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Welcome to the Never Been Promoted podcast with Thomas Helfrich. Get ready for a thrilling adventure as we uncover entrepreneurial journeys and life changing business insights every week. And now, your host, Thomas.
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Welcome to another episode of Never Been Promoted, where we unleash your entrepreneur within by learning from other entrepreneurs, from their journey, from things they wish they would have known or not known, wish or forgotten, too. And most of the time, most entrepreneurs realize they're always on a journey. Today, I'm joined by Kevin Dunlap. Kevin, you are the founder and lead trainer of the Optimal Performance Academy. I think it was based in New York, North Carolina. Did I read that right?
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We're in Raleigh, North Carolina.
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Raleigh, North Carolina. So take a moment, introduce yourself. You know, set the stage of how you became an entrepreneur. You know a little bit about your company and just kind of set the table for everyone listening.
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Sure. I actually became an entrepreneur kind of by accident. I was working at a, after getting out of the Navy, I went to college because I was falling under the old adage of go to school, get good grades, get a good job, and you'll be fine. And then I was working on this y two k project. I was a computer programmer way back in 99. That was a while ago, and I ended up getting downsized. And that's when I realized there's no security in job security. And then I went on a job interview, ended up it was a network marketing company, and that was my introduction into entrepreneurship. Before then, I always thought I had to be rich to be entrepreneur. But when, after I discovered that network marketing company, that got my, I got the role. I got everything going. Unfortunately, they went out of business like nine months later, and that left me kind of high and dry. And then I ended up, within another couple of years, I got into real estate, moved to Las Vegas, and started a real estate consultation business, which then eight years later, became a realtor and did that for another eight years, that was 16 years of entrepreneurship. The reason my company was formed that is that in 2021, while still living in Vegas, I wrote my fourth book, which is all about entrepreneurship. And then I shortly thereafter moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. And that's when I used that book as the catalyst to start my company. I always enjoyed teaching people and training people and stuff along those lines, and that's why I formed the academy, and that's what I do now. I do it through my online courses, through my coaching programs, and I just love helping other people. And that's why I call it an academy, because that's what entrepreneurs can come.
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To learn, and that's great. I mean, and this is, I mean, this is, there's a, it's part of where you are in your life, too, because I'm a newer entrepreneur, but it's been in me forever. And it's the reason I probably, I'm sure it's the reason I haven't been promoted because I just didn't really want to stay anywhere. I always wanted to find a one who doesn't break up with people like, you got to break up with me. So I've got the companies to break up with me. Say it that way. Next book will definitely be called not Neer Been Promoted, but rather asked to leave. Really good at that. So, Kevin, tell me about the academy. So someone shows up day one, you know, they're knocking on your digital door. Who is that that shows up? And what's the kind of the first things you do to help them?
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Well, I always try to find out where are they in their entrepreneurial journey? I mean, are they in a pre startup? Maybe they're working a job already and wanted to look something as a side hustle, something else to go on. Or maybe they are a startup. Maybe they're, you know, under six months, maybe even under a year. They're just starting up as that. As that they're maybe doing it full time, maybe doing it part time. Or they could be like, hey, I've been in business. I've been a coach for five years. I'm looking to take my, my business to the next level. So I create courses depending on what, where they are in their entrepreneurial journey. At the time of this recording, I'm actually creating three new coaching programs. So people could be at different places in their journey. Like, maybe they should write a book. Maybe they should start doing webinars. Maybe they should be on stage speaking to 50 or 100 people. So it all depends on where they are. And once we find out where their point a is, we try to figure out where is their point b and then what program or course that we have that can get them from a to b. It's always a discovery process.
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Yeah, and the a to b. So, like, in the systems that we help with people for when they're using LinkedIn to make money. Right. For my company, it's irrelevant. The a to b is a very simple concept that is sometimes over complicated. You're here and you want to go where. And if you can't answer the b to some form, everything in between doesn't really matter. Like, because you're not going anywhere then. And you can't answer all this.
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Ship without a rudder, right, is the analogy that's been used before.
