Ep 534: How to Find Yourself and Your Own Vision with Graham Cochrane

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On our journey to finding true fulfillment, we must reflect on three key elements: our joy, dreams, and desires.

Today’s guest firmly believes these elements were placed within us by God to help us discover who we are. Graham Cochrane is a highly successful entrepreneur, renowned TEDx keynote speaker, and bestselling author of How To Get Paid For What You Know and his upcoming book, Rebel: Find Yourself by Not Following The Crowd.

He hosts The Graham Cochrane Show, a podcast ranked in the top 0.5% globally, and has amassed 700,000 YouTube subscribers.

With over 14 years of experience in online coaching and content creation, Graham has built multiple seven-figure businesses that require less than five hours of work per week to maintain, establishing himself as a leading figure in the life-giving business movement. In today’s conversation, we dive into his new book, how to make money doing what you love, getting paid for what you know, and much more!

If you want to learn how to work fewer hours while continuing to grow your business and make more money, don’t miss out! Thanks for listening.

KEY POINTS FROM THIS EPISODE

  • An introduction to our guest, Graham Cochrane.
  • We discuss the title of his upcoming book, Rebel, and why not following the crowd is important.
  • Two great questions to ask yourself on your path to fulfillment.
  • His insights into getting clarity on who you are, and why dreaming is so crucial.
  • Graham unpacks what can happen when your dream(s) die.
  • We look at how our desire can take us past the necessary risk.
  • Graham further breaks down parts of his R-E-B-E-L acronym.
  • Where to learn more about Graham.
  • His advice for designing and building a successful business, while not working 100 hours a week.

TWEETABLE MOMENTS

“Typically, what we do, is we almost abdicate the path to fulfillment by just looking at what everyone else is doing — and the problem is you’ll never mind fulfillment by following the crowd.” — @thegcochrane [0:03:19]

“My theory, my premise, is that joy, dreaming, and desires, that I think are put there by God, are the starting point to figuring out who you are.” — @thegcochrane [0:05:53]

“I think hustle is just a form of laziness, in disguise because people haven’t done the hard work of sitting down and slowing down and saying: ‘What are the 20% of the things that I am doing that are generating 80% of the results that I need?’” — @thegcochrane [0:25:13]

About Graham Cochrane

Graham Cochrane is a TEDx and keynote speaker, 7 figure entrepreneur, and bestselling author of How To Get Paid For What You Know and Rebel: Find Yourself by Not Following The Crowd (2024).

He speaks to over 80,000 people each month on his top .5% globally ranked podcast The Graham Cochrane Show, where each week he helps people create more money, margin, and meaning in their lives. With over 14 years of online coaching and content experience, 700,000 YouTube subscribers across his channels, and having built multiple 7 figure businesses that require less than 5 hours of work per week to run, Graham is a leading voice and coach in the life-giving business movement.

His insights have been regularly featured in national media outlets like Forbes, CNBC and Business Insider.

