September 16, 2024 • 12 mins
Do you want freedom IN your business, not from it? We can get there using three Big Ideas for small business owners:
- The Four Building Blocks – the four essentials for getting started, and keeping it all going.
- Small Business Marketing and Sales – the radical difference between what giant corporations and guru books tell us to do, and what actually works for small business owners.
- The Emerging Work World of the Participation Age – moving past the tired Factory System hierarchy model 90%+ of business are still trapped in, and building a business that re-humanizes the workplace by giving everybody their brain back.
We need to move past the Random Hope Strategy of Business and understand how Clarity gives us Hope, which allows us to take the measured Risks we need to grow and build a business that gives us freedom. Let's stay disoriented, embrace things that are counter-logical, but highly intuitive, and be intentional about what we want.
Check our special offer for the Making Money is Killing Your Business: https://bit.ly/m/3to5Club
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Welcome back to the Get Off The Treadmill
podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs, where
we show you how to build a successful
business and to have a life too.
We're going to dive into another topic that
helps us make more money in less time
and to get off the treadmill so we
can experience a life of significance.
And now your host and the author of
(00:25):
the number one bestselling business book, Making Money
Is Killing Your Business, Chuck Blakeman.
Hi, I'm Chuck Blakeman and welcome to the
Get Off The Treadmill podcast.
Thank you for trusting us with your valuable
time.
My true desire is for this podcast to
become a go-to for you to find
clarity, hope, and risk.
(00:46):
We want to bring clarity on how to
build a successful business and how to use
that success to build your lifestyle in support
of your lifetime goals.
Clarity always brings grounded hope and hope allows
us to take measured risk we might not
otherwise take.
I desire for you to have the grounded
hope to take the courageous measured risk to
(01:06):
build a great business that serves you instead
of you serving it.
A lot of people have told me that
some of the principles we share with business
owners are things I've never heard before.
Allow me to set the record straight.
I'm not sure I've ever had an original
thought in my life, but I'm okay with
that because I'm pretty sure you haven't either.
Picasso once said, good artists plagiarize, great artists
(01:29):
steal.
He didn't mean that he should steal fresh
narratives like actual paintings, but he learned his
painting principles, techniques, tools, skills.
He learned all of that from being a
student of everyone who came before him.
So my belief is there's really nothing new
under the sun and when I hear people
claiming they have an amazing new way of
doing something that no one has ever thought
(01:50):
of, it usually turns out to be marketing.
Our tools and even some of our methodology
are unique paintings.
But we got here just the same way
Picasso did by building on everyone who came
before us.
So my trust is that the new narrative
of this podcast built on old truths will
bring some long forgotten ideas back to life
(02:13):
that work for you in the trenches of
your business.
This podcast is not intended to educate you.
I'm not a big fan of education.
I get more excited about learning.
The difference is simple for me.
Education packs information in my head and learning
transforms the way I do things.
In other words, education is knowledge-based.
(02:33):
Learning is transformational.
The Get Off the Treadmill podcast was not
dreamed up in an ivory tower to pack
theories and concepts into your head.
You got way too much of that already.
I discovered and rediscovered the principles, practices, and
tools we share in this podcast many times
over in the process of starting, growing, and
building 13 businesses in 10 industries on four
(02:54):
continents.
And we've continued to learn them helping other
business owners do the same.
Our clients and I are all using everything
we share here to build businesses with passion
that we can enjoy for decades.
I trust that the Get Off the Treadmill
podcast will not become a time filler for
you, but a regularly visited reference for your
(03:15):
business.
As I started on my own journey to
freedom in my business, not from it, very
important distinction, one of the biggest discoveries of
old truths for me was that a business
is supposed to throw off two resources, time
and money.
And with both of those, we can pursue
significance with our full attention.
(03:36):
But for some reason, we only expect our
businesses to give us one of those two
resources, money.
And because we focus on just making money,
our business never gives back time or helps
us have a significant impact in the world
around us.
We're just too often too busy making money
to get to the important stuff.
It's why I named my first book, Making
Money Is Killing Your Business.
(03:57):
So as a result, we've got everything backwards.
We build a business using what I call
the random hope strategy of business, which goes
something like this.