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Well, even. Even a ship without a rudder will get impacted by tide. You're going to end up somewhere. You're just not going to choose where it's going to be. Probably into some rock you don't want to hit and be stranded. And the idea is, an entrepreneur, they come to you because they're a little bit lost. They know there's something calling. They just don't know, can I go chase that? Should I? Where do I go for it? And maybe we'll take the specific example of coaches. So coaching is a very, I think, logical step to entrepreneurship. I jokingly say coaches are the cockroaches of LinkedIn. They're everywhere. You can't get rid of them, but they're absolutely necessary. And so I'm coaching just to be full disclosure. So I get to call myself cockroach, I guess. But tell me about that, because it's, you know, making content's frightening. I know. I know for myself. Do lots of podcasts, lots of videos. We're filming our first courses here in 2023 at the end of the year. So the last two weeks of my year is just filming coursework. And I'm like, I'm not sure what I'm creating sometimes. And let me ask you just, you know, as a coach out there about to Begum, you're gonna have the same question. If it's not in your head, it's coming. Should I just film what I know, speak to the camera, then let my teams go visualize it and take pieces and do the edit? Or what's the process for a coach to create their courses so they both. They best help their potential customers? Cause I know I'm struggling with that. And maybe if you can give that little nugget of advice, I'm gonna take a note and learn, and I think others would as well.
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Well, I'm going to not quote, but use the concept my book writing coach gave me back in 2016 when I was writing my second book is basically, is to go ahead and basically outline what is it that you want to cover. And then when you outline that thing and you put it, like, on one or two sheets of paper and then start breaking it down into more logical chapters. If it's a book or modules, if it's an online course, and then each module or each section of book, they don't have the chapters, and the chapters will have the subchaps. So you just start organizing this on paper. And what he suggested that I do is that each, if I decide that I was going to write 22 chapters in my second book is to get 22 sheets of paper and I get all the concepts that was on the one sheet of paper and then start putting them in. This is going to be chapter two. This would be chapter five. This will be in chapter seven. And once you have that outline, then you can start creating the content. So when you have a structure, a very logical structure, it makes the content flow a lot easier. Now, in my case, when I wrote my second book that gave me my first draft, I had four drafts to that book. So I just went and created the content, and that's, let me go and re edit it and re edit it and re edit that. That was the book. If you're creating an online course, it's kind of the same thing. You may, you may go and you're in section two or module two, and you're covering lesson number three and record something like, what? Did I like that? Or I did not like that. Do I want to re record it or do I have it? Lead that up to the magic of editing. Even if you're doing the editing yourself now, I mean, if you have a team, that's much better, but if you're doing everything on your own, and sometimes the magic of editing. Now, I will say this. If you're editing by yourself, it is okay to have cuts where you, where you're, like, you're facing the camera and then your head is slightly askew because you cut something out. You see that in movies. In movies they have, they have transition. Like they go from a wide shot to maybe another angle to cover those. To cover those in continuities. However, it is okay to have that when you're, when you're doing a course. I mean, I'm sure if you've ever taken anybody's course, there's going to be, there's going to be those kinds of cuts. So to me, just outline, get your, get your ideas together, outline it, and then just go and create the material.
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It's interesting, too, because I know when you have to say it, show it, see it, it's kind of a good video format, right? And so when you say it, you're on camera, you're talking about what it is. What I find is if you keep those things shorter where you can do one or two minutes, hey, now let's dive into it. You can just do voiceover after that and you could be clicking on your screen, recording your screen, and then it's easier to edit. A lot easier because then you can say, I'm going to go back and do that voiceover as I click through here. So when you're showing stuff and at the end when you say it, you're like, hey, so here's what the cap is. You can literally read the things that you're going to go put on the screen later and that say it, see it, show it is a really nice format for content that I know has worked. And as I'm getting ready to film these courses, we're doing exactly that. So this is a good use for case for AI as well. Here's my course. Can you help me create the outline things to consider, the quiz questions at the end? Whatever it is, it does a really good job for that. And does it be perfect? No, but it's a start. And just put it out there and get feedback from your course, maybe, right. And get feedback from your clients of what to go do next. So how do you take someone and involve them through that process? So we're going to focus on maybe a coach here because they come to you. How do you help them navigate the interactions? They, you know, every good plan is great until someone shoots at you. Right. And so the customers come back and go, yeah. How do you help them navigate that next phase once they start interacting with the real world, with their plan?
