In this episode, Nick speaks with Corey Quinn, who has learned a lot from working in corporate. He learned about knowing where boundaries lie when it comes to company culture and outweighing what’s being asked to do and getting ahead in the company. Corey had worked at a company where they liked to go out drinking twice a week.

He had to weigh in on his pros and cons and know his boundaries. He could get drunk with his co-workers and executive teams, bond, and possibly open up to promotional opportunities, but show up to work hungover, tired, and not his best.

Or he could miss out on those opportunities and put his health, well-being, and family first. Corey chose his health.

Corey now owns his own business, which helps other companies grow. He helps the founders and CEOs focus through the chaos and work on sequential growth.

That also means these companies need to place their own boundaries and stop saying yes to everything and start focusing on one area at a time.

About Corey Quinn

Corey is the ex-CMO of Scorpion, where in 6 years he helped grow the agency from $20-$150M.

Today he helps $2M+ B2B SaaS and Agency CEOs identify and scale profitable niches and customer segments.

Resources:

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[email protected]

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Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show”

00:00:08:08 – 00:00:27:17

Nick McGowan

Hello and welcome to The Mindset and Self-mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. And on this show, my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us, the lives that we lead on our path to self-mastery. So let’s not wait any longer. Let the games begin.

00:00:32:00 – 00:00:34:08

Nick McGowan

Hey, Corey, welcome to the show. Man How are you doing?

00:00:34:10 – 00:00:37:05

Corey Quinn

What’s up, Nick? Super excited to be here.

00:00:37:14 – 00:00:53:03

Nick McGowan

Man I’m super excited that you’re here. I was telling you that this morning. So I do meditations every single morning and as night, as often as I can. It’s part of my routine. But there are moments in the mornings where I have 3 to 5 minutes with you at different times and then tell me to go have a kick ass day.

00:00:53:09 – 00:01:14:09

Nick McGowan

And that’s really how that’s how our friendship here started. I found out about the Insight Timer app and then found some dude who told me to have a kick ass day in the beginning of a morning meditation. And I was like, This is great. Then I found out that we were connected, you know, six degrees of Kevin Bacon style, in a sense, with somebody on LinkedIn who also has another podcast, the 1% podcast.

00:01:14:09 – 00:01:23:09

Nick McGowan

Think differently, my friends and man, I’m just really happy that you’re on the show. So without nerding out. Thank you for being here.

00:01:23:21 – 00:01:28:11

Corey Quinn

Awesome. I really appreciate it. I’m honored to be here. I’m excited for our conversation.

00:01:29:04 – 00:01:38:12

Nick McGowan

Cool. So why don’t you get us started? Give us a little bit context. Who is Corey Quinn? What do you do? And tell us one thing that most people don’t know about you that’s a little odd or bizarre.

00:01:39:09 – 00:02:08:10

Corey Quinn

Okay, so, Corey Quinn, I am a consultant. I work with B2B subscription based businesses doing north of $3 million. I work really closely with the founders and marketing team to help them get unstuck. That’s my job. And so something that is different and a little unique about me. I was a childhood actor and I starred on the very first Chicken McNuggets commercial that ever aired.

00:02:09:08 – 00:02:25:09

Corey Quinn

And the funny thing is, I was this little kid. I was like seven years old. And I had a chance for the very first time to show my son, who’s now seven years old, a clip of me on television was obviously on YouTube now, and I was super excited because I was like, Oh, I’m going to finally show this to him.

00:02:25:09 – 00:02:44:11

Corey Quinn

And like, he’s going to he’s going to get such a kick out of this and say, I play the commercial. And he couldn’t care less. I got him. And I mean, yeah, so kind of anticlimactic there. But yeah, I was I was a childhood actor. I did about about three years. I did a Igloo Ice Chest commercial with Joe Theismann.

00:02:44:12 – 00:02:51:16

Corey Quinn

I did a couple of Hot Wheels, Donald’s, you know, you know, as you do here in Los Angeles. That’s what we do.

00:02:52:15 – 00:03:09:05

Nick McGowan

Yeah. You know, these coasters, we don’t typically get in the commercials unless we were, you know, running past the street and they’re like, Fuck that guy. Get in here. How do. So give me a little bit of background of that. How did you get into that? Did you have family that was into that sort of thing? Or were they just like, you’re a cute kid, let’s get you chicken nuggets?

00:03:10:00 – 00:03:26:11

Corey Quinn

Yeah, no, I was a cute kid. I think we were at Saks Fifth Avenue as a joke, as a child or going, my mom and I were together and we were going to go, we’re going to a wedding. So I had to get a suit. And I was in there sort of the the formal wear area in the in the in the shopping center.

00:03:26:11 – 00:03:39:00

Corey Quinn

And there’s some scout that came up to my mom said, you got a pretty cute kid there. You know, he’d be great in commercials. Here’s my card. And then you know, one thing led to the next and next thing I know, I’m eating Chicken McNuggets with a huge camera in my face.

00:03:40:08 – 00:03:50:04

Nick McGowan

What a weird thing. That’s so cool, though. I feel like that would be a weird situation now. Like if somebody walks up and is like, you have a cute kid, here’s my card, they’d be like, nine one, fucking one.

00:03:50:16 – 00:03:54:15

Corey Quinn

Yeah. No, it would be a little alarming and just. Yeah, get me the hell out of here.

00:03:55:02 – 00:04:05:04

Nick McGowan

Yeah, man. So you were. You were an actor for a little bit. Did you do anything passed past those commercials or did you want to weave?

00:04:06:00 – 00:04:21:00

Corey Quinn

No. You know, I loved it. It was super unique. I didn’t have any friends doing it. And I was it was at a time in my life when my friends were super important. I wanted to spend time with them. I didn’t fully enjoy. It was fine. Miss Cool is different and I did it, like I said, for a couple of years.

00:04:21:00 – 00:04:33:04

Corey Quinn

And then I eventually decided, Hey, you know, this is not really that fun. So I decided to kind of hang it up and then, you know, my my parents didn’t have a problem with it. There were there were, you know, happy as long as I was happy. So. Hmm.