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Graham Cochrane

Graham Cochrane on LinkedIn

Graham Cochrane on X

Graham Cochrane on Instagram

Graham Cochrane on YouTube

Rebel: Find Yourself by Not Following The Crowd

Dan Miller

AJ Vaden on LinkedIn

AJ Vaden on Twitter

Rory Vaden

Rory Vaden on LinkedIn

Rory Vaden on Twitter

Take the Stairs

Brand Builders Group

Brand Builders Group Free Call

Brand Builders Group Resources

The Influential Personal Brand Podcast on Stitcher

The Influential Personal Brand Podcast on Apple

RV (00:02): Well, I can’t wait to let you hear and listen in on this conversation with my good buddy, Graham Cochrane. So, Graham is a BBG client, and he represents, in my eyes, much of why we started the company, to find good people with real expertise, who are helping people and care about making a difference in the world, using their skills and talents to make the world a better place. He is a mission-driven messenger who has real expertise and a really impressive track record. So Graham is a seven figure entrepreneur. He has a podcast that reaches over 80,000 people every month. So he’s in the top 0.5% of all podcasters. He has over 700,000 YouTube subscribers, which is super impressive. I’m super jealous of that. And he does all of it in minimal number of hours per week. He’s been a Ted speaker, he’s a keynote speaker. RV (00:56): I know he’s speaking at some of my friends events, and I’m starting to see him more and more. We’re also in a Christian entrepreneur’s mastermind together. His wife and AJ are in an actual mastermind together. And so just an amazing guy and he’s got a new book coming out called Rebel. Find Yourself by Not Following The Crowd, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about that and how to just, you know, make money doing what you do and getting paid for what you know, which was kind of like more of his first book. So, Graham, welcome to the show, man. Good to have you GC (01:28): Dude. Pumped to have the conversation, man. It’s been fun to see our, our world collide over the last 12 months. A little bit more love what you guys are doing at Brand Builders. It is literally the best. Like literally, if you’re not in brand builders, you need to join. ’cause It’s the best program for getting your message out there holistically and building a business around it. It’s so well done, bro. RV (01:46): Man, thank you for that. I mean, that’s a powerful testimonial and, and to get it from someone like you who’s already, you know, doing a great job of it before we found you. I love that. And, and I just, I, I love your heart for what you’re doing. Everyone listening already knows I’m a hardcore bible thumping Jesus freak, and AJ is you are, and your, your, your wife is, and, and we got a chance to meet your family and that whole thing. But talk to me about Rebel, the title Rebel, and specifically the subtitle to me really spoke to me when I, I saw it said, find yourself by not following the crowd. So why is not following the crowd important? And I feel like we live in a world where people are constantly following the crowd and like looking at what other people are doing. And I feel like your book is like a very distinctively, diametrically kind of opposed message to that. So tell us about that. GC (02:47): Yeah, I mean, I think people are ultimately looking for fulfillment. You know, if you’re a personal brand or business owner, you want to be fulfilled in your business. And, and I have some thoughts on what leads to fulfillment, but t typically what we do is we almost abdicate the path to fulfillment by just looking at what everyone else is doing and saying, well, he looks happy. She looks happy. That’s how she’s running her business. That’s how he’s showing up online, that’s how they’re raising their kids. That’s how they’re thinking about handling their money. And so we just sort of copy what we see ’cause it’s easier. The, there’s already a flow. There’s already like a current of culture, of conformity moving in a direction. So the easiest path is the path of just doing what everyone else is doing. And the problem is, is that you’ll never find fulfillment by following the crowd because it’s gonna pull you further away from the way you were designed. GC (03:36): So we believe in a great designer and you, you know, this is true intuitively because you know what it feels like to feel out of alignment and then when you’re like in the zone or in your sweet spot, and it’s a lot easier to live in alignment. And I just think we’re afraid to a figure out what does alignment mean for us? Like, who, how are we designed? The late Dan Miller who was like, I, I had him on my podcast and he endorsed my first book and had a brief interactions with him before we lost him. But the two questions he always says that you need to answer are, who am I? And why am I here? And I, I, I agree with him on that, that we don’t know who we are. But even, but if we did the small but important work of finding out more about the way God designed us, the way we’re wired, man, we’d flourish in business. We’d flourish in parenting and marriage. We’d flourish in our relationships with money and people and spirituality. So it’s, to me, this book is a book about alignment and identity. But once you figure that out, man, you’re gonna be more successful. You’re gonna be more satisfied, you’re gonna be of more service to other people. And I think those are three things everybody wants. RV (04:39): So, yeah. And I think, you know, you used that word abdicate, which I really love. ’cause I think that it’s, it’s like this energy of almost like a a default mode. And I do