Blue Collar Culture

Business Results the Old Fashioned Way

Dan Kuschell | A New Take on Work/Life Balance

· ·

Dan Kuschell has started 11 companies and coached more than 5,000 entrepreneurs in all sorts of industries. Through decades of business experience he’s gained unique insights into why some businesses thrive, others barely survive, and some die.

One thing he knows for sure is that simply working hard doesn’t guarantee success. And often it wreaks havoc on your life. It’s a lesson he learned the hard way in a hospital emergency room.

But you won’t find him talking about work/life balance. Find out why he doesn’t believe in it, at least in the conventional sense, as well as…

  • 3 questions you must ask yourself to change your business and life
  • Why business plans don’t work
  • How to make sure your business doesn’t depend on you
  • What you must do to make your business sellable 
  • And more

Listen now…

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Transcript

Ryan Englin: Welcome back to another episode of the Blue Collar Culture Podcast. I'm your co-host, Ryan Englin. I'm here with Jeremy Macliver. Jeremy say Hi.

Jeremy Macliver: Welcome back.

Ryan: Hey, I'm really excited to speak with our guest today. He's got an amazing story about a real life-changing event that set him on a path to really support businesses in being able to grow and put the systems in place and the processes in place to really see success inside of their business. He's got over 25 years of experience, started over 11 companies and coached over 5000 entrepreneurs from a variety of industries around the world. In fact, he's even been rated as a top 25 influencer by Influitive. And his podcast is recommended by Forbes Magazine. Dan Kuschell, I want to thank you for being here with us today.

Dan Kuschell: Guys, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Jeremy: Welcome. We're happy to have you here.

Ryan: So Dan, I mentioned it a little bit in the intro and I know that you have really been impacted by the struggle between work-life balance. And you've got a really great story about something that set you off on this path that you're on now. I would love for you to just share a little bit of the backstory and how you got to where you're at.

How Dan Got to Where He is Today

Dan: Yeah, I mean, you know, the short version, you know, like, as you're listening right now, you know, you're probably if you're following Ryan and Jeremy and the Blue Collar Culture show, is you work hard, right? You were probably taught a blue collar work ethic, and you were probably taught that a way to get ahead is to, you know, outwork the competition and build in working smart. And, you know, that's a great way to, you know, have core values.

You know, for me, guys, I grew up in the inner city of Detroit. My dad was a blue collar worker. He worked for the biggest company in the world at the time. And then he got laid off about nine different times. And for me as I watched this, I was like, I don't want to do that. Like, that's insane. Like, why would you put yourself or your family but that's what he did. That was the choice that he made. And then my dad was a tinkerer as a blue collar worker.

So like on weekends, he would work on, you know, friends' cars in the neighborhood and make money that way. And then ultimately led to, you know, running a shop, essentially, as a mechanic. But if you can picture this for a second, like in our basement, like, where we grew up, we had basements in the inner city of Detroit. And so you'd go down in the basement, and like my dad had had like an engine kind of pulled apart and over in one area, there'd be like a carburetor and in another area, there'd be like, plugs and pistons and stuff.

And like, so he's always putting these things together. And for me, I've been kind of fascinated about that approach to business. And so combine these types of things and the fact that my sister when I was in college, she got me connected to a direct response marketing company. And I watched how you could put messages out like direct mail, you could run ads on radio, you can run ads on TV, and people would respond and they'd actually buy stuff. And that was like, the craziest thing in the world. I mean, I got so fascinated. For me, that became my PhD out of college and studying this stuff.

And I got immersed in personal development got a chance to learn and be mentored by people like Michael Gerber, Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, and followed a lot of their stuff. All the way back, this is all the way back in 1989 when I started. And then, you know, fast forward I started my very first company in 1992 because I didn't want to go work in a traditional company for traditional people. And I started this business, and we would go out guys and we would help clients, you know, make money and generate business and generate clients in the health club industry.

However, what I learned, although we were really good at that, what we weren't really good at, what I wasn't good at, most importantly, was running a dang business. And so fast forward, we had, I had a business partnership breakup. Basically, our business partner ended up emptying the bank account and managing disagreements, and I had to regroup. But, you know, it was a tough, tough time. And that was kind of my starting point to really learn about business, about process.