00:04:33:18 – 00:04:50:18

Nick McGowan

That’s cool. So let’s jump a little bit ahead. So now that you’re working business, business and working with other marketing people, how did you get into that? Like what? What was the path that led you from eating Chicken McNuggets to working with CEO CEOs and CMO’s?

00:04:51:00 – 00:05:16:22

Corey Quinn

Yeah. Yeah. So quick background on me. I my my previous role was as the chief marketing officer at a company called Scorpion and Scorpion is a B to B basically a marketing agency, very technology heavy agency serving the SMB. I joined the company about seven years ago. I was with them for for basically six years as their chief marketing officer.

00:05:16:22 – 00:05:41:19

Corey Quinn

We grew the company super fast. We started off with about $20 million in annual revenue, grew to be about $150 million in about six years. Massive, massive growth and learned a lot. And throughout the years, I always wanted to get back to more of an entrepreneurial motion in my career. And so my time at Scorpion was amazing and it felt certain point.

00:05:41:19 – 00:06:15:04

Corey Quinn

It was time for me to move on. And what I really wanted to do was to step out and be, I guess what they called it, in a solopreneur and started helping other companies by leveraging the experience that I had at Scorpion and then previous in my career, all the sort of B2B sales and marketing experience which led me to today and I so I left Scorpion at the end of last year and it was a great decision for me personally, and I’ve stepped into this consulting role, landed to clients really quickly, and then a third one.

00:06:15:04 – 00:06:19:01

Corey Quinn

And then now I’m just focused on helping these three companies grow and it’s been great.

00:06:19:15 – 00:06:42:01

Nick McGowan

It’s awesome, man. I know growing a business can be a lot. It can be taxing on you personally, spiritually, physically, all of that. But to have in a crazy amount of growth over a six year period, how did you manage your emotions? How did you manage your mindset and how did you manage just being you without being kind of a workaholic?

00:06:43:00 – 00:07:04:14

Corey Quinn

Sure, thank you. I probably could not say that I was not a workaholic, but a lot of a lot of imbalance, I think, for a couple of years. And that was part of it, honestly, to be to be, you know, completely transparent. It was a challenging role and a very, very fast growing company in a in a culture.

00:07:04:17 – 00:07:31:22

Corey Quinn

So every company has its own culture. And this company has such a fun, exciting sort of client first committed kind of culture where you really feel part of the family and all these things and so I was really consumed by that in a I think in a positive way. In some in some respects, you know, I, I potentially prioritize work over other aspects of my life and to a certain point when I wanted to make some changes.

00:07:31:22 – 00:07:55:17

Corey Quinn

But I would say that it was a period of a lot of stress, good stress. But also what helped to sort of balance it out was a lot of a lot of positive impacts. We were growing, the company were making great strides, and so the work was really resulting in some nice sort of material benefits.

00:07:56:06 – 00:08:28:00

Nick McGowan

That makes sense. Yeah, I know. If if you’re working and grinding on something and building and building, but you don’t see anything really coming out of it. You can just feel like you’re not doing anything or that you’re moving backwards. So for you to see that growth must have been great. But here you are years later. I mean a little over a year or whatever post being out of the company, but being able to look back, are there things that you would have done differently for yourself or mentally to be able to get through that stuff a little differently?

00:08:28:00 – 00:08:44:17

Corey Quinn

Yes, yes and no. It’s hard to say because it was a culture of sort of overwork at the time when I was at the company. And so you kind of either are on the bus or you’re not. And so it’s kind of part of the sort of the social contract of being all in and being a part of that.

00:08:44:17 – 00:09:05:20

Corey Quinn

And so I’ll give you an example. So the executive team, there’s a bunch of founders, our the founder and a lot of his sort of close friends are heavily involved in the business. And there is sort of a culture, at least when I joined the company, of going out and having a great time going out and getting drinks.

00:09:06:05 – 00:09:23:16

Corey Quinn

It was, I think every Tuesday and Thursday night it wasn’t just a cocktail and go home. It was let’s let’s have some fun like, you know, type of thing and I, I’ve always lived sort of very conscious of my health. I maybe not always, always. But, you know, my adult life for sure have been very conscious of my health.

00:09:23:16 – 00:09:51:04

Corey Quinn

And that was not something I really wanted to do, you know, drink a lot of alcohol. I’d always be hung over the next day. And the location of the office was about an hour from my house. And so it was not very practical with a wife and son at home to go out every Tuesday and Thursday night. However, as a result of not doing that, I may have missed opportunities for bonding with my team or the executive team, the founder and others, you know, sort of a trade off.

00:09:51:04 – 00:10:11:10

Corey Quinn

And I remember actually asking my coach, you know, how do I how do I build a better relationship with the founder and some of the other senior executives that were basically my team without doing this? And his answer was pretty straightforward, which is, well, you just have to suck it up and go out and have a good time with them and not and not, you know, not think about it too much.

00:10:11:22 – 00:10:29:00

Corey Quinn

And yeah, I thought about that and I thought, well, you know, I could do that, but then I would be compromising my, my, my values a little bit. And I decided to ultimately not do that. So I kind of, I think potentially missed out on some some trust building and some culture building at the at the company.

00:10:29:17 – 00:10:48:04

Nick McGowan

Sure. I’m sure there’s still a lot of companies that are like that. We were talking before we hit record about how remote work is, kind of changed a lot of things for people, especially working from home. Some people are more more of a holic now because they don’t have to drive. You’re just like constantly here. And I find myself doing that shit where I’m like, Oh, I’ll go make dinner.

00:10:48:06 – 00:11:05:10

Nick McGowan

5 minutes later, I’m back at the computer. I’m like, How, how do I get here? But being in that spot where there are companies that almost make you feel like you have to do these things to be part of the crew. And I think some of that really stems from some of the fear that they have as owners.

00:11:05:10 – 00:11:25:09

Nick McGowan

And I’ve experienced that with different companies I’ve been part of, but also through conversations with people where they’re like, Well, I feel this way and I can’t do anything different, and they’re obligated to either go spend that time or put in the extra work. Now how do you talk to CMO’s about that now, knowing the shit that you went through and honestly knowing that’s not really fucking healthy at all?