think people basically like live, live their life in that way of like, I’m just sort of default. And I think probably at least the way I view it is few people wake up and go, yeah, I wanna do what everyone else does, and I’m just gonna follow the crowd. But it seems more of like, they struggle to figure out, how do I know, who am I? How do I know why I am here? How, how, how, how do I find that? So what insights do you have there? If someone’s like, well, I just don’t really feel like I’m that clear on that, what are the steps that they can take to sort of like, get clear on some of those things? GC (05:28): Yeah, exactly. So there’s a lot of ways to do this. The way I teach in the book, it, it is a, an acronym, rebel is an acronym. It’s a five part framework. And the, the r the beginning of it, it starts with resolving to dream again. So the R stands for resolve to resolve to dream. Again, my theory, my premise is that joy and dreaming and desires that I think are put there by God are the starting point to figuring out who you are. Mm-Hmm. The point of thinking about dreaming, the point of thinking about what fires you up, what you would love to, you know, in Tim Ferriss’s language dream of doing, being or having, like he says, like, if you’re the smartest person in the world and there was, it was impossible to fail, what would you dream of doing? Being or having, I, that type of questioning is a starting point for figuring out your identity. GC (06:19): Not the end, but the starting point. ’cause My my theory is that dreams are clues as to the way God designed us. We dream. We might have collective dreams that are similar for all people, but I think there’s a lot of uniqueness to the things you want to do, want to have people, the person you want to be, that are a, a, a clue to, maybe I should pull on that thread a little bit more, but the problem is, is like, as adults, I think that’s just beat out of us. Like, as a kid, this was so natural. Like we grew up dreaming. We knew what we wanted as kids. And then either culture at large culture, like in your home or whatever, told you this is the, the way, you know, sort of mandalorian star Wars. Like this is the way you have to follow it. GC (07:01): And very few people dream anymore when they grow up. And so they, they no longer know who they are. They’ve lost sort of themselves, and they, they’ve conformed. And I really think there’s a difference between the path of conformity and then the beginning of getting off of that path is dreaming again. And it’s really hard to do. ’cause We feel like dreaming is pointless. It’s childish. It’s my dream didn’t work out for me very well. I got burned by dreaming. There’s disappointment there. So it’s a very tender place, but that’s my theory. You start with dreaming again, 30,000 foot view might seem impossible. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with this dream, but it starts to tell you a little bit about the way you’re wired. RV (07:34): Yeah, that’s good. Brother and I, I mean, just as you were talking, I was, you know, sort of processing what you were saying and it, it dawns on me that like, you know, God puts a dream in your heart. If you, if you look at the inverse of that, the devil, if the devil stops you from dreaming, then the devil stops you from doing, right? Like, if you never allow yourself to have the dream, then the likelihood of that thing ever coming true, it basically becomes non-existent. And so the devil doesn’t even have to stop you from doing, if he can just stop you from dreaming, then it’s like, it’s like a seed that never gets watered. It never gets birthed. And so then it’s like the devil wins by default in terms of a spiritual battle. And just thinking about like a spiritual enemy of you know, and I think of that, you know, that’s what the scripture says, that, you know, the devil is a liar. I mean, that’s, he, he, he’s he’s a liar. He comes to kill and steal and destroy. And you go, if he plants a lie, like if God plants a dream, you should go do this. And then the level the devil shows up and just plants a lie on top of it, you could never do this then like you lose. So it’s like, which voice are you gonna listen to? GC (08:43): Oh, that’s so good. And there’s different lies. It’s either for some people he knows what’s, like, if we’re gonna talk spiritually, the devil knows what’s effective for each of us. So it might be, you know, you you’ll never be able to do this. The other lie could be if this won’t work out, and you’ll be incredibly disappointed. And there could be a huge fear of disappointment, especially if you had a dream that did die in the past. Something we, we talked about, about a year ago, I was doing a session with you. We talked about this identity crisis intersection about like, and I wrote about this in the book about when you have a dream, we all have had a dream. It could be a financial dream or a career ambition, or a relationship dream. Like, I wanna get married, I wanna have kids. GC (09:21): And then what happens when that dream dies? Well, we’re at this identity crisis intersection because our dreams are not compartmentalized. They’re part of, our identity is attached to our dreams. That’s why they hurt so much when we lose them. And that’s why they feel so good when we gain them. And so part of you dies with that dream. And so what most people do is they say, forget this. I’m gonna choose the path at this intersection. There’s two choices. I’m gonna choose the conformity path, put my head back down, be like everybody else, and say, Hey, dreamings for other people that didn’t work out for me. There’s no way I’m gonna do the opposite. Which