- Why passion isn't everything
- Elements you need to succeed in business
- Listening to Gary V? Don't. (sometimes)
- How you're over-optimizing your business
- Separating you from your job
- Where to get the next 6FC favorite book
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of the six figure creative podcast. I am your host Brian Hood. I'm here with my big bald beautiful co-host in his. Is that a, like a purplish pinkish lavender hoodie.
Christopher J. Graham. How are you doing today?
um, Fantastic, man. I'm having a great day.
You sell a little sick? Is it just cause you just woke up or is it like you got COVID right now? What's going on?
No, I slept in this morning. I stayed up super late last night, making art and recording things and adjusting cameras and having so much fun. And so I'm a little bit sleepy today.
Well, I'm just going to call you out. According to our shared app here for health, you moved like 500 steps yesterday. Like you were so low on the exercise. Cause we have apple, I got an apple watch and we shared each other's health data with each other. Cause that's like a privacy concern.
And now I can like shame Chris, if he doesn't get at least, I mean, I've been doing 10,000 steps a day. Every day, I've been doing about 90 minutes to work out. It's
like,
I saw that you burned an awful lot of calories at like 10:30 PM last night. What was going on?
Ah,
Wow, [00:01:00] Wow, dude. Wait, what invade? My private actually my, my watch was off last night, so that's a bold face lie.
What kind of podcast is this.
Our guest is like, what is this? So speaking of guests, we have a re a re a three-peat guest. Today. We have Mr. Graham Cochrane on the show who has been on episode 46, episode 90, and then. A little fun reappearance. We, we brought them back a replay episode, a 1 71. We brought his personal finance episode back. So this is your third interview. Fourth time to show up on the show, Mr. Graham Cochrane, and good to have you here.
Wow. I'm an honor to be a four Pete. Really? If you want to, I want to take all the credit I can get. So all, all opportunities to say yes, I was here.
Yeah. So grand for those who don't know just to say that right now, I'm going to mess this up. Chris Graham and Graham Cochrane, I'm going to mess these names up. I guarantee it on this episode, but Graham Cochrane has the wonderful podcast of which I am an avid listener. I listened to just about every single episode, every single week of the Graham Cochrane show.
And I have been since the beginning there was a law where I went about six months without listening, and then I caught back up on all of them. So like I'm a fan. Great.
[00:02:00] And not just that I'm a member of your membership site too. I joined a, this go round as
well, so
Dude. I thought I saw you joined, met this incredible.
I'm not just a fan. I am a client or customer of, of grants as well. And also This is for Chris Graham. So just so you know, like he is the highest, the highest we could possibly recommend someone to our audience, Graham Cochrane on this show. And he's going to come on here today to talk to us about something that I'm really, really to use a bad word, passionate about something that I believe wholeheartedly.
And it's something that I'm, I'm about to make a whole neon sign to go on my wall behind me that says this, because I say it's so freaking much. And it's the saying that I say all the time, which is, it takes more than passion because as freelancers, we're almost always passion. First we're passion led.
We got into this because of something called passion, but that doesn't mean we're a business owner that doesn't mean we're equipped to do what we need to do in order to succeed. And Graham is. Kick our booties into gear. We don't cuss on this podcast anymore, by the way, Graham. So that's a, that's a fun thing.
Or if we do what we do sometimes when we bleep it out, that's the six-figure creative way today. Uh, But you're going to kick our Buddhist in gear Graham. So let's uh, let's talk about [00:03:00] just that line right there. It takes more than passion to make it as a, anything, honestly, as a business owner, as a freelancer or to anything, if you're trying to make.
Yeah. Well, I love as you should. First of all, you should get that sign. I think that's a great reminder. I don't know what it is about the follow, your passion mantra. It's very popular. I think it feeds to like the fact that it feeds to something real, that we all have something we're passionate about.
Right. I'm a Christian. So my worldview says that like, God's wired us a certain way to have certain skills. And the desires are a clue as to what we were created to do, right? Like a coffee pot was created to make coffee. So it makes sense for a coffee pot to want to do that. And so we're wired a certain way.
So I think it's a good starting point. And I think that's why. Light up when you talk about passion, plus everyone hates their job. And so they want to be told that you can make a living following your passion. So that speaks to a desire that we have for a better life. And then people get either jaded because they tried it and it didn't work because to your point, passion, isn't it.
Or they're just a skeptical cynical person and they don't believe that, like [00:04:00] they really could do work for a living or have a business that's about something they love and really wake up and be like, wow, I can't believe I get to do this. So it there's, there's, it's a hot button issue. But passion is important.
And I think if you look at the. Entrepreneurs in the world are the most successful businesses in the world. Generally there's someone behind it or a founder behind it who was very passionate about solving a problem or doing something unique in the world or in the marketplace. And that drove a lot of innovation because business is a, is an art as much as it is a science.
And so you need some of that, like creativity to play around with stuff, The problem is that passion doesn't pay the bills by itself. I mean, it's very hard to just be passionate about something and money flow to you. I, to the point, I make the example a lot that I'm very passionate about eating pizza, very, very passionate about eating pizza.
Now there are ways to monetize that some guys have done that. I haven't done a good job of that. So just being passionate about pizza, won't send money to my
bank account.
there's a, YouTube where you see them running all around New York and he gets a pizza and he says, everybody knows the [00:05:00] rule is you take one bite of pizza. He gives it a rating or whatever. And th the videos get tons and tons of views. He's making money from his passion, a pizza. So that is a thing you could do, but I guarantee you, he does more than just eat pizza.