00:11:26:03 – 00:11:52:15

Corey Quinn

Right, exactly. I think well, I think what you’re mentioning about remote work, I think people are being hired away from the headquarters where a lot of these things typically happen, you know, especially at the senior level. So if the CEO’s in Florida and the CMO is in the Bay Area, there isn’t there’s less pressure to go and kind of have a sort of always, always be on and always be sort of in that mode.

00:11:52:15 – 00:12:11:09

Corey Quinn

If you’re not particularly that’s not particularly your thing. By the way, I’m an introvert, so I’m not the guy who likes to go out drinking all night for, you know, a couple of nights a week. That’s just kind of not something I’m very interested in, not only from health perspective, but but I think when it does when it does come up, you know, I think there’s a certain aspect of it.

00:12:11:09 – 00:12:38:01

Corey Quinn

Yeah, it’s like, yeah, you have to, you have to show up and you have to, you know, put the put the company hat on and do the things that will help you to build tighter relationships because that’s ultimately what’s going to serve you and your career. But as long as it’s as long as you’re not compromising your values in such a way that is, you know, harming your health, harming your relationships, putting yourself in harm.

00:12:38:18 – 00:12:49:08

Corey Quinn

I think that there’s some some gray area there as far as what you should do. And it’s really ultimately it’s up to the person, but there is a certain level of of needing to participate in those things.

00:12:49:21 – 00:13:01:02

Nick McGowan

Yeah, there’s a balance. I get that. Like you don’t want to always be that guy. Like, No, I’m not going to do anything. I don’t really like you people. I’m going to go home like you got me from 9 to 459 and that’s it.

00:13:01:22 – 00:13:30:06

Corey Quinn

And look, I think and just just sort of interject, but I think there’s there’s different stages of businesses as well. And so this happened to be a earlier stage business and a massive growth cycle that required a lot of collaboration, a lot of trust, a lot of activity. And so for someone to sort of not be of the mind of, you know, company first and, you know, let’s we’re on this crazy ride together and we’re going to do whatever it takes to see where it goes.

00:13:30:12 – 00:13:45:05

Corey Quinn

That mentality, I don’t think you’d fit in, at least at this company. You certainly wouldn’t give. You wouldn’t fit in and you would pay, you wouldn’t last long. So there’s there’s a sort of a requirement. Now, you contrast that with do you go to work for Uber, you go out for Facebook. It’s a much different business. It’s an enterprise level business.

00:13:45:05 – 00:13:57:23

Corey Quinn

And there’s actually a lot more infrastructure is a lot more oversight from a human resources perspective. So there’s not that expectation. In fact, it’s probably opposite where it’s like you have to ask for overtime type of thing.

00:13:59:08 – 00:14:13:22

Nick McGowan

Yeah, that makes sense. So the people that you’re working with now, did you find that you gravitated toward maybe you a little bit more of a mom and pop or maybe something more corporate or something completely different than what you had.

00:14:13:22 – 00:14:35:14

Corey Quinn

What I’ve what I was very intentional about when I left Scorpion, I knew I wanted to consult with businesses, but I had to figure out what at what level, like what type of business and what I was immediately attracted to as well, working with founders. And the reason for that is I’ve been a founder myself. I have I started up a business out of college.

00:14:35:14 – 00:14:57:02

Corey Quinn

We raised $6 million and we we grew the business. It was a great experience. So I’ve been a founder, I’ve worked for the founder of a business multiple times. The last company I worked for, Scorpion, I worked directly for the founder. And so I also have an affinity for people who like to break the rules and like to do big things and like want to really build something interesting.

00:14:57:02 – 00:15:21:18

Corey Quinn

And so I like that energy and I’m attracted to that type of emotion. And so as a result of that, I decided I wanted to work with founders. Now I don’t work with pure startups. And the reason why is because I find that my strengths come in helping a business that has a level of success find, I find focus out of chaos.

00:15:21:18 – 00:15:37:06

Corey Quinn

Any time you do a startup business, there’s a lot of work that’s done in a lot of different directions. You say yes to a ton of different clients, and so at a certain point, doing that is counterproductive. And so my my role as I see it, is helping companies to get focus once they’ve already gotten a level of traction in the business.

00:15:37:19 – 00:15:54:16

Nick McGowan

Interesting. Honestly, man, the thing that came to mind is, are those people that help people organize their closets. And I’ve had conversations with those people and they’re like, you never really think about it until you go in and you look for the damn thing. And same with business. You can transfer that over. Rigo You get a lot of shit in this closet.

00:15:54:16 – 00:16:09:14

Nick McGowan

We got to take this out. We got to work through it because looking at it, you’re like, I don’t know what to do. We just keep doing these things over and over and you find that you get into a lot of almost therapy or mental work with the people that you’re working through because they’re just ingrained in the shit that they’ve been doing.

00:16:10:14 – 00:16:45:09

Corey Quinn

I’ll give you an example. So yes. And the example I have is one of my one of my clients is a software business. They have an amazing product in the for the learning development space and they are about six years old. They do about $3 million in revenue. And as I’ve gotten to know the company and the product is by far the most is a superior products in the market for sure, just as far as features and functionality and the value that it creates relative to its competitive set in the business, as I mentioned, is doing about $3 million.

00:16:45:15 – 00:17:26:03

Corey Quinn

It should be doing 30 million. And the reason why they’ve they’ve limited themselves is because when I when I got in there with the business, they’re in 29 different verticals, meaning that they said yes to everybody and everyone from sports management to to hospitality, restaurants, travel, you name it, like they’re in every other, they’re in every business. And the challenge for that, that he found himself in the CEO and founder, is that he was as a small $3 million business, he’s unable to compete against the large the super large businesses that are much more established and can market more broadly intend to attract a larger, larger audience.

00:17:26:14 – 00:17:46:08

Corey Quinn

And as a result of that broad approach, his message kind of really fell flat in the market. And so what we did is we identified of the 29 different verticals, which one was the best fit for him and for the business from both a, a revenue retention perspective as well as qualitative, like which companies do they like working with?