I'm going to work really hard and I'm
going to make me some money and I
hope it all works out because we really
didn't intend for the business to serve us.
We too often settle for whatever random lifestyle
the business happens to throw off.
(04:18):
At best, that usually involves having money, but
rarely a lot of time and almost never
significance.
This isn't surprising because the person who makes
the rules wins and too often the only
rule we make is to let our business
and the world around us make the rules.
The Get Off The Treadmill podcast was developed
to help us take hold of our business
and remake the rules in our favor so
(04:40):
that our business finally becomes our servant to
do our bidding, not the other way around.
To get there, this podcast is focused on
three big ideas.
Big idea number one is the four building
blocks of every business.
Lifetime goals, strategic planning, freedom mapping, and outside
eyes.
We didn't make these up in an ivory
(05:00):
tower.
They came to us from years of working
with business owners to find out what they
actually need and what I need and still
need.
You'll learn all about these four building blocks
as you journey with us.
Big idea number two is that small business
sales and marketing is completely different than what
the giant corporations and the giant books are
trying to teach us to do.
Just about everything we've learned from them in
(05:23):
the way of marketing and sales is not
just unuseful, it's hurtful and more often sends
us on a wild goose chase that costs
us time and money that we can't afford
to throw around like they do.
We will teach you how to stop spending
big bucks on marketing and how to get
off the sales treadmill once and for all.
Having built all those businesses and worked with
so many business owners, I've learned that just
(05:44):
about none of us went into business so
we could sell something.
We won't teach you to be a better
salesperson.
We will show you how to approach marketing
and sales in a way that worked long
before giant factories and giant businesses were invented
and they're trying to change the way you
do business.
Let's get you off the sales treadmill.
And big idea number three is the emerging
(06:05):
work world of the participation age is what
we call it.
The great business at its core is not
transactional like the giant corporations have all taught
us, but that it is deeply relational at
every level.
We'll show you how to rehumanize your workplace,
give everybody their brain back and stop following
the factory system imposed hierarchy model that almost
(06:26):
all businesses are still flogging to death.
As a small business owner, you and I
know we can't afford anything less than 100
% engagement from everybody in our business.
We commit to show you how thousands of
businesses are turning their backs on the traditional
operating system of that top down decision making
hierarchy and creating businesses that people are climbing
the walls to become part of.
(06:48):
So how should you approach listening to the
get off the treadmill podcast?
I've learned from my own experience that for
the most part, adults don't learn unless we're
disoriented from our settled in, frankly, sometimes very
stale view of reality.
It is my intention that this podcast will
also challenge your understanding of conventional business wisdom
and reintroduce you to some long forgotten central
(07:08):
ideas and practices from before factories existed.
Along with being disoriented, I would also ask
you to be intentional.
You'll hear the following statement from me a
lot because it's worked for me and thousands
of others.
You get what you intend, not what you
hope for.
What do we intend from our business?
Most business owners think that their purpose in
(07:28):
business is to make money.
Surprisingly, it is not.
The owner's purpose is not to make money,
but to build a business that makes money.
These two things are worlds apart, and almost
every business owner I encounter is absolutely buried
in trying to make money, which keeps them,
frankly, from ever making a lot of it.
Our intentions are so important in business and
(07:49):
in life.
Maybe my wife, Diane, and I are weird,
but from the beginning, we thought our kids,
we thought of them not just as kids,
but as adults in the making.
We were very aware and are to this
day that at some point, the great amount
of personal time, emotion, and money invested in
guiding our kids would eventually grow into a
more of a two-way street.
We intended that as adults, we can all
give back to each other, help each other,
(08:10):
find significance with our lives, and simply enjoy
each other for decades.
And we got what we intended, great adult
kids who are making their own contributions in
the world and are just plain fun to
be around.
Well, I think we should intend for our
businesses to grow up too.
I don't mean it would be nice if
it happened.
I mean, we should all, every one of
us, intend and frankly expect our businesses to
(08:31):
grow up and start giving back to us
and to the world around us.
We should assume that at some point, our
businesses will move from survival right through success
to providing the foundation of a significant life
for us.
Nobody would argue with me that we should
intend for our children to grow up, leave
home, become grownups.
We can enjoy for decades, but when was
(08:52):
the last time we had that conversation with
our business?