And it took a lot of work to get to where he is to get to that. So we may reference that example again today, because that's funny that you use the passionate about pizza thing,
Well, and that's also true. Let me jump in here too, because you know, I would imagine that a lot of in, in this particular example, a lot of people are really passionate about eating pizza. And for this guy in New York, it takes a lot of work, luck and skill to become part of the upper crust in the pizza
game, you
okay. You know,
what? This is. Okay, Chris. Cause we got it. We have a friend here. We have like guests on that. We don't have any relationship with. I'm like, I like cringe inside when you use your puns and you like interrupt the show, but Graham knew what he was getting himself into
today.
I'll do my best to toppings that pun.
Oh, wow.
The two cheesy,
is a great start
let's talk about this. Okay. So as business owners, as freelancers, as self-employed [00:06:00] people, whatever you want to consider yourself, there are certain things there's like certain attributes we have to have in order to be successful.
And I think that's ultimately what it starts with. We start with passion, but also. The only thing we really have, which is us ourselves. So what, what is it that separates people? Like there are people that, that can hit the ground running as a new business owner and just absolutely Excel. And they have something different that the people who continuously struggle to make it, what are those things that are missing between those two people?
What attributes are they missing?
Man. There's so many, right. I think that the one thing we could talk about for hours is I think the number one attribute of a successful business owner, that's discipline. You know, and so discipline looks like a lot of different things. Discipline looks like consistency. Like, can you consistently show up like creatives notoriously suck at this?
Like we're, we're not disciplined typically. And we're not consistent. Typically we're like in the moment, like, I don't know, like Chris, you were, you were creating art last night. I don't know if that was spontaneous or planned, but like when, for years in the recording revolution, when I would talk to people about songwriting, Real songwriters.
It's their [00:07:00] job. They show up nine to five and they sit down and they write, people are like, well, that's ridiculous. That's not being creative. I'm like, no, you're ridiculous. The reason they write hit songs is because they force themselves to consistently show up and they don't write a hit song every day.
Like they walk away knowing that they tried, but they consistently showed up. And people don't like that because a lot of people aren't disciplined by nature. So it's a harder one. It's when you have to work on. But the, also the flip is that it's great because you don't have to be an Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or bill gates or Steve jobs or anybody fill in the blank.
You don't have to be a genius. You actually don't have to be that smart to succeed in business. It's really the ones who win are the ones who are disciplined enough to consistently show up, which is important. But then you back the train up, like consistently show up and do what? Like if you just, just show up and eat pizza all day, like again, if you haven't found where that passionate about pizza, if we keep using that analogy where that passion like cross-sections or intersections with the market's demands, what do people want to pay for?
If you can figure that out and find some, like, you know, [00:08:00] some intersection there, then, then you can figure out the other elements of what the business needs to succeed. But it's those that continue to show up that treat it like a job. Like I'm so shocked when I talk to um, like students of mine or business owners who are trying to start an online business, let's say, cause I teach all that kind of stuff.
Digital courses, memberships, and they're like so surprised they haven't made money yet. And when you dig deeper, you find out. They kind of like work some days and not other days, or they'll work in the morning sometimes or in the afternoons. I'm like, dude, if you worked for me and worked like that and just showed up when you want it, I wouldn't pay you.
I'd fire you like you. How do you expect you to make money? Like you wouldn't treat your employer that way, if it was a job. So why do you treat yourself? Cause you're two people. When you own a business, you're the employee and the employer. Why would you put on. Employee hat and then treat your employer hat with that much disrespect by not showing up faithfully and expecting a paycheck, not showing up consistently and expecting it to grow.
Like you have to perform for yourself as the owner too. So does that make sense? Like it's, there's multiple roles and it's, [00:09:00] that's the stuff that gets lost in the weekend. Just be passionate, be excited and it's all going to work.
So I there's there as business owners, as anyone who has, who works for themselves, you have to wear multiple hats. And that's the, I think that's the biggest detriment we have as, as. We're in charge of her own days. And when we wear multiple hats, sometimes we're fulfilling work. Sometimes we're talking to potential clients, we're doing sales.
Sometimes we're doing marketing. Sometimes we're not sometimes where trying to make big picture decisions of our business. Sometimes you have to put our CEO hat on or the boss hat on, and you kind of touched on it right there. so many people listening right now, if you put your CEO hat on for a second, or just the boss, man hat or boss, woman hat for a second, and then just looked at your past week or month.
Job consistency. You would fire yourself right then and there. So maybe today you need to fire yourself and rehire and start from scratch because I think you hit a lot of stuff there that is, is really important. And it's so, it's so boring. No one wants to talk about this, this, this episode. Maybe we lost people who knows, but it's so it's so [00:10:00] important because like consistency wins the game and you brought up something, a songwriting, for example, episode 104, we interviewed Seth Mosley.
Who's a friend of ours.
yeah, so it's the episode's title of the recipe for platinum records. Number one, hits in a seven figure income. So Seth has all of those things. Seth has. 20 something, maybe 30 something, number one singles at this point. And it is because he is so consistent. He's the master of showing up and doing the, sometimes the boring work or doing it, treating it like a, like a job.
And man, I don't know how many people were just turned off saying, treating it like a job, but I want to, I think it's worth addressing this right here. Your business as a freelancer, as a creative, there will always be things you don't like doing in it. There's nothing you can make a living from where there's not going to be some sort of work you don't like doing.
And we have to be okay with that. It is still better in almost all cases. As long as you have a healthy business, it's still better than a day job where you're building someone else's dream. At least you're building something for yourself. And, and so, yeah, that's, those are my thoughts. And what you said is consistency in working working on the things that you [00:11:00] know you're supposed to do.
And so many people struggling.
Which I think brings up a really interesting question. And a really great conversation is as creatives who are subjected to the whim of the muse, how do we get more?