00:17:46:08 – 00:18:08:14

Corey Quinn

Which ones are a good fit for the product? Which ones map to the future product map roadmap and so on, so forth. So I identified restaurants as that vertical. That’s the vertical. And so what we’re doing now is we’re building business around a go to market plan around focusing only on dominating in restaurants, putting 100% of the effort behind that versus, you know, diffusing the effort across these 29 different verticals.

00:18:08:14 – 00:18:15:09

Nick McGowan

So how did he feel about the unraveling when he was like, but I did all this work and I got to listen to all these things. You’re like, That’s cool, let’s get it to one.

00:18:16:02 – 00:18:33:15

Corey Quinn

Yeah, well, I think he was ready and that’s really the best client for me is someone who’s like, I’ve tried it, I’ve tried to try it. I can’t figure it out. I know I need to simplify. I don’t know how. And to your earlier question, the you know, it’s like anything else is behavior, right? So it’s it’s getting out of the habit of saying yes to everything and saying no to certain things.

00:18:33:15 – 00:18:56:08

Corey Quinn

And frankly, he’s still saying yes to a lot of things that he shouldn’t be. But my role is to help him to stay focused, like to build that plan has helped him stay focused and invested in this plan. And once, you know, as we continue to see results, I expect his behavior to change just like any other human behavior, which is that when you see results and they’re the results that you want that you’ve been struggling to get, you tend to you tend to want to do more of that stuff.

00:18:56:08 – 00:18:58:04

Corey Quinn

So that’s it’s all a work in progress.

00:18:58:16 – 00:19:06:04

Nick McGowan

Yeah. Just like when you see it working, you’re like, oh, so I shouldn’t do those stupid things anymore. No. Okay, great. I’ll go do more of that.

00:19:06:04 – 00:19:08:12

Corey Quinn

Or hopefully he’s so busy he doesn’t have time for the other stuff.

00:19:08:23 – 00:19:14:22

Nick McGowan

Yeah, there you go. So what sort of advice would you give to that founder that’s in a spot like that right now?

00:19:14:23 – 00:19:37:06

Corey Quinn

Mm Yeah, I would say either you are sort of self-aware or you’re not as it relates to the specific issue. And what I mean by that is either you’re still in the mode of saying yes to everything and you’re convinced that by just saying yes to one more deal to one more vertical more revenue, that you’re going to somehow make it big or somehow scale and so and so forth.

00:19:37:16 – 00:19:55:21

Corey Quinn

And that’s really not the client for me. It’s really the person I want to speak to is the person who is has done that, has been through that and realized that no matter what you do, no matter what vendor you partner with, no matter what agency you have, no matter what sales team you hire or sales leader, that that is not the thing that’s going to change.

00:19:55:21 – 00:20:23:08

Corey Quinn

It’s going to be through focus. And so what I would say is in general, as a discipline is better to focus on a singular vertical, a single, single buyer today and building your business around that. And then once you’ve mastered that niche around that buyer, then you can go on to the next one. So it’s more of a sequential approach to growth versus sort of a concurrent.

00:20:24:04 – 00:20:31:22

Nick McGowan

Yeah. Or as some would just like it to be a shotgun where they’re like, we want everybody, everybody, come on in, we want to sell you things.

00:20:32:10 – 00:20:44:22

Corey Quinn

Right? And that’s fine, but I can’t help you if you’re, if you’re, if that’s your mindset where it’s like, oh, you know, I want everything in my products for everybody. Everybody can use it. And everybody’s a perfect fit. They’re not ready yet. Yeah.

00:20:45:08 – 00:21:06:18

Nick McGowan

Yeah. They got stuff they got to go through to figure that out. And you’ve mentioned about mindset, so I want to know how you got to the point where you got onto the Insight Timer app and got into meditation and all of that. I know you said that you don’t typically kind of tie the two together, but it does sound like within conversations and you being you, you’re going to kind of bring that sort of stuff up and have those sort of things happen.

00:21:06:18 – 00:21:13:08

Nick McGowan

But how did you get into that side of more the spiritual and more the meditation and and personal growth?

00:21:14:13 – 00:21:33:11

Corey Quinn

So I would say I was really introduced to personal development by my mother. Of all people think they goodness for her. Early on my parents did split and get divorced and I was lucky enough for my parents to have the insight to put me into therapy. And as a result of that, I really benefited from therapy as an only child.

00:21:34:11 – 00:22:20:11

Corey Quinn

Two parents who were working professionals involved in that person in their personal lives a lot. And so I was sort of I grew up quickly and independently, and so I got exposed to therapy. And then eventually in college, I was interested in this technology called neuro linguistic programing, which is about about the mind, how the mind works and studied nerve linguistic programing became a got it a practitioner course and a master practitioner course got very involved in that, in that and that world, which is has a lot to do with the subconscious mind, the conscious mind and it sounds like you may be familiar, but it’s, you know, the modalities around the the things we

00:22:20:11 – 00:22:42:08

Corey Quinn

say to ourselves and the pictures we tell our you know, we show ourselves and the feelings we feel. And so I learned a lot about the science of how the brain and the mind works and some tools to help change sort of limiting beliefs and whatnot. And so I was super, super interested in all that college. At the same time, I also was certified as a hypnotherapist, so I went deep on this stuff.

00:22:42:08 – 00:23:04:21

Corey Quinn

I learned a lot about induction and learned about Milton Erikson and all these folks who who were the masters of hypnotherapy and learned about sleight of mouth and all these really, really cool things. And so I’ve always had a sort of interest in the mind, the consciousness, subconscious mind, and that kind of played in nicely to my career in sales and marketing, because sales and marketing is really about influence.

00:23:04:21 – 00:23:12:20

Corey Quinn

And it all starts with the, you know, the, the mind and the stories that we tell ourselves. So, so yeah, I really started early on.

00:23:14:08 – 00:23:37:18

Nick McGowan

That’s, that’s huge for me. Most people don’t say that their mom got them into it. It’s, you know, somebody else because it’s it’s typically not from home. But I can almost guarantee that a lot of the people that are more into these things, if they didn’t have that complete opposite background where they’re like, I was in such a terrible spot that I did a complete 180 and here I am.