And you guys, you guys are amazing at processes and, you know, being a part of EOS and process development, right? And how do you navigate that? Fast forward, you know, to the last couple decades, I was very blessed, you know, one of my 11 companies or a couple of my 11 companies we built up pretty successfully at over 190 employees, several offices. It was doing a lot of business a month and year. And, you know, if you can imagine, you know, building what you think is like this certain level of success, but a lot of my habits hadn't changed.

I was still working 100 hours a week, working really hard and obsessed with growth and growth and growth and growth. And then, you know, I did what a lot of people do. I got married. I can remember it vividly, I had a two-year-old daughter. My son was just born and I want you to imagine that. Imagine you built this big giant successful from the outside looking in business, you were still working hard and while you were working hard, you're like, well, I'm gonna continue to work hard so that I don't have to work hard in a few years.

But imagine you said that a year before, two years before, five years before and so on. And it was still happening. And what ended up happening long and the short of it is if you take a walk with me, my daughter was two, my son had been just born a few weeks before. So imagine your daughter, you have a two-year-old daughter, your son is born and you wake up with chest pains one morning. So you call your doctor and you say, hey, I've got some chest pains. And your doctor says, Well, can you get yourself to the hospital?

Long and short you get yourself to the hospital. Of course, when you walk into the hospital emergency room, you don't walk and go and I got chest pains because you know what will happen. And I knew it would happen. And so I said, Well, I got a little like tightness in my chest. And, you know, I wanted to check some things out. And they go, Okay, great. And you expect, you know, you're going to sit in the emergency room for like hours. Only, it's minutes. Like, less than three minutes. They're coming over, they're starting to do some evaluations and tests. And then imagine all hell breaks loose. They say immediately follow me right now.

They walk into a side room, they put you on a gurney and say lay down, take off your shirt, and then all of a sudden they start putting diodes all over your body. I mean, it's chaos, like it's utter chaos. And then you spend the next three-plus days in the hospital. And then they have you sign a disclaimer as part of one of the tests and procedures that they want to do on your heart. They say you gotta sign this and it basically says you have a one in x chance of dying on the table. How would that change the game for you? I can share with you guys how it changed the game for me.

You know, I built this business. And I remember one of the nights after signing that disclaimer and preparing for that procedure slash surgery. Like really looking in the mirror. And I cried that night a lot. And I actually wrote pieces to attach to at the time, what was my will, because I wasn't sure if I was going to come out of it. And I literally stayed up the whole night writing these notes to my wife at the time.

And it was a very interesting experience and to just save some of the time, you know, I went through a process that maybe you've heard of as you're listening, and if you haven't, I'll just simplify it. It's from a book called Man's Search for Meaning and a process called DABDAR, which is how you deal with loss and it's denial, anger, bargaining, depression, anxiety, and then ultimately you have a response and that's the acronym DABDAR. And I went through all of those stages in like hours through that night. And as I was praying, going, you know, God, if, you know, when I come out of this, I will do things a little bit differently.

And I was evaluating like, what would I do different? And then think about that. If you were in that scenario, what would you do? And for me, guys, what happened is I was like, I gotta make some changes. And so I hired a coach, right? I've always believed that, you know, up to that point, I'd invested a lot of, money still do, million over a million dollars coaching, consulting, mentoring, you know, to get these fine distinctions all the time, like how do you uplevel, how do you get next level and being consumed to do that? And I came out of it going okay, I got to get a coach.

And so I hired a coach, her name is Dr. Christy Lopez still, you know, do work with her today. She's amazing. And we went through a process that I think will be a value as you're listening that like, regardless of where you're at in your business, you might be brand new, you might have started your business yesterday, or you might be running a 100 million dollar empire or anywhere in between.

You know, if you're looking for a way to kind of get the sanity between at home success and in business success and merge the two because I don't believe in balance, which is why you won't hear me use that word. It's integration. And, you know, if you're in a place where maybe you feel like, Hey, here's what I realized, guys, I realized that I was giving myself leftovers. What do I mean? My health was terrible.