is the other choice, which is to dream again. You know, maybe the, the divorce happened, you could choose to pursue another relationship and dream again. But most people are like, I don’t want to be hurt again. GC (10:00): I don’t wanna be disappointed. Again, it’s a tender spot. So we, we gave dreaming a shot once or twice, and then that was it. And I think I was just talking about this with Chris Cook on the Win Today podcast of like the people that seem younger as they get older and seem more full of joy in life are the people that continually let themselves dream again, dream new dreams. Maybe that dream didn’t work out, but what’s a different version of that dream? I could dream, you know, my first dream was to be a rockstar. Like literally try to get a record deal that fell through. I had to make some tough choices. But in a roundabout way, God put new versions of that dream in my heart, where now I’m in front of tens of thousands, if not millions of people regularly performing, sharing, creating, doing creative work. GC (10:44): I just didn’t wanna sit at a cubicle all day. And God gave me another way to do that. It was through YouTube, which didn’t exist when I was in college. You know, it was through podcasting, it was through books, it was through all this stuff. And so I never could have even imagined. But I think, yeah, there’s that lie of you’ll be disappointed if the dream doesn’t work out. It’s impossible. Dreaming is selfish. Depending on your, your origin story, your parents might have said, we don’t get to do what we want. We do what’s responsible we do with the families, businesses, we do. You’re gonna go to college, you’re gonna do this. So a lot of times dreaming feels selfish. So everyone’s story is gonna be a little different. But this is where, why I start with dreaming. ’cause It’s like so useful if you let yourself do it. But so many people have mental blocks around it. RV (11:23): Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, totally. And I, I think as I think of like the most successful people I know, they’re not the people who had a dream and then the dream came true. They’re the people who had a dream. It didn’t quite come true. They had a new dream that didn’t quite come true. They gave and chased a new dream that didn’t quite come true. And it’s like, it’s kind of this course correction of like, they’re chasing dreams that never come true. And then yet they keep chasing them. And then you look back one day and you go, I’m freaking living the dream. And it’s a dream that I never even had. I had different dreams that were, you know, things that I wanted. And in the moment you go, why isn’t God giving me my dream? Like, why isn’t God having this come true? But then you do that and it’s just like a giant, you know, Plinko board or a maze or something like that. Mm-Hmm. . And then one day you, you look back and you go, oh my gosh, God had such a better dream for me. But it was like, it was like he was using these dreams to lead me, to lead me down the path. So I I I love that. It’s like dreaming the, to me, the power of dreaming is not even that it has to come true. It just, the power of a dream is that it moves you to action. GC (12:44): Yes. Right. Because to do anything great, let’s talk about personal brands. Like to build a personal brand takes risk. Like anyone who thinks you can build a business without risk is, is not in the right mind. It takes risk. And so some people get scared away. But I think, and that was me when I thought about entrepreneurship, I never wanted to start a business ’cause it seemed risky. Mm-Hmm. , what I didn’t realize is I didn’t have a big enough desire for the outcome on the other side of the risk to take the risk once I had a dream or a vision of like, man, I could help. So for me, you know, my business started out in the music space teaching musicians how to record music and set up a home recording studio. Hmm. That’s how I started my first YouTube channel. That was the skill I had. GC (13:21): And so once I saw a vision of like, well, I, it’d be so fun to help musicians be so fun to be able to talk about music. And I was a freelancer at the time and do a little bit of everything. That was a big enough desire that made me want to take the risk. ’cause I had no idea what the business model was. I didn’t know who Amy Porterfield was. I didn’t know any, I didn’t know what a course was. This is 2009. You know, I’m like starting out in the dark ages and like trying to figure this out. But I think desire gets you past the risk. So if you’re gonna build a personal brand, don’t build the brand that you think you should build or someone else is building or build the business model the way you think. You, you’ve gotta really be excited about the thing you’re building to get you to take the risks necessary. And like you said, like horse correct along the way to get anywhere meaningful. And without that, I just don’t think we’re gonna take the risk. Mm-Hmm. RV (14:07): . I love that. Okay, so Rebel is the acronym. So that’s, that’s the first one. What’s the e GC (14:15): The e is to establish the outcomes you want in life. So if we’re resolving to dream again at the beginning, big picture dreams. I walk people through a 50 dreams exercise in the book. The E is to establish the outcome. So now we get clear on vision, right? And this is more of, okay, what what do I specifically want my life to look like? And I love, I kind of stole this question from Rich Lipin which is this just the simple scenario of imagine it’s three years from today, and I bump into you Rory, and I’m like, Rory, I haven’t seen you in three years. How the heck