your body can get completely reversed and all screwed up. Your experiencing something called time shifting. Here’s what happens to a lot of people; they’re watching TV so late, they’re looking at screens so early, their body has no clue what time it is! And what we see is auto-immune issues. We see people feeling rundown and having all kinds of symptoms like thyroid and hormonal and cortisol issues, and when you really look at all of those, they can be caused by this over-acceleration from blue light. And so, for me, I’m protecting myself from blue lights. I’m protecting my corneas and my entire focus, energy, and effort.

 

Chris: It was huge for me, and—I mean, I only got them because you kept talking about them so long, but I got them. And here’s what happened to me; dude, I stop now at, like, 8PM. I used to be hustle ‘til 1AM, wake up at 8AM. Now, I like—I’m done! It’s weird! I feel like wearing these all day doesn’t keep me in this updrive. I feel more centered and grounded, and I am sleeping better, waking up earlier, and I’m getting more done.

 

Alex: Yeah, you know what’s funny, Chris? Is some guys will listen to this and now go, “Oh my gosh, I would never wear those glasses, I love being up until 1!”

 

Chris: I know!

 

[00:41:54]

Alex: Here’s what they don’t know; they don’t know that when you start creating a high level of focus, when you start creating a high level of intention, when you start offloading where you’re uncomfortable, here’s what happens: one, you don’t have to be up until 1.

 

Chris: Mm-hmm.

 

Alex: And two, you get so much done during the day—such a high level of output, such a high level of focus—that you wouldn’t risk it by staying up ‘til one.

 

Chris: That’s right. That’s right. And—yeah. That’s exactly it, it’s such a big difference, and focus, clarity, and momentum, things are getting done, and it’s been done in less time, and it’s just better. Potent productivity.

Alex: Yeah!

 

Chris: It’s potent. It’s like taking just the minimal. It’s so good. I love it, man.

 

[00:42:51]

Chris: Hey, we’re running out of time, bro!

 

Alex: [laughs]

 

Chris: We could sit here and talk forever, and listeners you probably get that. Alex is coming back! I’m just going to keep hounding him and his team to get him on another show, because I just love talking. I want to next time talk more about biohacking and everything like that as well, if it—when it happens, which is great.

 

Chris: So, I’m sure some of the listeners want this planner. Where do they go to get it?

 

Alex: Go to charfen.com/planner, and we will give you the primary pages of that planning system, and then there’s a program where you can kind of learn the whole thing. What that planner will do is help you solve that age-old crisis for entrepreneurs of, how do you declare where you want to go long-term, and build all the way back to the day-to-day to get there.

 

Chris: I bought that program, and it was…the reason why I bought it, and Alex will remember this message I sent him, is I said; stop giving me so much great free stuff, I need to send you money.

 

Alex: [laughs]

 

Chris: And his response was exactly what I said. “Okay, well, let’s make that happen!” [laughs] And the program was amazing, so I highly recommend it. Alex, I know you’ve got to go. I appreciate you, man. Bottom of my heart. You and what you guys are doing over at Charfen is just awesome, and you’re making a difference in people’s lives. To me, that means somebody who’s not a fake guru, who’s not going to try to teach me another technique or tactical marketing thing that I already have learnt and know, but actually shows me the ground. Like, how to move forward, build a team, and create a contribution, so. Massive love for you and everything you guys are doing over there, man.

 

Alex: I want to thank you, man. Your team is one of the few marketing organizations that is outsourced that actually cares about a result more than just delivering the event or the product. The way you guys have hung in there with us through this competition, the amount of work you personally put into it, your team’s put into it, it is an extraordinary level of dedication that you and your team have that we just haven’t experienced with any type of marketing—contracting or outsourcing or consulting—so I want to thank you too, man. This has been an intense couple of weeks for us.

 

Chris: [laughs] You bet, brother, and I’m sure it’s going to stay that way, because I don’t know anything but intensity!

 

Alex: [laughs]

 

Chris: Hey, listeners! If you’re out there and you’ve got some momentum from this, make sure you go check out Alex on Facebook. Everything’s going to be on the shownotes: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, every other way you can chase him. I suggest that you go and do that. I suggest you get the momentum planner. I suggest you leave a comment, subscribe, like, and share this podcast, and I suggest that you live with Total Freedom. Free your mind, free your time, and free your life, so you can do more of what matters most. We love you so much. We will see you on the next episode. Bye for now.

Christopher Duncan shows people how to triple their income and double their time off so that they can do more of what matters most.

 

What’s up, Freedom FastTrackers? I’m here with Jake. He’s a badass, and we’re super excited to be talking. What’s up, Jake? It’s great to have you here, man.

Jake: What’s up, man? It’s great to be here!

Chris: And I can’t even—I can’t even stop the huge smile I’ve got on my face, because—normally, listeners, as you know, I do like a big intro about who this person is, and I’m like; “Jake, how do you want me to intro you?” He was like; “Well, you know, just like everybody else. Just intro me as Jake Ducey is a cool badass guy that’s got three books, travels the world, speaks on stage, and…” [laughs] It’s awesome to have you here, man. I’m so excited to be talking about all sorts of things. I don’t know where it’s going to go, listeners.

[00:01:09]

Chris: Jake, man, I’m excited to have you here, and I feel like I’m just talking to a brother. We’ve connected a couple of times before and I’m looking forward to having you on here and learning more about you as well, so it’s exciting.

Jake: Cool, brother! Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to seeing where the conversation goes too.

[00:01:27]

Chris: So, you’ve got three books and you’ve been travelling, speaking in person, awesome stuff—you’ve fed a bunch of people and some charity drives, and—you’ve got a great story, man. Listeners, you can grab the books on Amazon. I want to get you straight into that. There’s Profit From Happiness, right? The Purpose Principles, and Into The Wind. You’ve done some pretty awesome things, and I would love to just start in the most traditional way—after the most untraditional way—which is; dude, would you be so kind as to share your story with us and let us know a little bit about your journey?

Jake: Yeah, man! Well, everyone, I think, can relate to sitting somewhere where you wonder if it’s really what you’re meant to do with your life. It could be sitting in traffic in the morning, it could be sitting at a desk at a job, it could be sitting in a desk in a classroom—but you’re like, “Is this where I’m supposed to be?” And for me, specifically, that was being a 19-year-old freshman in college, thinking I’m going to go study business, and then I’m going to go get some job and sell something because I’m tall—and I was on a basketball scholarship, and they say, you know, when you’re tall, you can sell stuff. I just was listening to what everyone said I should do.

Jake: One day in economics class, I wanted to know why we couldn’t audit the federal reserve in about economic debt that the American economy is inheriting to the next generation. And that’s a reasonable question in economics and business class, and my teacher basically said, memorize this, and this isn’t a creative discussion class. And I realized then that it wasn’t really going to help me to—me, personally, at the time, my interests were to get involved and make a difference, and I saw everyone around me just kind of being groomed not to solve these big problems. And that led me to start saving a little bit of money, a few thousand dollars, went backpacking around the world, and that turned into the first book that ended up selling twenty thousand copies. And then Random House picked up the others, and—so, long story short, it was this whole thing that you introduce me as was started by sitting somewhere, I was like; “Is this what I’m meant to do?”

Jake: I left the class angry, thinking, “I could do something more with my life.”

Chris: Yeah.

[00:03:57]

Chris: It’s so funny, those moments. You know, the times that we remember that actually make the change. We have so many random moments. I can just remember some really strange ones, but the ones I remember the most are the ones where I made massive decisions, like yours—get out there and set out and do things. It’s such a, it’s so great to meet you and to be talking to you about this, because a lot of people don’t go and do that. They don’t go and travel the world, they don’t go and experience that, so.

Chris: What do you think was it about you that was different? Like, with so many people saying no, or saying, two thousand dollars isn’t enough, like … how did you kind of cultivate the belief? Was it your upbringing to go and do that, or…? How did that happen?

Jake: No, it was the opposite of my upbringing. My mom cried. She thought I’d ruined my life.

Chris: [laughs]

Jake: I think that I heard someone say one time, most people are gambling on the biggest risk of all, and that’s the bet that one day, then we can have the freedom or the money to buy back the time that we’ve wasted.

Chris: Wow.

