Impact Warrior
Impact Warrior
EP 1: The More You Let Go, The More You Let In with James Wedmore
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Welcome to the Impact Warrior podcast!
In this episode, I talk to James Wedmore, creator of Business By Design, Sales Page By Design, and host of the Mind Your Business Podcast. James’ online courses and trainings teach Digital CEOs how to build and scale their businesses, and I love that he is able to do it all with a focus on having FUN.
James talks about how learning to let go has allowed him to scale his business, what value there is in changing the way people think, and how our beliefs shape our lives.
James is always supporting entrepreneurs to achieve what he calls “quantum leaps” forward: big, explosive jumps ahead in progress, and in this episode he talks through his own leaps on the journey of starting his business.
It was an honor to talk to James and I think you’ll find him to be super wise and insightful. James generously shares his business lessons and life mottos, and there is a ton here that you can consider applying to your own path.
We’ll be releasing new episodes each week, so subscribe to Impact Warrior wherever you listen to podcasts to be the first to see when a new episode goes live.
Don’t forget to check the show notes after each episode for links, free gifts, and additional resources for our listeners! All episodes can be found at www.CaseyZeman.com.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
[10:49] What James considers the secret to his success. Personal growth doesn’t necessarily mean adding on.
[34:38] The two types of beliefs people have and how they get in our way
[55:47] James talks EasyWebinar, and how he’s made his funnel different with 30-minute webinars
[1:15:30] James on his motto, “The doing is the destination.”
To find out more about James, follow @jameswedmore on Instagram, James Wedmore on Youtube, and listen to his podcast, Mind Your Business. His trainings and more can be found at: https://www.jameswedmoretraining.com/
Links mentioned in this episode:
Where to Follow James Wedmore:
A special offer for our listeners:
> Click here to take advantage of EasyWebinar's 14-day FREE trial and start making your impact today!
Click here to check out a transcript of the show
Click here to check out a video of the show
Impact Warrior
Episode 1:
Full Transcript
Introduction: 00:00
You're listening to the impact warrior podcast. This podcast was created out of a vision to have like minded entrepreneurs who have faced similar battles and understand how difficult entrepreneurship can be. We will feature guests who are here to share with you how rewarding the journey can be. If you stay focused and disciplined to achieve the desires of your heart, every business owner will face a certain level of difficulty at some point, regardless of the industry. And we are here to share with you the story of warriors who have knocked down massive walls to inspire you to keep fighting on this journey. Let's conquer the journey together. And here's your host, Casey Zeman.
Casey: 00:43
Everybody, welcome to the show. I am super pumped because I get to interview James Wedmore. And I've known James for several years. I mean, back in the video marketing time period, like probably
James 00:59
I know how long I've known you. I'm curious if you know how long.
Casey: 01:02
I think over a decade.
James 01:05
It's been 10 years.
Casey: 01:06
It's been 10 years.
James 01:07
Yeah, I met you in 2011.
Casey: 01:10
Yeah, exactly. And, and so so for those of you who didn't, who do not know, James, but you should know James. He's an online entrepreneur who went from being a basically a broke bartender, to building an eight figure Empire helping people scale their businesses as a digital CEO. And James has a very successful podcast, woo-woo podcast, as you self proclaimed, woo, you went woo style, which I absolutely love. All around mindset called Mind Your Business, and his signature program, Business By Design has helped thousands of students. And I've just so loved your journey. And one thing I love that you say, is everything you've tried, you focus on the fun. You know, you try it. And that's, you know, so I was I was looking at it, and I've always known this about you, you know, surfing, keeping active energy, you know, the energy you put in your videos, the the fun that you that you show and express in your videos. It just shows that you can build a business around fun, yes, you still do hard work. That's not, you can't--they can go hand in hand. But I just love that you focus on the fun and excitement. And so, thank you for coming on the show.
James 02:29
I'm so happy and excited to be here, buddy. So thanks for thanks for having me.
Casey: 02:35
What? Okay, so, I'd like to I'd like to, you know, typically we talk about like the beginning, you know, where, how you started your company, you know, journey from like, the beginning to now. I know a lot of your beginning story because you and I, we would go you know, to the same conferences, and you know, I remember you dating Chelsea who is your wife, right? And I remember when you were dating Chelsea, and you're going through that process, so, so I've gotten to see like all of your like, you kind of grow. In 10 years, you see someone kind of grow up, you know, or, or at least try to grow to go through different seasons. So would you would you mind taking us through some some of your journey from the beginning, you know, like, as that video marketing person?
James 03:34
Sure, there's actually several beginnings. And I think that's one of the quote unquote, I always like to joke, "secrets to my success", is there's like a constant rebirth or innovation or, you know, re-creation of who I am my brand, what I'm doing. You see you see great musicians do this, you know, over the span of decades its because they reinvent themselves. They they reinvent their music, they switch genres are they invent a new one. And I didn't do that intentionally. I'm not I'm not out there trying to think like, how do I? It's just like, what's next? And I think it started with the idea that I think we're always growing. I think we're always becoming more of who we are stepping into more of our potential. But then there's the part of us that's always trying to hold on to what we've been because it's safe, and it's familiar. And so I just got really good at just saying F it, let it go, and what's next? And that's really scary. So when I started in, you mentioned the broke bartender, be my first thing back in 2007. That's a long time ago, especially internet years, was I created an online bartending course. I taught people how to bartend on the internet.
Casey: 04:56
So I remember bottles being thrown on your back. Over your back. You were totally Tom Cruise cocktail style.
James 05:02
Totally, exactly. So hopefully someone gets that reference. That's like an old, old film. That's but that was me. I learned how to do that. And what was driving that? The only reason I became a bartender was because I was doing very entrepreneurial stuff. And one of my best friends at the time, I'll never forget this. He said, "Dude, get a real effing job." That's what he said to me. And I was so impressionable. So like, "Okay, will you still be my friend if I get a job?" so I listened to him. And so I said, "What job do I want?" And the reason I went for bartender, was because I liked the idea, that's the entrepreneurial seed's kind of essence, coming out was, well, if I work harder, or I do more, I could make more money. And I think at the core, I think entrepreneurs get really excited about like, possibility, opportunity. Limitless like, oh, man, I, the more I transform, and the more I grow, the more whatever I can increase my potentiality for income, results, etc. And that's where I found that in bartending, and I hated it. I hated everything about it. In fact, I remember like listening on a TV show or a radio show or something, they listed the 10 worst jobs in America. And bartending was on that top 10 it is not as glamorous as talk Tom Cruise made it to be. But that's where I that's where I got my start is I said, F this, and I kept seeking, looking, looking, looking. And and I found myself putting videos on YouTube, and creating an online product, not knowing what the heck I was doing. I wrote a 220 page ebook on how to bartend. How to become a bartender. And that's how it all began.
Casey: 06:39
I love that.