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The thing is just to. The funny thing is, in some cases, it's just all you need to be is like one or two steps or even three steps ahead of them so, so that you can guide them. I remember when I was a, in college, I was actually a, what they call a teaching adjunct. And I was taking this one course that I had to be the teacher of. They're not the teacher of, but I conducted the recitations, which I would work with the. With the students to cover their questions on the homework and stuff like that. There was one class called engineering math two, if I don't know what that is, that's basically calculus five. So it's really advanced. And to be honest with you, I did not know anything about that coordinate. I was learning just the same type the students were. And I had one recitation that was 30 minutes after the course. So, I mean, I was like learning really fast so I could go teach it. And I mean, the thing is, I was just read that one step ahead. Now you're talking about, you know, every plan is a good planet to. Somebody starts shooting at you. The thing is, yes, you have to be adaptable as well. But the thing is just to stay confident. You are the professional and they came to you for help, so make sure that you keep that in mind. Now, you also mentioned some stuff like with AI. And AI is a very powerful tool if you know how to use it correctly. And I would say sometimes going to chat GBT or bard or chat being or, you know, whichever, those three content creators that you like and just start writing up or just start doing different scenarios and see. And then, so at least you're somewhat prepared. So you may have a plan a, may backfire, but that doesn't mean plan b. You can go right into plan b or plan C. Yeah.
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And your own journey. What's something you wish you would have known, or what would you go back 20 years and tell yourself?
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I would say hired. Yeah, I hired a coach back in 2003. It was a. An investor coach through rich dad, poor dad, and he's the one. I was living in Wilmington, North Carolina, at the time, which is coastal North Carolina. And he, and this was 2003, he was talking about how great the real estate market is out west, especially Las Vegas. And that is the reason I moved to Las Vegas in January or fourth, because it was because of my coach. Not only that, I actually met up with him, and I actually did business with him for like four or five months after I moved to Las Vegas. My thing is now is that I have learned, and this is from just being on other shows as well, is that a lot of the times I went the free route? No, let me go learn this on my own. I don't need a coach. I don't need somebody to help me with this. I don't need something help with that. And I found out that going the free route is by far extremely expensive. It is the most expensive route to go. Even now at this time, I went with a new CRM, and I wish I would have hired a coach a year and a half ago because I'm stunned, like, oh, this is how you're doing it? How much money did I lose? Because I didn't have all these conversations? Conversions. So going the free route is usually by far the most expensive because it's lost revenue. It's lost time of trying to figure things out on your own.
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Oh, 100%. I mean, you do have to have investment to make an investment sometimes, to be fair, but you do need time to understand your own world, so you should try things yourself. So we encourage people to try themselves. Things like just try legion, try your own website, whatever. But as soon as you get investment and you really getting serious about it, hire an expert. Now when you do that, I would have to guess you'd agree with this statement. Hire deeply. What I mean is actually interview people really get to understand do they have a clue, are they two steps ahead of you or 30? And figure out how far in advance this person is and are they the right fit for you? Because I think that's a lot of people's fear. Is this person going to really help me and, or not? And am I going to make this investment? And the truth is they probably know more than you. They're going to help you to some degree also. I think the flip side of that is, will you do what they say to do? So if you're the person who's like, yeah, I'm going to take a coach, but I know I'm not going to do anything, don't hire a coach, then you're not coachable at that point. So do you have any regrets along the way?
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Quite a few regrets. I mean, I was running a real estate consultation business starting in 2004 and my business strategy kind of had to change. When 2008, 2009 came around, we had the housing crunch and my business model was built on the idea of appreciation and it's hard to have appreciation in a declining market. So yeah, I've got many, many regrets. Sometimes I look back and I look at something, why did I make these decisions? What I did? And maybe at the time I thought they were wise, but now I've learned that they were not necessarily wise. And like you just said about hiring deeply, that's a very good statement because I've seen a lot of people go in, including myself, who make an investment in with somebody only to come to find out that that person was not the ideal person that I've gone with. And I've seen this all the time. Somebody build your website. And the person building the website, the actual doing the work is not very, let me call it in a nice way, is not very efficient. And therefore the owner of the business now spent a 1000, 2000, $3,000 on a crappy website. Make sure that you check somebody, make sure that they are decently ahead of you, and then also look at their referrals. Have them find out from other people that have worked with them in the past. That's why you go to things like Google. I don't know if you guys ever heard of this called Google when you say this restaurant always got a four star review or three star review. So definitely look at those kinds of reviews as well. And if you're running a business, on a side note, if you're running a business, always ask for a review. Not only ask for a review, ask for a five star review.