It's normal for children to grow up, so
why isn't it normal for businesses to do
the same?
Frankly, we're in charge of both of them,
and if you've had kids, you'll know that
you've got more control over how your business
turns out than how your kids turned out.
And yet, most businesses never grow up.
We spend decades changing the diapers in our
(09:14):
businesses and reporting to the vice principal's office
on a regular basis to get our business
out of detention.
Twenty years after we print a business card,
we seem to be spending as much time,
emotion, and money on our business as the
day it was born.
Why would we so eagerly anticipate the maturity
of our children and never expect the same
for our business?
(09:34):
Shouldn't we be able to expect to enjoy
a mature business for decades as well?
I believe the root of this problem is
that having a conventional view of business isn't
ever going to allow us to bring it
to maturity.
Our focus is on trying to make money
is the very thing that is keeping us
from being successful.
You're just too busy making money, and no
business can survive that.
(09:55):
It's not a play on words.
I've experienced it.
It's a serious problem.
You're simply too busy trying to make money,
or even worse, trying to and not doing
so.
Either one prevents you from making as much
as you could, and most likely, it is
stopping you from building a business that will
ever grow up.
If you want a mature business you can
enjoy for decades that makes money while you're
(10:15):
on vacation or when you're not there on
Friday, you might need a new view of
business to get there.
You might just need to regain the perspective
you had the day the business was born
in order to get back the passion that
brought you into business in the first place.
Either way, it's likely you'll have to do
what I call sort of a mental surgery
procedure, a business ectomy on both your thinking
(10:37):
and your processes to get freedom in your
business.
For years, your business probably has trained you
to focus on making money and other unproductive
distractions, and unfortunately, when you look at other
businesses, you see that most of them are
focused on making money too, but average businesses
all set a bad example for us.
They're dangerously following each other like lemmings toward
(10:57):
the money-making cliff, and I've learned lemmings,
in fact, don't voluntarily jump into the water
and drown, but like many business owners, they
take their cues from those around them and
assume that, well, it must be normal to
at least hang around the cliff just because
everybody else is doing it.
The point is, it's not normal to have
a business that never grows up.
It is clearly average, everybody's doing it, but
(11:19):
it is definitely not normal.
We'll discover what is normal throughout this podcast.
We will regularly give feedback and get feedback
that what we're sharing is very counterintuitive, but
it's actually not.
It's counter-logical, but very intuitive.
I believe you'll find yourself leaning in intuitively
to understand that the very things you need
to move from average to normal will probably
(11:41):
cut deeply into your idea of how business
is run, so let's start the business epitome.
Let the healing begin.
I look forward to your regular feedback on
this podcast and other tools we offer that
might be helpful to you, and as we
grow together, I'm going to learn from you
as well.
That is my intention for me.
That is my intention for you, that you
will have a relentless curiosity.
(12:03):
Remember, you get what you intend, not what
you hope for.
Let's stay disoriented, and let's set our intention
for listening and learning, and let's do it
together.
Thanks.
That wraps up another episode of the Get
Off the Treadmill podcast.
If you found this podcast helpful, please subscribe
and hit the like button to ensure you
are receiving the latest tools you need to
(12:24):
grow your business and to get off the
treadmill.
If you want more information on the 3
to 5 Club, the Crankset Group, or to
book Chuck as a business advisor, speaker, or
workshop leader, you can contact us at grow,
G-R-O-W, at cranksetgroup.com.
Until next time, have a great week.
Welcome back to the Get Off The Treadmill
podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs, where
we show you how to build a successful
business and to have a life too.
We're going to dive into another topic that
helps us make more money in less time
and to get off the treadmill so we
can experience a life of significance.
And now your host and the author of
(00:25):
the number one bestselling business book, Making Money
Is Killing Your Business, Chuck Blakeman.
Hi, I'm Chuck Blakeman and welcome to the
Get Off The Treadmill podcast.
Thank you for trusting us with your valuable
time.
My true desire is for this podcast to
become a go-to for you to find
clarity, hope, and risk.
(00:46):
We want to bring clarity on how to
build a successful business and how to use
that success to build your lifestyle in support
of your lifetime goals.
