The ADHD Skills Lab

The High Performance Habits Of An 8 Figure ADHD Business with James Wedmore

• Skye Waterson • Season 1 • Episode 182

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0:00 | 42:09

You get bored with the offer that's working, so you go build a new one. James Wedmore has run the same program and the same live event for ten years and says that's the entire reason it grew. He explains the difference between a real "this isn't working" and a feeling that just shows up the moment things get hard. He also breaks down why he became a bottleneck in his own business, what changed when he got specific about role clarity, and why he keeps his identity and worth separate from his revenue numbers.

What We Cover:

  • Why James calls novelty-chasing "first gear" and how it traps founders for years
  • The test for telling a real pivot signal from a hard-moment feeling
  • What changed when his business went from $2M to $10M in one year
  • Why role clarity exposed the real reason he couldn't delegate
  • How separating his identity from his revenue numbers changed everything

Connect With James Wedmore
https://www.jameswedmoretraining.com/

https://www.instagram.com/jameswedmore/?hl=en

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SPEAKER_00

Was working really hard. I had become a workaholic for sure. My sister definitely has been diagnosed with ADHD. So I was actually, I don't want to use the word taking, she was letting me have her Adderall. And I was popping 20 milligrams a day so that I could work longer. And my routine at that point became get up in the morning between 9 and 10, pop 20 milligrams. And I don't think I'd leave my desk chair until like midnight or 1 a.m. And I dropped down to 144 pounds. For reference, I'm like a healthy 175. My mentality at the time was he who works the hardest will will win or reach the top. And that's I said I'll just keep pushing and pushing and pushing.

SPEAKER_01

Hello everyone, and welcome to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. But before we get started, if you're a business owner making over 100K in a service business and you know that your ADHD is stopping you from getting the results that you want, then it might be time to build an operational layer. We do it for you for your ADHD brain. We find people, install people, get operators set up. Just click the link down below to do a free business build-out with me to see if you're a fit and we'll get started. Today I am joined by the wonderful James Wedmore. James has over 15 years of experience as an expert running a consistent eight-figure a year online business. He spent the last decade teaching entrepreneurs how to launch and scale their own digital brands. He began his career as that YouTube guy, and he made a name for himself, teaching online experts how to leverage the power of video and YouTube marketing to reach more people, share their message, and convert customers. But in 2016, James made a huge shift to focus on a big gap, the need with entrepreneurship for support around mindset, which I really appreciate and definitely agree with. He launched what he calls a totally woo-woo podcast, the Mind Your Business Podcast, and his signature program, Business by Design. Today he helps coaches, experts, content creators, and authors not only craft a better marketing message, but also ditch the hustle mentality and create true and lasting success from the inside out. So welcome to the show, James.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for having me, Sky. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome. So obviously, you're on a podcast where we talk about ADHD, diagnosed, undiagnosed, suspected, all that kind of stuff. What is your relationship with ADHD at the moment personally?

SPEAKER_00

I will say I have been told I have ADHD, but I wasn't told that until very recently, like in the last six months. The bio, thank you for sharing and saying all this braggadocious stuff about me, is actually I'm up, I'm up to 19 years of running a business. So personally, I have never had an experience where I go, like something's really wrong. I can't do this because something's wrong with how I think, how I learn. I've had like things where, yeah, it you gotta keep my attention. I get bored easily, but I get deep and fascinated into things. And everything in this world of business has always hooked me from day one. So I've had never I've never had focus uh trouble focusing or, you know, so I I don't know what that is, if like it's just served me for the things that I do or whatever, but I fell into business like a hand fitting right into a perfectly sized glove and have loved it, fell in love from day one. And it's allowed me to do so many incredible things that like stretch myself, stay interested, you know, uh grow, learn, help, and you know, even just like discover new skills and and lean into those as well. So it's just been such a joy for me that when this person told me that, I said, well, if I do, what a blessing, because it's served me well in my career. So that's my relationship with ADHD.

SPEAKER_01

And the research backs it up. You know, we love we love business, it's a huge overrepresentation of people who have ADHD or or ADHD symptoms. I'm curious though, you said this is you know what you've done. Did you what was your first job? Did you work in in a store? Have you ever done anything like that?

SPEAKER_00

So I graduated college in 2006 and immediately got four jobs. So that that that might be an ADHD job.

SPEAKER_01

Like one of these is gonna fit.