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Actually, you're right. I'll even extend that. So specifically in the website, the guy who pays the lease usually pays twice. That's another one to live by. So if you pay $1,000 for a website, you're probably going to pay another thousand six months later for another website. Just in general, as a guy who's done that, just to be fair, the five star review is an interesting piece. Here's a tip for you entrepreneurs, anybody, when you send for someone, and we have a referral system as part of our thing, that's how you become instantly relevant. When someone goes, hey, go work with them. And it skips all the marketing stuff and you got a customer, ask for not only a five star review, and if they don't have it, give them a channel to let them know why say, hey, if you don't think it's five star, can we talk? I want to hear why that gives you good feedback. But secondly, send them, hey, here's a sample review. Make sure it's unique. Use AI to help generate it. If you want to with your brand points, your keywords and things, give it to them and say, and don't give it the same one to the same person, more than one person, but say, make it your own. But here's a starting point, because what happens? People go, oh, thank you. Because I didn't want to have to write that. But they'll take that in pot copy and paste that in there, maybe change a word or two. And now you've got an SEO friendly, keyed on brand point referral from somebody and you made it very easy for them to post. Get in the link. Here's what we'd love. When people say, here's a few options, make it your own if you don't think it's five, Stark, here's my old accounting link. Let's talk. And so most people will give you the five if they're anywhere in the bar ballpark. And you probably shouldn't be asking somebody for a review if you don't know it's a anyway, you should be asking.
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For feedback at that point because you can go to all kinds of review websites like Yelp. But I'm also a big proponent of your Google business profile, formerly known as Google my business. They changed it. They changed. The name is to go and figure out exactly where that link is. Get that link. Get it. Get that URL. Keep it on your, I don't know, in a spreadsheet somewhere if you know how to do a subdomains and redirect or redirect or somebody will go to your website forward slash review and it takes them to there. That makes it so much easier for you to ask for, to ask for that. Now when I've given reviews, I mean, I do have given some good reviews myself, however, most recently. And Thomas, I don't know if you agree with this or not, but when somebody was, hey, can you give me a recommendation? I actually went to chat GBT, put into the person scenario and had chat GBT write the recommendation and then I go and change it around to author more personalized to me. So I mean, there's so many, there's so much stuff that's available right now in 2023 24. And whenever you listen to this show of technology out there to help you grow and just be open to it.
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Yeah, absolutely. And I know when I have a more complex sale or I blew it on a proposal, like I just, whatever, like you just like I totally missed the mark on what I was supposed to send there. I use GPT to kind of say, hey, here's what the ideas are. Can you help me form an email to get this, you know, to convince them to come back? Or can you write the proposal portions to be in line with these strategies, with time? And it's so good at doing that because it helps you not have to mess it up or miss things. And so use these technologies, entrepreneurs, anybody, really, not to replace you, but to help you in the difficult spots where you need a little clarity and you need a little, you need a coach and you need somebody who knows what else to do. That's a good use of tech. Tech is an AI coach. I say it that way not as a life coach, but as someone to execute coach.
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Little trick that I'd like to share with your people is if you're going to be doing something more complicated in chat DBT or the other ones, since you hit the reenter button or the carriage return, whichever you want to call it, to go to the next line, you cannot do that in chat GBT because once you hit that little carriage return button, it's going to start answering your stuff. So if you've got more complex things that you want to be asking chat GPT, go to Microsoft Word, write it out in paragraph form there. You could have multiple paragraphs, then copy paste that over the chat. That way you can get more detailed results.
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Awesome. That's great. It's a good point. And sometimes we screwed up to start a new chat.
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You do not want to try to fix going down because chat GPT is learning for that one particular chat what you're wanting. And if you start going sideways, start over.
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Yep. And don't forget, if you've put customer instructions in your chat GPT, that sometimes it influences into other chats. Like, why does it keep saying about that? I don't. Why do they keep talking about Atlanta? I'm like. And I go anyway, so just be aware of that. The journey is an interesting one. So you talked a little bit about your past and kind of current state stuff you're doing. You're at time zero again, though, right? What are you doing to prepare for the future?