That's a great question. in my opinion, it starts with understanding what really drives the business because to the point, the other side of the argument as well, there's people. They will put in a solid 40, 50, 60 hours a week on their business. And they would come home every day and be like, man, I, I busted my butt and I'm, I'm hustling.
I'm riser grind. Like I, I rise and grind. I hate that term. Like business doesn't have to be a grind. That's the grinding is like a bad negative thing. Like, can we use the more positive hustle and grind are like the worst words, look them up in the dictionary. They're not positive or is why would I associate my life or business with either of those terms.
because Gary V told me to.
Um,
Whatever Gary says. And so like they will walk away and be like, I did a lot of stuff. I'm consistent. I'm disciplined. Good point. But are you doing the things that drive the business?
That is such a great point. Cause I know a lot of people I [00:12:00] can think of right this second, who work consistently all the time and they're working on the wrong things. And you said it earlier, working on the right things is also a huge part of this.
It is, and it's hard to know. So because. if you base your business, this is why you need to get either like a mentor or coaching, or just really do your due diligence to figure out what it takes to drive the kind of business you want to build from someone who's done it before. If you just look at what people are doing online, which is how a lot of us decide what to do with our own businesses and lives, which makes no sense because who knows if those people are successful or why they're doing what they're doing, but we do.
We look at people and go, wow. They post a Tik TOK. They post an Instagram, they've got YouTube videos. They have a podcast. They're doing webinars. They're doing Facebook ads. We just see what they're doing. And we assume they must be successful. And sometimes there's metrics that would warrant that. But sometimes we really don't know on the other end of the thing.
So we just copy. And the problem with that is you still don't know what you're doing. You're just copying people and then you're hurting yourself because you're exhausted. And you're like, Graham, this doesn't work. I've done this. for months and months and months. So I think you have to understand what makes a [00:13:00] business tick.
The good news about that is you can figure it out. And once you do to your point, Brian, like if there's elements of it, you don't want to do. Once you drive the business to a point where it's paying all your bills and then some, you can start to outsource the stuff you don't want to do. You've earned that, right?
Because you you've built a healthy business first. And then two, you can automate a lot of those things. There's a lot of software every day. There's a new piece of software that takes something off your plate that once we had to do by ourselves, or it makes it fast. And then three, you also don't have to do everything that could drive the business forward.
For example, there are things that I could do to make more money in my business that I just don't feel like doing, because I don't want to show up in the office more, or I feel like I've had a very busy season, like right now, I've got a book coming out and I'm, it's been a long, like publishing a book with the traditional publishers is really long arc.
You know, it's been like almost two years. It's like a year and a half and I'm like, I I've, I've got a lot, I'm doing a lot of other things going on with that. I don't want to do one-on-one coaching. So I'm saying [00:14:00] no to a lot of high ticket one-on-one coaching that I get asked about all the time, even though I could do it and it would make sense to make money.
I don't want to do the work right now because I need some mental space to do other than.
Yeah, and I, I think that's a really important thing. You, you kind of touched on. Sort of you brushed up against this and that is just looking to other people in order to decide what you're going to do. Isn't really working on the right things, because you, you said it, you don't know what the results of those things are.
An example that I always use is social media. So many people assume you have to do social media in order to be successful. And I have built multiple businesses without ever focusing on social media. I w I focus on other things. It doesn't mean social media doesn't work. That just means that you don't have to do it.
There are other ways to get around that. any of these things could work. If you put enough focus and effort and consistency into them, it's just a matter of not trying to do all the things, especially at the same time. And this goes back to especially people early in their careers, looking to someone who is years into their career and trying to duplicate what they're doing, trying to replicate other people's.
You know, level 100, two use RPG gaming terms. They're like [00:15:00] max level. You know, if they got the best armor, the best weapons they have like, oh, they're in the best areas, fighting the best enemies and getting the best loot. And you're like this little level one guy, and you're like, I'm going to go to that area and try to try to farm gear there.
This is going off the rails here,
guys. Sorry for our non
I like where this is
going. You had me at RPS.
and then you get there and you get one hit killed, and then you're wiped out because you try to do something that you weren't ready for yet. And I think so many people. Fail to understand that as new business owners.
What's interesting about that too, is, is there's a lack of creativity there as creative as we take a lot of pride in our creativity and our uniqueness and our specialists, and to just look around at other people's businesses and just sort of copycat and assume and do all the things that you see other people doing, just assuming that they are the right things.
Doesn't jive. it's strange that as creatives, we can be totally unique in our art and just copycats with our
business
Hmm. Wow,
But why is that though? Because it's insecurity, right? Because there's so much freaking fear. I think fear [00:16:00] is the problem. There's so much fear of, I don't know what to do. And then laziness. I don't want to figure out what works. I'm just going to copy someone, assuming they've already figured it out.
That's like, that's, that's not the same thing as learning from someone who's figured it out. That's just copying what you see. And that's like the, I can stay in my pajamas and sort of look and not actually get into this world. And it's just, I don't know if it's the, I have, I have theories about the school system that trains us not to fail and we don't have to get into that, but, but certainly there's a, so much fear of failure.
So it's like, well, she has a hundred thousand followers on Tik TOK. She must be doing something right. Don't don't mistake followers for a business. I interact with YouTube owners who have massive YouTube channels and they don't have a business. But they don't, they don't have enough. They can't make enough money.
They're at the whims of the algorithm, even of YouTube. And I love YouTube. I've built my businesses off of YouTube, but I that's a starting point for the rest of my business because I don't trust any platform. Every platform will, will mess with you. So don't look at the vanity metrics, figure out how this business model works, whatever [00:17:00] it is you want to do.