James 06:40
You want me to keep going? I can go--
Casey: 06:42
So that was the first step. And that was your--
James 06:44
Yeah, yeah. I mean, what's been the most? So what I'm thinking is, what was the most impactful sort of reset or start over point for you? You know, like, like, this was this was the discovery of "Oh wait. I don't want to work for somebody else. I'm creating a course. I'm putting it out there." You started selling it, right? Yeah. So April 18, 2008 I made my first sale, changed my entire life. Wow, that's the first one does the first one I'll never forget that day. Because the simple thought was planted like a seed and said, If I can do one, I can get one person to say yes to this and be happy. And this is what they wanted. And they paid me happily, I get a second. I can get a second, I can get a third. And I was that's how it started. But I have a few of those. Okay, so can I share, share the highlight of 'em, and then you tell me where you want to go? Because 15 years of this dude, we've been around a long time. We're like the old timers now. Right? So there's a there's a lot of those moments. So the first moment that was the first one was, I'm selling something on the internet on how to bartend. The next one was when I recognized that first niche of the YouTube and video and how I stepped into that. The next one was was where I did a big quantum leap in growth where I let go. Actually, I won't tell you what I let go of, but we we took we 4x'd the company. I went from like 200 and something thousand a year to like 1.2 in one year. And then the next one was when I started talking about the stuff I talked about, and I released the podcast, the one after that, which is happening around the same time, I can't remember the order was when we were growing the business and we were at about just under two, like 1.5, 1.7. And I found out my expenses were higher than my than my monthly revenue. I had a month where I did 70,000 in revenue. That was amazing. And my expenses were 72. And how I had to completely reinvent from the inside out how I ran business and how I looked at everything that that changed everything for me. And then we had a big transformation where I went from three to 10 million in one year. There are six in one. Yes. Yes. And that's after being in business for like 10 plus years, you know, and like right, where a lot of businesses start to mature and stuff. And so there's a lot like and I can I can talk about all I can talk about one is any of those jumping out at you because they each of those feels like the huge breakthrough and that's the big thing I'm really passionate about with entrepreneurs, your business is a reflection of you. So you grow the business grows, and what I look for and what I love working with my clients and is causing or being a catalyst for these breakthroughs, these quantum leaps. I'm bored of linear, I'm bored of 10% growth, like let's do something explosive and it took something different for each of those jumps. So is Are any of those? I don't know. Yeah, you know what I'm very interested? What was the thing? So you're saying each one took a different? a different thing was required for each one? Was there a was there? Was there something that you had to do? Was there an order to it in terms of Hey, processes, you know, or team management or you know, like, like things like that, you know, like, what, what were the what were those? You know, where there, were there consistent things you found yourself? Like, did you have to go through mindset first, before you focused on, you know, creating clarified processes and things like that, you know, digging deeper into it. Yeah, it's great, it's great. If you're asking, "What's the common theme?" What I tell people as I as a joke is like, what I've really discovered is the secret to my success, you know, that secret, the common theme, and every single one of those, the one thing that was the same universally in all of those huge leaps, was letting go. I think I think entrepreneurs get really excited and passionate about like, personal development, personal growth! But then they think that personal growth means adding on. That's what I thought for a long time, like, I got to be a better person than I am now. Like, I'm not good enough. So I have to learn more skills, I have to acquire more things and boom, boom, boom, and add on, it's almost like buying like a Honda Civic and then saying, "Get the leather seats, get the power steering, get the power windows," you know, adding on and what I recognized that my journey and each of those stepping stones, each of those quantum leaps, as I call them, was actually a shedding or letting go process. And that's the universal universality of it. Now that's letting go in a physical, 3D, external. And that mindset piece that people love to throw the word mindset around all the time, right? The letting go of what's no longer serving me, what, what I can consume my mind with that I think is important that I am concerned with. And I finally let go. So like the one where we went, this was the first like, oh, wow, big one.
Casey: 12:22
This is your I went to breakthrough moment. Yeah.
James 12:24
This was like the big breakthrough. Like the first one that kind of caused a chain is when we went from 208. We're, we're going cruising, and I thought I was like the bee's knees like I'm doing great. I'm so happy. I'm so successful bump up. I felt like the top. Now I was that I was making about 280,000 a year. And then boom. I think it was like, yeah, that's what 280,000 and we went to over 1 million, 1.1, 1.2, something like that we ended in one year. And people asked, "What did you do?" So that's the thing, a lot of people, I understand it because I was there. But a lot of people are focused on the doing and only to doing and then they get trapped into this mindset of the one right, best, only mindset.
Casey: 13:07
Theres only one way.
James 13:08
Right. Hey, Casey, what's the best way to sell? What's the right type of product? What's the only price point right? Best, right, one, only, mindset as if there's only one. And so people said like, "What did you do differently? What's the, what's that secret thing that you like hid, you know that only the guru's know about or whatever?" As if they're not doing the same things you're doing, they're just maybe doing it differently. And I'm telling you one thing changed, man, one, one stupid little thing changed. And I so emphasize this because it sounds so small and so insignificant. But this is 2013. January, I can take you back there. I don't know what it is. But I can always remember these dates of these pivotal moments of when our life changes and transforms its January. Yeah, and I finally let go of that you guys are gonna think it's stupid. The need to be liked. Everything I was doing up in my business to that point was secretly to get people to like me. That was my marketing strategy. Casey, if you like me, you'll buy from me. That was my strategy. Now here's the funny thing and the problem with that. One of the I learned a lot of stuff from Dan Kennedy, old school. Oh my goodness, right. Go back to the old school stuff and you won't get the copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. You'll get the purest stuff. I always say the biggest sin in marketing is to be boring. And when you're trying when your energy when your output is from the intention of I want people to like me, you have to be boring, because you have to be vanilla. You have to be, let's please everybody and "Are they gonna like me is just isn't going to be what they like?" or they you know, and everything is "I don't wanna rock the boat because I want them to like me." And that's that's what I was doing with everything.
Casey: 15:09
Always do the voice.
James 15:09
Always, I'm notorious for having a lot of voices on the show. I'm sorry. That voice is really amazing though.
Casey: 15:24
Okay, I really love that. I love that I love that that you're talking about. You're talking about like, you know, marketing strategy to just be liked. Basically, doing so, you're you're not pervasive, you're not, you know, you're not finding your own tone. And you're just bland, right?
James 15:42
You're just you're bland, and then everyone sees your stuff. And they're like, "Yeah, I agree. Thanks for the reminder." Like, that's who you are. And then you hear that a lot of the time "Thanks for the reminder, Casey." Well then so I'm just telling you what you already hear, what you already know. And when you look, why this is such an important, but so simple concept is anyone listening, there's people you follow for your own marketing, business, personal, maybe spiritual growth, whatever, who you call a "thought leader" right? And if I asked you, why do you follow these people? First off, I would, you know, you think of the people that you follow that you like, I really follow love listening to receiving information, coaching, mentoring from such and such and such... We can all agree that they are not the only person teaching this, I'm not the only person, you're not the only person we have competitors, we have you have options out there is what I'm saying. So why do you follow the people that you follow? And when I've asked this question, to live audiences of 600 people. I've have asked this digitally, you know, virtually in person one on one. And the answer always comes down to a theme of qualities, characteristics and ways of being that that person desires to have more of themselves. "Wow, I follow Casey because like, he's just got such a huge heart. And he just cares. I follow Casey because he's so authentic, because he just says what's on his mind, because he's just so he exudes so much confidence, so much certainty." It's all of those things. Right? He speaks, as you've heard people say, they just speak their truth. They speak their mind. They don't give an F what people think. And that's what's really funny. What is one of the most unattractive qualities? This is like part of the whole cosmic joke. What is one of the most unattractive qualities somebody could be that could possess? The need to be liked. You know what? Yeah, he's trying way too hard. He's trying way too hard. That's, ugh, needy-pushy pushes you away. And that's what I've been doing. And it was the last place I was looking, I was looking at, what's the strategy? What's the skill? What could I be doing better? How can I make this landing page or this funnel, and that's great. And that stuff's so important. But I wasn't looking at myself. I wasn't looking at how it's showing up on the video. I wasn't looking at what I was putting out there. How I was making people feel, or what I was leaving people with. And when I just said, I just said a simple switch is, I want to help people. I love helping people. And I don't need you to like me. In order for me to help you. And I got some things to say. And here they are. Take it or leave it. And wow. That changed everything because I realized every decision I was making in my business was from that filter of what if they don't like it? What if they're upset? And I was holding myself back in innumerable ways: How I priced my products, how I sold my products, how I presented myself just in like, like there's the whole idea notion. I think it was Jay Abraham that the law of preeminence, the the entire notion that the brain consumes more calories, burns more calories than any organ in the body, so we're always in his brain calorie conservation mode. So when it comes to learning, solving, fixing a problem, instead of going through all that heavy lifting and thinking we just want to look for someone who is the best and the brain is always like the Terminator looking for the best "Tu tu tu tu tu tu tu tu tu BOOM", that guy right there, and then just tell me what to do. So if you're out there selling coaching, content, courses, membership, whatever and you have not been effective at demonstrating authority and expertise, then no one will buy from you. But let me say it this way. If your prospect doesn't already experience you, as the authority or the expert, they will not buy from you. It is an absolute prerequisite, but I wasn't doing that. I wasn't, I wasn't demonstrating that I was like, more scared. I don't want people to think I'm bragging, or I don't want people to think I'm this or that, or, do you know what I mean? So that changed everything. And it's so simple. But a lot of aren't people doing it, a lot of people have heard what I'm saying before, but then they, they have that inability to, like, look in the mirror and say, "But am I doing that?" and that changed everything for me.