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I mean, I still set goals of what I want, where I want to go. And I have, and I have a different formula than most people do with goals. And I don't go to the smart formula. So I go with like a smart e formula which has the extra y on the end, which stands for, you know, what is your, why? Why are you doing this? So I set my goals, but I do definitely focus on why is that important? Why do I want to go there? Because if you don't, a goal, a smart goal without a why is a dream. So, you know, where do I see myself going? My goal at this particular moment in time is to help 1000 entrepreneurs to hit the six figure level, which is eight to 10,000 a month. That way, then they can quit their job or do whatever they want to do. So that's my tangible goal now. I'd rather set goals that are business, business related goals. I'd rather set them as external goals instead of internal goals. Because if I set external goals and I achieve the external goal, then my internal goal is set by default. So that's something I learned about 13 years ago.
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Yeah. And one of my favorite books is atomic habits. My goal is just to execute the process as intended every day and thoughtfully. And it's producing results. It's not to look at a bank account and go, okay, when we get to this much operating capital, I'll do X it, just show up every day, get the meetings, go execute your plan. You have creative moments, put them into the right spot of priority. But the goal is to execute the process every day. And then when you do that, you get results. And if you're not getting results, your goal is to execute a better process. But I agree, and I think you talked about something there that I love to address. Being an entrepreneur doesn't mean you have to be ELon musk. You don't have to make a millionaire. Most people never breathe that rare air in life. Your company will. Many people will never have that rare air breed in their company either. A millionaire. Revenue, let's say $100,000 a month of revenue, is a lot of revenue. And it's not in the big world, it's not. But for someone starting a business, that's a ton of money, typically, because making it on a commercial side would be nearly impossible unless you're in the top one of one of 1% of people making money in the world. So just so be realistic. Making $120,000 a year on your own business is a really good lifestyle. Now, if you're making a half million before, your mind is going to be different. But if you're making about that now, maybe you're making more. 120 made on your own is a lot more fun than 150 being paid from somebody else. I still love it when I get a little check for $300 or something we have on the side. It's like, it's kind of fun, kind of tickles. It's mine. It's like something I just created. Never. It wasn't there. Would you agree, though? Or maybe I say it differently. What's your opinion on then? On when entrepreneurs come in from their mindset of, oh, I'm going to be a millionaire, or are they? Tell me. Take me both ways. Some people, are they not aiming high enough or some, are most entrepreneurs coming in aiming too low?
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I think there's some people, because I just had a phone call the other day with a guy that was not able to afford my coaching processes. But he says, I'm used to making 4 million a year ago. I'm not that expensive.
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I'm also like, how much cocaine and hookers were you partaking in the blow through? 4 million. Do you have a boat and a yacht? And a plane?
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I mean. Exactly. So he's trying to build another business. It was just, it's what I call Biprenor, is when two people are working together instead of just a solopreneur. And it was him and his and his partner were trying to grow a business, and they wanted to grow it into a state figure level business, and they weren't even, you know, they weren't making much, any money at all at this point in time. So that, to me, that is part of the smarty goal, or smart goals as well, is the a. It has to be attainable. So that is, that is probably too lofty. I'll say. Set other goals that you can have as milestones on your way to that bigger goal. Now, a lot of people also set goals that are too low as well. So. And in my opinion, if they're setting a low goal, maybe it's even just a proof of concept kind of goal. Okay, let's get you to that goal as quickly as possible so that we can set you at a more lofty goal.
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Agreed. I think a lot. And the problem with goals are you've effectively limited yourself now to something. And I think, I love the analogy of golf. If your goal is to make a birdie, you usually don't make one. It's usually, it's the process of getting there. Start with just trying to get it between the tree lines, then try to get it somewhere on or near the green, and then try to get as close to your hole, the hole as possible. And occasionally it goes in. The more often you do that, the more birdies you get. The more often you try to get a birdie off the tee, the more often you get a double. So anyway, let's, you know, it's kind of the show I always like to kind of, like, give you an opportunity. Tell me about who you want to come contact you. How should they do that? But also, you know, what do they get when they, when they meet with you?