are you buddy? And you’re like, Graham, it has been the best three years of my life. I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s amazing. Let’s grab a coffee. Sit down. Tell me, tell me about that. GC (15:00): What would you be telling me about what would have to be true for you to say to me? It’s been the best three years of my life. And what I like about this journal prompt or thought exercise is two things. One, it’s open-ended. ’cause It’s not business related. It could be, it could be your family, it could be your finances, it could be whatever. But also it’s the timeframe of three years. Like, I’m not, like, I’m a big planner on the strength finders. I’m high on futuristic. I live in the future to my detriment a lot of times at the expense of the present. But 10 years, like people having a 10 year plan, it’s really, really hard because 10 years is so far down the road. I’m either gonna be highly unmotivated to take action today. Totally. It’s a decade away or I don’t know who I’m gonna be in 10 years. GC (15:43): 10 years ago I was a totally different person. And so it’s just a tough thing to project one year. Like I, I kind of like New Year’s resolutions ’cause they give you a lot of urgency to like, let’s freaking go. And I like the, the boost of adrenaline, but then it’s hard to change your life in a year. And so you get discouraged and you give up three years, you’re close enough to who you kind of can project who you’re gonna be and what season of life you’re gonna be. And you can look at your kids, you can look at your life and go, I can kind of see in three years where I might be. So that’s, it’s reasonable to assume some things. And yet I think you and I both know that we can do a lot of damage in 36 months. Like we could change our body in 36 months. I could change my marriage in 36 months. I could transform my business in 36 months. And so that three year question allows people to go from dreaming big picture to man, what do I really care about that I would say it’s been the best three years of my life. What would have to be true? And now I have some specific outcomes I wanna move towards. RV (16:39): Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. I agree with that. I I love that the three year window. I, I think the, there’s also something powerful about, yeah, 10 years feels far. One year. It’s like you tend to over, you tend to overestimate what you can do in a year. But like by the time you’re an adult, you, you can look back at your own life and go, well, three years, like that was basically high school. Think of how much I changed when I was in high school or that was middle school. Think about, I went into middle school basically as a kid and then come out as like a teenager, right? So there’s like, you can look, you can look back in your life or college, right? It’s like four years. So three to four years you can look back in your own life and go, I see evidence of how radical a life can change in that window of time, physically, mentally, you know, spiritually. So there’s a, it’s long enough that you can do real change, but it’s short enough people can still get their mind around it. And they’ve kind of had those like little seasons, those little windows of of time and mm-hmm. . So I love that. So in, in that, you are basically just answering that question, what would need to happen in the next three years for you to be able to say you’d have your, your best life ever? And you’re just like writing that out. The answer to that question, GC (18:01): Yeah. You start to journal it out. There’s some sub-questions you can ask yourself. Like once you see that vision, like what are the opportunities in front of me right now that could get me to that vision that are just low hanging fruit? And then the opposite, what are the obstacles that I could foresee, external obstacles, internal obstacles that would prohibit me from making that vision come a reality. But the reason we do all this stuff, right, is like, and, and I have this with clients who come to me and say, Graham, I wanna, I wanna make a hundred thousand dollars a year in my business. And, and I’m like, Hey, go, go do this exercise. Go do the three-year vision. They come back and what it does is it exposes what they uniquely want. And I had a client who wanted a hundred thousand dollars a year in his business. GC (18:42): He wanted me to help him scale up. But when he came back from this exercise, what he discovered was actually what I want is to move to Florida and live closer to the beach so I can ride my bike or walk on the beach every day with my wife. I want to be able to have my wife stay home with our kids and work with me in the business. So my four kids, me and my wife are all at home together. We have more time together and we’re getting to work on something together. I want to be able to travel a little bit more and I want to be able to replace my car. Like he had very specific things and he was like, I wanna be working out every day. Like he had mapped all this out and he realized I don’t need a hundred thousand dollars a year, a month in my business to create that vision. GC (19:20): ‘Cause The money is where as I coach business owners a lot, that’s where their minds go is a a dollar amount. But I’m like, the money is a just a vehicle. You really have a business to create the life you want and serve your life, not have your life serve your business. So like what, what kinda life do you want? And that’s gonna be different for Rory and me and my clients. Like, you’ve gotta get clear on what you uniquely want. And the reason why as a business owner, if you’re a personal brand, is that well