Because I guarantee you there's someone who's gone there before and you can just ask the right questions, pay for their time. If you have to, if you don't know anybody that will sit down for coffee with you or take a course or whatever, it's not that hard to figure out the mechanics. And there's a few things that are a hundred percent true about certain business models.
And then there's a lot, that's up to your creativity that you can play with and do it in your own unique way. You don't have to literally copy a business model, but there's some foundational things that make it work. And that's where you're going to make the money to then have the freedom to try your own unique.
So I, the reason I like to push on the, it takes more than passion conversations because it allows me to. explore other areas of focus and get people deeper into our ecosystem at six-figure creative, which is like understanding that there are other skills outside of your creative skills that you have to, to learn, to get at least to a level of proficiency.
You don't have to master, but you have to be proficient in a lot of other skills to become a business owner. And that's why I'm really struggling what to call our audience. If it's just freelancers. If it's self-employed, I prefer the term business owner, because that puts you into a different mindset.
And earlier [00:18:00] you touched on something Graham called outsourcing that's when. Take a task that you don't like doing in your business, which is a lot of tasks for me. And then you hire people, helpers, part-time full-time, whatever you want to take. Some of those tasks off your plate, an example would be for you, Graham.
I don't think you edit your videos at this point. Do you.
you don't even need to edit your videos cause you're a one-take wonder Graham Cochrane. I forgot about that. But for the rest of us plebeians in the world, we have to get our videos edited and I don't edit my videos for YouTube.
I have a guy that does it for me. And it's because I think through it from the perspective as a, as a business owner, but there's another thing, and this is the area I think we need to talk about for awhile that holds people back from thinking of themselves as a business owner, is that lack of self-confidence it's that.
I think it's tied to limiting beliefs that we have about ourselves. we are this, and we're not that, or I can't be this because of that. And it's, it's just, it's it's down to limiting beliefs.
I think one of the things that Graham I'd love to hear you speak on with this, because you're incredible at this is what I would call. Willy Wonka in there's the scene in the beginning [00:19:00] of the movie, Willy Wonka, the original with gene Wilder, where he's walking out and he hits, he comes to the stairs and then he falls down the stairs and then he pops up and says and he takes what probably.
Was a mistake would probably was, was not looking graceful, was not looking the way he wanted to. And he turns it into this to Dom moment. And I think Graham, one of the things that you do such a great job at, and one of the things that I think we as creatives, need to be better at is trying to figure out, okay, I'm on camera or I'm on the mic or making art, or I'm doing my thing.
And I just backed myself into a corner and I messed up. Do I hit a dead end and be like what's next? Or do I find a way to catapult that, to catapult myself into the next thing
A good example of that. Chris is how I just cued him up for the perfect next segment of the podcast. And then you just hijack the whole conversation for your Willy Wonka theme. So let's see if we can Willy Wonka, this Graham, which one do you want to address here?
Oh, I can, I can tie it all together. I'm going to
Willy Wonka. This, this.
is super meta, but [00:20:00] that, to your question, Chris, that there is a limiting belief that relates to what you're talking about, which is it. has to be perfect. Like my business has to be perfect. Or optimized or I have to always make the right decisions.
So there's a lot of fallout there of like, if I make a mistake, how do I handle That
That is my biggest problem. Graham, I am so slow to do and implement and release things because I'm a perfectionist. I want it to be perfect optimized before I start scaling any.
Okay, so this is really key and it does depend on the personality. So you're one of those people, Brian, that probably want to split test subject lines, sales pages, landing pages. Does this color button convert better than purple or
whatever?
than that. But
yes.
Yeah. So, and, and I love that, right? Cause you're the mad scientists of the world that are going to eventually take over the world because you you're, I'm, I'm too lazy to really worry about it being the ultimate.
But, but it holds people like you back, although you've, you've found a way to make it work. So there's people that at the worst, they don't lie. The product until it's [00:21:00] perfect. They won't put out their sales page until it's perfect. They won't start a freelancing career until they've know the right price to charge per hour, or should it be per hour or a package rate or whatever, like they're stuck on something.
And so a couple of things related to that, that I try to help students with is like, that's a lie that it has to be perfect or optimize all the all that you needed to do in a business is to, to make money. It just needs to make. Like, if it doesn't make money, something's not right. Then it's you have a hobby, you don't have a business, but if it makes money, that's, that's all that it needs to do.
You can improve it. And I'm all about improving things, but it doesn't have to be perfect for you to have a profitable business. The other thing is that I see a lot of people, so obsessed with looking for best practices. Like they want to know, is this the best way or the right way? Because it's really, again, fear.
They want to validate their work. They want to just know and reaffirm themselves that if they're doing it right. And I tell people to stop looking for best practices, look for sales again, is it, is [00:22:00] it making money? That's the only metric that you need to really know is like if the business is working, could it be better a hundred percent?
Could my systems be better? Oh, without a doubt where my, what about my sales copy? Could it be better? Absolutely. I hired a marketing guy years ago and I thought he was going to come in and like destroy all my sales copy and write about, I was so excited. I was like, rip it apart, make it better. Show me that, put that one different headline at the top.
And then it's going to double my sales and he was like, I'm not going to change in your sales copy. I'm like, but it's not that great. It's making sales. Right. I was like, yeah. He's like, well then let's do other things. Let's focus on other things. And that like blew my mind. I was like, wow. I mean, I know it's not that great, but he really just moved on.
He was looking for the things that would really move the needle. And I think there's a lot of freedom. If you can stop trying to be perfect or optimize. Cause I think optimizations just robbing you of joy, of having a simple, profitable business. that's. all.
you mentioned earlier, or I mentioned earlier about having proficiency in a skill, but not having to be a master of that [00:23:00] skill. And it's the same when we're talking about marketing, which is what you're talking about right now is get it good enough and then move on. And this is something I'm preaching to myself right now, because I'm not doing that, but there is a deeper issue with a lot of.