SPEAKER_00

One of these, well, yeah. Um, I had four jobs, and the the two predominant ones where I spent the majority of my time was I actually became a janitor at a gym. So I was like basically literally, that's where I started was like cleaning up sweat and then like to be gross urine in the in the bathrooms. And um I was the daytime weekday bartender at Chili's. So that that's what I that's what I started with. And it's a very long journey to get to where I am today, but I liked this idea of bartending. It was very fun and fascinating for me. And long story short, someone there at the bar asked if I would bartend one of their little private parties at their house. And I said, sure, okay. You know, I was saying yes to everything. And I got paid to do that. And I got paid more money to set up a little bar in their backyard than I did working at this restaurant. So I was like, why don't I just do that? And all of a sudden I found myself starting a business. And I grew that. I had to figure out how to build a website. I had to figure out how to get that website found and SEO'd and all that type of stuff. And then, and then I'm all of a sudden the phone's ringing every single day. Fast forward about six months, I had a staff of 15 bartenders and uh I had like the the cocktail servers and I'm renting bar equipment and all this type of stuff. And we were serving parties all throughout Southern California. And I was like, I'm not really passionate about bartending, but I'm loving this business thing. And it was like, it just kept evolving from there. But that's that's how it started.

SPEAKER_01

So tell me about your first hires. Were they contractors? How did you were they friends? Like, how did you make those decisions?

SPEAKER_00

And you're and you're referring to the bartending business?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, referring to the bartending specifically. We'll get into the other businesses.

SPEAKER_00

So we we did this part this New Year's party in Anaheim Hills, California for a huge company. It was their annual Christmas party that they had been doing for maybe 15 years. It's this huge traditional thing. And they took a chance and hired me. And the second year when they brought me back, um, and the party is so big that I have to have, I think it's it was between, I think it was at least four bars. So I had at least eight to ten staff there. And the the the daughter of the like owner or whoever was like the president of the company at the time comes to me and he said, She said, you know, she was a little tipsy, but she goes, You are the best bartenders we've ever hired. And I said, Do you want to know why? And she said, Why? And I said, Because none of us are bartenders. And it totally clicked. I had hired all of my friends, and we were all in college, we were all in like the biggest party fraternity back in the day. No one's ever asked me this. So this is fun for me to tell. So thank you. And we knew how to have a good time, we knew how to throw a party. And when you're doing a private party bartender, you you don't need to know how to bartend. It's like rum and coke, you know, vodkatonic, and then like beer and wine. So we became the entertainment. We were sociable, we were outgoing, we we made sure people were having a good time. And that's what they loved about us. And uh, I always thought that was that became like my niche. And so my company was called Poor Service, P-O-U-R, because I wanted people to know, like, I'm funny, we don't take ourselves too seriously here, and we want you to have a good time. And people loved it because we brought the party with us, and none of us were bartenders. So it was just my friends. It was just my friends.

SPEAKER_01

That's so fascinating. I love that as a niche. Obviously, you know, you're probably not thinking about that. You're like, I have friends, they're coming to this party. Nice. Tell me then about like, have you did you ever end up like because you scaled this business? How did that work with friendships? Because you know, we hear about business and friendship and things like that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it wasn't a problem. And I don't know why. It was such an easy gig and was such a it was such a simple deal for them because it was just a per per gig thing. And it was like, okay, I'm getting paid this much. We we split it. I think it was like I took 40%, they took 60. And I, and you know what it probably was, Sky, is that I encouraged tips there. I said, look, either you put a tip jar on there for my bartender, or if you don't want the tip jar because you think that's weird, just take care of them. And and and I would say tip them based on their performance. And so they were, we were all young, we were all in our early to mid-20s. I think I stopped, I think I started getting a little like like depressed. I was like, maybe I should stop doing this at like 27. And I was like, I think, I think I don't know if I could do this my whole rest of my life. No judgment or thing. I just like that's what the thoughts were coming up for me. So, you know, we're young 20s, and like four to five hundred dollars a night in cash when you're like 23 years old was everything. And so my friends would do an amazing job and they would get tipped well. And and it never was a problem. Every once in a while, there'd be like, oh man, we were at a sketchy party, a fight broke out, the cops came and a helicopter came over us, and everyone's scattered, you know, there'd be weird things like that happened, but they were always really great. And I think it was because they were, they kind of knew I'm not your boss, they are. And if and if you do well, they're gonna treat you well.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so you were more of the the facilitator to the boss.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I never felt like I had to manage them. True. I just said, this is where you're going this week. Do you want, do you want a gig this week? And they're like, please, here's the location, be here at this time. It was really fun, and it taught me, it taught me everything. Like it was so fascinating. I have this philosophy in life. I don't have a cool name for it. So we just I just call it the leapfrog effect. And it's this belief I have that everything you're doing is preparing you for the next thing. And I learned so much about people, about marketing, and about business at that time. And it still serves me to this this day with everything I do, but it was so cool. I was just like, I was almost like too dumb to know what I didn't know, and you're just kind of stumbling your way through it, and it worked.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Actually, that kind of, you know, one of the things you're talking about with ADHD is working memory, which means we don't look at the complexity. We're sort of like, this sounds great, and I love novelty, so let's do it. Sometimes not knowing is great.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I do feel what I see today when we work with clients is they use complexity as like a crutch or a protection mechanism. They will overcomplicate things in order to push out deadlines, in order to impress people. And I I don't recall off the top of my head the quotes about simplicity, but there's some great quotes about there is something so valuable and impressive with simplicity. And so I think that's a beautiful thing, is like we should try to make just lean into that. Yeah, I'm gonna keep this simple, make it simple. And maybe, I don't know, maybe just deciding it's simple helps make it more simple.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, simplicity is is always the best in business. And it's like, I don't know if you've ever heard someone who said, like, sorry, this letter is so long. If I had more time, I would have made it shorter. You know, like that can be.