You know, I was sleeping two hours, three hours a day going, Oh, I'll sleep one day when I get things successful. But I've been doing that for over 10 years. That takes a toll, right? I was in my 30s though, are you I don't know about you guys, but for me, I was like, Oh, I'm invincible. I, you know I can sleep later. And I also had a mentor in my early 20s, who said, well, you can sleep when you're dead. And I kind of bought that idea, hustle, hustle, hustle, grinding, grinding, grinding. And it's a dumb way to go about it. Like, if you just look at things differently. And

Ryan: I was going to say I got questions there. I mean, great story. Lots going on. Sounds like, at a point the business was going well, new family, things. You had a lot. There part of it where the business was just grinding you to death. Maybe on the outside, you looked good, but on the inside, not quite so much. And I know as an entrepreneur, I can relate to that. I've had periods in my life where that's happened. I mean, I even had a period of my life where I was working for corporate America where that happened.

And sometimes you just felt helpless. Like, for me, I didn't really realize there was this, there are people out there that actually cared about getting me out of this. You mentioned the coaches and the consultants. For those listeners that are feeling that way right now that maybe this is the first time they're actually really thinking about it, but that are thinking about this or feeling that way. What were some of the things that you found that helps you get through it? Because there's one part that's making the decision to change it, to take control of it, but then there's the other part is actually doing something about it.

Overworking Yourself is Very Often Counterproductive

Dan: Yeah, I would go back to, you know, my work with Dr. Christy Lopez. And I'll simplify it, you know, as you're listening, ideally, grab a pen, because these I imagine they will transform the way you think about building and growing your business, especially at a value base level. And building a great culture starts here.

Because if you don't have a good culture, personally, like how does that show up in your business, right? If it's a mess, if you're a mess, like health-wise, mess at home, it'll bleed into your business. And if that's what you want, well, Hey, keep doing it. Be messy, be chaotic be, you know, unhealthy, all those sorts of things. It will ultimately one will lead the other and it starts at home. And so when she got me to look at guys was, number one, she said, I want you to answer this question, What do you want?

Sounds simple. Now I'm in her office when she asked me this question for the first time, and I'm a little embarrassed to a degree to share this, but I found it as impacted a lot of people when I tell them the real deal about how it worked. We sat down, I wrote one answer on my sheet of paper and then I stopped. And about 20, 30 minutes went by and I was stuck, right?

So if you're listening, and you think about that question and you feel stuck or overwhelmed to a degree, by the way, she told me it's normal. And she said, Well, let's have your next session, which was supposed to be a couple days later, and I blew her off because I was so damn embarrassed that I couldn't think of another answer at the time. And then I blew her off the next week. I made excuses. And then finally I got in. I was sitting down, she sent me a couple more be thinking about, like, What do you want?

And she says, just like, not what your kids want, not what your employees want. Because I had about 200 at the time. Not what does your wife want. What do you want? What do you really want? And then she said, Here's another way to start maybe, that might help you. She says, What do you not want anymore? Oh, that was easier. And it helped me bridge the gap with what do I want. So I went through this process with that one question. It took several weeks and then got a lot of clarity.

And then she added the second question, which was Who are you? Now that one wasn't quite as hard but what she when I first started doing it she, the mistake I made which a lot, she says a lot of people make is that the Who are you, a lot of people start talking about titles, accomplishments, you know, all this nonsense that really hit the chord, I mean in the bigger picture of stuff just doesn't matter. She says not that. Like, who are you as a human being? Not a human doing things but a human being thing. What are your qualities? What are your characteristics, right?

Who are you? And I got through that and it was like eye-opening. And then she says, Okay, well, third question, what do you stand for? Like we hear companies talk about, Oh, you've got to have great values, right? You guys allude to it about the idea of like this nonsense foosball tables, right? Open source offices, right? Work at home, flex hours. It's all I mean, it's Bs, right? At its core. More important is like, what do you stand for? What are the core values, right? But here's the thing, most owners look at core values, projection values, not like who they really are.