It's that fear it's that it's something holding us back. And, and I mentioned limiting beliefs earlier, but I'd like for you to touch on those, because I feel like you address limiting beliefs better than a lot of people that I've heard talk about these and it's worth just hearing your input on some of the most common limiting beliefs that you see that hold people back from taking that next step that they know they need to take, but just haven't done yet because of some sort of fear or limiting belief that's holding them.
Yeah, here's a couple, I mean, everyone's different. So maybe. Listening to the one that really speaks to you. One is I hear a lot is I don't have enough time. It's like, that's a such a classic I don't have, I don't have time to start this business. I wish I would love to. I probably could. I've I've listened to all the six figure creative podcast episodes.
I understand it all. I don't have. it's just a lie. Like you don't have time. None of us have time. We make time. We make time for the things that are important to us. Right. We always do. If you're listening to this, you've made time to listen to this because [00:24:00] you value this. Do you think this is important?
You're finding a way to do the things, to watch the Netflix episode, to lose time on Tik TOK videos, like watching cats, dance, whatever it is like you're, you're making time. So time. Isn't the problem. A lot of times it's like we touched on earlier is doing the right things with your time. That's why I'm a huge fan of like the 80 20 rule.
And always constantly like every three to six months. Re-evaluating everything I do in my business through the lens of 80 20. Like the reality would be according to 80, 20, 80% of what I do in my business leads to 20% of the results, which is pretty subpar and sad. So you could almost stop doing four fifth of what you're doing, and most of your businesses success would still be there.
It's so bad frees up a ton of time when you have the guts to cut stuff that kind of works, but doesn't make, make a big difference. Social media, no offense to it. Really, most of us don't need to be active on social media to make a big living. It's a lot of time. That's like it takes 80% of your time, but it might contribute to 20% of your results [00:25:00] where a few things take 20% of your time, but contribute to 80% of your results.
And that sort of reality is so freeing for people.
we have a full episode on the 80 20 principle for anyone. Who's not exactly sure how that applies to them. Episode 45. It's one of our oldies, when we were the six figure home studio, it's called an episode. Title is how studio owners are multiplying their income and minimizing their headaches using the 80 20.
Let me just throw this in here. Graham you're kicking my butt, man. This is, this is one of the reasons I was so excited for this episode is I'm very guilty of this. Over-optimization. I have spent so much time getting my sort of command center, my video, audio media things set up instead of actually doing the things that I know I need to be doing to grow my business and to simplify it.
It's the technician inside of both of us, Chris.
I love, the vision that you're casting, man.
So you talked about not having enough time, that's a limiting belief that we have. What are some other ones that are common for people that hold [00:26:00] them back from doing the things they know they need to.
Yeah, one, that's just still part of. Not having enough time. That may be is another one. Is that, there's just, this is what I tell people. Stop being in a hurry. I don't know if you guys sense it or if you feel it, but there's the sense in the generation today that maybe it's because of social media and, and all of the access to seeing other people's lives.
Everyone. I talked to feels like they're in a hurry to make this business work. They, it has to work. I have to hit six figures and I have to hit it in the next 90 days. Like there's so much pressure or if they don't actually need the money, they feel like, well, everyone's making money quickly. It feels like.
So they feel like if they don't, there's something wrong with them. And I just, I hurry, we'll just make you do dumb stuff because you're going to be desperate and the type of business that sustainable, like you have to think like, isn't it, the Japanese don't, they make business plans that are like 400 year business plans.
Like they set up their businesses. It doesn't, they're not going to, they're going to be dead. Their kids are going to be dead. Their grandkids are gonna be dead, but they set up their [00:27:00] businesses as if it could last for four to 600 years. And that, that's a very interesting, because it's just changes. It's not that they want it to last that long.
Maybe they do. But it changes the type of business they're building. It's something that actually has legs. And I always want people to think about like, can you do this for the next 10 years? If you can't run at the pace you're running for the next 10 years, because you're in a hurry to. make money quickly. You don't have a real business. That's sustainable. You're just chasing after something. And I'd rather you find a business model that's proven. Maybe it's a little slower. It's not very sexy, but it's going to be sustainable for the long haul. There's no rush. There's a great interview with Chamath Palihapitiya, I'm probably butchering his name.
He was one of the early execs at Facebook. He's a billionaire. He says some very controversial things sometimes, but he was Ed's really cool interview where he was maybe a Google and there's a bunch of people asking them about startups and businesses. guy asked him about like, you know, what's the fastest way to grow a tech company or whatever.
And he started to call this guy out and he said, don't, don't grow it fast. He said, I've [00:28:00] seen all these businesses that want to start up fast. He said, the faster you build a company, that's the half-life basically it'll get destroyed in the same amount of time.
You see, in relationships, you see relationships to people that go a hundred miles an hour from day one, and then they burn out like a spark. Fast fast, easy come easy go. So I understand that when James will put the interview in the show notes for anyone who wants to listen through that, assuming he can find it.
Cause I wouldn't even know the first way to spell that name.
Yeah. C H a M a T H just look him up on YouTube. He's got a lot of great interviews, but his whole point was looking Amazon. He's like, that's the kind of company, not because of how big it is, but like Amazon wasn't profitable for so long now they had some legs for it, but like they, they were building, they weren't building something quick in the nineties.
Like just want to build a cool little book. You, we realize now that Jeff had like crazy plans, he wanted to build a massive company so that he could build rockets for his other company. You know, like that that's a long, slow build, but it's like that business is not going to overnight disappear. It can't cause it's so deep with the roots.