00:23:37:18 – 00:23:54:00

Nick McGowan

I can almost guarantee that there’s a lot more of that that happens with parents that are just trying to be better people and trying to give wisdom because there’s things that I’m sure you’ve learned over the course of time, especially NLP wise. It’s how you talk to yourself where they as parents say, Don’t say that to yourself, you’re not an idiot.

00:23:54:00 – 00:24:07:00

Nick McGowan

You just didn’t do the right thing that time. So let’s help you and do something a little different. So with your with your kid now, are you introducing him to Tony Robbins or anything like that?

00:24:08:03 – 00:24:11:03

Corey Quinn

I do meditate with him. He last maybe 30 seconds.

00:24:13:14 – 00:24:14:17

Nick McGowan

And then he’s just twitching. He’s I got.

00:24:14:17 – 00:24:39:09

Corey Quinn

To take him out of here. Yeah, I got to go. And so yeah, so I do that. I, I’m very intentional about modeling good behavior in front of him. So I meditate in front of him. I have an expectation that he’s going to do it, but at least he sees me doing it. I also work out in the same, you know, to try to like do push ups around him, those type of things, to give him an opportunity to see what I do without a lot of overt expectation on him just yet.

00:24:39:09 – 00:24:41:17

Corey Quinn

He’s not quite there yet. He’s seven.

00:24:41:17 – 00:25:00:04

Nick McGowan

So yeah, but that’s that’s a big thing for him to be able to see what you’re doing and for you not to pressure him without being like, I’m sitting here, you should sit here too. I think that can push people away. Like think about how many people it’s sort of been a joke like, yeah, I played an instrument, I played piano because my parents forced me to do it or something.

00:25:00:13 – 00:25:02:12

Nick McGowan

And then people are just like pushed away, right?

00:25:02:15 – 00:25:04:02

Corey Quinn

And I haven’t touched it in 30 years.

00:25:04:11 – 00:25:08:23

Nick McGowan

Exactly. And you’re like, oh my God, you could be a savant. You don’t know, like your parents knew, but you didn’t.

00:25:09:17 – 00:25:26:22

Corey Quinn

And I think I learned that from my parents. My parents both work very, very hard. They still do to this day. And so my parents are both physically fit and they both work out. They do a lot of physical activity. And so they never really pushed that on me. I saw that of them and I think maybe I was influenced by that.

00:25:26:22 – 00:25:31:09

Corey Quinn

So I kind of I’m modeling the modeling they did for me, for my own son.

00:25:31:09 – 00:25:58:00

Nick McGowan

Yeah. Way to go, parents. Good job with that one. And for you to be able to look and be like, Oh, cool. Yeah, this is how this works. Instead of like force feeding what somebody taught you and what somebody taught them sort of thing. I know we’ve we’ve gotten into some deeper things, bits and pieces here, but let’s talk about a couple of those major moments or, you know, episodes that have happened in the course of time that you can look back to and say, Man, that was a moment that changed me.

00:25:58:15 – 00:26:27:05

Corey Quinn

Yeah. Well, you mentioned Tony Robbins. I, I was in college or sorry, high school. And it was a time in my life where I was hanging with the wrong crew, doing some, some very, not healthy things around some habits and just not being very active. And so the one time I was not very physically active and got involved in some did some some guys who were not very, very healthy.

00:26:27:14 – 00:26:53:17

Corey Quinn

And it led to me falling into a depression. And my parents divorced and separated and my living in an apartment with my mom. And, you know, all in all, my life was fine. But I think as a child in high school trying to figure out life, I fell into a depression and luckily my mom had the time to think of the name of the Tony Robbins program, but it was like Awaken the Giant Within or one of these things.

00:26:53:17 – 00:27:17:20

Corey Quinn

And I, I got to a point where I was so just hopeless and helpless in life and really was, you know, not not in a good spot mentally. And I didn’t really feel like I had a lot of options. I didn’t know where I was going. And then luckily I decided to listen to this tape as a cassette tape back in the day.

00:27:18:08 – 00:27:44:07

Corey Quinn

And I don’t know if you’ve ever been through Tony Robbins programs. Yeah. So he’s just an amazing, amazing speaker. And this has been a time this is when I actually got introduced an LP through through Tony. And in event I took this program and I mentioned I remember there was this breakthrough moment in the program and it was like, you know, you’re going to be the guy you want to be and you’re going to do the things you want to do and you’re going to take control of your life.

00:27:44:07 – 00:28:08:18

Corey Quinn

And I remember this like I can remember now, just like this, this massive transformation where I was like finally promising myself to be true to myself and do the be the person that I truly know who I am. And I, I had that sort of emotional breakthrough, and that led to me cleaning out my diet, cleaning up my my physical routine, having a fresh look on life.

00:28:08:18 – 00:28:42:09

Corey Quinn

And I remember I went from these these days in classes to straight A’s. And I remember the following semester I met the at the time the woman of my dreams and this woman one year older than me in high school. But to me, she was amazing. And she was way out of my league. Somehow I was able to build a connection with her and we ended up becoming sort of, you know, boyfriend girlfriend, really super connected and really spiritually connected for many years.

00:28:42:09 – 00:29:05:05

Corey Quinn

And so just all these wonderful transformations I have in my life, when I decided in that moment in high school that I’m that that I wanted to how do I say it that it’s so funny. I never really put words this so forgive me for not being more articulate, but yeah, so it was it was, it was just I was ready and willing to bet on myself when I never had.

00:29:05:05 – 00:29:08:05

Corey Quinn

And when I did that, everything changed.

00:29:08:05 – 00:29:26:06

Nick McGowan

That’s all that’s interesting. Then I, it can be easy to say I wish I had done this at this time or what have you. I didn’t experience anything like Tony Robbins until maybe 1920, something like that. And I think if I were to listen to some of that throughout high school, maybe things would have been a little different.