SPEAKER_00

There you go. That's like one of those quote. I love that. Such a great quote, yes. And that's the truth. It's like we think simple means less value, less time. It's like, no, it's the opposite.

SPEAKER_01

So I want to zoom forward. You've started a business and now you're deciding, okay, I want to pivot away from being the YouTube guy. I want to pivot into podcasting. I want to know, like, we can we're gonna talk about the fears, but but even beyond that, like this is a huge decision. You have a very successful business, you know, you have a partner, you probably have assets at that point. Like, how are you making sure that this is gonna be a good shift for you? Or are you just going, it doesn't even matter? We're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's a great it's it's a really common question I get from people is like, how did you pivot? Because I was, I was the YouTube guy. I mean, I'm not this is not to toot my horn or anything, because this was just really early on in that world. Because I went to film school, so I had a passion for film and I was putting all the bartending stuff on YouTube, and I was doing all this stuff. And so, like, if you heard the word YouTube, you would think my name. And and it was because I was doing this back in 2011. This is like before people like Mr. Beast and all this type of stuff. And that's not, I'm not trying to to, I'm just like trying to paint the world of it. It was like, wow, that's something that can give a lot of security, and just why don't you just keep doing that? The first thing that shifted for me was when a client came back and said, I went through your whole program, it was amazing. And look at what I did. And it was their first video. And I'm not trying to be mean, it's gonna sound really just, but it was like it was really bad still, and it wasn't like they did all the they did all the things right. It was like you framed it right and you lit it right and you posted it right and all that stuff. And it's like, but I could tell how scared they were, how like stumbling they were, and like they weren't really stepping into their power and sharing their greatness from that place of like owning it. And I started being like, man, they have they have so much more ahead on their journey. And I could see the gap. And that what really started the question of like it was kind of two questions, like, what am I really here to do? Just help people make pretty videos or learn the technicals of videos. And then, and then I started questioning if I'm shouting YouTube from the rooftops, is that the real honest thing that's made the difference for me? Uh and and I I was feeling less and less congruent with that. If I I was going around saying, like, and I still believe this as a tool, YouTube is one of the most powerful ways to build an online brand. There's there's many more ways today. It's not the only one. I started going, like, that's but that's not all I've done. And I realized I was doing a lot of work on myself. I was doing a lot to become a better version of myself to oversimplify it, but you know, like be a leader for people and be more effective communicator and coach, and and really a lot of changes that happened within me. And I'm like, but it's just all YouTube. YouTube's the thing. And I just wanted to help people more. That's all it took for me, Sky. Is I just said, I want to do more for other people because that really gave me an incredible life. And I was like, I can do, I can provide so much more. So I just didn't care. I just, I'll just do it. I'll just do this. And so I did, and I didn't look back, you know. Simple as that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no, that's interesting. Well, take me through then, like mechanically, what happened in the sort of six to 12 month process of closing this down, opening that up.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, see, I am very strategic, and I will say that I'm very, I feel like I'm very strategic business wise. Someone asked me once, because a quote I do like is a leap in the net will appear, and they said, What's the biggest leap you've ever taken in your business? I'm like, I don't take leaps, I take calculated steps in the right direction. And I don't think someone needs to do things that are big with all this fanfare. Look at me now, and I'm burning it all to the ground. I I think that's all ego. I think that's all for attention and vanity. So no one knew until it had happened. In other words, I just one day started a podcast, and that was the Mind Your Business Podcast. And I just said, I'm just gonna start this podcast. And it was just talking about other stuff. Then I had I hadn't been I've been talking about video editing and codecs and frame rates and what camera to get, and there were lenses and stuff like that. And now I'm talking about all this other stuff. And it was not well received by that audience. I lost 70% of my email list, and I started getting one-star reviews right out of the gate. People were like, this guy's lost it. This guy is a loony. Because I'm talking about things like manifestation and energy and crystals and feng shui. And people are like, give me a break. And it was it's so cool because that it was not as receptive in those spaces as it is today. And I don't know what I had in me, and it could have just been that like blindness or dumb luck or something. But I was like, I knew this was the stuff that had made the difference for me. So I really didn't care what people's opinions were about it. It's like, if it helped me and I want it to help others, I'll just keep sharing what helps. And that's all that was like really in my mind. I didn't even take it personally if someone was giving me those one-star reviews. And the whole email list, like it dropped from like 100 and something, 160,000 down to less than 30,000. But then it started growing.