Casey: 17:00
That's amazing. I mean, that, that, that and that that impact in your life has. I mean, you've had a 10x growth from that, that, you know.
James 20:43
I know, man.
Casey: 20:44
Was it was it 2013? Like, yeah, that's when you have the realization it sounds like, right?And then that's when you got that upward trajectory.
James 20:52
That's when I started letting, yeah, that's when I started letting go of stuff. That's when I started to realize the more you let go, and the more you let in, so I let go, the need to be liked, I let go of caring about people, what they think of me. And that sounds like kind of narcissistic and whatever. But you have to. Now, there's there's like two James's. And that's, I think it's important for me to share some of these things, because there is the James that when he comes home, and he's with friends, family, spouse, and all that type of stuff. Like, yeah, I get what they think about me, and these are my, these are the people in my life. But then there's that. I don't want to call it a persona, but it's the James that's out there, just like there's the Casey that's out there. And I have, I chose I drew a line and I walked over it, that I'll never let a complete stranger or someone who's just not in my life, right? Dictate how my life goes, not gonna happen. That's not going to happen. And that's what I'd been doing. And I let go of that need to be liked or, or putting, giving my personal power away to someone's opinions or judgments. And when you realize that people are just always in their opinions and judgments all day long. Right now someone is listening to this. And they're and they're already going. "Do I agree? I don't agree. I think he's coming off a little too strong," or "I've heard this before. And it's just repeating something I've already said, this is boring." you know, we're all in that all day long, right? And so everyone's doing that. And so when you make your life of "Oh, I'm not going to follow my dreams, I'm not going to live in my purpose, I'm not going to be happy, I'm not going to have fun. I'm not going to do what I love or what matters to me." Because someone out there is running on autopilot all their judgments and opinions, which really says more about them than me in the first place. That's tragic.
Casey: 22:42
Why would I let that? Why would I let that affect me? You know, exactly tragic for letting that, someone I don't even know, affect me. How much mindset is in, are in your programs? Like this is such a major thing. And it sounds like it was such a major, major explosive thing for you? How deep do you go in some of your programs around around this same sort of realization?
James 23:11
Hmm. Um, yeah, that's a really great, that's a really great question. Because it's so bizarre. I don't I mean, I mean, your podcast, I would imagine everything and nothing. Yeah, go ahead.
Casey: 23:24
Well, I was just gonna say I, I imagine your podcast breaks that down. You actually, I mean, I think I feel like your podcast was the answer to you. Always reminding yourself of that, of that notion. And maybe, and you can correct me if I'm completely wrong, or if I'm sort of on,
James 23:44
Here's what it was, man, because you saw me, I was going around talking about YouTube and online video. Right. And this is like a half incongruence. But there started to feel an incongruence for me, because what I was doing, and I don't think there's anything wrong with this, it's just it's just the evolution, the natural evolution, like right, talking about the beginning, of I was saying, "YouTube, is the best way to grow your business," its the fastest way it's the best way to get, you know, a deeper connection for people like right, the celebrity effect, it's a real thing. I mean, I remember seeing Will Ferrell at the my local beach in Laguna Beach, California one day, and I lost my ish. Like, I was like, "What Will Ferrell's here!", and then I remember thinking like, wow, what why am I starstruck? Like, what causes that? Yeah, then you realize that, that like, we all have that ability. I've seen people that see me in person after watching my videos, like I go to an event. And I'm like, "Whoa, you're doing that same thing I was doing to Will Ferrell" like video that said there was a huge power, still is, but i was saying that. And then I was looking at my own life, my own business. And I was saying, I don't think it's the video that's actually causing the 90% Then of the results in the success that I'm having. So I'm sitting there going, it's this 3D external thing called an online video. But I see a lot of people who have video and they suck. Their videos are awful. So it's not really video videos like a tool videos a part of it. Right? You know, and you look at all the tools that are out there. Even a webinar, there's, there's people that just have really crappy webinars, your webinar sucks, and but "I don't get it. People said webinars are the fastest way to make more sales and go from like a lead to a sale." Not if it's a sucky webinar. "But I followed all the steps." It's like, you haven't if your content sucks, if your offer sucks, if your energy sucks, if your presentation skills sucks, what do you expect to happen? Yeah, so I started going, a lot of what results are happening in my life are all from within something that's coming from within, that is different that I'm putting into my stuff. It's something that I'm thinking about differently, I'm causing differently. And I could sit there and tell 1000 people to make a video like this. And, and 90% of them were like, oh, man, this is I gave you all the everything. And it's like, videos off all the contents off of the energy is awful. So that's, that's where I said, I have to talk about this because this has been such a cause of my own success. Yes, I'm not talking about it, I'm going to lead into a further gap of incongruence, or lack of alignment. So 470 episodes, I talk about what people call mindset, that's a lot of episodes. My programs? here's here's what we did, very unique and different. With business by design, and I'm not talking about this to plug my stuff. I'm talking about this to say, everything I do is I want to think about how to do things differently, not just for different sake, but to do it better, right? Always How do I innovate? How do I do better? What's missing? What? How can I solve and improve in this industry, you know, if you guys are listening are in this industry it moves at the speed of light. And and I can share my antidote to that. Because if you're just constantly having to react to an industry's fast pace, you're going to be constantly left behind. Yeah, but here's what we noticed. When we talk about mindset, just, now I'm answering your question-- is what people are going for is results. They want results, more sales, more clients, more customers, more money, whatever, right? They want those results. So I became obsessed with what is preventing the results. And I now I do this with my clients, like you have a course you have a problem. Like let's get obsessed about what's preventing because it's always going to be the most successful marketing strategy is word of mouth always. So when people hear like, "Have you heard of this gal's program? Like, are you kidding me like this? She's amazing. This stuff's unbelievable." That will be you know, so that that's what needs to be on our mind. So I noticed that there were two things. The first was, is people are buying these mega big courses. And then they're spending like the next six months of their life going through consuming hundreds of boring videos. And now, at the end of these videos you're left with, here's all the things I didn't know I need to be doing that I now need to be doing that I haven't done, because I haven't had the time to do them.
Casey: 28:28
Right.
James 28:28
And I was like that, that I think that's just adding to the problem. So here's what we did. And it started with my own transformation within the business, remember I told you the little Cliff note of we had 70,000 and expenses. 70,000 in revenue, 72,000 in expenses. Yep. So here's the 30-second version of what we did internally first in the business and then into our programs. We took the Lego instruction manual as a metaphor, and plug that into our business. So wow, whether I want to create a landing page, a survey or run an entire multimillion dollar launch we created a step by step Lego instruction manual for it. And we had a team of virtual assistants and I would take that Lego instruction manual say here create this landing page here create this webinar like we do. We used to do a lot of live webinars so all the moving pieces, the landing page connected to your webinar provider connected to your autoresponder with your emails and your confirmation and the links and the date and the time and above up above all those pieces. All those moving pieces that are in our head. "Oh what do I need?" and so much wasted brainpower "Oh, what do I need to do? Oh and I forgot to link this and this isn't working in a tag is the wrong tag." We've we processed out the entire thing. We handed it to a brand new virtual assistant that had never worked for us. 48 hours later they came back 100% done working perfect, flawless. We were blaming the people, including myself, not the process. And when we dialed in the process that changed everything. So what business by design became first and foremost as the foundation is the playbook, the Lego instruction manual for every single aspect of your business from how to create a course, to how to fulfill on the program, to how to create all the marketing assets, pages, etc, even even things like how to create the perfect email to how to send out that email. You know how amazing it is when someone is, and this is what our students are doing is, they're newer, you know, we have where we have, where people have come in, it's really interesting seven figures and when people are coming in, they're brand new, someone who's new or comes in, they hire their first virtual assistant. And then they hand over process to send out an email and the system boom does it and they just got back an hour of their time that they didn't even know they'd be wasting, like most people do, doing all those things themselves. And that was the foundational piece. Now, all of that is rooted in action. Step one, you know, log into EasyWebinar. Step two, click this button over in the corner, create new webinar, whatever, right? And literally, boom, boom, boom process. Like, if you can read and follow directions, then you can do this. Yeah. And that's beautiful. And and then you hand it off to people. That's the foundation. But what I always find is self sabotage and the humaneness that makes us human. mucks it all up. If we were robots, we would have no problem whatsoever, just input, output. Follow these steps to execution. But yeah, execution complete. Yeah, that's it, there's more voices for you, buddy. So that's not happening. That's the majority of people will find a way to overcomplicate it, skip a step, I don't know what it is. And we saw that happening. And so I had to begin to bring that into it. And so a lot of what and this is for anyone else, who is I know, it's very fascinating. It's like I can give you 10 the 10 steps without skipping any step, perfect detail. And I'll watch eight out of 10 people mess it up. And it's just the funny wonkiness of human nature. So what I'm about to share again, this is not a this is not to talk about my program. This is to say that there is an opportunity here for anyone listening who's selling any type of coaching program to radically (because now we've taught now we teach this) but radically transform your customer experience and produce deeper results. So what we started to do this is gonna This is gonna open a little bit of a rabbit hole, but you just tell me where you want to go with this.