Jake: And I think that we get conditioned into thinking we can live secure lives but, you know, the stats are clear that nine out of ten people are dying with less than ten thousand dollars and virtually no financial assets, seventy-five percent of Americans say they’re actively disengaged from their jobs. Following this traditional path isn’t working, and I think as a young person, I saw my parents and most of the people’s—most of my friends’ parents get divorced over money and working jobs they never wanted, they were stressed out, and I think something finally clicked. I said, “You know what? I need to make sure that I actually create a career that can make me happy.” I think that walking away from that and going the path unknown is—it’s a scary thing, and it can inhibit us and stop us from, you know. It’s like, the worst that happens for me, was like, I go back to school—
Chris: Yes!
Jake: — it’s like, nothing bad is going to happen. Just go to a community college and, like, I’ll work my way back into something.
[00:06:04]
Chris: You know what? Sometimes I think worst-case thinking is the best motivation ever. It’s like, you can think about all of these possibilities, but I love basing decisions off of—okay, so what’s the worst case, here? So, like, if I do this and it all goes to crap, what’s the worst that—okay.
Chris: If you’re going to start, and then it fails, well, you just end up back where you are.
Jake: Basically, yeah!
Chris: You start your business. If it goes well, great! If it doesn’t, well, you just get a job similar to what you’ve got right now. So, it’s huge.
[00:06:45]
Chris: So you, obviously, aren’t in a job anymore. You’re in a—you have a business. I’d love to hear a little bit about your business. You’re a coach, you’re a speaker, consultant, you run workshops. How is it that you’re supporting this lifestyle? Would you like to tell us a little bit about your business?
Jake: Yeah, well, you know. I had a book come out this year. This is, uh…November, I had book come out in the beginning of summer. Middle of summer. So, books. A publisher. And I have, I get speaking engagements, I just ran a fifty-five person workshop, people from five countries were there two weeks ago. November fifth and sixth, so.
Jake: I do coaching, I do group programs. You know, helping people that are in specific areas in their life, partnering them with accountability partners. Speaking engagements. So, yeah! A little bit of everything.
Chris: I saw a recent video of yours, about the coaching industry. There are lots of good coaches, but then there are also others as well. Would you like to give us a bit of insight on that video, because I personally thought it was hilarious. You got a share and a thumbs’ up from me. [laughs]
Jake: I just made a goofy video! I think that—I made a video where I just took an extreme example of, I guess, a typical person in the personal development industry that maybe the average American pokes fun at. I mean, you know. It was probably a bit of myself, and I expounded on my qualities. It was just a little fun video. I think, sometimes, it’s nice to prove a point, show an example to—I know there are a lot of coaches and people like that that are familiar with my work, and so I think it can help us lighten up and connect back to what we’re really trying to do, which is to serve people.
Chris: The video, for me, really—it was really great. And, obviously, it’s similar to the ultra-spiritual one that came out a while back, but. The video for me was great because you allowed yourself to not try to be anything other than you are, and I loved that. Every single thing in that video was actually things that you did. One of the things was, you got a book with a celebrity, and I was loving it!

[00:09:20]

Chris: The thing that I loved about it, Jake, most importantly—and what I have written down here, to really discuss with you—is just being…one thing I noticed about you online, and especially [in] that video, is you’re just so you. Even with that intro today and everything, it’s like, eh. This is me.

Chris: And I see a lot of people not wanting to do that. They don’t show up that way. Has that been quite important in some of your success and what you do, or is that just…is that just how you roll?

Jake: I think it’s everything. I think that’s the only reason that I’ve had any relative level of, you know, success at this. You know there are a lot of people doing this, and the majority of them don’t have a business. No one’s really checking out their work. They’re not a profitable business and they’re not really reaching and serving people. I think one of the greatest competitive advantages is to be yourself in a world that’s constantly trying to make you something else. I think one of the biggest competitive advantages is to be ourselves in a world constantly trying to make us something else. Everyone’s concentration spans are really, really, really short. So if there’s a hundred million people trying to make motivational videos—because there’s a lot of people doing this. And it grows every day!

Jake: And I think that it’s easier to reach people that can sense that, and I think that that’s helped me. I think, also, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to be like other people, and it was when I had the least fun with what I was doing. I want to have fun with what I’m doing, and feel like I’m an artist, and I’m creating. I’m getting craftful and just really being me. Not, like, putting this mask on. Because even if it made me make more money by catering a certain way that wasn’t who I am, you know, I want to do what I do to feel good.

Jake: I like this quote that I say a lot. It’s, uh; forget being a professional. Find out who you are and turn that into a profession. That’s what a brand is! It’s really an extension of the person.

[00:11:44]

Chris: It is! And turning what you’re already good at into a business sounds really easy. It sounds easy, doesn’t it?

Jake: It sounds easy when everyone else is trying to turn a business by trying to be like someone else.

Chris: It is. It is.

Chris: And you’re right. There are so many people rushing to social. There are so many people doing this, so many people starting these businesses that really seem authentic, and they don’t work. But for the listeners out there, what’s different with you and your coaching? Because there are a lot of coaches out there and, honestly, most of them don’t survive as long as you have. I see your videos from years ago on their social media, and one thing about that is; people that have been here a long time, they’re doing something right. So, what is it that you do in your coaching?

Jake: Um. What do I do in my coaching…? You know, everyone listens to this, you’ve heard people say everything I’m saying before. I think it’s just our own unique energy, and sometimes it meshes with the right people. I guess it’s less what I do and, you know, some people vibe with how I do it, and some people don’t. I believe that—I heard this quote one time, that everyone’s a genius, but the world de-geniuses you. Everyone’s a genius, but the world de-geniuses you. And a lot of people don’t really believe that. I actually believe that. Albert Einstein and Gandhi and Steve Jobs and Oprah and Mother Teresa and whomever it is that someone’s inspired by in any industry, from humanitarian to tech, I believe that every person’s tapping in to some special place within us that all of us can tap into.

Jake: There’s a quote by Aldous Huxley: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite.” And I think if you look at Steve Jobs, if you read his biography, his employees would call it his reality distortion field. He’s like, “I just don’t accept that. I’m going to create my own reality,” and I think all of us, and, you know, my goal is just to invite people into that part of themselves that maybe no one’s ever told them that it exists, or supported them in exploring, and trying to create their lives knowing that they have access to the same type of creativity—the same type of mind and thoughts, and consciousness and human spirit and power that anyone else has ever had before. And I want to hold people accountable to that in a fun and playful way.

Chris: Fun and playful seems to be everything for you, which is really refreshing, actually.

[BREAK]

 

[00:15:40]

Chris: I think you’re right, man. When I looked at your site, and I was really exploring, you know; “Who is Jake?” and having a look around, as I do before every single show—one thing that really struck me on your website was this. It was right down the bottom, and I’m not sure if you know, or even remember putting it on there, but you’re like; “Coaching’s going to cost you a heck of a lot more than money.” And then you elaborate on how it’s going to take energy and all these different things, and transformation’s going to take more than just money. So, one of the big questions I wanted to ask you is, what’s the difference?

Chris: I’m sure you’ve had people that spend money and don’t get a result, and don’t transform, and don’t change, and then you’ve got people who do. What’s the difference?

Jake: You know, sometimes it is when they’re making an investment that stings them? It makes you do the things that another person won’t do. It’s like the difference between a thirty dollar gym membership and a personal trainer that’s $200 a session, and it’s costing you a grand a month. You’re going to show up in a different way. I’ve definitely seen people show up differently—which I’ve done in my own life! If I’m like, “alright, I guess I’m really stepping into this. Now I have to. I want to show up.” And I think—I mean, it’s a great question. I think that [pause] I don’t know! I think you’ve got to want it for yourself, you know? I can’t make you do anything. No one can make you do anything in life. No one can make you do anything.
Jake: You may think that someone makes you do something, but you chose to do it, ultimately. Viktor Frankl wrote that awesome book, Man’s Search For Meaning, about being in the concentration camps. You know, the worst conditions – to me – imaginable.
[00:17:40]
Jake: He said; no one can make me think anything I don’t want to think. Through the worst torturing and experiences that anyone could ever have during these Nazi camps, he would have spiritual freedom and spiritual liberation, because he’s like; “They can’t make me think what I don’t want to think. As long as I have control over my own mind, I’m free.” And, so, I think that—I don’t know where I’m going with that, but—
Chris: That’s such a good book, man. The bit that I love in that book is where he talks about how he felt he had more freedom than his captors. Did you remember that? That’s like…I like paused on that. I had tears in my eyes, and I was like, what an amazing book. What an amazing story. So many of my mentors had talked about it. For him to have more freedom – and that’s something you talk about as well (and I obviously talk about it): freedom. That was so huge. He felt sorry for them.
Jake: Yeah, I know! I could tell you—you were getting, your head bobbed, and I could tell that you had read the book. Yeah, it’s—it’s mind-blowing to see the conditions which he went through, but kept his spiritual connection and his connection to something higher into his real freedom in life was inspiring.
Chris: It is, man, and I really believe that there’s so much education out there that we can get. And one thing that I always say to people, I’m like; no matter where you are right now, you can tap into podcasts and books like that. You can be watching on YouTube. We’re so lucky right now. There’s no excuse. You know what I mean? Like, maybe fifty years ago, there’s an excuse to not know how to change your mind or to build your life, or to do what you want, but there’s just not an excuse anymore.