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I do offer a 45 minutes complimentary discovery session where I basically go through 13 different questions, and essentially I just find out, who are you and where are you right now? Where is it you want to go? Why is this important to you? So we can start painting that picture of you being able to achieve that goal. And if we do seem to work well together, then, and we both decide to work with each other, then we can move forward with one of our programs, either one of our online courses, one of our solo coaching programs, or one of our group coaching programs. So depending on where it is that you want to be. So that's, that's why we're offering so much. So the type of people that I typically work with are usually going to be, as we already mentioned, a solopreneur or biprenor. Typically, they're going to be in some kind of information space. They have their own intellectual property. They could be a coach, they could be a trainer, they could be a yoga instructor, a realtor, somebody that provides their own intellectual property, or maybe a specialized service. Again, like a realtor or maybe a chiropractor, and, and they have to fall into what I call the safe formula, the s for safe sense that they need to be serious. This is not, I'm not teaching hobbyists. I'm. I want people that are actually want to achieve something bigger. They want to get to that six figure income level. The. The a stands for they have to be adaptable, which means they have to be teachable. You said this earlier, somebody that's, that comes to me that say, I want to. I want to hire a coach, but you, I want to do everything my way. You're not teachable. The f stands for they have to be financially willing to invest in themselves. If you're somebody that cannot afford something like our level of coaching, then this is not going to work for you. Which is kind of like the same as the a is. They have to be eager. Now, Les Brown says one of his catchphrases is, you got to be hungry. So I want people who are not only adaptable and serious, but they also have to be eager that they really, they're really committed to doing something different and they can reach out to me. It's okay. Okay. You can just go to our website. Actually, here, this is my calendar redirect link. It's just our website, which is optimalperformanceacademy.org discovery. So again, that's optimalperformanceacademy.org discovery. And that will redirect you to my calendar link, which, which you can get onto my calendar. And I have it set up that it has to be at least one day in advance. So you're not going to be able to schedule a call on the same day.
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Right. That's a good rule. Because what happens is sometimes you're taking your kid to chest and all of a sudden you're like, I can't meet.
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Oh, darn. I didn't see that thing was coming up.
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So just for an entrepreneurial standpoint, right. It doesn't give you time to send them something, remind them of things. So there's some marketing can happen between, if you push it out a little bit and also you can get out people who are a bit impulsive and maybe trying to sell you stuff as well. Tell me. We kind of move to like a hot seat kind of piece where we kind of have a conversation about things that just help entrepreneurs. One is around technology. So maybe my first question on the hot seat part is, what technologies are you really excited about? The one I always talk about. I love calendly. They're not a sponsor of the show, but I love that. That saves me a ton of time. GPT, what about you? What's maybe one or two technologies that you're leveraging that you find to be just super helpful?
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My calendar happens to be through my CRM. Therefore accountability is a great program. I've used it in the past. I think the other one is acuity. It starts with an a. My CRM has a calendar. I have eight different calendars. So I love the CRM that does that. But I'm going to save some of my favorite technologies that I'm playing a lot more with right now. Number one is chat GBT. That was a life changer for me this year. I'm using that chat probably sometimes eight or nine times a day. I mean, I use it to come. I use it for, to create the titles of my programs, the outlines of my courses, topics of trainings I'm going to give. How do I write a five star review for this one? I use it a lot. Probably. The other one that I like is another AI program. I'm playing around with it more. It's called Playground AI.com. And Playground AI is basically where you go. There's a free and a paid version. We can go and create your own images from scratch. So you just put in the prompt I want. One of the prompts I had was, it was for one of my blogs. It was a picture of a woman in a suit with a tie doing yoga.
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Interesting.
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I want to show life work balance or business work balance. So I want a businesswoman. She's also doing yoga at the same time in a suit. So you're not going to find that on Google. And I couldn't use it anyway if I find it on Google because that's going to be a royalty issue. But the thing. So I'm really liking a playground AI. I'm really also getting very heavy into AI. There is a. There is a chrome extension called Glass and glass. Oh, my goodness. I wish I had this a few years ago, back when I had my podcast. Glass is a YouTube AI tool where you go to. When you go to YouTube and you have that. That chrome extension turned on, it will. And you click on, you click on a YouTube video, it will transcribe that video within a couple of seconds. So I've done this a couple of times where I went to like a 1314 minutes interview and it took like three or 4 seconds to transcribe the entire video. Then it connects to chat GBT, and then it will give you a. What do you call it like a show notes or just highlights of that, of that conversation. And this will be done in under 1 minute.