then now you’ve got a much clearer vision to give yourself permission to not do what she’s doing, what he’s doing, what the trends say to do if it’s not in alignment with your vision. So if your vision is to work less than than 20 hours a week in your business, you probably shouldn’t be taking on a, a model of business that requires you to pump out content all day, every day. GC (20:06): And you’re a slave to the business. ’cause You’re now sacrificing your vision for making money. What if it got you to be curious about, is there another way to make money but have my vision of working less than 20 hours a week if that was part of your vision. So that’s where it starts to get more personalized to you so you know how to design your life and not just float. ’cause In personal branding, you’re gonna, everyone’s gonna copy everyone, but you’ve got some of the biggest clients in the world and everyone sees them, the Ed Millets and the Amy’s and all these people and be like, oh, I should just do what they’re doing. But maybe that’s not best for you and your personal brand. Mm-Hmm. Or your season of life or your unique challenges or your special needs child or your whatever. You gotta really get clear on what you want to do and make your business fit. That, that’s part of my heartbeat when it comes to business owners specifically. RV (20:50): Mm-Hmm. . Yeah, totally. I I mean I was thinking about that ’cause our youngest just turned five and, you know, it’s, it’s been such, such a wild ride and you know, it’s, it’s been the most beautiful thing, but also very difficult. I mean, like the last seven years of my life have been extraordinarily difficult, you know, growing up for most of my young years without a dad not knowing what it means to be a dad, not knowing how, how this, you know, looks and had no expectation whatsoever. I would never been around young kids. And it was like, it was hard. And, you know, I was, part of it was celebrating me. It was like, man, I feel like we’re finally turning in a corner of like the kids having some autonomy and me being able to just like, sleep through the night. I mean, it was just literally like, I basically went seven years without sleeping through the night. RV (21:39): I mean, like, it, it was hard. And, and I was thinking about that to myself and I was going, you know, people don’t give themselves enough grace for the season they’re in. Right? It’s like you’re looking at someone online who’s blowing up and it’s like if you got newborn kids, like you’re living in a completely different universe. Like you’re, you’re not even, you’re not even in the same game, the same league. Certainly not the same field. Like you’re in a completely different universe. And just having that, you know, both the dreams for your own life, but also the grace of failure of like, if it’s not happening so fast, it’s like, dude, there’s, you know, and, and having kids not having kids, it’s like, it’s two different universe, I mean, happening on this planet. Like they, they they’re completely different. Yeah. And each one has different, you know, things that come along with that. RV (22:31): And so I love that. And, and so, so the acronym y’all, R-E-B-E-L. If you want to know the rest of the acronym, you need to go get the book. Okay. So the book is called Rebel. By the time you’re hearing this, the book is out or really close to being out. So you need, you can, you can go get Gram’s book. I, I have one more thing I want ask you about before I let you go Graham, but like, but before I do that, where should people go if they wanna like get the book, learn about you, you know, stay in touch, et cetera? GC (23:02): Yeah, the rebel book.com will get you directly to the book. And if it’s before it comes out, there’s some pre-order bonuses there. But graham cochrane.com, the Graham Cochrane show, or on Instagram, the only place I hang out online is at the Graham Cochrane. RV (23:17): Cool. cool brother. So the last thing I always wanted to hear your thoughts on a little bit is how you build a business not working a hundred hour a week. I know this is something that you have made a focus in your life. I know that this is something that you have done. I know this is something that you have coached and advise people on. I would love to just hear a few of your tips or pointers around that and going like, I think a lot of people do think, I mean, entrepreneurship is hard. I mean, let’s, let’s be real. It’s, it’s like, I think there’s a, a lot of truth sometimes to that whole, like, you know, you quit a job working 40 hours a week for someone so you can go work 80 hours a week for yourself. RV (24:03): And a lot of times that is pretty, and then my experience has been that that is often true, especially like the first couple years. But like, you also have the freedom to design a business differently. So how do we design a business that works that way? The other thing I’ll say about you is I love meeting your family and I really learn a lot and like all I need to know about a person by meeting their family just to go like, you know, is this someone who’s just trading what’s happening at home for something else? Which is not necessarily good, bad, right or wrong, it’s not. It’s just, but I, I’m always very curious, especially of like people’s kids and things like that. And yours are so wonderful and your wife is so wonderful. So it’s, it’s powerful to me to to to go, alright, here’s someone who’s who’s doing this. And, and while, while they’re able to have this like really wonderful, beautiful family. So talk to about, talk to us about that a little bit. GC (25:01): Oh, thank you so much, man. And