So she says, you know, you can't have core values at your business work, right? If you don't have good core values of you personally. And then she said, then take that to your family, right? So what do you stand for? What are those core values that you stand for? And also, what are you not going to stand for? And man, that was such a powerful, so every decision I make like why we're here. We have Steve Gordon, Unstoppable CEO and his right-hand person Darby to thank for getting us connected, right?

But part of the reason I love doing conversations like this is because it fits in to like, these core values, these three questions. It makes it a decision-making process. And so fast forward. What I decided from all that, by the way, was I didn't want this big giant business anymore that was consuming me. I wanted better health. I didn't want to give my wife leftovers anymore. I was done with it. I didn't want to give, I didn't want to be the dad.

I did not want to be the dad that when his kids asked them at 16, 17, 18 years old, what was your dad like? I didn't want my kids to be saying Well, my dad was amazing. He provided for us. We did all these cool trips. Well, what was he like? Well, I don't know. He's always working. And I was on that path. But I decided clearly, through this exercise, that's not what I wanted. And ultimately It led me to setting the stage to sell my business.

But here was the problem, although I had all this revenue and we were profitable, I had a business that was really still dependent on me. And it forced me in that time to really get dang serious about building processes and building systems for the business. You know, the Michael Gerber concept or, you know, the EOS concept which are brilliant, which is, you know, have really good systems, if not great systems, run your business and have good people run those systems. Notice the difference though.

A lot of people miss this little distinction and that little framework. It's get great systems to run your business. Good people to run those systems, not great people. So if you're like I was I used to look for unicorns. People like me, people who run as hard. And I just found myself completely frustrated all the time. And through this process, it forced me to think very different about business to look at setting it now. You might be listening right now and you might be going I never have a desire to sell or exit. Well, how about getting free from the day to day? Like I am so blessed, guys.

Like, all of this transformation through those three core questions and some other things, setting up processes, which you guys teach. You're a couple of the best in the service world to do that. For me, the processes lead. I was able, within 18 months, I had a couple buyers on the hook and we sold the company shortly thereafter. It gave me the freedom to exit. Gave me the freedom to be a dad. Gave me the freedom to really be a present full-time husband. Now then my wife kind of got sick of me. And there's another story too that we could talk about some other time.

But today I get, I'm fortunate now, I sold the businesses now I get to advise some of the top experts in the world on how to grow and scale their business with far less stress. And I coach my son's football team four days a week, right? Which is a pretty large time commitment. I would not be able to do that in my previous business days. But it started with those simple questions. And then looking at it from the perspective, like what you guys teach. Set up good culture, set up the processes so you can free yourself up from the day to day. And it's amazing what happens when you do.

Ryan: Yeah, so I'd like to go back to the you getting your business preparing, you know, preparing it to sell because I think to your point of probably a lot of people out there that have never really thought about selling their business or exiting their business. And so they haven't really been very intentional about creating the systems and getting good people to run them. What were some of the things that you learned along that 18-month journey from the time you made that decision to the time you were actually able to sell the company? So just what was like, what was that journey like?

Just in support of that people that are thinking yeah, I want that whether I choose to sell or not. And one of the things I love, Jeremy, I heard him say this multiple times, he's like, if you get the business ready to sell In 18 months, you just might want to buy that business. That might be a business that you want to own. And so there's no, nothing wrong with getting your business ready to sell. You just might decide you like it even more then. So what, tell us a little bit about that 18-month journey you took?

The Six P’s of Building a High Value Asset

Dan: Well, you know, a big part of it that evolved out of that was really setting the stage for building an asset, right? What I realized looking, you know, today, looking at in hindsight, always being 2020 is, you know, what is a business? Now we have a choice of what a business really is. Is a business, really a job? is a business, like an opportunity just to substitute what we had in a job, right? That's one way to go about it.

Another way to go about building a business is actually you buy nine jobs when you buy a business or get started in business. And so now you're wearing nine hats. You're the chief cook bottle washer. You know, you're responsible for prospecting, you're responsible for selling, you're responsible for the fulfillment that happens every day, right? I see a lot of people there, right?