00:29:26:11 – 00:29:53:19

Nick McGowan

But probably not because I probably wasn’t friggin ready until you get to that point where you’re ready. But there are a lot of a lot of kids that I remember putting pressure on themselves like they need to figure out what their five year, their ten year, their 15 year plan or whatever as a 15, 16, 17 year old kid and them going to college and then becoming a doctor or whatever, like they had this big, glamorous plans and then their other people are like, I don’t give a fuck.

00:29:53:23 – 00:30:20:01

Nick McGowan

I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be around anybody. I want to go do my own thing and just disappear. I think that all basically stems from the same thing of not being okay in your skin and being able to actually grow from that. So for you to experience that and look back at that now and even kind of articulate that, do you see how you do things now deep work wise that are still of the same mindset?

00:30:20:01 – 00:30:25:14

Nick McGowan

Or are there things that you do on the daily that you wouldn’t be the same without?

00:30:25:14 – 00:30:52:07

Corey Quinn

I think at that moment when I went through that transformation. Thank you, Tony Robbins, for that. I got connected to what I call the voice. And for me, the voice is intuition. It’s sort of the higher power within me that is more universal. It goes beyond it’s sort of my subconscious. It’s something that guides me. And I think ever since that moment, I’ve I’ve allowed myself to be guided by the voice.

00:30:52:22 – 00:31:21:23

Corey Quinn

Sometimes I always don’t I don’t always follow the voice. But when I do follow the voice, I do, I, I experience amazing moments in life. And so I can give you an example where the company before Scorpion I was looking to transition out of and I had an offer from Scorpion to become their CMO. And it’s back in 2015 and I had another offer from another company at the same time.

00:31:21:23 – 00:31:41:12

Corey Quinn

And so I was kind of doing these competing offers. And actually the other offer was it sounded like on paper it sounded better. It sounded like a better bet, a safer bet. At the time, Scorpion was basically building websites and doing SEO and some things that I felt like it back in 2015. Like, that’s kind of commoditize. There’s not much opportunity left in that in that market.

00:31:42:23 – 00:32:05:18

Corey Quinn

Logically, that’s what Logic said. And this other company was in this massive growth vertical and was super interesting. I like the CEO and I remember I was in Santa monica with my wife. We were at Mexican dinner and having some margaritas, and I was sharing with her some of my conflicted sort of mindsets. Like on paper, this one sounds great, but I really want to go to this other one.

00:32:05:18 – 00:32:25:14

Corey Quinn

It doesn’t sound as good. And I remember that night because my wife got mad at me because I basically told her my decision, which was I’m going to go with the one that’s less less attractive. On paper, she didn’t understand why I would do that. We had a young child at home and whatnot, and so she’s like, Why would you do that?

00:32:25:14 – 00:32:50:18

Corey Quinn

Like you’re going against the obvious choice. And so obviously it worked out for me choosing Scorpion, the other company, interestingly, went out of business about two years after that. And so just another example of following the voice in I make it a practice on a daily basis to reconnect with the voice, to listen to the voice and see, you know, what I need to do to make more changes in my life.

00:32:51:14 – 00:33:05:20

Nick McGowan

I like that. I like the the idea of listening to that voice. But I got to be honest, because one of the things that I like to do on the show is play the devil’s advocate to that one person, or maybe there’s a couple of them that are like, Yeah, fuck you guys. I hear what you’re saying, but I’ve tried that.

00:33:06:07 – 00:33:25:04

Nick McGowan

That’s bullshit. Or I can or what have you. And I think that there are certain people that have a hard time discerning what is their intuition and what’s just the monkey mind. So how do you how would you kind of coach somebody through that or what tips would you give them to like listen through the bullshit of the monkey mind and get to the actual intuition.

00:33:25:20 – 00:33:42:18

Corey Quinn

And you got to go through the monkey mind. It’s a great way to say I think there is there’s a process where you have to allow yourself to be emotional and to let your ego sort of play out. And you could do that in a number of ways. You could go to the beach, but no one else is around.

00:33:42:19 – 00:34:09:11

Corey Quinn

You just yell and scream. Get some, get some emotion out. You could journal, you can meditate, you can go deep within. But yeah, there’s a certain level of bullshit that we all kind of carry around in that that sort of disguises the truth. The other thing I think is important to do is to on a regular basis, I do on a quarterly basis, I do sort of I look at sort of inventory of where I’m at today.

00:34:09:11 – 00:34:27:06

Corey Quinn

And that is in my body. Like, what are the facts of today? What are what are the facts? And these are facts that like my height, my weight, my health, my, you know, the my resting heart rate, how often I work out and so on, so forth, like what is the truth of today? And you can’t hide from the facts, right?

00:34:27:06 – 00:34:47:17

Corey Quinn

You can’t tell stories about the facts of the facts of the facts right. And so you start with the facts. And then based on that, that will lead you into a deeper conversation with yourself. It’s so easy, however, for people to avoid the facts, because sometimes the facts reveal things that you don’t want to see. But that’s true for everyone, myself included.

00:34:48:03 – 00:35:02:21

Corey Quinn

But I’ve I’ve sort of built a discipline around making sure that for the areas that are important for my life, my health, my relationships, my business, that I am, I’m attached to the facts. And any time that I drift from the facts is that’s when I start to fall in trouble.

00:35:03:18 – 00:35:20:02

Nick McGowan

That’s good stuff, man. Especially to be able to go, all right, well, facts aren’t going to lie. So as long as you get those out and start from that, then your emotions are automatically going to come up because you’ll be like, Oh, there’s this. Oh, well, you feel this way about it, but it still is what it is.

00:35:20:02 – 00:35:41:12

Nick McGowan

But at least you can’t remove those facts. I, I really appreciate that. I think for the audience, I’m sure there are some people that try to journal. They try to go through things and talk about stuff, but they just get kind of lost in it and then they get too upset, you know? And I’m sure we’ve all been there, like you just mentioned, even kind of going through that monkey brain, I think like a jungle in a sense.

00:35:41:18 – 00:36:04:10

Nick McGowan

Now, do you ever see the book or not? The book, the the movie Big Fish? I think it came from a book. Did you ever see that movie Big Fish with Ewan McGregor and the guy? So it was a sci fi sort of sort of thing, but it’s a big story. And at one point he’s going through this forest and just pops out into this extra little town that was hidden behind the forest.