SPEAKER_01

And this is a very yeah, I I love you sharing this because this is so important for people to hear if they're in that position. Did you get any feedback from family, friends, people around you being like, hey, is this the right thing for you? Like, was everybody supportive?

SPEAKER_00

Everyone in my personal life has always been really supportive of me for two reasons. Number one, they've never fully understood me. That's a very true statement. They say that to me. They know this about me. I'm very stubborn, but I use my stubbornness in a healthy way, which is like I'm stubborn towards if I say I want to do something, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna do it. And they know that about me. So people in my life next to me, they just go like, if James says he's gonna do something, he's gonna do it. And you just, you don't, you don't argue otherwise. And that that's a really cool reflection for me. So Noah, everyone was extremely supportive. Plus, it didn't hurt that my it's actually my family, like especially my mom and my sister, that, you know, because these were like these were like weird topics of like spirituality and manifestation and energy. But it was it was actually the the women in my family that introduced it to me.

SPEAKER_01

Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_00

Well, my mom got me a book for my birthday several years earlier when I was starting, you know, like the bartending business. And it was a spiritual book. It was one of the Abraham Hicks books, if anyone's familiar with that. And she got it for me for my birthday. And I read the first, like the forward. I was talking about like, you know, they're channeling this being. And I just I took the book. I was such a jerk back then, and in front of my mom threw it in the trash in front of her. And um, yeah, oh yeah, big time. I was like, do not give me this nonsense. I don't want this. But I had to face during these years, so these are like while I'm doing the bartending and stuff like that, that I was working really hard. I had become a workaholic for sure. My sister definitely has has been diagnosed with ADHD. So I was actually, I don't want to use the word taking, she was letting me have her her Adderall. And I was popping 20 milligrams a day so that I could work longer. And my routine at that point became get up in the morning between 9 and 10, pop 20 milligrams. And I don't think I'd leave my desk chair until like midnight or 1 a.m. I looked, I wish I could find a photo of it. It was pretty bad, but I looked like a skeleton. I dropped down to 144 pounds for reference. I'm like a healthy 175 today. I looked like a ghost, and that's all I was doing. So I became a workaholic, and I just my my mentality at the time was he who works the hardest will will win or reach the top. And that's I said I'll just keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And I had nothing to show for it. I really didn't. And this was in between, just for like reference. This is we're talking this guy's 19-year career, but this was in between, like I had the bartending thing and I was trying to do something on the internet, trying to do this YouTube thing, trying to get the digital business. I had nothing to show for it. And when you hit a bottom like that, where you're you've decided this is the way that the strategy for success, and you follow that 10 out of 10, and it leads you nowhere. You either give up or you give up your excuses and limitations, your fixed mindset. And that's what I did. And I said, What's the harm? At this point, I got nothing literally to lose. And it was my girlfriend at the time, who's now my beautiful wife of 110 days of the recording of this podcast, and my my sister my little sister and my mother, who pretty much like spiritually intervened into my life, and in an and in their only the way that they could all three together assisted me in opening up. And that's all, I mean, that's a whole long story. But the the the TLDR of it is that the more I opened my heart and opened up spiritually, the more I could see with my own eyes the impact. That's when things started taking off. That's when I had more energy, more ideas, more creativity, more inspiration, more opportunities, more connections. And that started a journey for me. And so even though when the bit the YouTube business took off, I'm sitting there talking about this 3D thing called YouTube. It was everything that was occurring with me and within me that was really having a profound impact on my life, on every area of my life. And I said, I have to talk about these. So it was that's why I was like, it didn't matter at this point in time if people didn't like it. It didn't matter if my email list went down, it didn't matter if my revenue went down, which it didn't because it was just so like I it had bottled up so much to say this is what people are missing. And 816 or 17 episodes later, I could still share 800 more with my audience, you know. So we're still doing the podcast 10 years later. It's just crazy.