[00:19:28]

Chris: I’d love to hear some of your favourite books. Where do you go to get your information?

Jake: I like a lot of old authors. I like Neville Goddard. He writes about harnessing the power of imagination in the conscious and subconscious mind. I like this guy, U.S. Anderson. He’s another really old author. He’s really neat, too. Three Magic Words. I like older authors a lot of the time, but I’m reading really cool book right now by a guy: Dr. Joe Dispenza? It’s called Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself—

Chris: Oh my God, dude.

Jake: –it’s amazing.

Chris: Just—for a moment? Oh, my God. What a book. It is next to my bed right now. Do you watch Gaiam TV?

Jake: No, I’ve never watched it.

Chris: Okay, dude. It is—and listeners, if you’re listening to this? You need to look at the TED Talk of Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself. Have you seen the TED Talk?

Jake: I didn’t even know there was one!

Chris: Dude. It shows—this blew my mind, and I have shown so many of my staff, my dad, my mum, my grandmother, talked about this on her birthday…I’ve shown so many people this video, man. This video, he shows—it’s amazing—literally neurons in the brain? He shows them, as someone’s learning, breaking apart and reconnecting somewhere else. You get a visceral experience. When you watch it, you get this—and listeners, every link and every book’s going to be in the shownotes. Dude, I love that book. I think that he’s one of the smartest dudes out there.

Jake: By far, man, yeah!

[00:21:13]

Jake: The other guy’s Neville Goddard. So, Neville Goddard is like a little bit…he’s talking about the same thing, but without science and neurology. He talks a little more philosophical and mystical? But they’re both talking about the imagination and changing your concept of yourself and your conscious and subconscious, so I’m really into that! That’s like my favourite thing to learn about.

Chris: Me too, dude! Me too.

[00:21:40]

Chris: So, there’s probably someone listening out there, going, well this is a really interesting conversation, but how do I change? I think that, where I would like to go with this conversation, is—I’d really love us to talk to that person. Talk about how change can be created, what elements they need to have, and just the, I guess the general capacity that we do have to change.

Chris: So, what are the steps to creating your dream life? Do you have some steps or a system, or…?

Jake: Yeah! There are some things that I go through, that I work with my clients on, but everyone’s different, you know. You can follow it: a step, a system, a mentor, or you could have an emotionally traumatizing—God forbid—you know, that catapults you to change. Those are two ways to change. One’s voluntary and one’s an emotional impact situation that causes change. Now, everyone here is listening to this because they’ve made the choice to change. They want to improve their lives. And I think that one of the biggest problems that we face as people is an information overload. There’s an oversaturation. So it’s easy to get entertainment through insight. We just basically consume entertainment.

Jake: I don’t watch TV! I don’t scroll through Facebook. I listen to podcasts! But we’re just—we never act on anything, and that’s what – I’m sure what you’ve learned. Most people don’t ever act on something. Even if they say they’re going to do it, they still don’t do it.

Jake: And, so, I would invite you listening to this right now to be that person—you know, Chris has created a platform where you really can be supported in taking steps to really create and move confidently in the direction of your dream. What I would invite you to consider would be, you know, when this ends? Or pause it right now. More than listening , we want people to be taking action. And then you’re like, I’m listening to the rest of that, because this actually made me do something!

[00:23:53]

Jake: I always say write out your vision. Bob Proctor says it in a way I love. “I’m so happy and grateful now that______.” Start with that. If you like pen and pad, or if you like Microsoft Word. “I’m so happy and grateful now that______.” And write out your vision! Like, what do you want to do? How much money do you want to make? Where do you want to live? What are your relationships? How do you feel about yourself? What type of work are you doing? Just, like, really your vision for your life and who you want to be. Just like, no-holds-barred. Not thinking about the outside world and what’s giving your report cards or your current situation. Stepping out of your current self and saying, what do I want to create moving forward, given that I do have this ability to create the life I want?
Jake: Just go from there, and write it out. Mine’s on my refrigerator, right over there. I read it every single morning. Every single morning, I just read it out loud. I get involved in it, because I’m trying to hijack and brainwash myself before the world brainwashes me and says; “well, you’re just Jake. You know, you’re 24. You have really long hair and you don’t have a college degree. You can’t have a million dollar business.” Because that’s the way our mind works! It’s conditioned to behave negatively in our world. And there are agendas for that, so we buy things we don’t need. But if you step outside of that, and you say; “what’s my vision?” You read that every day, you start to, you know, get involved in that. The same way when you first fall in love and, like, the person you’re in love with, their head is like a hologram on top of your windshield. You can’t stop thinking about them!
Jake: You’re in this thing emotionally and mentally and spiritually, and I’m saying do that with the person you want to be and the dreams you want to create. And then, you know, when you have that vision, just…I call it the Rule of Five. Five simple things that you can do every day to move closer to your goals. You don’t need to work 18 hours a day. I know there’s a bunch of internet entrepreneurs that glorify that, and, you know. They say you’ve got to work eighteen hours a day, and they preach that. That’s not my belief system. That may work for them, but for me, I like to also create something outside of the context of that, so.
[00:26:11]
Jake: Rule of Five is five things you can do every single day. You can pull out an index card, and you can pull it—five things, every single day. So, three of my things today is, I did three interviews today. That’s three things to move closer to my larger vision, which is to reach millions of people and to do this on a bigger scale! That’s three things, you know. I don’t need to do a hundred things in one day, so. Whatever your vision is, just start it. Bob Marley says, if you don’t start somewhere, you’re never going to get nowhere.
Chris: [laughs]
Jake: And then you just cross them off your list as you go along. Carry your index card in your pocket, so you see it all day. Even if you’re working a 9-to-5, you can still do it for thirty minutes at night, or just work two hours on the weekend to start. That’s how my girlfriend started. She started saving as much of her 9-to-5 money as she could and now she’s a full-time artist and she has a great income! It took her time to do that, but she worked five little actionable tasks every day and she knew what her vision was. I think when we actually take the steps to do that—you don’t just listen to this and say, “that’s cool,” and in your head you kind of imagine what your dream life might look like, and in your head you kind of think about what type of steps you can take, and then you forget it because the world brainwashes you or hits us in the face, or something happens and we get really busy—and then we don’t do it.

[00:27:32]

Jake: So, I think start there: vision, and five things you can do every day, and every day, keep working on that. Chris has—obviously you’ve created a support system to help people once they’re helping themselves and they’re taking action, so. Start throwing bullets on the wall, and I’m sure there are a lot of awesome other materials that can help you take the next step. Just look at other people that have created what you want.

Chris: Create action. I love it. Action is the key. It really is. Obviously a lot of people will sit there and be able to get the information, and get themselves started. Write that vision, get the five things, and then work it. Get moving them. Get them to actual visceral action.

[00:28:12]

Chris: I’ve a real signature question I love to ask, and that’s because I really believe the fastest way to get to where you want is to find people that have already been there. So here’s the question—it’s two parts. First question is this: if you could time travel back to the moment you were starting, and you got to sit down next to that person, all the way back then—you’re sitting down, you’ve got five minutes, three minutes, however long, and you just get to impart as much wisdom onto the old Jake that you could…go.

Jake: I’d say, “Hey, look man. You’re 19 years old. One of your heroes and your big inspirations, his name is Bob Proctor, he’s 82 years old. He’s over 60 years older than you. He’s been doing this for 55 years. What I’m saying is, if you’re really committed to creating the life you want, and this is who you want to become, this is bigger than a one-year vision. This is a forty, fifty, sixty year vision, so. Dream big, but remember to stay patient. What you think you might—Tony Robbins says, ‘most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year, and they underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade.’ Most people are going to quit after two months, six months, one year, two years.”

Jake: Chris, you said, before we started—or maybe it was during this interview—that you noticed a lot of these coaches, they’re in and out pretty quick, you know. So if you can keep a larger vision and keep staying the Rule of Five—five simple steps everyday—and don’t fret. Don’t fret. One person falling out or having one certain thing to happen a certain way with one person rejecting you, or you want to work with one person and it doesn’t happen—just remember this bigger vision. It’s beyond any particular people or any particular rejection. It’s this larger vision you’re moving towards, so…I would tell myself that. Having a really big vision and being patient.

[00:30:12]

Chris: The second part to the question is this: if, right now, you were starting out from scratch. The only thing you’re allowed to take is experience. No money and no personal contacts. All you have is your experience right now. You’re down to nothing, and no one will talk to you that you already know. You don’t have any of those contacts that you spent so hard making. How do you start moving towards what it is that you want?