00:36:04:15 – 00:36:20:14

Nick McGowan

So I think of that sort of stuff within our mind. We’re like, There’s that thing. It’s back there, almost that oasis, but you’ve got to get through the bullshit of being able to do it. And I know for me personally, I’ve had a hard time over the course of time to be able to not listen to the other bullshit negative talk, but be able to get to the intuition.

00:36:20:23 – 00:36:29:13

Nick McGowan

Now, have you experienced this to where the intuition doesn’t speak in bullshit long sentences it gives you jabbed specific words like this thing.

00:36:30:04 – 00:36:43:19

Corey Quinn

Yeah, yeah. You know. And for me, I’m a feeling tone guy. So I, I let that sort of a feeling first, and then that bubbles up into two words or images for me. And so I like that. That feeling is the guide for me. Yeah.

00:36:44:04 – 00:37:02:16

Nick McGowan

Yeah. The trigger, you know, that’s got to be able to open the up. I’m right there with you, I think. I think creatives are like that where we just feel things at first and if we feel a little off like you should listen to it, you know, that the biomes, you know, the microbes or whatever else in your system is like, Hey, there’s something wrong.

00:37:02:16 – 00:37:14:16

Nick McGowan

You should do something with this. So how did you get to how did you get to Insight Timer and doing meditations and things of that? Did you do it for yourself? Was that kind of like to set it up for you and then put it out there?

00:37:15:12 – 00:37:16:15

Corey Quinn

The voice told to do it.

00:37:17:11 – 00:37:17:19

Nick McGowan

Thank you.

00:37:17:19 – 00:37:46:15

Corey Quinn

Voice I was called to do that and it was something that I did is kind of an experiment. So I did, I think 12 different meditations and I challenged myself to do it within a three month period. And so I did it and I had heard about I’d heard about Insight Timer and that you could publish. I was like, okay, I’m, I’m getting into meditation, get a lot of value out of it or want to teach this.

00:37:46:15 – 00:38:04:00

Corey Quinn

I want to find a way to teach it. There’s this thing called Insight Timer. I can publish a couple of meditations and who knows? Who knows what might happen, you know, just do it. And it’s kind of more of just like, yeah, this is kind of scary for me to do. I think I know what I’m doing, but I but I’m called to do it.

00:38:04:00 – 00:38:36:02

Corey Quinn

So I did it. And what I did was I recorded the 12 meditations and then I uploaded to Insight Timer. And the cool thing is that people around the world are downloading and listening to these meditations. I get reviews just like any other product and it’s wonderful. So wonderful to see people around the world literally from you name it, all walks of life, all places in around the world, islands and big countries and everything experiencing value from that meditation.

00:38:36:02 – 00:38:40:02

Corey Quinn

So it is it’s so gratifying to, to, to look at that.

00:38:40:18 – 00:38:59:15

Nick McGowan

I bet, and for you to listen to the voice and go ahead and do it even though it is scary or, you know, uncomfortable and awkward and weird and you’re like, oh, this is not something I’m normally doing. Do you find that you you have more of that that you’re being called the put out there? Or was that kind of a one time thing and now you’ve shifted a bit.

00:39:00:14 – 00:39:24:23

Corey Quinn

So I would love to do more of it. I think from a very practical perspective, I am committing myself to supporting all my free, all my time and building my business. And so at a certain point, there’s a small window of time where I thought, well, maybe I can make that a business kind of be like a headspace kind of thing, where I can come up with an app and do sort of meditations for business people.

00:39:26:18 – 00:39:50:22

Corey Quinn

But that is a at this point, more of a hobby than a than a career. And from a very practical perspective, you know, I’ve got a wife and kids. I’m not yet financially independent. And so I needed to build up the business first. And so, to be honest, I mean, being completely transparent, I’m not sure how to integrate those that with me and my other aspects of my business in my life.

00:39:50:22 – 00:40:09:20

Corey Quinn

I think I came came up at a time when meditation was not a commonly discussed topic, whereas I think it’s much more today. And so I know it adds value. I know people love it, I love the meditation in general, but also get value out of my meditation. So I’m I’m sort of open to the universe to figure out what’s the next step.

00:40:10:17 – 00:40:28:01

Nick McGowan

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I can tell that even from when we were talking before we hit record that you’re like, I can’t fully see it. And sometimes that’s okay to not be able to fully see. But if you have that feeling, you trust the voice to kind of lead you in that direction. And it sounds like you are where you’re not being led in that direction.

00:40:28:02 – 00:40:49:02

Nick McGowan

I think that’s kind of a lesson for all of us of go where you’re feeling. You should go and give your all to that thing, especially building your business now. Yeah, there are those things like your wife, child mortgage, car payments, food and shit. Yeah, there’s stuff that you need to take care of, but if you’re feeling the thing that you’re doing, then that’s huge, man.

00:40:49:02 – 00:41:05:05

Nick McGowan

Now you’d mentioned earlier even about sales and marketing. If you don’t have some of that, you’re just kind of a grunt sales guy just trying to push it. But if you’re not able to actually talk to people and have good conversation and get stuff out of them, I think a lot of that’s really psychology, don’t you?

00:41:05:05 – 00:41:32:18

Corey Quinn

Now, 100%. I mean, you know, sales and marketing are both, in my mind, influence and the way you build influences by building trust. And that has everything to do with psychology, communication and rapport, as they call it, in neuro linguistic programing. And so it’s a great field for me, sort of professional field for me to leverage all my interests and my hobbies to the extent of leveraging sort of sales and marketing as a way to add value to companies.

00:41:34:07 – 00:41:41:18

Nick McGowan

Now, when you think about yourself doing deep work, are there things that you’re working on right now that like, hey, this is a focus, this is thing that I’m actively working on?

00:41:42:15 – 00:42:05:16

Corey Quinn

Yeah, well, I’ve got my I’ve got three clients, two of them are very, very active. One of them is more passive. So I’m dedicated to doing everything I can do to earn earn an amazing testimonial from them, which means my mindset is they, they should be paying me 10% of the value that I create. So if they’re paying me $100,000, I should be creating $1,000,000 worth of value.