SPEAKER_01

It's also good because you mentioned, you know, you had the first business and you were like, okay, I love entrepreneurship, and then the second business, and and you're you're in that space, and and now you're in the space where you're like, I love entrepreneurship, and I'm doing it on something that I could talk about forever.

SPEAKER_00

Forever. Yeah. And that's why I went from YouTube to the podcast was because I wanted to talk longer. And I I just wanted to be able to go, listen, I don't want you to sit in front of your computer while I do this. Like, go for a run, go for a walk, go for a drive, take me on your road trip. And because I got a lot to say. And that was the only reason I went to that that format. Because I think the medium must match the market and the message. And that, and that, you know, you've probably seen this with with your podcast, but you know, if it was just a YouTube video, it wasn't, it wouldn't be the same thing. Like, we wouldn't be able to have these conversations in the same way.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, I'm a I'm a former academic, so this is my this is my home for being like, and then the research said this, and da-da-da-da-da. And people listen to it, so great. Tell me then about like the podcast itself. You said, you know, you were saying, okay, the revenue might go down. It didn't. How did you monetize your podcast?

SPEAKER_00

I've always had this thing personally of like, I I I'm not uh giving this to advice for other people, it's just me. I said, I don't ever want to have sponsors or anything on that. I said, if there's ever a sponsor and ad, it's gonna be for my own stuff. So the podcast came out in January of 2016 with no other plan. I had no idea. I was like, I'm just gonna put this out there and see what happens. And a philosophy that's really treated me well since then is this idea that. Most people wait for clarity before they take action. And then they end up waiting a long time. And I figured out pretty quickly that that's that's the opposite. That if you just start taking action, like more clarity emerges. And it's just, it's a fascinating phenomenon. When I I don't know what that is, but I go, I'm just gonna get started. So this is this is exactly what I did. At this time, I built this YouTube business to about two, two point million in revenue. That's amazing. I was living three minutes and 10, 12 seconds, because I would time it from my front door to the beach. And I would go surfing twice a day. So I'm like, this is the dream. I'm here, I'm I'm at it. And this is at 30 years old. I'm like, I've made it. I've this is this is it. And I'm like, I really want this for other people. So I made this video, simple three-minute video, and I and I said, I went to anyone who follows me and I said, This is the life I've created, this is what I've been able to do. I don't know what I would teach on, but if you want me to help you do the same thing, I'm putting together, I think the number was 25, 25 people, and I'll take you through four live calls. At the time we didn't have Zoom, it was go-to webinar just to date myself a little bit from the tech nerds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there was no Zoom back then. It was 2016. This is so this is like March or April at this point. 350 people applied to this thing in 24 hours. And I ended up, I think I accepted 25, and then I said, okay, I'll take 25 more. And we did 50. And I'll never forget, I did that first call. And I the first thing on my mouth is I said, I just want to be straight, transparent with you. I don't know what I'm gonna talk about. I don't have an agenda. And it's because this is still something that I've done, but I haven't reverse engineered how I did it. I haven't turned it into a framework. I haven't turned it into anything that's replicatable yet. But if you're willing to do that alongside with me for this series of calls, I'll tell, I'll do as long as it takes and I'll give you everything you need. And they were here for it. So we did the first call and I went home and I said, I probably should start to like map out topics for each call. And I said, okay, week one is all gonna be about building your business by design. And as soon as I said that, I was like, oh, there it is. That's the whole thing. That's that's what I want for everybody. The program's called Business by Design. That was it. I took these people through these few weeks of training, I think it was four. I maybe, maybe ended up adding a few weeks or something like this. And then this is really cool. Is I said, Do you guys want to come out to California? And that's where my office was. And I said, Come hang out. I'll do an additional day or two in person. And 44 out of the 50 people from all over the world flew in for these two days. And I had our first live event. I'd never done a live event before. This is it. We're doing it. And that is now what we officially call the first BBD live or Business by Design Live. And I just held the 15th one to a thousand or eleven hundred people down in Phoenix, Arizona last December, right before we got married. And that's, you know, that's 10 years of something. Now, I want to add something because I don't know if you'll even think to ask it, but it's something that I think is really important to me. That if we are talking to someone with an with an experience of, you know, diagnosed or undiagnosed ADHD, that has been one of the most simple, powerful, and profound principles that has helped me in business, that is not sexy. It's not what you're gonna hear from the people with with all the you know fun, hypey stuff they want to share with you. There is something to be said about my career from that moment till today, I'm doing the same thing. That I just decided I am gonna just do this. So I have the same program and I do the same event, and I just try to make it bigger, better, more impactful, and more helpful every year that I do it. In total, you know, the business has generated a tremendous amount of revenue over the years in in 19 years, but I would say 80 plus percent of it has come from what what I just shared, that offer and that that little strategy of just doing that over and over again for 10 years. And I say this because there is something to be said about what I call like the toxic side of entrepreneurship. Any new idea is very exciting. And so, what a lot of people do is they