Casey: 32:47
I'm down. I this is what I want. I mean, I want this because I okay, I know process was a big one for you. I mean, oh, yeah. The whole process structure. Yeah, structure instructions, step by step by step by step. I know that was big. And so what I love You're talking about right now is, is the mindset, the mindset stuff and and how you had to get people to take action, keep them accountable. It sounds like you're gonna give me you're gonna maybe dig into that a bit. So please,
James 33:15
A little formula, a little formula , because the first piece is about structure, you know, processes, execution, guides, whatever you want to call them. People think a business gives you freedom. How many people out there have a business that are free than when they were working a job? I mean, like, no business does not guarantee diddly squat, I will say, structure is the access to freedom.The more structure that your business has, the more freedom that you get to have back. So think about that one, okay. So that this piece, what you want to ask yourself, you want to journal on, you want to write this down? What is preventing my students, my customers, if we already know that more than completing my programs, more than getting results is going to make me more sales. And this is a relevant important question we asking, What is preventing my students from completing my programs? What is preventing my students from taking action on my programs? And what is preventing my students from getting results with my programs? Because chances are for the majority of us, the majority of them are not. you know, you have that in 10-20%. superstars you got to you got like, you know, 10% who are rocking it, but then there's a majority that don't finish, don't start, don't complete it, don't put an action, don't get results, right want to start to learn what's causing that? And what you'll notice when you tune to that is the stories they tell themselves. And so what we boil these down to are the beliefs. And there are two types of beliefs as they exist in language. There's a belief that I would call a prediction based belief, what they believe will happen. "If I do this, then that" and then there's another belief that we would call an equivalent based belief, which is a this is that this means that I am this, I am not that. These two beliefs are ruling people's lives, and they don't even know it. And this is something I've been diving in. And we've created an entire coaching methodology. Don't even get me started on that Casey, we have a team of 40 coaches that I have trained in a specific, they work with me for 90 days straight. And then every month, we have, you know, updates and continual training and practice. And they work with me at different levels through all of my programs. And 90% of it is working through the stories, aka the beliefs that we tell ourselves. And so many come up so many unbelievable, ridiculous beliefs that I realize.
Casey: 35:50
Self limiting beliefs, right?
James 35:52
Oh, yeah, yeah, this, I didn't realize these were all the beliefs that I had. And this is the this is the most beautiful realization to have, is like all the struggle for your listeners that you're going through, or have gone through, just like all the struggle I went through, is all the experience and wisdom that you're accruing. So that you are now equipped with the ability and the mastery to help others through those same things. And that's what I just kept noticing is like, I had to work through these myself, and now we help our clients. So for example, two types of beliefs right, this equivalence, which is this equals this, this means this, this is this A equals B. And then there's the predictive or cause causation type beliefs. So for example, I'm gonna have you fill this out, someone is someone, someone's someone comes to us, and they say, you know, I think I'm under charging. Great. So what would our advice be? Raise your prices. So what do you think would be the big belief or five, that would prevent them from raising their prices, if I raise my prices, if this then it's caused, its future based, it's predictive, if I raise my prices, then,
Casey: 37:10
"No one will buy my product."
James 37:12
No one will buy my product. So this is a belief, this is something that they are there, the amygdala area of the brain is looking for threats. And this is a potential threat. Even though it doesn't exist, it's a future prediction that we've hooked our brain onto. "If I raise my prices, no one will buy." And then we go, and then we add a link in the chain to that one. "And if no one buys, then I won't make money and have no money, I have to close my business down. If it's close my business down, I got to go get a job. But if there's no jobs, I'm not gonna be able to get a job, which means we're not gonna be able to pay the mortgage, which means we're gonna be homeless, oh, my goodness, I can't raise my prices!" Right? All of this.
Casey: 37:55
Oh my god. Yeah.
James 37:57
The inaction. And here's the funny thing. People say it's so hard and so scary, to raise my price. And it's so funny, because I said, "Wait a second, wait a second, I just log into our little sandpark, kajabi, whatever, and we added zero or we change the nine to whatever, press Save, you just raise your prices, there was nothing hard about that action." Right? What was hard was what we created in our mind. And that's why so much of all the things that you and others and myself, teach people to do are hard. Because complicating things keeps us safe. Overwhelm keeps us safe confusion, keeps us safe. Everything that will change your life in your business exists outside your comfort zone, you guys have heard these cliches, 1000 times. And they're actually ironically, really simple. You know how simple it really is to create your first webinar, make your first sale, it might be ugly, it might suck, you can do it again, do it again, do it again, you're going to get better, better, better. These are skills, skills mean, the more you practice, the better you get, the better you get, the more results you get. But if it puts you at risk of failure, rejection, shame, disappointment, guilt, whatever, there's a part of you that will protect you from all of that. And I'm under charging. But it's so hard. So scary, so heavy, so much resistance to raise my price. It's all that fear, all the beliefs and all the stories and what we're doing is I don't like have like, oh, here's all the mindset. What I do. Casey is when I'm giving a principle. Hmm. And we can talk about that, you know, it's like a lot of what I do is teaching from principles, tried and true. business sales, marketing influence principles. People are gonna have resistance to adopt or run from those principles because they're operating from a belief already. And so I'm baking into all my content and why As people even know it, I'm baking in the belief conversation. Hmm. So I'll be sitting there saying, in this, you know, just to give you an a simplistic example, in this module, we're going to talk about my process for how to price your products. Right. And I'll give them the the process, say, Now you might be sitting there and already be operating from the belief and the fear that if you raise your prices, no one will buy from you. Right? So now, I'm calling it out, I'm talking to I'm not just saying, hey, in this video, I'm just going to tell you raise your prices, Okay, next video. Because if, if that if, if I tell you something once, but you've been telling yourself about 1000 times every day, raise your prices means no one's gonna buy from you, you're gonna listen to the thing you've been saying 1000 times, you know, then then the thing I said once, so I'm going to begin to talk about that I'm going to begin to address I already said, the fear and the belief that you might mistakenly be already choosing to believe I'm not even letting people know, it's just a belief, and it's a mistake, is that raising your prices, is going to make sure no one you know, no one buys from you. Right. And there's a lot of ways in which I begin to talk about that belief, discredit that belief, and get people to move to a different way of thinking, here's an example of how I do that. Yeah. I give metaphors of very powerful one. I love metaphors, an examples like that. And I say, I give my own stories as metaphors. So just to kind of riff on that one for a second, a lot of times, I say. So a lot of people think that if they lower their prices, then then more people will buy. The first problem with this is people now you're attracting people that are making their decision on price. Yes. Versus value transformation? And is that really the type of person you want to attract in your business? Take a look at Walmart. Take a look at Saks Fifth Avenue. I don't know, to give some contradiction. What type of people shop at Walmart? What type of people shop at Saks? I mean, there's literally a website called People of Walmart. If you want to have a good laugh. There's not a website called People of Saks. And what that tells us is that price determines who you attract, the caliber, right? Quality of commitment, not like "Oh, this is a better person." No, no, no, no: the caliber of commitment. And and then I'll use myself and I'll say things like, and so again, I'm talking about all these things.