00:42:05:16 – 00:42:43:05

Corey Quinn

So I’m trying to create $2 million with the value so I can really knock it out of the park for them. That’s one. But then for myself, I am on a mission to to build ultimately a software business. That’s where I’m going with this consulting. That doesn’t make sense when I say that. But where I’m going is in in the next 3 to 5 years, I want to have a significant software is not a big but you know revenue wise significant and how I’m going to get there is right now I’m working with businesses that I believe I’m particularly well-suited to serve and I’m kind of doing paid market research where I’m learning about the

00:42:43:05 – 00:43:03:17

Corey Quinn

problems, being able to apply my experience and then hopefully find some patterns in the in the problem solving and I’ll codify that maybe create some products and then eventually some software. But that’s ultimately where I’m going. That’s the big sort of impossible goal that I have for myself, and that gets me kind of going every to keep to keep going.

00:43:03:17 – 00:43:03:22

Corey Quinn

Yeah.

00:43:04:12 – 00:43:09:05

Nick McGowan

That’s awesome, man. Are you doing that because you want to be able to build it or is that more of a legacy thing that you’re trying to set up?

00:43:09:12 – 00:43:31:02

Corey Quinn

I think both. I think I one of the reasons why I’m not stepping back into a corporate role after my last company at Scorpion, which I could very easily do based on my background, I’ve got a lot of opportunities decided intentionally not to because I but I extremely value my time and I see software as a great leverage of value.

00:43:31:02 – 00:43:51:08

Corey Quinn

So very simply, when you’re a consultant, I’m a consultant. I’m selling effectively my time. But when I’m selling software, I’m selling an asset over and over and over again. So there’s a lot more leverage in that and that it’s going to help me to buy back some time so I can spend more time with my wife and my kids and sort of enjoy life doing things other than work.

00:43:51:21 – 00:44:01:22

Nick McGowan

Yeah, yeah. And working how you want to work. I think there are a lot of people that get stuck where they’re like, Oh, I fucking hate my job or I hate this, I hate that. It’s like, Well, stop, go do something else. What the fuck is wrong with you?

00:44:02:10 – 00:44:23:15

Corey Quinn

Yeah, yeah. The other aspect of that, and this is personal to me, but if I go work for a company, I’m working for an entrepreneur. It’s their vision that I’m supporting and, not my own. And that’s fine. And I did that for many years, but the voice was always telling me that I don’t need to. I don’t need to live the safety of someone else’s vision.

00:44:23:15 – 00:44:26:19

Corey Quinn

I can. I have my own vision and I just need to invest in it. And that’s where I’m at.

00:44:27:05 – 00:44:40:00

Nick McGowan

You’ve got to listen to that voice, man. That’s a it’s a big thing, you know. So I always like to ask, what’s that one piece of advice you give somebody that’s on their path towards self-mastery? It sounds like the voice may be the thing, but if you’ve got something else, please do.

00:44:40:00 – 00:44:58:03

Corey Quinn

It is the voice. It is definitely the voice. The reason why I say that is because I believe that we can all tap into a higher power or a higher set of knowledge, and that that’s the biggest thing that gets in the way is ego. You know, there’s a book by Ryan Holiday, The Ego Goes the enemy and these things.

00:44:59:00 – 00:45:28:17

Corey Quinn

What that means to me is that we do a great job of blocking ourselves from hearing the voice. And I believe that it’s the work involved in quieting the mind and getting to hear the voice, whether that’s through meditation or working out or whatever that is. I think that work is, is extremely important because ultimately I believe in life that is the most intimate relationship you can have is one with the voice.

00:45:28:17 – 00:45:36:22

Corey Quinn

And so it’s important relationships to build and to invest in over time and it will always pay you back in dividends.

00:45:37:10 – 00:45:41:16

Nick McGowan

Hmm. That’s great stuff. So, Corey, where can people find you? Where can they connect with you?

00:45:42:14 – 00:46:04:06

Corey Quinn

Yeah, thank you. So I have a profile on Insight Timer. If you are a business person and you are looking to level up your mindset for the day, I’ve got a power, a power morning meditation, which I think, Nick, that you’ve been through a couple of times, which I love that meditation. I listen to it all the time and and others definitely check that out.

00:46:04:06 – 00:46:28:17

Corey Quinn

An inside timer. You could also, if you’re interested in accessing some of my marketing, my marketing mind and ideas around subscription businesses, I have a newsletter that you can join. It’s a daily newsletter. I send an email every single day, five days a week. And again, the topic is for B2B subscription businesses. You can go to Corey Quin dot com slash newsletter and I’d love to see you on the list.

00:46:28:17 – 00:46:30:14

Corey Quinn

So those are two places.

00:46:31:08 – 00:46:39:13

Nick McGowan

Awesome, man. What? Corey, it’s been such a pleasure talking with you, man. I appreciate the conversation, the wisdom, and just you being you. So thank you so much for being on the show.

00:46:39:22 – 00:46:42:11

Corey Quinn

Nick. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I had a great time and.

00:46:43:15 – 00:47:06:19

Nick McGowan

Another great conversation on today’s episode of The Mindset and Self-mastery show. So what did you think of the show today? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Check out the Instagram or Facebook page. Join the conversation. If you enjoyed the episode, please jump over to iTunes and subscribe rate and leave a five star review. It helps us be found and helps others be healed.

00:47:06:19 – 00:47:27:12

Nick McGowan

If this episode opened your eyes, made you think or smile at all, then I’m sure it’ll do the same for your friends. Check out the show notes for more info from today’s episode. Check out other episodes on the Mindset and Self-mastery show e-comm as well as our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and look up the mindset and self-mastery show.

00:47:28:03 – 00:47:45:11

Nick McGowan

Thanks again to our incredible guests for being real, honest and vulnerable with us today. I’d like to thank our sponsors and most importantly, I’d like to thank you, thank you for hanging out with us today. Your support means the world to us. And with that, remember, your mindset matters and so do you.