And [00:29:00] so stopping in a hurry, like people say they don't have enough time. They also in a hurry and they're going to live out that anxious, Frank, life it's going to show up in their business. Like there's no rush. There's no rush to be successful. You've got.
So There's one other area of limiting. Graham that I think are worth addressing here. And that is that it's a fear of failure. You, you, you kind of briefly touched on it with your theory around schools and stuff.
We don't have to get into that, but I think the fear of failure is, is truly what holds back. The majority of people that I've talked to it is that fear of failure that keeps them from taking that next scary step from doing the thing that stretches. To do the thing that they maybe don't want to do.
That's scary. Maybe the thing that held you back from launching your podcast back in the day, Graham, I remember when you were hesitant to launch it, the thing that maybe held you back from doing a book book launch, which is a scary next step, and, but you pushed through and you still did both of those things.
And I think, I think you're a good example of someone who is willing to push through those fears in order to get to the other side, to reap the rewards of that. And I'd love for you to talk on that for a bit because our audience might need that, that kick in the bucket.
Man. This is a, this [00:30:00] is a near and dear topic to me because this is very real and palpable and it hasn't really fully gone away. So there's a couple of things. One angle is you are not your work. Most people, they don't realize they've wrapped their identity into what they do. And it it's, it's subconscious.
We just, it's just the way our culture is in America. At least in the west, it's very much, you are what you do. So we're so afraid of starting something that could fail, because then I am a failure. If my business fails, I'm a failure. And that's just deep and not like you need some, like some counseling, some soul searching, and I'm not even joking like that.
You need to learn how to separate who you are as a person. from what you do for a living, because who you are as a person is a, an identity that's always, there always has been and always will be. You can't get away from who you are, the good and the bad, the light side and the shadow side. we're a mixed bag as a human is the human race.
Right. But, but you can change what you do for a living for your whole life. You can be employed, you can be self-employed, you can be unemployed, you can start different businesses, they can fail, they can be successful. You have to separate your identity from what you do. [00:31:00] Number one, because if you. Then you, you need everything you do to succeed, to be a successful person, to not be a failure of a human being.
And that's just a rollercoaster ride. You don't want to be on. I've been on that ride for me, it started attaching my identity to musician. Graham was musician. Graham was rockstar. That was the dream, get a record deal. And I really believed it was going to happen. And when it didn't happen and I had to like wake up to the reality of, I gotta go get a job now because I'm engaged and I need to learn how to support my future.
It doesn't look like this is going to pan out. It felt like my life ended. And it was like, oh dude, I wasn't, I had no plan B, like this was the plan. And this is all signs pointed to this. It was a moment of crisis that like, literally I'm still in counseling for like, it comes up in my counseling sessions.
They're like, dude, I'm still suffering from the repercussions of that. Like, wow, that was a big let down because that was who I was. And I thought I was on not talented enough. Did I not try hard enough? Did I not make enough connections would if I had done. And that just [00:32:00] is destroying. So a lot of people listening might struggle with some of that identity being attached to their work.
And the moment you can separate it even a bit, you have a little bit more freedom to try some. That could fail and that's okay because you're not a failure. The thing you did just didn't pan out. So you can try something else that succeeds. And to your point, Kristy, you can look at other entrepreneurs like Elon Musk's, who have started other things that we don't talk about anymore because they failed.
Or Jeff Bezos, he launched a smartphone, it's called the fire phone. It was a complete bomb. It was a complete bomb. And so like they don't make successful product launches all the time. That's part of it. That's part of it. The other part of it though, is that like, The fear has never gone away from me. Like it's really real.
I, with the recording revolution, I had to start that because I needed to make money. And it was just a really, we've talked about that story maybe in the past, but I had no other choice, but when that took off too much of my, to my surprise, I got real, comfortable being a top dog in this audio niche. And people [00:33:00] knew me.
I finally had accolades. I had money. I had work. I enjoyed, I was like, this is the life. And then one of my desires started to expand and I wanted to coach people on businesses and I was doing it privately, but I was like, I feel like I should start something like another website, another brand where I could do this more publicly, the fear crept in like, don't do that gram, like you're comfortable and safe here.
Like you've already had success. You would think having success would mean like you'd be the Michael Jordans of the world, like, oh, I'm good at basketball, I'll be great at baseball. Like that's, you know, but I wasn't. I was like, no, I should stay. I should stay where I'm safe, where I'm successful. I don't want to start another thing.
2015, I already knew I wanted to start Graham cochrane.com. It took me three years to finally launch it. Cause I just kept making up excuses and I was. And then even, even then to your point, Brian, like I launched the second business and then that's taken off and I could be real comfortable again. And then.
There's this desire in me to write this book and I suffer. I stuffed that desire down for so long because I've [00:34:00] a fear of what people will think, because everybody in their mom's writing a book and I would, I would, I didn't want to be lumped into a category. Oh, you're writing a book too. Grim. Good for you.
I want it to be different. No, I'm different guys. I'm not a normal person. So I had my own issues. And so there was that fear. And then there was the fear of what if I write a book and nobody buys it. That'd be embarrassing. Cause like my goal isn't just to write a book it's to become a New York times bestselling author that writes like world changing books, idea, changing books, like the books that have shaped me and changed my life.
I want to do that as well. That's a big, crazy goal. So I didn't even let myself. Articulate that goal into the world because I was afraid that I didn't have to like do it and what if I failed at it? And so that fear, I mean, and I'm still, Hey, I've got through that fear enough to get some coaching on this, to learn that business model, to, to, to write a proposal, to get an agent to you rejected by like 30 plus publishers, but to get a publisher to say yes, and then to write the book and, and you know, we're still launching it to, we were talking about this before we hit record.