Jake: Do I still have my Facebook and everyone following me?

Chris: [laughs] No! You can’t have any of that. You just have your knowledge, that’s it.

Jake: Okay. And if I was trying to do what I want to do, I’d get a phone. And I’d probably start—you know. I’d make an Instagram and a YouTube, and I would just recreate what I’m doing. I was talking to a guy that I’m coaching, and he’s starting in a similar space. He said, “What’s wrong with people? I got 70 views on my video, but only 2 people liked it! But there were 70 views. That means 68 people watched it, and they didn’t like it or comment!” Just like, little things. And I was like, “Dude. Just get involved with the process of it. Get involved with who you are and start expressing that.”

Jake: I think what I would is the same thing I did before. Turn the camera on and start sharing my story and hopefully, you know, it inspires and connects with people, and I would just do the same thing I did, really. I would just start over, you know, and just rebuild it. I’m not, like, this really brainiac, like, business-strategist person at all. I’m just like, I put my content out and I stayed consistent with it, and now I’m—you know, I didn’t even have an email list ‘til a couple years ago. I did everything backwards.

Jake: I would just start coming from pure place and sharing my gifts and my passion, whether that’s what I like to do—which is this—or whether someone wants to make the perfect juice company, and it’ll help someone overcome cancer! Doesn’t matter what it is.

[00:32:50]

Chris: Dude, we’ve covered a lot. Right from that 75% of Americans are actively disengaged from their jobs, that 9 out of 10 die with little or no money, covering your story—and it’s awesome to hear someone else taking action and doing big things. I love some of the books, and I especially love the quotes. We’re going to make sure that all those quotes, and if you’ve been listening and you want to grab all those quotes, we’ll put them on the shownotes. I love the steps of write out the vision. You know, five steps a day just to get started.
Chris: Man, it’s been an absolute pleasure. I’d just like to ask; how would you like to leave the listeners today? What’s one last thing that you’d love to part across time and space to wherever they are, plugged into this experience? How would you like to leave?
[00:33:35]
Jake: I’d say no new information. I would say to actually do make that vision, and actually do make your first five actionable steps that you can take, and if this speaks to you, share this video. Share this audio. Whatever it is. You maybe found Chris’s work because someone else shared it, and then you saw it, so imagine who else you can reach, so. Share things. Let’s build this movement of people that are really recreating themselves in the world. Make that vision and take those actionable steps.
Chris: Thanks, man. And I know that time is valuable. In fact, I know that time is the biggest currency, so I know you’ve invested some time to be here, and I’m absolutely certain there are people that would like to learn from you more. Where do they go if they do want to connect with you at the moment?
Jake: Well, if you’re on Chris’s website, then you can see how you spell my name. Last name is “D” as in “David,” U-C-E-Y, Jake Ducey. That’s it across all social media. Jakeducey.com, Jake Ducey on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube—all that fun stuff. You can check out all the stuff that we’re doing and, you know; love to hear from you.
Chris: And, listeners, I want to add some weight. I’ve known of Jake through some common friends and things, and then got to meet him a couple times. Every time that I experience your work online or here or then, I always get this feeling that you’re just showing up as you. And that’s very rare. A lot of people can show up as different in different situations, and so I really wanted to say; if you’re listening to this show, and you’re looking to create some sort of transformation, I highly recommend that you go check out what Jake’s up to, because I appreciate everything he’s doing.

Chris: Thanks for being here, man.

Jake: Yeah, man, thank you! I loved it, dude. Thanks for the kind words!

Chris: Listeners, live with total freedom. Free your mind, free your time, free your life, so you can do more of what matters most. This was the Total Freedom Podcast, my name is Christopher Duncan. Make sure you go across to christophermduncan.com/podcast. Download, like, subscribe, and share this, and we’ll catch you very soon. Smash it!

Welcome Fasttrackers to another episode of the Total Freedom Show – your fasttrack to total freedom. My name is Christopher Duncan, your host, and today I’m here with Cat Howell, who is in my home country. It is not very usual that I get to speak to someone from Takapuna in the North Shore in Auckland, New Zealand, so Cat, I am excited to have you here. It’s gonna be fun.

[00:06:36]

Chris: What’s up, Freedom Fasttrackers? It’s your host, Christopher Duncan, and today we’re going to be talking about how to stand up and step out. Calvin Wayman from CobbesMedia, and dude? I’m excited to talk to you—and I’ll tell you why: I saw you speaking with my friend Nick Unsworth about two weeks ago on stage. You’ve got #1 Best-Selling Book—actually, [you’re] in the Top 100 which is even better. Dude, I’m excited. I’m excited for what you stand for, I’m excited because you made such a big shift, so … let’s bring the heat, man. Welcome to the show!

Calvin: Hey! Thank you so much for having me, brother. Let’s jump in, let’s have some fun.

[00:07:18]

Chris: Dude, let’s start where we shouldn’t start? I want ask you this: why are you so excited about social media? Because this is what I get from you when I look through your social: you’re excited about it. Why the heck are you so dang excited about social media?

Calvin: Because it works.

Calvin: One of my mentors—I call Uncle G—Grant Cardone—

Chris: [laughs]

Calvin: --something that Uncle G says is; when a business fails, it has nothing to do with their product. It doesn’t mean they’re a bad person. It’s because of one thing: obscurity. This meaning, nobody knows who the f you are, right? To me, social media is like the lowest barrier of entry that anybody can get on. As long as you can create awesome content in the right context, you do it consistently and you build connections with people—

Chris: Right.

Calvin: -- you’ll stand out like crazy. So, yeah! I love it, and I’m learning from people like him and Gary V and stuff like that, and growing my business off of that.

Chris: Dude, it’s so smart.

Chris: Listeners, before you think; oh, maybe I won’t listen to this ‘til the end, here’s what we’re going to go through so that you’re definitely listening right to the end for this whole show. We’re going to go through how you need to stand up, how you need to step out, so you can really step in to who you’re supposed to be. We’re going to go through a lot of things about how to quit your job, how to leave that behind, and how to step into a business. How to brand yourself, how to do social media, and anything else that seems to pop up, so make sure that you’re listening to this. Put this on your Favorites list. I feel like we’re going to be going through this a few times.

[00:09:01]

Chris: Let’s go where we’re supposed to start, following the traditional rules. Tell us about you, man, and how you got started.

Calvin: I think what’s important to know—and I don’t mean this in a fake humble way, but I mean it in such a real way, and that is—I think it’s important—

Chris: What? You don’t mean it in a fake humble way? [laughs]

Calvin: No! I—it’s this! I think it’s important to know that anybody listening to this, that I’m a regular dude.

Chris: I got it, man, I got it.

Calvin: And why is that important? I think it’s important because, when I got started, I would look at people—whom I’ve already mentioned, like Lewis Howes, Grant Cardone, Garvy Vaynerchuk—and I would think: well, I’m in my day job. It’d be cool to be there, but I don’t know if I actually can. Right? What’s important to know is like, where I am now? It’s just been a year and a half since I quit my day job, and so if I can do it, anybody can. But where I come from is…yeah.

Calvin: 2015, the beginning of the year, I just got to the point where I was done. I was done doing the day-to-day, 9-to-5 entrepreneurial gig. I didn’t have the freedom that I wanted to have. And I  had this, like—not only did I have the fears of; what if I go to be an entrepreneur and I can’t do it? I was like; what if I don’t freaking do anything with my life? What if ten years passes by and I haven’t done a freaking thing. And so, about twenty months ago, I just got to the point where I was just sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I just said: “I’m going to quit.” And that’s what I did.

Chris: So…there’s likely somebody in that place right now, listening to this. What was going through your mind? I mean, you obviously think about it for quite a while. What held you back from taking the jump for so long?

Calvin: Fear! Oh my gosh, you’re right—I did think about it for awhile. You’re right on. I wanted to honestly quit for years. And I thought; I need to keep educating myself; reading books, watching more webinars, until I finally do. What kept me stuck was fear of “what if I mess up?” And what’s interesting is, a question I get asked all the time is: “That makes sense, that you have all that fear that keeps you stuck. But what made you actually jump?” Like, if you have all that fear, what made you just quit.

Calvin: Because here’s the thing, too: I had a wife—I still have a wife—and a 1-year-old son, at the time, so I have a family, this responsibility, rent to pay, food to put on the table and all that stuff—and I still quit! Without having anything lined up next. Now why did I do that?