Casey: 42:52
Yeah, like your first products and things like that. Yeah.
James 42:54
Yes. Instead of just telling, just only focusing on the doing, I'm looking at what are the beliefs preventing the doing and then I'm going to make an argument to discredit that old belief. And, and bring in the new perspective, right? Oh, in fact, I didn't even call it a belief. I called it a perspective. So you know, I'll say things like, if my program was $7, would you buy it? Right? Or would you just use maybe you would, and then you just throw it away? And never use it? Because you wouldn't see the value? Right? Have you ever considered that raising your price helps to convey and communicate the value value you deliver. And when people see that value, and they put that skin in the game,
Casey: 43:37
They get the transformation.
James 43:39
They're more likely to follow through and get the transformation. So everything I'm doing is, let's look at the belief, lets discredit the old story, let's reinforce the perspective that I operate.
Casey: 43:50
So every and I think that's, that's, that's amazing. You know, when I think about, like, the struggles most entrepreneurs make, it's this fundamental problem. They see the marketing, they understand it, then and you've given you've given them literally a blueprint, a playbook. But if they don't execute on the playbook, because they're not in the right state of mind. Yeah, they're not there is going to be the execution just not going to happen. So what I love that you're doing and you're saying is like that, that's the biggest thing that stops them is that is that those those disbeliefs those, you know, the things that are that the conversations that they keep having in their head over and over and over again as to why they can't do this or why they can't do that. So I love that you're talking about that. And so, so with with all of this, does this define scalability? Like in your opinion, and we we only have a little bit left. So first off, thank you so much for the time, you know, you gave us today. Do you feel like like-- What's the key to scaling to scaling your business in that in that regard? Is it what you just said? Is it is it, you know?
James 45:14
What I said about just, about what specifically?
Casey: 45:16
Yeah, like, what what do you think is like the key to scaling your your business up?
James 45:21
Yeah, it goes back to Lego.
Casey: 45:22
Just summarize, summarizing.
James 45:24
That's the that's the short answer. And I can elaborate on what what that means for me.
Casey: 45:29
Well, you already. I mean, that's, that's the thing.
James 45:31
But different every phase. Yeah, yeah. So first, it was letting go of being liked. Right? Yeah, I was letting go of the fears and these kind of things that you're just like, cuz that's what it is, man, you put yourself out there. Like, it's, it's actually a very simple business model that we run, that everyone here who has this type of, it's very simple,. Attract an audience, and sell them what they want. Like, come on, like, this is so simple, have a great offer, make the make the sale, ask people are gonna say no, people are gonna say yes, great, keep going, do it again, make more offers, but in front of more people, you're gonna make more money. It's really simple. But when you have all that internal stuff, you're gonna make it complicated. You're making it hard. Right. So that was the first piece. Now let's talk about scaling. For me, there's a there's a statement we talked about. So as I said, the first one which is, the more the more structure you have in your business, the more freedom you get. So structure is an important piece, that the systems that look into the process, the streamline efficiency of how things are done in a streamlined, structured manner. What comes with that is the letting go. So the next, the next line, I say is, the powerful piece is the role you filll within your business determines results you receive. So what people don't really realize, because I know I didn't for a long time is that when you say "I have a business now," people think that people collapse all the roles and think it just this like one role that you're in. And that it couldn't be further from the truth, the moment a business exists, even just through your words of I have a business now, several roles got created simultaneously. There's the role of customer support, of copywriter, of teach, of admin, of assistant, you know, scheduler, you know, branding, all these roles. But people don't see that they don't see that the moment you said "I have a business now," that there's an org chart with anywhere from five to 50. Who knows, depending on your business, different seats, different roles, and then you're filling all of them are trying to and not even realizing it, and you're overwhelmed. And you're working 40 hours a day, no wonder, no wonder, and we didn't even know that. And so what what happens there is, we're spending a lot of time. Well, let me go back, let me say something else first. I think the inherent nature of this type of business, being a personal brand, is actually really simple to get going and actually the hardest to scale, because you recognize how much of a bottleneck you inherently are. Like if you and I ran a landscaping company, right? And our job was to go out and like mow lawns and trim trees. You and I could just hire people to do that for us, run the business. Boom. You know what I mean? It wouldn't require too much of us if we wanted to retire, right? And we're just funding it and paying the bills and stuff like that, right? Signing the checks. But you look at this business, and you look at how much requires if you like, you don't want me to bring someone else on my team for this interview. Right? So I'm here. I mean, you probably wouldn't, I mean, they're cooler than me. You'd probably like them more than me. But it's like, no, I want James on the call. Same with me by the way. Way cooler than I am. Yeah. Yeah.
Casey: 49:03
I mean, that's, that's a testament of, you know, being a great leader, building a great team. So I have to be here for this. I get to be here for this. That's a choice, but but like it's required of me to be here. And when I do my podcast, it's me. Right? Yeah. When I teach my program, it's me when I do the launch, it's me. Copy, Instagram. Oh, my goodness. And that's just the outward face aspect of it. But then there's all the other aspects that we're still doing. So we quickly become this bottleneck. And then of course, when you have a lot of attachment to it, it's like, oh, that's not my voice. I wouldn't say it that way. I don't use that word or bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla, right. And we are just bottlenecking ourselves and overworking. So I set out to fix that in every single way possible. And so I think I'd just advice, this is higher level, like when we work with clients, we usually start when they're roughly at about 5-700,000 a year in digital product sales before we really start looking at this, yeah, say, here's the first thing we need to do you need, you need to figure out your org chart, a lot of people don't know their org chart. And and to flush that out. And to see where you have been filling in for most, it's like all of them.
James 50:25
And the kind of simple, overly simplistic game with what we have in time here, is my job is to constantly move myself up the org chart and spend as much time there and as little time at towards the bottom, and get the right people to fill that. Yep. And so that's gonna be really hard to do, if you don't have that structure in place if you don't have those systems and processes in place. But what I find today, like just to get to the end of story, where we took the business from three to 10 million, came down to one thing, really. I began a new question. Tony Robbins, actually, he got it from Richard bandler, founder of NLP, powerful, quote, "The quality of your life is determined by the quality of questions we ask ourselves." I think questions are so powerful, because when you ask a question, no matter what the question is, the subconscious mind must go to work looking for the answer. But a lot of us are driven in our life by some really crappy quality questions. Like "Why is this? Why is this always happening happened to me?" Yeah. "Or when is this ever gonna work?" What an awful question, because you can just feel the energy of it. It's like you already decided it's not.
Casey: 51:41
Victimized. Yeah, for sure.
James 51:42
Yeah. Whereas something like, what am I missing here that I need to learn? Oh, genuine, pure curiosity. Yeah. So we wanted to go to we wanted to go to 10 million a year, I had hired a leadership coach for my number two in the company. And when I told her the goal, she laughed at us. She literally laughed at us when she said, Well, what's your goal this year? And we said 10 million. She goes, where are you at right now? I'm like, well, we wrapped up the year at three. And she like, a compulsive laugh
Casey: 52:15
From like, like, like, like, you know, she something in her mouth? Like, spit take?