Like, this is scary. This is. I feel like I have less control over this launch [00:35:00] than any other product launched. I'm still talk to my wife. I've had more anxiety now with this book than ever before. And I'm like, why am I doing this? Like, you don't make money off of books. I'm not doing this for the money.
I'm doing this because it's a desire of mine, but why am I subjecting myself to this potential failure? So I just, I say all that to say, it's never gone away from me. But to your point, Brian, there are rewards on the other side of it and I wish you could have the rewards without the fear, without the anxiety.
I think you can minimize those things, but I don't know if you can have it without it. Cause that's the whole point of like jumping off a cliff is some, there's some fear in there, like, cause everything in you says don't jump off the cliff, but you have to just decide if it's worth it to you.
And I think having done this multiple times now. Yes, it's. I don't want to be stuck in a cubicle. I had, I had the cubicle, I had the oversize button up shirt with the ties that don't match. I, I had that banging my head against the wall. I don't want that. So I guess I have to take the fear of failure with the success and the joy and all that.
Graham. I love that man. You know, I got to encourage you and I'm not trying [00:36:00] to flatter you or anything here, but it is evident that you have grown since the last time you've been on this show. Like there, there is an electricity about you. That is more than what has been there in the past.
And, you know, I think a lot of that Graham is, is you seem to be willing to do the next scary thing again and again and again and again. And I think that's really. That's a high accolade. I think that's a, that's a big compliment as far as what it takes to be a great creative is to stretch yourself, get comfortable, stretch yourself, again, get comfortable, stretch yourself again.
You do it again and again and again. And I think you're going to pull this off. I think that what you want to do as far as being this New York times bestselling author, I won't blink when it happens. It seems.
we've had two New York times best-selling authors on this podcast already episode 1 53. We had Bob Burg on the podcast, which I know you, you, you know, unlike author co-author of the Go-Giver Graham. And then, uh, we had Mike McCalla wits on episode [00:37:00] 1 66, author of profit first pumpkin plan.
And so hopefully you are a third New York times bestselling author with your upcoming book, which we'll talk about in a second, but there's. Quote from the Bible that I want to bring up on this because it matches so perfectly your path gram and S and it should match so many people here who are struggling with that fear of failure.
The quote is from Proverbs 1423. And the quote is depends on what translation you read. It's all hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to.
And I think on your, and just to bring it to an example, Graham, your, your, all the work you did in that band that ultimately didn't get to where you wanted to go.
And you face this crisis of, of facing failure in the face that work led to everything that you accomplished in recording revolution. You just didn't experience it till later, but that was. Led to profit later because you are forced to face failure. And uh, I think so many people in our audience, even if the thing that you're working on now, isn't the thing that you were successful for.
If you continuously grow and stretch yourself, you will learn new skills. You will make new connections [00:38:00] and forge new paths that eventually will lead to your success. And I've seen this happen in my life. I've seen this happen in Chris Graham's life, and I've definitely seen this happen in your life, Mr.
Graham.
Wow. I mean, thank you both of you guys. I mean, I'm, I'm flattered and I'm encouraged. Can we just hang out and you, can you say nice things to me all the time? This is great. This is a great. No, You are so right Brian, like, this is the thing I look back at. And, and maybe to the point of the failures, like you, you know, you, there's great quotes about like there's no failure, you know, it's all just an experiment or you're learning.
There's, there's a lot of truth to that,
you
got to go with Yoda failure. The greatest teacher
is.
oh my gosh, you did, you, you just are The the
The one-liner.
cutting our guest off in the middle of a great
sentence.
But if you're going to cut me off with Yoda, I think that's a reasonable I'm okay with that. He's wiser
You still don't put up with Graham. This is why Graham doesn't have a
cohost.
Hey, his stick is denser than bacon. Right. And it's better than bacon.
So I don't know if you guys ever listened to that song
No, I love Chris's Pontiac. Okay, go
ahead and grab and
finish. Finish the sentence.
are always collecting experiences and [00:39:00] skills. and this is what's so unique, right? You going back to the identity is not what you do. You are who you are, but what you do helps shape your identity and it adds to your identity.
So you're still your core, you, the way God made you, who you are from birth, but you're, you're, you're like capturing all these experiences. And for me, like college seemed like pointless, but I had, I had like learned a lot of cool things. Added to my identity that God helped me use for the recording revolution that I never thought I would do anything with audio engineering than I never thought I would teach audio engineering.
I thought I'd just be in a studio. Cause I tried that. But then my passion and experience, like I was a theater kid, so I was on stage all the time. And then I was in bands. And so being on stage presenting, teaching, talking like not being afraid of being in front of people. All that's made me a good podcaster and like it being on video, like to your point, like I try not to make mistakes in my podcast.
I just, if I could just not screw up for 30 minutes and we won't have to edit or pay someone dead, it was like, well, let's just do that,
It's incredible to watch. I hate it so much.
oh, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. But to that point, like,[00:40:00] so my identity thing, and maybe anyone of you struggles with this, like I so desperately as a kid and a teenager wanting to be good at one thing.
Like, I just want to be masterful at one thing, like the tiger woods at my thing. Right. And so what I've done is the moment, like the thing didn't pan out, like the rock star thing, didn't pan out. I have a crisis. so what if I could just be great at something else? I'm gonna be the best audio engineering.
And then as a woman would be the best, you know, audio YouTuber in the, in the world. And then it's like, oh, but now I'm interested in business. So I kept getting mad at myself cause I, now I'm jumping into Tony Robbins territory and all these other people, they're like, you know, this is just too big of a pond.
I don't want, I don't need to be the best. I've learned that I have too much. identity issue where I want it to be attached to what I do. Because again, going back to our, our struggle, a lot of us is our identity. And what we do is we want them to co-exist and be the same thing as a Christian, I've learned, like that's not my identity.