Calvin: This is why: a bigger fear. That’s really it. A bigger fear. A lot of people talk about having a powerful why, a positive vision as to what’s going to pull you, and I kind of had that, because I wanted freedom, right? Freedom got me started, but it didn’t push through all that other fear.

[00:12:14]

Calvin: It was one day—I’ll never forget it—I sat there and I closed my eyes, and I projected myself ten years into the future. I basically ended up having a conversation with my ten year older self, and I was like; when should I quit? Should it be now, should it be later? And a couple things happened: I first asked myself: “What if I don’t do anything? What if I don’t quit? What if I wake up, ten years down the road, and nothing has changed?” The fear of that happening scared the hell out of me. In fact—and so my ten year older self essentially said; as you get older, Calvin, as we get older, you and I, we’re going to get more responsibility—not less.

Chris: Yeah.

Calvin: So if you’re ever going to do it, the sooner, the better. And here’s the big fear that really made it happen. Not only did I fear what if I wake up and I’m at the same place, only I’m more stuck because I have more responsibility—bigger family, more responsibilities that are keeping me there—what I thought was this: as an entrepreneur—and other people listening to this, maybe people that are contemplating quitting their day job or wanting to go create something—this is what I know about you: there’s this fire inside of you. This fire to do something bigger. To go after freedom. To do more for your family, or to make an impact on the world. And what I thought that day, when I projected myself ten years into the future, is I thought; what if I wake up, ten years in the future, and that fire inside of me died? What if it died?

Calvin: What if I woke up, and because I didn’t freaking do anything about it, it just was gone. And now I am complacent, and I’m like; well, I’m this 35, 45, 55-year-old dude now, that’s just like—this cynical guy, dream-stealing all these other 20-year-old people that are wanting to make an impact. Like; “Wait ‘til you grow up and life kicks your ass!” You know, nothing’s going to happen. The fear of me turning into that, and having that desire—that fire—to make a difference? That going away is what made me just say…”F*** it.”

Chris: [laughs]

Calvin: “I’m gonna jump.” And that’s what I did.

[00:15:01]

Chris: Dude, I love it! When the fear of staying still is bigger than the fear of acting and failing, we’re able to create such momentum. And I say, use it!

Calvin: Yeah! That’s what it was!

Chris: Really, man! And here’s where I want to congratulate—and I just want to appreciate you. I want to appreciate your energy, I want to appreciate your honesty, and I want to appreciate your ability to tell a great story.

Calvin: Thank you.

Chris: That was a—that’s such a great thing, and I think that the people listening are going to have an experience right now that I want them to pause with. If you’re listening to this, and you haven’t had that conversation, here’s my gift from Calvin, through me, to you: press pause right now, and have a frickin’ conversation with your ten year future self. Let’s do that! That is such a big benefit, so thank you—and I think people should go and do that right now, right?

Calvin: Yeah! I’ve slipped into that couple more times in my journey through the last year and a half. I don’t know where it’s come from, but it’s guided me, and yeah! It’s what made that big fear swallow the smaller ones of like, I can’t do it. It got to the point where I’d rather try and fail. I’d feel better to try and mess up than to stay stuck, wondering if I ever could have made it.

Chris: Thank you, man, thank you. I think that’s super important.

[00:16:18]

Chris: I hear people say all the time, there’s no such thing as failure. Well, there is. And the only true failure that I see—the only way you can really fail is not going after what you want. The only way you can really fail is just playing small. That’s true failure, right?

Calvin: Totally! There’s this other video … of Jim Carrey, giving a commencement speech. Have you seen that? It’s such a cool video! Like, he tells the story of his dad who could have been a stand-up comedian, could have been great, but he took the safe, secure route. And then in the middle of his career, in the later part of safe, secure job, he got fired! And he had to start over. And Jim Carrey says; my dad taught me a ton of lessons in life, not the least of which is: you can actually fail at doing what you don’t want. So you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.

Chris: [laughs] Legendary, man!

[00:17:24]

Chris: Tell us; what is it that you’re really loving? Obviously you’re doing social media, so who are you excited about helping at the moment, and how do you help people in your business? What do you do?

Calvin: In the social media sense, I’m excited about helping anybody that wants to stand out. That tends to be small business owners or entrepreneurs that are building a brand and a platform, but they want to focus more on their thing, whatever that business is, then we can just totally offload it, create content for them in their voice, and post it for them. Like, in a social media sense, that’s who I want to help.

Calvin: But in a bigger sense, that’s even bigger than my business, bigger than my social media, the reason I just did my first live event, who I really want to help is the person who wants to make a different but isn’t sure if they can. The person that wants to make an impact but maybe hasn’t been exposed to how badass they really are. And I kind of distil that into something that I call the Roger Bannister Effect. I want to create—the thing that excites me is creating Roger Bannister Effects in other people. I’ll try to explain what I mean.

[00:18:38]

Calvin: Roger Bannister is well known for being the first guy that ran a four-minute mile, right?

Chris: Yup!

Calvin: And, for decades, people tried to run the four-minute mile, and all failed—to the point that it became conventional wisdom and knowledge that no human being could ever do that. Scientists thought it was impossible, doctors, and certainly the general populace. And then, Roger Bannister did it.

Calvin: The question though that’s more exciting than; that a guy did it? is this other part, and that is how long his record lasted. Because logic would say, since it took humanity decades to produce someone to run a four-minute mile, that it should take at least many more decades for the second person to do it. Right? But get this: Roger Bannister’s record lasted a whopping 46 days. Not 46 years, not 5 years, not 2 years. 46 days—a month and a half. Why is that?

Calvin: Because once people see it, and see that it’s possible for them, then everything changes. And that’s what I like to do.

Chris: Let me ask you a question right there: do you know the name of the person that broke his record?

Calvin: No!

Chris: [laughs] That’s what’s so fascinating!

Calvin: Right!

Chris: He’s 46 days late, Calvin, and he doesn’t even get—it’s called the Roger Bannister Effect, right?

Calvin: Right! Right! But—yeah, it’s crazy! We give all the credit to him. And thousands of people have done it since, by the way. But the main point that is just so exciting to me is how, once people see that it’s possible, how it changes the game. And that’s what I want to do. Something that I did to currently challenge myself in this area, just to see if I could—not even as a physical challenge, but a mental challenge—about eight weeks ago, I signed up for a fifty-mile ultra-marathon. In the mountains, in rain and snow. Had no effing idea if I could do it.

Calvin: But I saw somebody named Hal Elrod, who wrote The Miracle Morning do that! And I was like, if this regular guy—if Hal can do it, then Cal can do it, right? So I just frickin’…based off of just that, I was like; “I’ve got to try this.” And the most I’d ever run up to this—my New Years’ Resolution for 2015 was to sign up for an eight-mile race. That was crazy. And then I got up to a half marathon. But I signed up for a fifties, and I went from half-marathon, skipped marathon, and frickin’ hit fifty. In rain and snow and in the mountains, just to see if my mind could take it. And that’s what excites me; doing something myself that I didn’t think I could do, but also showing other people and them that they can do way more than they think they can.

Chris: Wow, man, that’s impressive.

Chris: So, what’s the next impossible Roger Bannister Effect or experience? Have you picked anything yet?

Calvin: Something that I’m thinking jumping—so, I’ll just get transparent here. I’m a 29 year old grown adult dude, and I don’t know how to swim. I never was taught that as a kid, and I’m really good at sinking. So many people have tried to teach me how swim, and I just sink. But I’m probably going to sign up for an Iron Man for 2017. At least a half-Iron Man. Something that forces me into the water to have to figure it out. So that’s kind of the next mental challenge that I’m playing with right now.

Chris: Nice.

[00:22:38]

Chris: And, what about in business? What is the impossible that you’re chasing there? It seems like you’re really going to close big things.

Calvin: Making a million dollars in revenue in 2017.

Chris: Wow. I’ll tell you, as somebody who’s done it a few times, the first million is the best journey that you’ll ever be on in your entrepreneur journey.

Calvin: I’m capturing it too, because I’ve heard that, and there’s something that I—I mean we talked about Jim Carrey already and something kind of stuck with me with him is, I remember watching him give an Oprah interview that is now on YouTube, of him talking about how he would drive to the top of the mountains before he was big and visualize him being big and making the millions, and then wrote himself a check for $10 million and dated into the future and he freaking did it?

Calvin: I remember watching that, and [thinking] “Man, it would have been so cool if somebody documented it!” So that you could see him go through it. And there’s nothing out there that has it, so for the last year—almost a year—I started a YouTube show called Millionaire Case Study. It’s not even very popular and I don’t want it to be yet. It’s just me documenting what I’m doing right now to go after that first million, because I’m going after it! And I want to be able to capture the journey in it, so that it’s not just a story told after the fact where so much is lost. I want to be able to go back and see what’s actually happening in the journey, in the moment, while it’s actually happening.