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Yeah, that's a, that's a massive time savings. We use a thing called Whisper Wysper AI and you upload the file and it creates the post the show notes and there's a bunch of these that are out there and they're also very good from a sales standpoint too. So in a sales meeting you can upload the companions into GPT four. So there's one here in Zoom, those are great as well that say hey, listen, to create an email that just as a summary of the meeting and next steps and what you'll do in your meetings, you'll be more effective because you know you're going to ask your GP, your AI to do that. So you can go through and say hey, so what do you guys want to do as next steps and let the customer or client. And then you do that. And so that kind of stuff is a good use of technology to keep you accountable but also influences your behavior in the future. What's your favorite business book? Or at least a must read business book? Can't name your own. You can't name your own. If you want, I don't care.
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But four, but okay, you can name.
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One of yours and somebody else. One ears and somebody else.
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Well, my most recent book is called launch the a to z and creating a successful business. And that was the catalyst that formed the academy. It was because of that book. So I would highly suggest that. But there's two books that I would highly recommend for all small business owners. One, I guess could be a little bit outdated now because of AI, but it was by Tim Ferriss. It was a four hour work week and I'd like some of the topics that he has in there. He even has his own acronym that he uses in that book, but which is called Deal Dal. The second book I would highly recommend. Most people mispronounce it, but I'll give you the real name and then what most people call it. The name of the book is called e myth revisited. Most people just say e myth because revisited is technically the second edition. The first edition came out about a few years prior. So it's called e myth revisited. And in that book he talks about the three different types of or levels in the business from the, from the, what do they call it? The daytime, the specialist, the manager and then the investor and most people. And when I read that, but you have to get past the first four chapters and not get pissed off, because that book made me angry. And it basically said that if you're an expert at your job and they use that baker and then you want to open up your own bakery, that chances of your success because you're the expert is much higher, that you will fail. Why is that? Like, because you're the specialist. You don't know how to be the manager. You don't know how to be the investor. You don't know how to be the business owner. You know how to bake goods. But if you were to start, let's say, if you're a baker and say, no, I'm going to open up my own flower shop, your chances of success are much higher.
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That's my. That was my first audiobook. It was the e myth revisited. So I think e myth, and I've done them both, I believe. And the biggest takeaway I look from all that was work on your business, not in it. And so if you keep yourself in a job, like, I know they said a lot of words in those books, but that was the one big takeaway I took. It's like, work on it, not in it. And so that's. That's a solid. That's a solid choice.
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Or even a third book would be like, say, rich dad, poor dad. And what you just said about that by working on your business, because, you know, you got the entrepreneur, the self employed, the business owner, and the investor. Most people are self employed. And if you're self employed, if you're in the s quadrant, you are working in your business. If you become the business owner, you're now working on your business.
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And when you, once you have teams and, you know, you can, you can step out for two weeks and maybe nothing changes, you're in a good spot. That's the. We're all strive for that. Do you have a, do you have a favorite quote you go to?
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Well, I'll go to two quotes. One is my quote, and I wrote this in my second book. And my. My quote is all it takes is one quarter second of non hesitation, and then you're in the moment. So that basically says, I'm gonna hit that enter button. I'm gonna hit. Then I'm not gonna hit anyone. Hit the enter button. You just sent that email. You're in the moment now. You just sent off that proposal. I came up with that quote, oddly enough, when I was in grad school, and I was wanted to see if I had the cojones to actually get into the stud business. So I actually started skydiving. And that quote came from skydiving. It's like, I'm holding on the start of the plane. I'm holding on the start of the plane, and then I just let go of destroy the plane. That not one moment not hits that, and I let go destroy the plane. Well, I'm skydiving now. There is no turning back.
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Oh, man, that's funny. Like, it's, uh. Let's see if I can be a stub man. Let me jump out of an airplane first. That's, that's entrepreneurship for you right there. That's pure, that's a great metaphor for entrepreneurship. I wanted to be an entrepreneur, so I just jumped out of a plane instead of training or anything else first. That's really good.
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You want to do the second quote?
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Yeah, please. So you had your first one, but what book was that from? That was, I was trying to get my head around. What was the book that you wrote that for?
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It was in my second book. It was called designing your own destiny. Design your own destiny, which is a book and workbook.
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We'll definitely put the links into the show notes for that. What was your other favorite quote?
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Well, this is a quote that I first heard when I was working for the network marketing company. And I think it was, I said, by J. Paul Getty, it could have been zig Ziglar, but I think it was Jay Paul gay. And he says, I'd rather make 1% of 100 people's efforts than 100% of my own efforts.