likewise, your family is a, is a, a, a treat to meet them and see them. And AJ is such a classy, classy person, and Shay’s really loved getting to know her. And I think they’re trying to stick together in their little small group inside this mastermind. But looking forward to doing more life with you guys. Man, I think we, we want the same things, right? Which is you really care about your family and you care about your faith and you care about other people and probably your community. And those are all things that are a time commitment. And so from day one, when I started my business, I was on food stamps. I was newly married, new baby planning a church. I was like a volunteer worship leader. Like I, I was like, I know God’s telling me to start a business, but there’s no way it can be a hundred hour a week business. GC (25:48): It just can’t. ’cause I, I am volunteering 20 hours a week at this startup church. I’m trying to become a dad for the first time. I’m, I’m still a couple years into marriage. So it has, I had parameters from day one that had to fit in. And so that was my set of circumstances, which I’m really grateful for because it taught me to understand something that’s just so simple, but it takes effort on the front end to do, which most business owners don’t do, which is really do the hard work of, of an 80 20 analysis on your business. Like I think people hustle because they’re lazy. I think hustle is just a, a form of laziness in disguise because people are, haven’t done the hard work of sitting down and slowing down and saying, what of the tasks I’m doing in my day, week, month, what of the offers I have, what are the lead gen strategies I have really are the, the 20% of the things I’m doing that are generating 80% of the results I need? GC (26:40): And that changes from season to season in business business. And I’m constantly putting everything under the gun, so to speak, of, prove to me that this task is worth it. Prove to me that that offer is worth it and I’m willing to let things go. Or I’m willing to not have the most perfect system as long as it gets me most of the results so I can do it in a minimal amount of time. And I became like a weirdo bro every year. I was like, I made it a game every January. How can I work fewer hours in my business this next year while increasing my income this year and just see what’s possible? And I haven’t always done it perfectly and economies change, things change. I’ve started a second business. That’s what I’m doing now. Now I’m writing and speaking and things are changing again. GC (27:21): But that’s always a mantra I have is I have to prove to myself that this task is worth it. I just think most business owners are doing a lot of activity and most of it isn’t moving the needle forward. It feels important, it might even look important, but I’m willing to not look as important. I’m willing to not look as active on social media or other places to have more of my time back and have the income and lifestyle I want. So it’s just a, it’s just a decision to analyze things and put it under the gun. RV (27:50): Yeah. That’s cool. I love that. I love that question. How can I work fewer hours this year while still growing the business? You know, that’s a AJ and I put constraints and parameters around our stuff. Like, you know, we’ve always said like, brand builders group cannot be more than 50 employees because then you get into all these other, like, it just becomes more complicated. There’s all these HR policies and like all these other things that come, come into play and it’s like, so what’s the most impact we can create with 50 employees? And it’s like, you have to go, what’s the impact per employee? What’s the revenue per employee? And it’s been really fun to, to fund to do that. We, we also, you know, we worked a hundred hour work weeks and the first business and brand builders, we said, we’ll work from nine to five and outside of that it’s up to God. RV (28:36): Like we, and so it’s like, how can I build a business? And this is the constraint. In, in AJ’s case, there’s two days a week and she, you know, she, she’d been trimming back more and more ever since we started to, to be, have more time with the kids. So I think it’s good to give yourself those types of parameters, those types of boundaries, those those types of challenge questions to go, how can I do this? Because if you ask the question how your brain will figure out the answer, it’ll start to cut what’s irrelevant. But if you don’t ask that, it’ll just fill the space with whatever shows up. So I really love that, Graham, I’m so excited about you and the book and just the, the future. I just, again, you know, we’re so proud of the people we get to work with as clients and just be a part of their journey and proud to hold people up and say like, look at, like these are the people who, who we get a chance to work with. RV (29:31): A lot of what I think we do that’s really brilliant at Brand Builders Group is we pick people who are gonna be successful with or without us and then we work with them right before they blow up . So I, that is, you know, part of my prayer for you too, brother and I, I think that’s happening like more and more. So thanks for your time here. Thanks for who you are. Thanks for what you’re, you’re putting out there in the world. Keep helping, keep serving brother and, and we wish all the best. Thanks bro. The feeling is a hundred percent mutual.

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25 of the World's Most Recognizable Influencers Share Their Tips on How to Build and Monetize a Personal Brand

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