they get addicted to the exciting, you know, hit of the new idea. And that keeps you in first gear. And then that will wear off for everybody. That wears off because it's not new anymore. You've you've reached the point where now you gotta do something hard with it. It's it's you've hit a challenge, you've hit a roadblock. People go, it doesn't have that same feeling. Let me go do something new. And I've watched people over the same 10 years still be in first gear in their business because they're just hopping from one thing to the next. This ain't it, this ain't it, this ain't it, this ain't it, this ain't it. And I always wonder, is that true? Is this ain't it? Or did you say that the moment it got hard? And what I know to be true for me, I can only speak for me, but the more that I've just done the same thing, which takes discipline, it takes a level of business maturity, the more I have gained in every way. And today I tell my students everything that you want from your business, because a lot of people don't get from their business what they thought it was gonna give them. I was gonna get all this freedom and all this money and time back. And it's like now I am a prisoner to my business. And it's like, I could have just stuck in my job and I'd be working less, I'd have more energy. Like, what happened? And what I tell people is that everything you truly want from your business comes on the other side of replication and delegation. If I'm doing something longer, it's easier to delegate. And if I'm doing it longer, it's easier to replicate. And if I do that long enough, it continues to grow and get better while I continue to work less and less. And it's been really beautiful to find that sweet spot in that pocket. And a lot of people say, How do you not get bored? And that's that's the ultimate. Whenever I say any version of this, people say, I was just at, we were just at one of our events. We were just with 175 of our clients in Orange County, California last week. And they seen for four days. Again, this is not to brag. I'm four days. I am, I am on the whole time, and I am present and excited and enjoying the and they see it. They're like, this guy is having so much fun. How can you do this for 19 years and have this much fun? How are you not bored by now? And I have two very simple, two very simple answers. Number one, my business is not my hobby. Its job is not to entertain me. I have, you want to talk about my ADHD. I have so many hobbies and I love them. You know what I was doing 10 minutes before this call was I was working on my Star Wars movie theater build. I'm building out an entire replica Millennium Falcon in my basement right now. I think it is the coolest thing. That keeps me plenty enjoyed. You know, I'm entertained by that. I'm I'm learning a ton. I'm having a blast. I also picked up guitar three years ago, and that set me on a whole journey of learning music. And I've fallen in love with music on a whole nother level. So I don't need my business to do that. And and people create a very unhealthy, toxic relationship with their business, a very codependent one where they need to get all their needs met. That's a very dangerous place to go because now businesses are going to have ups and downs, you know, for various reasons, internally and external factors, uh, the economy, the marketplace, it changes and da da da da. And now your entire mood, your entire mental, emotional disposition is tethered to whether you got sales today, whether you got leads today. That is exhausting. That's the number one reason why I can do this for 19 years, because I chose long ago to uncouple any type of attachment, identity, value, worth, or need and decoupled that from my business completely. I want to just live a happy, simple life. I have my hobbies, I got my beautiful wife, and I got my little puppy. And I'm like, I am, I'm living in little magical Sedona, Arizona. And I'm like, I couldn't be more happier. And then I go, wow, I get to do this. The second reason that this will never get boring for me. Like, this isn't my first podcast. I've done at least two or three others. No, two or three thousand others. I do podcasts all the time. And and I love it. You you asked immediately. I was that was me responding. I was a hell yes, instantly, right? I love doing podcasts. And the simple reason, number two, is that every day I choose, and it is, it has to be a choice. I choose to be present to what is on the line for another human being that I could have the potential of impacting or helping in some way. I was in a very low and dark place at the start of my business. I thought it was hopeless, endless, and I was ready to just go. Maybe I should go back and get that janitor job. Maybe I should just should have stayed at Chili's. And uh, and that was something I had to really face. And a lot, a tremendous amount of people I'm so blessed, came into my life and helped me at all these milestones. I love to brag to say I'm the best student for the people, the mentors and the teachers that have come into my life. And I don't take any of their advice, their mentorship, and their guidance lightly. And I'm I'm always want to have such an open mindset, still to this day, still still to this day, I'm learning so much. And my life is completely, unbelievably radically different today because of that. And I go, if I could be that for one more person, it's worth it. And that just doesn't, that's that's never gotten old for me. That's just true. I I go into that room for four days and I'm like, someone here, something will click and it will change the trajectory of their life. I'm not trying to take credit for it. I will say I played a role in being a catalyst, and I believe humans need to do that for each other. That's otherwise, why are there all of us? For for what other reason than that we can impact each other and rise together and support each other to be of service to somebody is is a beautiful thing. So there's my long answers. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01

I agree. No, I love it. My quote, because to get to quotes at the end, is we rise by lifting others. Like, that's my favorite quote. I think it's so so valuable. I want to get into the the thing you talked about, the delegation side. You talked about delegating, giving other people. So take me through like what was the most difficult thing that you had to delegate? Explain that process to me.