My identity is child of God image, bearer of God. And I'm a husband, I'm a father. And I'm like, I'm all these other things. What I do for a living. It's not completely separate because it's an extension of who I am. [00:41:00] But man, to your point, all the experiences I've had, I've just like added to who I am as a person and allows me my next endeavor, whatever that would be to bring more dimensionality to it.
And I feel like, oh, none of it's been a waste. Like my audio background, my all this background helps me do what I'm doing today. It makes me human and I'm embracing that more and more. And it's, it's freeing and it's fun.
Well, speaking of your next endeavor, Graham, you've got a book coming out and I know you're on your, your you're beginning just today, your big podcast tour that authors like to do, but your book's called how to get paid for what you need.
And I think that's a perfectly apt title for our audience because everyone here is either getting paid for what they know or they're trying to get paid for what they know. And I want to do a throwback to an episode we did with Rachel Green, from green chair stories. she's transitioned her freelance business from service-based only to now.
She has kind of like a digital product and she's tied in with that service. And I think that's, your book is more on the digital product side. So if anyone listened to that episode with her on episode 1 75, I think this is a [00:42:00] really good book for people to go through to make that transition from just service-based business, to maybe you where you have a digital component to it.
So can you tell us a book a bit about that book and what a journey they can expect to go through and by the way, it's available for pre-order today, it goes, it goes live on sale next Tuesday. So if you're listening to the episode, now it's either available for presale, or if you're listening next week, you can go buy this book right now on Amazon or anywhere books.
And guess what? This is a podcast, so you can multitask. So pick up your phone, open up Amazon and do that. Pre-order I'm, as soon as this episode is over, I'm going to put on my best convincing voice to try and get Graham to send me a pre-release so that I can read this book before it comes out. And I think, yes, all, all of us should be reading this book.
Oh, I, I appreciate it. I don't, I don't know if you guys need this book, but it's the book. Like there's an opportunity right now that it don't know if people understand, which is you can take what you actually know, what you're passionate about, what you're good at, and you can monetize it in a myriad of ways.[00:43:00]
In this book, I walked you through my story of like being on food stamps, not understanding online business world, not even knowing that I was trying to start an online business. I was just trying to get clients for my freelance business and how that turned into like a whole search for how to monetize this content that was kind of blowing up a little bit on the.
And learning that okay. Ads and all this stuff, isn't the best way having your own digital products is. And I'd had a discover for myself. There was other people out there doing it. I didn't even know they were, I didn't know what to look for. I didn't, it was a thing. And so just the journey of going from like food stamps and not knowing what I'm doing and groping in the dark and like trying to figure out.
To building a seven figure business and then doing it again in a different niche. I tell that story a little bit to show people like, look, I didn't have a vision. I'm not an Elon Musk. I'm not a Jeff Bezos. I don't have this grant entrepreneur narrative. I stumbled into something and we are living in the best time right now to take what you're good at, what you know, and turn it into an online business.
And specifically to your point about Rachel like a digital product based business. So instead of selling [00:44:00] your service, which has a limitation, you can only serve, but so many claims. Raise your rates, but so much, so much of a level. Although Chris you've, you've been able to like leverage that with other people underneath you.
So there's a third lever lever there, but at some point you still hit limits. And so digital products are a great addition to a service-based business or replacing of it. If you can productize through an online course or a membership site, what you're, you know, what you're teaching or what you're doing for clients?
That's to me where the lifestyle comes in, because then your business can scale. So for example, I had two businesses like this, this new business right now. Now this is a seven figure business. I worked six hours a week on the grand Cochrane brand. I only put in six hours of work a week, not including the book and all the book launch stuff.
I'm trying to figure that all out. I'm not getting paid for any of that. That's just me trying to like take over the world. But like the business takes only six hours of me. And that it's, it's doing over a million dollars a year. How is that possible? I'm not serving clients. I've got digital products and automation.
And then when you [00:45:00] build an audience through discoverable content, it gets out of hand in a beautiful way. And so in the book, I just sort of explain here's the business model. Here's why we're at the beginning of a easily 30 or 40 year wave. We haven't missed the wave where we're on the surf board at the front of the wave, and it's a huge wave and it's coming.
And then I explain how it works through six chapters based on like, it's like what I teach in my courses, basically here's the six steps. If you don't have any idea what your business is to how to launch it, productize it, automate it, and then how to then scale it from there. my goal with this book was to make a book that you actually not only know exactly what to do.
So it's not just hype. It's like, here's the business model. You don't have to pay Graham anything more than this book. You could actually go build a business, but not just. You would come away feeling like you could actually do it. Cause we're dealing with a lot of limiting beliefs in the book, a lot of common misconceptions or doubts or objections.
I try to address all of them. So people had no excuse after the book, they actually could put it down and be like, I think I could do this because that's where life change happens. When you actually believe you can do it. [00:46:00] That's the hallmark of a good teacher. And hopefully even with my teaching and podcasting into my courses, I hope I'm not just transferring information, but I'm transferring the belief in yourself that you can actually go do what you just learned, how to do.
Cause that's when he will see life change. And so the book.
is very approachable. It's a fun, fast read. And I think it's just going to help, hopefully help a ton of people get into better, more creative work. That's fulfilling and practice.
Well, I, again, I cannot, I there's no one, I have a high recommendation for that Graham Cochrane and anything he puts out, I believe in. so I just want to say again, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I want to say anyone still listening right now. Go open up Amazon either. Pre-order the book order it if it's out now Thanks for coming on and kicking her bites, dude.
Anytime. If you need a good buck, kicking, just call good old Graham I'm here.
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