James 52:20
Like, "Okay, like, that's awesome. That's awesome. But like, what's like, the realistic number?" And I was like, "Thank you so much for laughing at me, because nothing drives me more than proving people wrong." And so we did it. And it was all driven by one question, or an offshoot of one question, which was, what does a and it's such a simple question, but what what does a $10 million a year business do? How does a $10 million a year CEO think, what would he do here? What decision would he make? How would you do this in a $10 million year company? And I asked, I obsessed over that question. And what I found little by little, was that the answers that kept coming to me, was my role needed to continue to change. And so I was fully in that visionary what we call the digital CEO role, where your number one thing is, "Where are we going? And why are we doing it? Number two, it was fostering the culture through the values and the energy of the team, you want to go fast, go alone, as they say, but you want to go far we go together. And a few great people by your side will take you further than you can ever imagine. And your job becomes cultivating and fostering this team. And so what my role really became, and again, this is higher level stuff, this isn't somebody that started a business yesterday, this is not gonna be relevant for you, I get that. But log this away and come back one day, and this will change everything. But my number one thing became being the coach and the mentor to my A-players. Hmm. And that's where I found that's where the $10 million year CEO can have the most value within the entire organization, lifting up and creating leaders and supporting them to be high performing A-players. And that began to change everything for us on a whole other stratosphere. So scaling means on bottlenecking yourself. And you can't do that. When you don't let go. When you have too much control and ego. You're going to continue to bottleneck yourself. When you don't have the structure in place and the great people in place to follow that structure. It's going to all fall back at you and you're going to continue to collapse everything back on yourself and prevent that that massive scalability and, and that's that's what we had to do. So that was hard. It wasn't easy. This is simple. It's not easy. But that, in a nutshell is like how we started looking at scaling.
Casey: 55:06
So you just told you just told everybody here who's listening how to scale to $10 million, how to take how to become a digital CEO, who's, who's removing themselves as the bottleneck. I mean, that that's absolutely powerful. And, and I agree, I agree with everything you're saying. It fostering the leaders in your organization. Intrapreneurs. You know. Whoever is working with you, you know, owning the roles, you know, energized, excited about those roles, for sure. Amazing, amazing, James. This was-- Thank you. I appreciate it.
James 55:47
Dude, you want to talk about our EasyWebinar funnel?
Casey: 55:50
I mean, we can! Yeah, let's let's how's it, how's it going? What's happening? So you know, you're doing a webinar, right? Yeah. What was? What? What was your What? Yeah, what's, what's going on with that?
James 56:02
It's rocking and rolling, man. I love it. Because we do. We've been known for like doing these big launches. And people start to think like, I just like to mess with people, you know, because people just have their opinions and decisions about things. And they're like, "Oh, James is all about being launches, and nothing else works" or whatever. Hmm. And so I'm just laughing. And so in our spare time, we just, we just created this automated funnel, and it's pacing a million dollars in sales this year. And for a $497 product, and we're using easy webinar. And and it's, it's amazing, and we love it. And we're, I think, I think one of the coolest features that we did is I wanted to, I wanted to have a different experience than people would get with an automated webinar. So we just everything was about framing it differently. And I think this is where it comes down to what I was talking about earlier about, like, yeah, if you have crappy stuff, and you do a crappy webinar, don't don't blame the webinar. So we wanted to frame it differently. We didn't want it to say 60 minute free webinar. Why because, you know, we exist and operate in a more sophisticated marketplace. And so yeah, if your market is more sophisticated than you, then your stuffs not going to work. So I wanted it to be different. I always like to zig when others zag. So it's a 30 minute, it's a 30 minute training. I made it shorter. And I mean, that was like the big selling
Casey: 57:43
You're selling, you're selling right off the webinar, right?
James 57:46
Zero to 30 minutes. And it's doing like a couple 1000 a day.
Casey: 57:52
That's so awesome.
James 57:53
It's so awesome. And so I had to think I was like, how do I make this different? How do I get this a different experience? I said, Well, you know, and still provide unbelievable value. Don't get me wrong, like I wanted it to be unbelievably valuable. But I said "Well, first of all, let's not call it a webinar. Let's not call it any of the things that people have been conditioned to, let's change the title says a 34 minute video, and I'm going to walk you through." So it's for our sales training program. Sorry, sales page training program. I don't know if I included the word page in there. So okay, it's basically we have an awesome little process and system guide. Again, a lot of stuff we do is like we create a process that works for us in our business. And then we can like sell your offer, we've a really great process for how to create a sales page, like in as little as two days if you really wanted to, if you want to block off two days for it, and it's all based on like templates of different sections. And so I said 34 minute video, I'm going to show you five things that had the biggest increase in conversions on our sales page, five things that if you add even one of these is going to increase your performance and conversions on your sales page. And I just walk through those five things in a 30 minute video. And I even start, I think this is really great copy messaging practice for people is like, look at what the-- people talk about objections, right? The objections that people have about you about your stuff about buying, and about themselves. But are you looking at the objection that people have about the way you're selling it? Oh, this is just another one of those webinars? Yeah, 60 minute sales, because we've all seen those 60 minute fluff filled sales pitches. Yeah. So people see a couple of those and then they they make a decision. It's called a generalization. Generalizations will get you in trouble when you go, "Oh, this is just one of those 60 minute sales pitches," right. So if I join, I'm talking to one of your listeners if I join your webinar, and that's already in my mind. And that's how I'm experiencing all of your stuff, even if it's really good. "This is just a sales pitch, oh." So that's the first thing, is I wanted it to be different. And then I call that out. And I'm like, I know, you've been here on these training calls. And it's like, 20 minutes of me telling you my life and my why and my things. And here's a picture of my family and blah, blah, blah. And then it's like, another 30 minutes of fluff, and you're like, waiting to get to the good stuff. And by the time you think you're getting to the good stuff, I'm going to sell you something. And I said, this is not in fact, I'm, I said, here's, here's my bio, and like, you know, 45 seconds or something like that. It's like, here's just the most important bullet points that I just need you to know, just so you can like, trust what I'm saying, right? And then let me let my results speak for myself. And I say, and here, I'm not even going to talk about, you know, my, my program and stuff. Like, I do this whole thing where it's just like, yeah, I'm gonna sell something in the end. But you don't even need to you just need these five things. And you can make a difference, right? I mean, so I'm, I'm reframing. I'm letting people know, like, I get that that's out there that exists. Let me show you why this is not that. I said, all you need, you could just watch one of these little hacks and tweaks and take it and run and you're good. Yeah. And then I get to the end, I'm like, obviously, that was five and I have a lot more. And if you want help building the entire sales page, I'd love to help you with that. And here's my program for that. And 30 minutes, 30 minutes to the sale. And it does unbelievably well.
Casey: 1:01:29
That's so amazing. I love it. You're you're kind of like, you know, when people are going in one direction, you just went the other right? You called it out.
James 1:01:38
Yeah.
Casey: 1:01:39
And you just shared, like quality value. And then you said I have more than this. I mean that that's so simple. But we get we have so many barriers that get stuck that we get stuck with, you know, so many, so many templates, like, this is the perfect webinar template. And this is that, you know, like, we all get stuck in that and then, you know, but there's also fatigue that comes with it. So I think what I like is that, you know, I start to call webinars just an experience in general, and you have to figure out what the best experience is going to be, for the people watching to have the the decision of "I'm going to pull out my credit card," right, what gets them to that decision, right? So you always have to reinvent the the experience to figure out what that what that how you can get to that decision. And that's awesome. That's a that's so cool. I love this. I mean, now we get to share James's 30 minute, you know, success. Totally. I love it.
James 1:02:40
Yeah, I mean, and that was that was really awesome. I was like, I don't know if this is gonna work because you know, you start to hear things like, oh, why is it 60 minutes? Does it have to be 60 minutes? If it's if it's shorter is it gonna fail?