Chris: I’m going to go check that out, man. That sounds amazing.

[00:24:24]

Chris: Hey, we’re going to pause for a quick break, but I’ve loved the Roger Bannister Effect. I love this: you get older, you have more responsibilities than less, and I think I’ve felt some heavy motivation. So if you’re out there listening, we’re going to pause for a quick break, and we’ll be right back after that.

[BREAK]

[00:25:44]

Chris: Welcome back! I’m here with Calvin. We’re having a great time, and we were just talking a little bit off the air as you guys were on the ad break about the Roger Bannister Effect and really going for big things, and I just wanted to remind everybody. The one thing that really stood out for me was that, as you get older, you have more responsibility, not less. And I hope that everybody had that conversation with their ten year future self.

Chris: Now, I’m going to assume everybody listening right now wants to hear how to stand out on social media. We have him here, so I’m going to ask to learn your signature Four C System on how we actually stand out on social media. So, Cal, if you would be so kind just to dive into that? We would love it.

Calvin: Absolutely! This is how you stand out past everyone else. They’re called the Four C’s of Social Media Success, and if anybody’s taking notes, those four C’s are Content, Context, Consistency, and Connection.

Calvin: Content, Context, Consistency, and Connection. It’s when you have these four C’s that it’s just game over. I could go and spend an hour into each one of these, but I’ll just briefly touch on each one to give people an idea.

[00:27:01]

Calvin: Content is where it all begins. I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast that the number one reason people fail in business is not that they’re a bad person or that their product sucks. It’s obscurity. There are not enough people who know who you are. And content, and creating content on social media, is the first step to get into that game. So, create content on telling us the story of who you are, what you stand for, and what you believe in. One little tip here is, most people that are small business owners, what they want to tend to do is talk about what they’re all about. What they do.

Calvin: And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this cool video—it’s by a guy named Simon Sinek. A TED Talk called “Start With Why” or “The Golden Circle.” See that? If anybody’s listening to [this], they should watch it, because that’s what works on social media. Not talking about what you do, but why you do it. What are your core values? What do you believe in?

Calvin: Simon Sinek uses Apple as an example in the TED Talk. He says, if Apple were like everybody else, then a content message or a marketing message would sound like this: “We built the best computers! Want to buy one?” And you’re like, “Meh.” I mean, it doesn’t sound very inspiring, right? But he says, this is how Apple actually communicates. They create content that sounds like this: “In everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. And because we believe in challenging the status quo, because we believe in thinking differently, we create products that are simple to use, beautifully designed, and user-friendly.” Right? “We just so happen to create great computers. Want to buy one?”

Calvin: And it’s totally more powerful that way! If you look at the people that stand out the most—somebody that comes to mind is Gary Vaynerchuk. If you look at his content, that’s what he’s pitching! He’s not talking anything about his business. He’s not even talking about VaynerMedia. He’s saying, “If you’re going to win, you have to hustle.” If I was to go to my Instagram right now, which I’m just going to do, I’m going to look at a recent post of Gary V and I’m going to guess that it’s going to be something that is a value or a belief of his.

Calvin: “Doing the right thing is always the right thing.” – Something that he just recently posted. That’s a belief. That’s a core value. And what you have to realize is, when you’re trying to attract the right people to you, the thing that attracts people to you is not what you do. It’s what you stand for and believe in. If you think about congregation—like, when I used to say the word “congregation,” I usually ask people; “Where does your mind go?” when you think where people congregate. And an answer that a lot of people say is, well, church. Right? If I’m seeing a congregation of people, I think church. That’s a perfect example. If you ask yourself, what makes people congregate into one church versus another church? It’s this: their common set of core values and beliefs! That’s what makes that congregation congregate in that church versus another church. It’s not how pretty the church is. It’s not how cool the windows look on the other side. It’s what they stand for and believe in.

Calvin: So that’s the very most important thing anyone can do on social media, is to get clear. Like, really just forget what the hell your product is and services [are] a little bit, sounds a little counterintuitive, find out what you believe in, what you stand for, and post about that. And a cool thing will happen: you’ll start to attract people to you. And when they come to you, they end up being the perfect tribe member. The perfect client. Because they believe in the same things you believe in. So, that’s the big one.

Calvin: I spent more time on content than I’m going to do on the other three, but that’s just the beginning piece. That is so critical. Talk about what you stand for, not just what you do.

[00:31:09]

Calvin: And then, Context. Context is fun for me, because it’s one of the most misunderstood pieces of social media. And what that’s all about is creating content that is specific for that platform. Because every platform is like a different room, or a different situation. If you have the right piece of content but don’t have the right context, it doesn’t stick. I’ll give you a quick real-world example. You’re in business, right? You’ve probably made business cards for yourself, right, before, Christopher? You probably have business cords or some type of—

Chris: Yeah.

Calvin: Okay! So, I’m going to guess that even though you’ve probably talked to people about your business before as well, right? Like, it’s probably not too much of a long shot. You might have handed out your business card, but this is where I’m going to make an assumption about you, if I may.

Calvin: I’m going to assume that a method that you’ve used to talk to people about your business has not ever been to go to a random funeral home in the middle of a funeral service of somebody you don’t know, and walk up and down the pews, and hand out your business cards and say, “Sorry that you’re crying about Joe. I honestly don’t know who Joe is, but we should really connect about my business. It’s awesome. Here’s my business card, let’s talk about my business.”

Chris: I haven’t tried it yet. I’ll put it under the Ideas To Test Next Quarter—

Calvin: Got it.

Chris: --and I’ll let you know.

Calvin: Okay! [laughs] So I’m pretty safe in assuming that’s something you have not tried it yet.

Chris: I have not tried it yet, but I’m open to testing! If you think it’s a good idea—I mean, you’re the expert.

Calvin: Okay! [laughs] Well, this is what I want you to notice: even though you’re in business, you handed people your business card before—

Chris: Yeah.

Calvin: --there’s nothing wrong with handing people your business card. There’s nothing wrong with talking to people about your business. But what would you say is so wrong, though, about doing it in that type of situation?

Chris: It’s wrong because it doesn’t feel right. It’s wrong because they’re not read—

Calvin: Yes! Bad timing! Bad place, right? It’s not the right context to do it in. This is such a huge idea, because that room of people could even be your ideal clients. Like, it could be the people that you want to talk to, but if it’s not in the right context, then it’s not received well. The big idea here is, what you do on Instagram, for example. If it worked on Instagram, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be the same thing you do on Twitter. What you do on Twitter is not going to be the same thing you do on Facebook, right? So you need to speak to the context of the room, of the platform that you’re on, of what’s happening and what’s going on. Because without the right context, you’re not respected.

Calvin: So, again; content was—without content, you don’t exist. Context—without context, you’re not respected.

[00:34:06]

Calvin: Now, with consistency—the third C is consistency, and if I were to ask anybody on this podcast, listening to this, to think about of a big yellow M, in fast food, who would they automatically think of?

Chris: McDonalds.

Calvin: McDonalds, right? Yeah! And if I said, “think of red soda softdrink ,” they’d probably know Coca-Cola, right? Or if I said, just do it, they would know that brand is Nike. Question is: how the heck is that? I’ve asked the same question to dozens and dozens of people from different countries, and they all get it right. Which is crazy, because nothing crosses cultures like this.

Calvin: How did those brands get in our brain? They got there through consistency. So the big idea here—and again, we could go deep in this, but I’m not going to—is, you need to be super consistent in who you are, but also consistent in how often you’re posting. Because if you’re not being consistent, you’re not going to be recognized or remembered. So to be recognized, remembered, recalled, you have to be consistent. The average business posts only about two or three times a week on social media. You need to be doing that at least two or three times a day, on whatever platforms you’re on, if you want to stand out.

[00:35:42]

Calvin: So that’s consistency. And the last C—and, to me, the most important C of all—is the reason we do anything on social media: to build connections. If you’re not building connections, then you shouldn’t be doing anything. And if you built connections, that’s what’s really going to help you stand out. You have no idea how deep one connection will go. I was recently scrolling through my social media and I came across this random video that somebody tagged me in. It was a podcast interview—kind of like this—but it was in studio with three Australian dudes. Besides you, Christopher, I personally don’t have any friends that have these sexy accents. That aren’t American, right?

Chris: [laughs]

Calvin: So, I did not recognize these guys or their accent! They were from Australia, and I was like, why am I tagged in this video? I started watching, and these guys start talking about somebody. And get this; the person they’re talking about is me. And I’m like, what? What’s going on here? How is this happening? Because—again—it was in Australia! In a country I’ve never even been to. It was the weirdest thing because it was the first time in my life where I ever saw anyone talking about me where I literally had zero frame of reference of who they were. It wasn’t like, did I meet them at some party and I forgot? Because I know I don’t know anybody with an Australian accent.