And I was kind of a hybrid until I made some serious shifts. And then the third is the type of person that really wants to set the stage to build an asset value. And how do you build an asset value in our model? We refer to this as six P's, right? We don't have time to go through all of them but I'll just share the nuts. So number one is a plan, you got to have a good plan. Like, you know, when's the last time as a business you looked at your culture, plan, your values, right? There's plans to that.

And you can do these in 15, 20, 30 minutes, at least a version one a basic version. Or how about a marketing plan blueprint, right? What is your plan? Like, some people go I gotta build a business plan. Not that I almost feel that business plans today, traditional business plans are obsolete by the time they're done because things change so fast. So if I were to tell somebody or suggest to somebody today versus say 10 years ago what the focus on, values culture, marketing plan blueprint. Like if you don't have those plans, you're doomed, right?

It's going to be really hard to set the stage for moving to an exit. So what are the plans? Now there are other plans and certainly as you grow, they'll evolve, but those are some of the basics. Second P is in this is positioning. How are you positioned in the market? Real simple base, what makes you unique compared to anybody else in your area? And there's more but that's a baseline. Third is packaging. Like, what is your what is the packaging of your business?

How are you packing, like part of what I realized that our businesses I had to just as much as I spent time packaging for products and what we offered our client, I had to package up the business to be able to sell it, right? These six P's whether you're it's day to day with your client, whether you're b2b b2c, really we're all p2p, but my person to person one, and if you're looking to exit at some point, you're, these six P's also hold true if you want to have a high-value exit in exchange, right? So packaging. How are you packaging? Fourth P is promotions, right? What kind of promotions do you have going that are not reliant on you, right?

Do you have a system for promotions? In other words, day to day, like if you look at Apple, how often are they promoting, you know, all day. now you might go, you know, speak to the elephant in the room, right? Or that voice it might go I'm not Apple. I don't have that kind of budget. Well, what could you do day to day? I mean, so today, you can basically run online TV type of commercials for pennies per person. It's crazy. That's just one example of dozens. So that's the fourth P. The fifth P are processes, right? You guys, you know you have amazing process systems, you know, EOS, you know, working with that type of a model.

And then the sixth P, remembering at the base, what it all comes down to, which also starts at the core of the founder, you as the CEO is people. We're in the people business, right? When we lose sight of that, like so many businesses, including some of my early business, just truth be told, is it was more transactional than transformational. And if you can take one thing from this from a business growth focus, if you'll shift from like how do I make more money? How do I make more sales? And that's which is transactional to like, how can I add long-term value? How can I add short-term value?

And it's a people to people business. We're in the people to people business and it's about what we refer to as the BOTE, BOTE, breakthrough, outcome, transformation, experience. You'll stay true to, and that goes to you as the owner and getting clear on what is your breakthrough outcome transformation experience? What is your team's if you're building a team, you know, like, you know, what Ryan and Jeremy teach you here with culture, right? Well, if you are building a great team, like what is the breakthrough outcome transformation, the experience you want provide for your team, right?

To give them a platform to grow and evolve as a human being, as a dad as a parent, right? As a spouse, right? As a leader, what is the breakthrough outcome transformation you want to provide for your clients, right? Then if you're going deeper in your community for other outreach type things that you're doing are involved in. I mean, so those six P's, I have found guys if I were to say like, what would what didn't evolve over the time, that allowed us to set the stage?

When we get the sixth P in order and we think from these six P's again, you may never have a desire to sell or completely exit your business. But man, when you have these six P's in order, it gets you in a stage where you're able to get freed up from the day to day. One of our clients in the medical industry, you know, working with fascinating technology and stem cells and, you know, typical doctors are known for being so involved in their practices. Well, this client, you know, through their own mindset, number one, their belief systems that they could scale. And also through the work and application implementation.