SPEAKER_00

This is a there's a whole long journey of everything I've learned about team. And today, my wife and I, it's one of our things that we love, our most passionate about today is teaching team. I have a very simple philosophy, I believe, is great businesses are built by great teams. Entrepreneurs are pretty good at holding on to control. I'm just trying to state it in a positive way. We are little, little itty bitty control freaks. And I was. The first time it hit me in my gut was I hired a like a freelance project manager to help run this whole campaign with me. And I'll never forget, we were on the phone and I said, Oh, yeah. So did you do that? Whatever it was. And she said, No. And I was so taken aback. I was like, wait, what? You didn't even do it? But I needed that by today. And she said, No, I didn't do it. And I said, Well, why? And she said, What's the point? You were gonna redo it anyways. And that was the first like mirror back to me in how I had been showing up as a leader or lack thereof. And so I realized I had a really hard time letting go of things, giving, you know, some trust to other people to take the wheel. And of course, then I wasn't training them either. So it kind of is like this double-edged thing, right? It's like you're not training them, you're not effective in your communication, and then you can't trust them. It's like you couldn't make this more of a worse environment for even an A player to thrive in. And there was a quote that I read in a very different context. It was standing behind the concierge desk at the four seasons, no, not the four seasons, the Ritz Carleton in Maui. And it was a quote, that's how you know that level of specificity, like that's how you know. And I can even tell you the year was, I think it was either 2015 or 2016 in the summer. And it said, if a flower doesn't bloom, you don't blame the flower. You look to the environment in which it grows. And I go, Oh, well, whose job is to create the environment? And it's mine. And I realized that if I ever wanted to attract a team and take things off my plate and continue to grow, because in this type of business, we become the bottleneck really fast. That's the nature of the business model. But then when you had add, I'm a control freak, I have a fear of letting go of control, it's gotta be done my way or the highway, all these things. It's like you're you're you're bottlenecking on steroids. And so I what shifted for me is I said, I'm gonna look to the ways in which I can change the environment. And it really, it really helped to say, like, maybe someone can thrive, bloom when they have a better environment. And that changed, that was the beginning of a whole new era. And it really is what set us up, where we had this one year, and this this came about 2018. The business went from two to 10 million in one year, and people always want to ask me about it. There's there's all these factors and stuff that did it. I didn't just do one thing, but in the business side, I set up the environment for it. And when that was in place, it was like everything exploded.