Casey: 1:02:50
Oh, you wait, you're selling on a webinar? Oh, it has to be 60 minutes to two hours. Right? Like, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
James 1:02:57
It's like, "No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't." Because there's also a lot of stuff that we do to like, qualify beforehand. Yeah, we're actually um, I think one of the cool opportunities, not everyone will have this opportunity. But one of the things that we're doing is as I share the hacks, here's your sales page hacks. I'm using the sales page for the offer that I'm selling at the end. So I get to speak about the program throughout it. So it's like, hey, it's so meta. Check it out below. Yeah, right here. It's all here for you. Yeah, it's, it's because I get to be so much more efficient with that, you know, instead of going, here's 30 minutes of content, and then let me talk about a program for 30 minutes. It's like, I know that one in the same actually, like, they just go together. And that was that was really awesome. But yeah, just to your note about the experience, I'm a huge, it's got to be an experience for people. And when you ask that question, like, what's preventing them from buying, like what needs to happen in order for them to buy? But the last thing I'll say, and this is, you know, talk so much about: I believe, I firmly hold the perspective, that this notion of, you know, just give, give, give, give your best stuff and people will buy is, is outdated advice. I think, I don't want to say it's bad advice, because I think it's, it worked. But we're reaching in most markets, more sophistication today than yesterday. And so that's an unsophisticated strategy. Because I can't tell you how many people have come to me. And maybe you've had clients come to you and they're like, you know, I don't get it. I used the webinar. I gave my best stuff. But people didn't buy. Yeah, so what are you saying you still didn't give good enough stuff. And so like, the metaphor I use for this is like, when you remember food courts, then you go to the food court. That's a sample you know, yeah. I remember back then when we could go to the mall. And you know, they got like the toothpicks on the plate. And so someone goes "Here, have a little sample" and you taste it and go. "Oh, this is great. Honey, you want to go here?" "Yeah. This is great." You got a sample of it. But when people are trying to give their best stuff away on the webinar that's like going to a food court and someone says, "You want this free meal." And they're like, "Oh, yeah," and they eat the whole thing. And they're full. And they go, do you want to go shop at our Panda Express? And like, what? I can't even eat another bite of food, I'm so full. You mean for later? Right? I've good. Yeah for later when I'm hungry again. I gotta I gotta digest. Yeah, it's good metaphor, right?
Casey: 1:05:27
For sure.
James 1:05:27
So, hail the metaphor.
Casey: 1:05:29
Yeah. I mean, I say this, too, I say that, you know, like, teaching is the killer, because we all want to teach, like, we want to be effective teachers, we go into this wanting to help people. And so we're thinking, you know, it's like taking a six month of, of, you know, calculus, and trying to cram. Like, I've seen people do this, like, you know, they're, they're experts. And so that it's almost like taking six months of calculus and cramming it into this short presentation, where you're just sharing, sharing, sharing, sharing, sharing, you just create the massive overwhelm people, like, that's awesome. Wow, I gained value. But I'm gonna go now, because I got to take a break. Because my brain so to explode.
James 1:06:14
Yeah. So here's the, here's the way we do it. And if you guys, if anyone sees this or goes through it, I'm not saying you have to, but we do it in the training. Everything is about, I want to change the way people think about the topic at hand. So when people say things like,"Casey, you just blew my mind." Or "Mic drop." I guarantee you, folks, anytime you are you've seen anyone else say those phrases. It was never, because you taught something like, here's, here's step one, boom, it always happens through a shift of perspective.
Casey: 1:06:55
Exactly. Yes.
James 1:06:57
I mean, to get you to think about something differently, look at it differently than you've ever thought about it. And when you do that people go. "That was mind blowing. So the question becomes, are you spending more time just filling someone's mind with more stuff? Or rather, are you draining it, emptying it of the stuff they don't need, and helping to shift the way they look at something?" That's when everything changes. That's what we do. That goes back to what why I was teasing about the belief stuff, we are looking at what are the beliefs that they already have? What are the that's what a misconception is, it's a belief, the mistake is in a belief, followed by an action, that doesn't get you the result. So instead of just going, here's more, here's more, here's more, here's more, we're actually pulling away. Here's, let's remove this wrong way of thinking, let's remove this mistake. Let's, let's remove this misconception. And what that does is it clears the mind to something new. Yeah.
Casey: 1:08:02
And if you're if you're running a webinar, and you're not seeing people say, "mic drop" or, "Ahh" or you know, you know, and you're asking those questions, then you're not changing their minds. Those aren't, then you're not getting the response that you're looking for.
James 1:08:18
Right? Why is this so important? Because people buy from thought leaders, not teachers. So to be a thought leader that teachers is going to be you demonstrating and delivering so much more value than just being a teacher. Because think about it, like, and I love teaching, I love teachers, but it's like, there is a difference between like, okay, here's the book, someone else wrote the book, and I'm going to teach the concepts in the book. And that is something that is more replicatable. I'm not saying it's wrong or bad or anything, right? I'm just saying it's more like, anyone can do that. But when you're a thought leader, that's hard for anyone else to do that. And, yeah, that's, that provides way more value to that to your audience. And so if we're not doing that, like, how can I change the way they look at this? Yeah, and you're not, you're not actually demonstrating the highest level of value that you can, most people are saying, Here's how to do it. And what I'm doing what Casey and I are talking about is instead of telling people here's what to do, you're telling people how to think, how to think differently about something. Right. And that's powerful. James, thank you so much for today. Yeah, this was so fun. I mean, I'd love to I could probably talk to you for so much more. So much more time but, you know, we gained so much. I mean, you just shared basically, how to create better experiences, you know, and and really unlocking that. How do you change perspective, that's how you create the better experience. I love that you said you, you create a path, a clearer path. You know, I feel like what you just said was like parting the Red Sea. You know, the And it was and, and that, that result will I mean, once you do that it will manifest to getting the result at the end. And that's awesome that you're doing these 30 minute presentations. I just absolutely love that.
Casey: 1:10:16
So, a final thing, why did you move to Sedona?
James 1:10:22
Um, I came here with Chelsea in 2015. And before we even got to the hotel I saw, I had no idea what this place was, came here on a whim. It was like part of another trip, like, oh, we're out here, we might as well stop buying the Sedona place. And I saw the Red Rocks for the first time. And I melted like my heart melted. I was just like, in awe. Before we got to the hotel. I was like, how do I get a place out here? And we hadn't even got our own home yet. We were still living in a rental like looking for our home, in California. We both were born and raised in Laguna Beach, California. Just seemed perfect. So all of this was like illogical. But I kept being driven by that question. And then one of my buddies to try and make this story as short as possible. I find out one of my buddies has 22 investment properties. And I was just like, wow, and at the same time, another and I don't know if you know him as well, maybe Mel Abraham, great guy. Great friend. He talks a lot about wealth, affluence and investments for entrepreneurs. And I just love that guy. Yeah, yeah. And I started learning a lot about like, you know, it's not just about making the money. It's about like, what are you doing with the money and being smart with it, you know, and, and my family was in real estate. My dad was 40 years in real estate. So I love I love it. I don't want to ever be a real estate agent. But I love homes, home improvement, stuff like that. And so I was like, maybe we could get an investment property. And so I started talking to a realtor and come out here and she just says flippantly and she's like, Well, yeah, you could get a renter in here. But a lot of my clients are doing that Airbnb thing. This is 2019. I laughed at her. I like come just like someone laughed at us. I laughed at her. I'm like, come on, wait, what? Like, that's the thing. Like, isn't that just where people rent out a room in their house and stuff. She's like, no, people are renting out the whole house. And they're doing really well. So I did the research. And people were saying, depending on the market, you can see anywhere from four to 600% ROI or whatever, 6x times the mortgage that you pay on, I'm like, No way, come on. And I just kept doing more research, I'm like, wait, this is if I do the math, I'm like, what? So in December of 2019, December 26, actually, we, we made, we made an offer for the first of what ended up being four properties out here in Sedona. And as soon as good old Corona came to town, I said, I think I'm gonna go out to Sedona and just start setting up the Airbnb and just kind of get away from things for a little bit. And then we never left. And that's the story. I, I've been back to California, three times in a year. And I just love it out here. So.
Casey: 1:13:30
you, you came out to, you know, to fix up your Airbnb, and you're just like, well, I'm here.