Calvin: And I’m like, how did this happen? This is how: one of those guys followed me on Instagram six months prior. And when he followed me, instead of just ignoring that notification like we normally do, I was like; you know what? If this guy’s going to take the time to follow me and if I had it my way, I would like him to follow me forever. I want like his attention for life, what can I do to kind of stand out? So I just pulled out my phone, shot a quick video, and all it said was this: “Hey, brother. I noticed you followed me. Thanks!” The video lasted four seconds. But that four seconds was enough of a connection with him that he had been stalking me on social media for the past six months without me even knowing it. In fact, when I came out with my book—when I came out with Fish Out of Water—he ended up buying a bulk order of my books without me even knowing it, and he was giving ten copies of my book away for free on this podcast interview to an audience I would have never thought I ever could have connected with. All this was happening without me knowing it in a country I’ve never even stepped foot in! Because of one simple four-second connection with another human being over social media.

Calvin: So, that’s the most important piece that I believe everybody should be focused on when it comes to social media. What can you do to keep social media social, right? It’s called social media. Like, to connect with another human and spend your time doing that. You can create a ton of content in the world and spin it out, but if you’re not making connection to people, like, replying back to everybody that comments or going and sending a message to somebody that follows you on Facebook, or doing a voice memo or a video, then you have no idea what you’re wasting. The very best of the best still do this. You can still message Gary V and he will comment back or get back to you at some level.

[00:39:02]

Calvin: These are it. These are the four C’s: Content, Context, Consistency, and Connection. And the most important or the most beautiful thing about these four things, to me—for anybody listening to this right now—is nobody is doing this. So if you do this—especially that last piece—you will stand out like crazy past everybody else. That’s what you do: use those four C’s and you will stand out past 97% of everybody else that’s on social media today.

Chris: What great advice, man! Obviously I can tell you’ve got so much passion for this and you’re doing the right thing, you know, starting with why and really getting that content out there was huge for me. Understanding, and you’ve got to have the right context. Getting consistent and then creating connection.

Chris: Now we are going to need to wrap up in just a second, but I thoroughly enjoyed this. Let me ask you this: you’re going to give a social media makeover—

Calvin: Yes!

Chris: -- to our listeners. How do they go about getting that, and what is it?

[00:40:00]

Calvin: Awesome! So, a social media makeover is based on the context of what we just talked about with those four C’s. We see how well you’re doing that, we see what your goals are, and to follow them. [We] walk you through what the next step is to stand out on social media.

Calvin: So you can get your social media makeover by going to socialmediamakeover.org—and again, this is going to be an actual phone call, because we’re huge on connection—surprise! It’s not just a PDF or anything like that. It’s going to be personally myself or somebody on my team that will get on the phone with you and see what we can do to help you stand out, to makeover your social media. Again, you can grab that by going to socialmediamakeover.org, set up a time that works best for you, and we’ll connect and help you stand out.

Chris: Dude, what a great gift! I massively appreciate that. If you’re listening to this, the link will be available in the shownotes or you can just punch that in if you remember it, but head on over to the shownotes---christophermduncan.com/podcast and get those shownotes.

[00:41:09]

Chris: Dude, we’re going to have to wrap up in a second, and the reason is we want to keep this really short and to the point, but I gotta ask a few more things before we do that—

Calvin: Hit me.

Chris: --and here’s what I want to ask: somebody starting on social media today, and they’re right back where you were a year and a half, two years ago—what do you suggest? How do they start?

Calvin: The thing that was intimidating with me—something I don’t share too much: when I first got into this, you would be shocked, probably, to think how shy I actually was. My first sales job I ever had, I still hold the record for the worst performance a sales agent ever had, because I was so shy. Same thing with my social media: I was afraid to even put my own profile picture up. It was a picture of Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes—it was just a comic strip. What made me get into the game is, I was worried about putting myself out there and if somebody’s getting started and they’re worried about that? Then understand what I said about content, and how you just start with why.

Calvin: If you’re afraid to put yourself out there, then start posting quotes of what you believe in. If you believe in never giving up and things that Gary Vaynerhuk says or Tony Robbins says, or Grant Cardone says, or other entrepreneurs? Start posting about that. What it’s going to is you’re going to start to show other people what you stand for, what you believe in, by posting those things. And then you might stand out enough to come up with a new belief that you want to say, this is what I’m taking a stand on that’s your very own.

Calvin: That’s one of the easiest ways I can think of; just start posting what you believe, even if it’s just simple quotes from other entrepreneurs.

Chris: Love it, man. Getting started and making it simple is such a great piece of advice, so thank you for leaving that with everybody.

[00:42:58]

Chris: We’ve got time for one last thing, and I would love you to just give whatever feels right, whatever message you want to leave with the audience. Thank you so much for being on, man, and I’ll leave it with you. What last message would you like to leave with everyone?

Calvin: What’s on my heart right now, especially [since] it’s a New Year, and people are going to—they’re aiming higher, they’re going to go after something else, and the one thing that I would say is; become a member of the CIA. What does that mean?

Calvin: Yes, it’s part of what you just said: take Consistent, Imperfect Action. Just get in the game. When you’re getting started, we’re our own worst critic a lot of the time, and we think it has to be just right or it has to be totally perfectly pretty, or we can’t do it and we’re going to look stupid. Listen: just doing it is the win. Just going after it is the win. That is the success. Whether you get the result right away or not, that’s not it. Just doing it is the win. Just give yourself the gift of taking Consistent Imperfect Action. Know done is better than perfect and just get in the game.

Chris: I love it. Doing the CIA.

Chris: Calvin, thank you for taking some time out of your day. I know time is the most valuable currency we have, so we appreciate you. Listeners, I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’m just going to assume because I know you did. Just remember this: as you get older, you’re going to have more responsibility, not less. Take some advice from Roger Bannister, and know that you need to be first one to do it, because no one knows about the second—[laughs]

Calvin: Yeah!

Chris: I know that wasn’t the point Calvin was making, but I think it’s funny. Step up, stand out, start with why, get the content, be consistent, create connection. I’ve got a huge smile on my face. Thanks for being on the show, brother, and we really appreciate you. Everybody out there, please subscribe, like, and share this podcast. Reach out to Calvin. Have an amazing day. We’ll see you on the next show. Live with Total Freedom—free your mind, free your time, free your life; smash it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Freedom Fasttrackers, listen up. Entrepreneurs, listen up. This episode with Neil Patel is absolute fire. He went behind the scenes and showed how he’s spending over $12,000 every single day on his Facebook campaigns. He shared his screen with me and actually went into detail on what he’s doing.

If you don’t know Neil – Neil is the man when it comes to online marketing. He’s the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP, and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web. Forbes says he’s one of the top 10 online marketers, entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur Magazine said he created one of the hundred Most Brilliant Companies in the world. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama, and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations. He’s been awarded the Congressional Recognition from United States House of Representatives – and he is a bad-ass! But this interview is next-level.

I have interviewed some amazing people, and they’ve all been great. This one really stood out for me. He shared with us what he thinks, in 2017, is going to happen with internet marketing. And it blew me away. I’ve listened to it and implemented everything he said, and you should too. Make sure you go and listen to this episode in full. Take lots of notes and remember, subscribe to the show and send me in any questions. I’m going to be doing a follow-up episode with Neil and it is going to be bad-ass. Honestly? Just plug yourself into this and enjoy our conversation.

[00:01:51]

Chris: Welcome to the show, man. It’s such a pleasure to have you here and, for me – I’ve read your blog for a long time. I got your book, “Hustle” – it’s actually not in the bookshelf right now, but I’m excited to have you here! So, thank you so much for being here. I know that you’ve got lots going on. Today, I was hoping that we could really dive deep into what you think the future for 2017 marketing is. I mean, who better to ask and what better time to be releasing this show than in January 2017, and to get it from you, what you think’s going to happen. So thanks for being here, man, I really appreciate it.

Neil: Sounds good! Thanks for having me.

Chris: Yeah!

Chris: Before we dive into that, I don’t know if everybody that watches the show knows exactly who you are, so I would love you to maybe give us a quick rundown of how you started and what it is that you’ve been doing – because you, you know – you’ve done a lot of things, but how did you get started?

[00:02:48]

Neil: I was sixteen years old, looking for a high-paying job, couldn’t find one, and what ended up happening was when I was searching the job boards, I found that they were making millions of dollars – technically, hundreds of millions of dollars. So I was like, ‘you know what? I can’t find a job, might as well just create my own job board, make 1% of what they do. I’m going to be rich.’ And that’s where I started; I created my first website job board. [It] failed miserably because I didn’t know how to generate traffic. Paid a few marketing firms, got burned.