SPEAKER_01

So, in that case, I know people are gonna ask, I want to know, can you give me like three practical things that you changed in that environment?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and and just speaking to the environment. The the first thing I did, oh, there was it was very clear on the roles and the responsibilities of people on the team. And when I was when they were very clear and I was very clear, something else became very clear that responsibility means the buck stops with them. They own it. A lot of people don't get that, and they do this like pseudo-responsibility thing where it's like you give them the ball, but like as you think they're about to drop it, you like grab it from them. And it's like, so if they can't actually drop the ball, were they really holding it? And my team really saw that they owned things. And I spent, so this is the first one. I and I spent the majority of my time instead of now staying busy and doing all kinds of stuff, because that's what a lot of them say is, oh, now I'm just managing a team and they're taking away from everything I need to do. It's like, no, my friend, your role has changed. And now your primary job is to lead this team. So that's what I did. So I cultivated their skills and invested import into them. And we could go down that rabbit hole in all the things I did, but that's a that's the first thing. With that came, you know, like they became responsible for particular metrics and goals and games and stuff like that. The next thing, and I think these are the two bookends to this. And if someone could get these three things, it was like the right people in the right seats, right? The next thing, and these these are things that entrepreneurs never think about was I cultivated the culture. And the culture I didn't realize is freaking everything. And and the culture is like the invisible glue that holds the team together. This is the vibe, the way we work, the way we interact with each other and treat each other, what we acknowledge each other for, all of that. And that became the foundation, that became the floor that these A players stood on. And then the third thing, also what I call the forgotten stepchild. It's just the most like, oh yeah, yeah, scoffed at thing when I teach it. I think it is the most important thing. I think if there's anybody here listening building a business, I don't care if you started the business yesterday, and I don't care if you've been doing this for 25 years, I still don't think there's anything more important than this one thing, and that is vision. The vision is the future that you and your team choose to live into that is a future that would never, ever happen if not for you and your team, not for you and your organization, that you literally cause and alter a future outcome because of your actions, your decisions, and how you play the game. And the vision to me was everything at that time. It still is, obviously, but it was everything. It it alters how you think, how you show up, how you take action. It alters your state, everything. What was also happening at this time is I was understanding the true nature of fear to the degree and impact in which fear affects performance, thinking, you know, and they've they've proved what fear does to even our creative faculties and decision making, and how important that was to eradicate fear from your life. Because fear to me is simply a vision of the thing you don't want. And so if I could create such a compelling vision of a future I did want, I noticed it would overpower like a vacuum. It would pull me towards that versus the unwanted. And that's just what we kept doing. And I'll I'll never forget, I had this moment at a team retreat like a couple years after that, where a team member admitted when he was, when I was sharing the things we were up to and the goals and what we were gonna do, he was saying under his breath and in his head, he's like, This guy's nuts. This guy's lost it. And he goes, but every time you said we do something, we did it. And you were right, you like we made it happen. He's like, I don't know how you did that, but now I just trust you and follow you. Wherever you send us into battle next, like I'm here for it. And I'm like, that's A players, it's the culture, and it was the vision. And those three things just gave us a you know a superpower that I had never tapped into before.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, no, that's amazing. And if anyone's seen me looking down, I was writing that down. I hope you guys were as well. Well, well, we've got a quick fire round. I want to make sure we we let you go on your way, although we could just talk about this forever. I'm gonna ask you three questions we ask everyone. What is a professional achievement that you are the most proud of?

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think it'll make sense now. The answer, I've been asked this before, and the answer is always the team that I've created.

SPEAKER_01

100%. What about a professional failure? How did you handle that?

SPEAKER_00

I think the biggest professional failure I had was before I created my program, Business by Design, I promoted somebody else's business program. And it totally flopped. And I was very disappointed. I put all this time and effort into it, and no one wanted it. But I asked people what happened, like, why didn't you join this? And it was amazing what they said. They said, Because we're we're not following you to learn from somebody else. We want to learn all that from you. And that's what gave me permission to do this. Not that you need permission, but that was like what I go, oh, you do? You don't want to just learn video from me. And that's that's when I launched Business by Design. So that was that was a big one for Emma. And I was like, what a blessing that was. Today I I, you know, I make mistakes all the time, and I I go somehow we always find a way to turn our biggest failures and disappointments into gold, you know, the alchemist there. So that's a good example for me.

SPEAKER_01

And, you know, if you had to pick a quote from, you know, the many you have for your life, what would you, what would you want to pick?

SPEAKER_00

That was the hardest, you know. I have I have so many. I've been working closely with a spiritual mentor the last eight years who's had the most tremendous impact on my life, just shares ancient wisdom constantly. And there's one quote that he shared that he has shared. It's it's less a quote, and it's just it's a statement of truth that is a tool that I use every day. And it's the simple statement, you are where your attention is. And I remind myself of that every day because then I can just ask myself, so where's my attention? Is my attention on what I can be grateful for, what I have in my life? Is it on the moment? Is it on the present, or is it on something I'm screwed up on the past, you know, something I'm embarrassed about or ashamed, or is it on something I'm nervous about or afraid? Because you are where your attention is, and you get to decide where you keep your attention.

SPEAKER_01

Well, James, it has been so wonderful to talk to you. Honestly, we could have gone so long on that. I had so many questions. But tell everybody where they can find you, where they can find your podcast, where they can find business by design.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, thanks for that. It's a joy for me too. I really appreciate it. So thank you, Sky. So I think anywhere that they host podcasts today, mine is on there. I know it's on Spotify and in iTunes. My podcast manager, I think, does a great job putting it everywhere. But it's called the Mind Your Business Podcast. There are a lot out there called the Mind Your Business Podcast today. That doesn't really bother me, but mine has my name on it too. My name is James Wedmore. I do an ep, I do at least one episode every single week. And so I would say, like, if you want anything, learn more about that stuff, that would be the place to go. And you can start anywhere in there. And I just like to share what's on my mind and then bring some really fun and interesting guests to the show at any chance I can get.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the ADHD Skills Lab. If you liked it, leave us a five star review. It helps other people learn more about us. And thank you so much to our wonderful team for making us sound good, look good. We couldn't do it without you.