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I like that scale right there. If you were to summarize one entrepreneurial trait that's most important, what is it?
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I would say being able to dream. No. You know, because the thing is, I think what happens with most entrepreneurs is that they, they are their own worst critics. And, you know, we hear about this all the time. And how to do that, or, or they suffer from the imposter syndrome is to dream big and then set up that game plan to achieve it.
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So it's an interesting, it's a, I think you're the first person to answer that. To have the ability to have a vision, to dream big and dream often. The flip side of that is entrepreneurial add. So you have to stay focused on that one dream and not go balance on the next. But it is definitely a trait that is present in nearly every entrepreneur. If they've been thrust into it through by accident or chosen by themselves, it's usually there for them to survive. Listen, I appreciate all the time you've given today and being on the show. I want to leave you a few minutes just to once again say, hey, listen, this is how you get a hold of me. Any offers you'd like to go do, obviously, you sent one earlier, but just kind of restate, kind of, you know, who it is should come get in touch with you and how they should do that and what they should get.
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Well, again, if you're a solopreneur or a bipart, maybe even a small business for that matter, that you have your own, your own knowledge or your own specialized skill. I mean, again, it could be a trainer, it could be a coach, a health coach, life coach, business coach, you know, whatever. Or you have a specialized industry, like, say you're a realtor, a mortgage lender, home inspector, florist, chiropractor. So you have a specialized skill that you really want to build, then let's go ahead and have it sit down, have a chat again. Just go to our website, which is that the optimalperformanceacademy.org discovery that will redirect you to my calendar so we can actually have a 45 minutes discussion. And how can you build your business if we work together? Fantastic. That would be great. We have more time together. If not, then you would get a little bit of an education. So there is no harm and no foul there. And if you do schedule at that time, I do have part of a free giveaway. If you do that within, like, within 1 hour of our discoveries session, you will be given our very first program that we ever created. It's called roadmap for business success. It was based upon a webinar that we. That we're still continuously doing. And that covers the three biggest errors, or the three big. The three biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make that cause them to. That cause them to fail. And in that, and I strongly believe that the third mistake that we covered in that thing, once you start, like, oh, my gosh, I could do this, I can do that as well. Then this is how you maintain client retention, because one of the best things you can do is solve a problem for a client and then kind of find out, hey, there's another problem that was created that you can also solve for them as well. So now you've got client retention.
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That almost sounds like a Munchausen problems, to go solve them. Hey, got another problem. Got to go solve it.
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I'll give you an example of what I went through back in 2010. I started doing P 90 x, and I wanted to get from 240 pounds to 170 pounds in three months, in 90 days. That's a very lofty goal.
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That's an aggressive piece of body, or that's a pretty no.
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I started doing P 90 x, and then I was probably eating less than 1000 calories a day. So I was doing an extreme workout program with extremely low number of calories coming out. I didn't get to 170. I only got to 180, so I only lost 60 pounds. But, but when I bought that program, my goal, you know, that was my goal. But guess what? It caused me a lot more problems.
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Oh, yes.
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Once I got down to 180, guess what? Now what is my motivation? How do I stay motivated? My goal, the reason why I was doing it was in the past. And guess what? My clothes didn't fit anymore, so I had to go buy a whole new wardrobe. So me doing p 90 x, it was a great, it was a great solution. And I love the solution, but it caused more problems. So that is what the roadmap for business success is all about, is whenever you are creating your own things, like, what problems do you solve and then the solution that you're going to be solving for those people, what new problems that they're going to have? And can you solve those problems, or do you create an affiliate relationship with somebody else that solves those problems?
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So you heard it from Kevin. Don't work out. That's what I heard. And now you see how I got to the e myth tie back of. I learned one thing from the book. No, you're spot on with this. And so anyway, listen, if you guys want some advice and need a, you know, like a program, Kevin's the guy you come see. Kevin, thank you again so much for taking the time today to join theNeer Been Promoted podcast. And I think anybody still listening to at this point, good for you. You get five dad points. You can spend those however you like. My kids have hundreds of thousands of them. They still haven't spent it. But thank you so much for listening to the never been podcast where we unleash your entrepreneur. And until next time, take care.
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Thanks for listening to Never Been Promoted with Thomas Helfrich. Make sure to check the show notes for our guest contact information and any relevant links. Connect with Thomas personally at neverbenpromoted.com.