This client has had over nine clinics, right? And he spends less than four hours a week in his clinics. The rest of his time is he gets to focus on like the things that are really in his sweet spot. His genius zone. And for him he's realized it's not being a doctor day to day on patients but it's having a bigger impact in the medical industry-changing policy, right? That's what fuels him. Now you have to decide as you're listening what fuels you? Like what is that for you? That's where these couple questions come in. I mean, I can go on and on as you guys could tell guys, but I hope this

Ryan: Yeah, no I think this is great. I want to go back to something you had said. Something that really stood out for me is as you're going through these six P's, I don't know if it was just coincidence, but I love how the first P was planning. And inside of that, not only do we have marketing, but we have culture And then the last P is people. And it was just so interesting to me that we start with, underneath planning, we start with culture.

And then we end with people. We realize that that, to me, those were really the bookends of the six P's. And so much of what we do is helping these, helping businesses just really build really effective teams, whether that's your frontline employees. And I love that you mentioned culture. I love that you mentioned experience. We talk a lot about employee experience. You know, so many businesses have spent so much energy building out an amazing customer experience.

They know how to get leads, they know how to close them, they know how to fulfill, but they spend almost zero time building an employee experience and they're not quite clear how to get good employees and they're not quite clear how to keep them and how to fulfill with them and keep them engaged. What is it that you found on the culture side, just bringing a little bit to what we do, what is it that you found on the culture side the people side, what are some things that our listeners can go do right away to really build that effective team?

What if You Treated Your Employees as Volunteers?

Dan: Well, of course there's, that's a deep dive, right? And there's a lot of strategy to this versus say tactics. But if I were to give one tip, this would be from one of my early mentors in the early 90s that he shared, and it just stuck with me. I think I've heard some versions of this from others now over time, but it's really timeless and as a founder, owner of your business, what would happen if you treated all your staff as volunteers, instead of employees?

How would that change the game or how your value system was set up? Because a volunteer can leave at any minute can't they? And if you treat it everybody as a volunteer, and then maybe took the perspective that at most, they have a 90-day shelf life. In other words, they're in total judgment for 90 days and it's your job to create a culture, create an experience that they want to stay a part, stay connected to you, right?

That would be like one of the biggest ones is thinking from that perspective of what if I treated them as, and I had to treat them as a volunteer to keep them, right? That will certainly change the game. The other if I had to pick a secondary with that, which you guys teach from some of the stuff I've explored and investigated, and it's just, you know, again, it's not a tactic, like it's not a shiny button you press today and, right? It's magical, per se, but it's magical today and tomorrow. In other words, it's a timeless strategy.

And that is core values in alignment, right? You want people on the same page, right? It starts with truly having your core values and, you know, big mistake that people make, companies make, I've made in some of my earlier of having like nine core values, 22 core values, 12 core values, and people just can't connect to that. There's too many things. Just like my son's football team, right? These are, you know, 12-year-old kids, it's youth football, like, you can give them like three concepts that they'll remember at a time.

And that's about it. Kind of like red light green light yellow light, like they can remember about that and anything beyond that they're not going to truly connect deeply with. So what are like three? And maybe it ends up being five eventually but what are the main three core values? And likely it's going to be you as a human being, like what are your as the founder CEO? As much as you want to project in the world and go, we want to project integrity. Okay, well, that's loosey-goosey and how did you decide in that anyway? It's not like a real value. It sounds good on a piece of paper.

Ryan: I agree with you 100% on that one.

Dan: Yeah. And it's

Ryan: Yeah, if you don't have integrity I don't know that I want to do business with you.

Be Careful With How Your Core Values Might Come Across

Dan: Right. And another one you hear in a buzzword today is a fascinating documentary to go check out from Morgan Spurlock which is called Supersize Me 2, Holy Chicken. But, you know, if you saw his first one, you know, he talked about meat. But with this one what's so fascinating, it's both a breakdown of like, some of the false things, false perceptions in the industry of chicken, which is regarded as a supposedly healthy food.

And he breaks, debunks it. But then what he does is beyond that, which is really fascinating, he actually goes and starts the business and puts money into this business to launch it then has a waiting list. But like one of the other big values that's now being overexploited and utilized, you know, on top of integrity is like authenticity. We are authentic.