Clarity always brings grounded hope and hope allows
us to take measured risk we might not
otherwise take.
I desire for you to have the grounded
hope to take the courageous measured risk to
(01:06):
build a great business that serves you instead
of you serving it.
A lot of people have told me that
some of the principles we share with business
owners are things I've never heard before.
Allow me to set the record straight.
I'm not sure I've ever had an original
thought in my life, but I'm okay with
that because I'm pretty sure you haven't either.
Picasso once said, good artists plagiarize, great artists
(01:29):
steal.
He didn't mean that he should steal fresh
narratives like actual paintings, but he learned his
painting principles, techniques, tools, skills.
He learned all of that from being a
student of everyone who came before him.
So my belief is there's really nothing new
under the sun and when I hear people
claiming they have an amazing new way of
doing something that no one has ever thought
(01:50):
of, it usually turns out to be marketing.
Our tools and even some of our methodology
are unique paintings.
But we got here just the same way
Picasso did by building on everyone who came
before us.
So my trust is that the new narrative
of this podcast built on old truths will
bring some long forgotten ideas back to life
(02:13):
that work for you in the trenches of
your business.
This podcast is not intended to educate you.
I'm not a big fan of education.
I get more excited about learning.
The difference is simple for me.
Education packs information in my head and learning
transforms the way I do things.
In other words, education is knowledge-based.
(02:33):
Learning is transformational.
The Get Off the Treadmill podcast was not
dreamed up in an ivory tower to pack
theories and concepts into your head.
You got way too much of that already.
I discovered and rediscovered the principles, practices, and
tools we share in this podcast many times
over in the process of starting, growing, and
building 13 businesses in 10 industries on four
(02:54):
continents.
And we've continued to learn them helping other
business owners do the same.
Our clients and I are all using everything
we share here to build businesses with passion
that we can enjoy for decades.
I trust that the Get Off the Treadmill
podcast will not become a time filler for
you, but a regularly visited reference for your
(03:15):
business.
As I started on my own journey to
freedom in my business, not from it, very
important distinction, one of the biggest discoveries of
old truths for me was that a business
is supposed to throw off two resources, time
and money.
And with both of those, we can pursue
significance with our full attention.
(03:36):
But for some reason, we only expect our
businesses to give us one of those two
resources, money.
And because we focus on just making money,
our business never gives back time or helps
us have a significant impact in the world
around us.
We're just too often too busy making money
to get to the important stuff.
It's why I named my first book, Making
Money Is Killing Your Business.
(03:57):
So as a result, we've got everything backwards.
We build a business using what I call
the random hope strategy of business, which goes
something like this.
I'm going to work really hard and I'm
going to make me some money and I
hope it all works out because we really
didn't intend for the business to serve us.
We too often settle for whatever random lifestyle
the business happens to throw off.
(04:18):
At best, that usually involves having money, but
rarely a lot of time and almost never
significance.
This isn't surprising because the person who makes
the rules wins and too often the only
rule we make is to let our business
and the world around us make the rules.
The Get Off The Treadmill podcast was developed
to help us take hold of our business
and remake the rules in our favor so
(04:40):
that our business finally becomes our servant to
do our bidding, not the other way around.
To get there, this podcast is focused on
three big ideas.
Big idea number one is the four building
blocks of every business.
Lifetime goals, strategic planning, freedom mapping, and outside
eyes.
We didn't make these up in an ivory
(05:00):
tower.
They came to us from years of working
with business owners to find out what they
actually need and what I need and still
need.
You'll learn all about these four building blocks
as you journey with us.
Big idea number two is that small business
sales and marketing is completely different than what
the giant corporations and the giant books are
trying to teach us to do.
Just about everything we've learned from them in
(05:23):
the way of marketing and sales is not
just unuseful, it's hurtful and more often sends
us on a wild goose chase that costs
us time and money that we can't afford
to throw around like they do.
We will teach you how to stop spending
big bucks on marketing and how to get
off the sales treadmill once and for all.
Having built all those businesses and worked with
so many business owners, I've learned that just
(05:44):
about none of us went into business so
we could sell something.
We won't teach you to be a better
salesperson.
We will show you how to approach marketing
and sales in a way that worked long
before giant factories and giant businesses were invented
and they're trying to change the way you
do business.