Neil: From broke and frustrated, I ended up trying to learn it all on my own, got good at it, and then my job boards started getting tons of traffic, and guess what? Still wasn’t making any money. [laughs] Because I didn’t know how to accept payments online, didn’t know about conversion or optimization, UX – there were so many issues!

Neil: But I got good at traffic generation. I started cold-calling and pitching other people on that service, right? Like, ‘I’ll help you get more traffic to your website!’ And then … honestly, it just went from there.

[00:03:50]

Chris: And so, you just had a problem that you kind of faced, and turned that into basically your business, and now? I mean, I’ve heard so many people have used your services. I think if you type ‘internet marketing’ or ‘SEO optimization’ into Google, you’re always in the top 2 or 3 that turn up, so you’re definitely doing some good things.

Chris: Where did that take you, and what’s kind of the journey towards, now?

Neil: Where it ended up taking me was – got good at traffic generation. From there, I learned how to help other companies get more traffic. Through consulting, I ended up learning about different types of industries, issues they may be having. I learned to think on the spot. And I eventually realized that the money isn’t in growing other people’s traffic, but it’s in growing your own traffic. So then I started to grow my own traffic, started doing a lot of SEO for problems that my guys would build, and then walk from there.

Chris: And so now you do what for people? I know that you do content marketing, SEO, but what’s the thing that you’re most excited about now? You have multiple different businesses and tech businesses –

Neil: -- yeah.

[00:05:05]

Neil: I mainly create software and then we market the software to marketers. They pay a reoccurring subscription for it. We don’t really do much consulting, actually. It’s –

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Neil: -- I’m trying to think of how many clients we have. Maybe three? We get a lot of consulting inquiries, we just … don’t care to do consulting.

Chris: Right. And so, what’s the tech that you’re mainly focusing on at the moment?

Neil: Crazy Egg, Hello Bar. Those are the main two.

Chris: Do you want to fill us in on those?

Neil: Sure!

[00:05:34]

Neil: So, think of it this way; someone comes to your website. They browse around and they don’t purchase! You get a hundred visitors, you’re lucky if one purchased – three, if you’re really lucky. What’s causing it? You look at Google Analytics and it shows you all these numbers, but what does that mean? Some people are visual people, right?

Neil: So what Crazy Egg does is it tells you, visually, why people may not be converting. From there, you can look at heat maps, user recordings – like, videos of people with their mouse, and how they’re engaging with your website. You can look at how far people scrolled down your page, right? Like, call-to-action is too low, but people actually stop scrolling halfway down, then of course you’re not going to end up generating sales, right? It helps you spot all these problems, and then through Crazy Egg you can run AB tests … and then you can try to optimize or you can moreso. You can optimize and then use your conversions. There’s a really simple tool … shows you where people aren’t converting and why, and then from there you can run AB tests in Crazy Egg to optimize for conversions.

[00:06:40]

Neil: And then the second company, Hello Bar – think of it this way: people come to your website. Again, a lot don’t convert. It’s hard to get a lot of these people to convert. You have to do so many changes. Not everyone knows what to AB test, not everyone knows how they can optimize their designs, not everyone can change it, so we just put elements on your website to maximize conversions, such as when someone’s leaving, why not incentivize them with an offer? If you’re trying to collect more emails, why not offer or create quizzes to collect more emails – stuff like that.

Chris: I love it. It seems to me that you really help people with one big problem, and that is, you know, how do they get more conversion out of their websites. So, tell me; what’s the big problem for most people with their sites? Why are they not converting?

[00:07:35]

Neil: Most people aren’t converting because they don’t understand the pain points of their users. It’s all about serving. There’s data – quantitative – and then there’s qualitative data. Qualitative is people talking to you, giving you feedback. If people tell you, “hey, I’m not going to convert because you don’t offer free shipping,” or, “I’m thinking your competitors may be cheaper,” and “I’m not sure.” There’s all these reasons.

Neil: And then when you survey hundreds of people, you’ll see some commonalities. Businesses aren’t trying to understand their customers, because if they did, then they could adjust the messaging, the copy, on their website to maximize conversions.

Neil: That’s the number one way. It’s really through surveying and understanding them, and then boosting conversions.

Chris: You know what? It’s so great to hear you say that, Neil, because – look, I know people who always tell me, “it’s leads. I need more leads, Chris, I need more leads.” And I always say to them, like, “leads is the easy part, because you can just pay for leads—“

Neil: Yes!

Chris: “—it’s the insights that convert.” [laughs] For every one person that hits your page, if you’re making a dollar, that’s pretty easy to get someone to hit a page for under a dollar, and you’ve got great money.

Neil: Yeah.

Chris: Right? But everyone’s focused on the other one; ‘how do I get more leads?’ It’s such a – aw, I don’t want to say it, but it is! – it’s such a naïve, ignorant thing to say. ‘I need more leads,’ – no, you don’t! You need a page that’s going to freaking convert.

Neil: [laughs] – you can convert, and then you can just spend a ton of money, right?

Chris: Right!

[00:09:04]

Neil: And it’s the easiest thing. Paid advertising isn’t that difficult if your conversion rates are high. Because even if you’re going to pay campaigns like crap, you still are profitable.

Chris: Yeah!

Chris: You only need to make, like, a little bit more per click, and you can scale like crazy! And I wish that more people really got that. The focus needs to be on that conversion, because the leads and the traffic are so simple. Someone said to me, the other day, they [went]; “you know, Chris, you’re not very big on this platform. How are you qualified to help people have freedom?”

Chris: I said, “look, I don’t care about that platform. I just pay for my traffic, because I know my numbers.” For me, numbers is the most important thing online. It sounds like that’s similar to you, so.

[00:09:55]

Chris: I’m excited to hear one big thing, and I just want to spin the conversation that way, because – I think going into 2017, Neil, things are going to be different. I think a lot of people had a tough 2016. This episode’s going to be released in January 2017, so the listeners are sitting there right now – we’re in December, we’re in the past – and, so, I want to hear from you, and I want to dive deep into what do you think marketing’s going to look like, 2017?

Neil: Sure! The big thing marketing’s going to look like in 2017, is you’re going to start seeing more personalization. Not personalization in the aspect of, like, ‘Oh, this person came from Google, so let’s show him a different landing page.’ I’m talking about to really get the maximum conversion – we’ve been testing some of these things – you’ve got to really personalize it to the user. For example – here’s a crazy example. This isn’t even online-related but it kind of ties into it: you go into your fridge. You’re running out of milk. You buy, let’s say – I’m making up names, because I haven’t bought milk in years – let’s call it, uh, Blue Milk.

Neil: The fridge tells you; ‘hey, Neil. You’re running out of milk. Would you like us to order you another Blue Milk, or would you like to try Alterdina Milk? It’s very similar to Blue Milk, but we’re running a promo right now that’s 30% off.’ Right? And Alterdina could end up doing that promotion to try to get you.

Neil: Now, that’s a crazy example of personalization in the real world. For example, online: Hubspot used to do this one, you won’t see it as much – when I was coming back to Hubspot, they knew it was me, and they would say, ‘Welcome back, Neil!’ Why can’t it go one step further and say, ‘Welcome back, Neil! Based on all the posts that you’ve read in the past, here are five more blog posts that we recommend reading for you.’

Chris: Right!

Neil: Even if it doesn’t say ‘Welcome back, Neil,’ based on cookies, you know what people are reading. If they’re reading all e-commerce posts, why would you show them posts on B2B, right?

Chris: Right.

Neil: So it’s truly about personalization. What does that look like in future? Who knows. I think the possibilities are endless. For example, I was talking to my co-founder, Ethan, and … he was like, ‘wait – with support, it’s run by people, why can’t we use the Watson API – from IBM – and learn, based on what people are saying and not saying, and what responses they like, buying patterns, etc., -- and then program the Watson to start giving responses that are very relevant to what the person’s looking for.

[00:12:49]

Chris: So, how does the small business owner – the person that’s not as tech-savvy as you – how do they capitalize on personalization and personalizing what they’re doing?

Neil: They don’t in 2017 – and here’s why: because this technology is not mainstream yet, and because it’s hard to actually do, you’re going to end up seeing that the big companies are going to try it out, or the small or medium – like, companies that are still making millions and millions of dollars – once they fine-tune it, you start seeing people productizing it. In 2017, I still think there’s going to be a lot of issues, but in 2018, small, medium businesses can buy these productized solutions like a Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, optimize etc.