James 1:13:37
I thought about crying, very idea of leaving, I was like, I don't want to go, this is this is it. And it's just, it's a very, it's a very special place. To me, it's very, very magical. And it's just like, I'm in a different phase of my life. You know, we did the 10 million we did the crushing bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. And, and, you know, today even just how we restructured things like, I don't, I don't actually love too much like, the outward facing the the marketing side of things. I love teaching it. But I actually like where I feel best is is as soon as someone presses submit with their credit card details, and we get to work together, you know, as soon as we get to coach or get on a zoom call and, and teach something and walk them through. Like that's my favorite part is like if I could just do that all day. Because this is very similar to that, like it's teaching but just, you know, via podcast. Like, I just do that. Like, what's the new thing we're gonna do? And like, how do we grow? Like, I'm really kind of like that. I'm fine with wherever we are now. Like, you know that and that's the whole thing. I know, I go on tangents. I talk a lot, Casey. So you can shut me up at any time. But it becomes a really interesting thing is like we're driven by these goals, partly because it's like, let's see what I can accomplish. Let's see, well, some cable that lets you I can prove it. Yeah. And you know, and then you hit those and you're like now what? And when you have we had a 6 million during launch, we made a million dollars in one day, you know, and you start to have these unbelievable results. I think it's a very dangerous thing to continue if we just continue to "Okay, now what? Okay, we did $6 million to 10 million or 10 million, lets do 20 million," you know, and is that what's always driving you is, as always the the giant vector, the force behind it. And I think it's a real, it's a lot more simple, I always want to lean into more simplicity. And for myself, and for my students, and just what I've been telling people now that I've realized the hard way, and the easy way, both ways, is "the doing is the destination." And if you can make the doing your destination today, you're going to be so much happier, you're gonna have so much more fun, and, and you're there. And that means when you're there, there's nowhere to go. There's no way to get to that you're not there, you're not behind, you're not when I you know, conditional living is what I call it, once I, if I, when I, then I can, and you're there, the destination is the doing the doing is the destination. So my doing is like showing up on a podcast today. What a joy, like, this is so awesome. I'm not doing it to hear myself talking and I talk a lot. It's like, oh, I have a lot I want to share and help people and if it makes a difference, that's amazing. And that's a win on my, you know, little thing there. So, that's kind of where we're at. You know. I love that I feel the same way I feel like my, the just the being able to, to have these moments where I can have a conversation. I mean, obviously I have every, there's reasons for everything we're doing. But at the end of the day, just this is this act of being able to talk to you and have a conversation is like it feeds it feeds my soul. It's gonna feed the listener's soul and it's like, you know, it's yes and it, and it helps on so many different marketing fronts. But that's, that's not the there's there's so much more depth to it than just that piece. And that's so I love that I love that you said that. It's in the doing. James this was like, just a massive honor to talk to you and also to catch up with you and to hear what you've been up to and to see your beautiful view and the Red Rocks out your window. Can I point out one last thing? Yeah, you and I have the exact same t shirt. I'm not wearing it today but I have that T shirt. What does it say is it a location you went to was like Utah or something?
Casey: 1:17:45
Yeah, it's its a Glacier National Park.
James 1:17:50
Yeah, I have one that says Sedona, its the exact same shirt.
Casey: 1:17:55
This is what we so I am me and my family we're going to be going on you know, that's why I was like hey, Sedona might be a spot but we're going to hit Utah I think and then, when we go through this like we're going to we do two months on Diana's parents farm in Iowa and then to a lake house where my parents are. But we're going to take a like a four or five day drive thru Utah through through Colorado and and then you know, and then hit Iowa so so we're already we're already going to hike you know, we have all three kids though, so it's like we're gonna probably do some hiking and stuff like that, but that's like Diana's thing is like outdoor stuff she just is like, that's her like, church.
James 1:18:44
So greatest place to do it. Well being Yeah, I think Utah is about eight hours from Sedona. But we're gonna be up there this this July for our Mastermind. If you're in the area, you let me know. To have you hang out or whatever. But I told you I told you I'm building a camper van right?
Casey: 1:19:01
Are you? That's incredible.
James 1:19:03
Dude. It's so incredible. I bought a 2020 sprinter 170 inch wheelbase. Mercedes Sprinter van, empty, naked, just empty van it's you know it's high do you stand in it we're 6 feet you can stand in it. And I am I'm building this thing out as a complete mobile camping unit off the grid unit in my spare time.
Casey: 1:19:28
You and I are friends with Chris Harder and I don't know Did you see his given RV right he have a massive awesome looking RV. It sounds like you're gonna build it you say you're gonna build it, you're gonna like--
James 1:19:39
I'm building it as we speak dude. I did it because it's number one like I just so jazzed up about the whole camping thing like to go out in nature and be out there.
Casey: 1:19:49
Yeah, for sure. Road trip it.
James 1:19:50
And then you know, zombie apocalypse end of the world who knows? It could be here, next week.
Casey: 1:19:54
Dude, I hear you. I hear you. I know when when when Corona, when COVID hit here, We got in our car before they locked California down. We got our van and drove all night to, to basically the farm, right? Kids were sleeping on the ground while we were driving at night through Nebraska and stuff like that. So like, you know, we we got out but we also loved being on the road at that point. And that's I've I love that you've done that. This thing has solar power, right so it's fully electric. Got the batteries and all that type of stuff, running water, heat, air conditioning, hot water. Yeah, bed, you know, like it's fully, refrigerators in there its a fully functional thing. It's a home on wheels. I'm so excited for it. But it's kicking my butt, man. It's it pushes you. So, yeah, that's awesome. Well, when you get that I want to see pictures. Okay. And I'm sure you're gonna do a walkthrough so like, that'd be awesome. Oh, yeah.
James 1:20:53
Awesome. Oh, yeah. I can't wait. Yeah, it's been great. Thanks for having me.
Casey: 1:20:57
Yeah, yeah. So final thing. Where can people find more of you? I know, that's such a common question. But I'm assuming just go to @JamesWedmore, right?
James 1:21:08
Yeah, yeah. I'm on the Instagrams. It's my name James Wedmore. W-e-d with a D for dog and then our podcast is everywhere that you would listen to podcasts. It's called Mind Your Business. There's 460-470 some odd episodes where I talk about a lot of things I'm talking about here. It's like what's on my mind, it's what I've had to learn who I've had to become, what I've had to let go of, all the crazy notions and yeah, the weird the woo, all that. I talked a lot about all the things like energy and manifestation from both a very scientific and a very, like, this guy's crazy and I loved I love pushing people's minds and brains a little bit. So we have a good time over there.
Casey: 1:21:50
I love that you have you've gone deep with self mastery, and it's shown so many wonderful results in your life.
James 1:21:58
And then when you go deep with that you come all the way back to just realize like it's just all about having fun and being happy. Who knew it was just that simple? It really is man,
Casey: 1:22:08
Living life on your surfboard.
James 1:22:10
Yeah, and now you know, your desert surfboard. So, but it really is, nothing is more important than your well being. Do what you love, love what you do, be happy. Just be happy and have fun. Not take this stuff so seriously. Yeah, someone else someone doesn't like you. Someone criticized you. Someone asked for a refund. Just shake your feathers. Right. Have fun. Keep going. Well, when you when you when you're doing when you start doing desert surfing, let me know. Okay. Oh yeah, wheels on there. I know you're gonna do that, I feel--
Casey: 1:22:46
What, you don't mountain bike or anything, you'd never do that? Oh, no, we've definitely Yeah, no, we have some bikes in the back. But just like it's harder out here to--
James 1:22:54
Dude I'm gonna bring you guys out, and get you set up in one of our places.
Casey: 1:22:58
I'm totally down.
James 1:22:59
And then we'll go mountain biking and we'll use the van and you guys, it'll it'll be a blast. I love it. We have four places so like Totally. Come on out.
Casey: 1:23:07
That's so cool.
James 1:23:08
The rest of you, listening? No.
Casey: 1:23:12
Wait what?
James 1:23:13
Everyone else, you have to pay. But yeah, Casey no.
Casey: 1:23:17
Guys, I get to go for free. And I get to get to go into Sprinter van. Oh, this is, ah its gonna be great man. A camper? Yes.
James 1:23:26
But no one listening cares about this.
Casey: 1:23:28
I know I know but this is for us. This is you and me. He probably won't even include this. He's gonna edit it all out.
James 1:23:34
I don't know. I don't know. Ladies? I guess we'll see. Right, we don't know. I love this part. This part is like we're, yes, It's like the the energy part. It's like feeding my heart so gets me jumping. It's like internal jumping jacks right now. So James much love to you dude. It was really great to catch up. And if you need anything your team needs anything around EasyWebinar or anything just just keep us informed.