Well, if you have to say you're authentic, well, what, well, it's the same, kind of like saying Well, I didn't realize you weren't authentic in the first place. So be careful of your core values, being projection values, and not like things people can really A simulate connect to and relate to. You guys teach us stuff, right? So, by the way, if you're following these guys, I encourage you to go deeper with some of the resources they've got available on how can you clearly define your core values so people can connect to these things in a much easier way.

And when you get it right, by the way, like one of our clients was Joe Polish and Genius, and you've maybe never heard of them. And that's okay. But not only when we got core values clear in the business, for the team, it made the team work better. But it even made it easier to attract clients from multiple levels. One, if you want more referrals, when you're, you have your three core values clean, your team connects to it, but then your clients connect to it and then they actually start spreading your core values to others.

So like, you know, you think about a conversation when either your team or a client is out at dinner tonight or this weekend with somebody and somehow your business comes up, will tell me about them. The things that if it's done right, and really strategic and practiced, and it's true, your clients will then advocate for you. Your clients will go, they'll sing from the roof and they won't even know they're doing it. It'll be a strategic byproduct because of the core values. You know, you'll hear clients, depending on your core values, say, Well, you know, this company is amazing.

You know, working with Ryan and Jeremy is amazing because what they do is they're helping bring unity and getting our team on the same page. And they're helping us, you know, get clarity and certainty about our business so we don't make the same mistakes, right? And I'm just kind of making these up a little bit, but imagine having clients, staff just talking about your business in a really cool non-hypee non-salesy non-pitchy way that people go, Wow, can I learn more about that business? And that's how

Ryan: Yeah, word of mouth marketing is so relevant today, even though everybody gets obsessed with SEO and online, being able to have clients and employees and vendors that are just talking in a positive light about your company is amazing. And the clearer you are on who you are, the easier it is for them to do that. So I love where you were going with this. Hey, Dan, we got to wrap up here. I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I know you've got some offers available, some free stuff for our listeners if they want to take a deeper dive with you and some of the work that you do, Can you share that information with us?

Dan: Absolutely. We put together a special resource toolkit for listeners of the Blue Collar Culture show, and you can go get it. And first, let me just describe real quick what you get in the toolkit, it's completely free, you just enter your name and email address and we'll give it to you. But if you're looking to have a simple marketing plan blueprint, right?

Because maybe you haven't had that type of training before, and you'd love to have like a simple one or two-pager to get you and your team on the same page to grow your impact, grow your reach, grow your contribution. We're going to give you the marketing plan blueprint as part of the toolkit. Also, if you're like, you know, many of the clients we work with where you're running a business as a founder, so-called CEO, but you're like, well, I don't know that I even enjoy being like a traditional CEO. I don't like managing people. I don't like administrative. I'm a creator.

I'm somebody who wants to build stuff, right? And chances are if you're part of this show in the service industry, you probably can relate to that really well. We have a tool it's called the CEO checklist. That is essentially, I originally created it for me because I hate admin stuff. I don't really like managing. I like leading and creating. I love that relationships, love, so this checklist is a great tool and a lot of people have said, Wow, this really simplifies running my business. Another tool we created, it's called How to Sell More By Selling Less, right?

If you've ever like struggled with selling or maybe you feel like people aren't connecting, or maybe you have team members that are overselling or over hypee, our approaching approach, we take in customer service people and turn them into high producers in different companies and including our own with this simple process because it's an interview method more than it is a sales system or a sales method I should say.

So it's called How to Sell More By Selling Less. And then the last one is related to being able to build leadership. Now you can go get this toolkit by going to activate.breakthrough3x, that's activate.breakthrough3x and you can get that free. Just enter your name and email and there you go.

Ryan: Awesome. Hey, thank you so much, Dan. I enjoyed the conversation today. Love the insight you had. You know, for those of you listening, make sure you go get that. Just also it's breakthrough3x.com so make sure you get the.com in there so you can get those free resources. And Dan, thanks again. Really enjoyed it.

Jeremy: Thank you so much, Dan.

 

Podcast Episode

Never miss an episode of the Blue Collar Culture Podcast.