Let's get you off the sales treadmill.
And big idea number three is the emerging
(06:05):
work world of the participation age is what
we call it.
The great business at its core is not
transactional like the giant corporations have all taught
us, but that it is deeply relational at
every level.
We'll show you how to rehumanize your workplace,
give everybody their brain back and stop following
the factory system imposed hierarchy model that almost
(06:26):
all businesses are still flogging to death.
As a small business owner, you and I
know we can't afford anything less than 100
% engagement from everybody in our business.
We commit to show you how thousands of
businesses are turning their backs on the traditional
operating system of that top down decision making
hierarchy and creating businesses that people are climbing
the walls to become part of.
(06:48):
So how should you approach listening to the
get off the treadmill podcast?
I've learned from my own experience that for
the most part, adults don't learn unless we're
disoriented from our settled in, frankly, sometimes very
stale view of reality.
It is my intention that this podcast will
also challenge your understanding of conventional business wisdom
and reintroduce you to some long forgotten central
(07:08):
ideas and practices from before factories existed.
Along with being disoriented, I would also ask
you to be intentional.
You'll hear the following statement from me a
lot because it's worked for me and thousands
of others.
You get what you intend, not what you
hope for.
What do we intend from our business?
Most business owners think that their purpose in
(07:28):
business is to make money.
Surprisingly, it is not.
The owner's purpose is not to make money,
but to build a business that makes money.
These two things are worlds apart, and almost
every business owner I encounter is absolutely buried
in trying to make money, which keeps them,
frankly, from ever making a lot of it.
Our intentions are so important in business and
(07:49):
in life.
Maybe my wife, Diane, and I are weird,
but from the beginning, we thought our kids,
we thought of them not just as kids,
but as adults in the making.
We were very aware and are to this
day that at some point, the great amount
of personal time, emotion, and money invested in
guiding our kids would eventually grow into a
more of a two-way street.
We intended that as adults, we can all
give back to each other, help each other,
(08:10):
find significance with our lives, and simply enjoy
each other for decades.
And we got what we intended, great adult
kids who are making their own contributions in
the world and are just plain fun to
be around.
Well, I think we should intend for our
businesses to grow up too.
I don't mean it would be nice if
it happened.
I mean, we should all, every one of
us, intend and frankly expect our businesses to
(08:31):
grow up and start giving back to us
and to the world around us.
We should assume that at some point, our
businesses will move from survival right through success
to providing the foundation of a significant life
for us.
Nobody would argue with me that we should
intend for our children to grow up, leave
home, become grownups.
We can enjoy for decades, but when was
(08:52):
the last time we had that conversation with
our business?
It's normal for children to grow up, so
why isn't it normal for businesses to do
the same?
Frankly, we're in charge of both of them,
and if you've had kids, you'll know that
you've got more control over how your business
turns out than how your kids turned out.
And yet, most businesses never grow up.
We spend decades changing the diapers in our
(09:14):
businesses and reporting to the vice principal's office
on a regular basis to get our business
out of detention.
Twenty years after we print a business card,
we seem to be spending as much time,
emotion, and money on our business as the
day it was born.
Why would we so eagerly anticipate the maturity
of our children and never expect the same
for our business?
(09:34):
Shouldn't we be able to expect to enjoy
a mature business for decades as well?
I believe the root of this problem is
that having a conventional view of business isn't
ever going to allow us to bring it
to maturity.
Our focus is on trying to make money
is the very thing that is keeping us
from being successful.
You're just too busy making money, and no
business can survive that.
(09:55):
It's not a play on words.
I've experienced it.
It's a serious problem.
You're simply too busy trying to make money,
or even worse, trying to and not doing
so.
Either one prevents you from making as much
as you could, and most likely, it is
stopping you from building a business that will
ever grow up.
If you want a mature business you can
enjoy for decades that makes money while you're
(10:15):
on vacation or when you're not there on
Friday, you might need a new view of
business to get there.
You might just need to regain the perspective
you had the day the business was born
in order to get back the passion that
brought you into business in the first place.
Either way, it's likely you'll have to do
what I call sort of a mental surgery
procedure, a business ectomy on both your thinking
(10:37):
and your processes to get freedom in your
business.
For years, your business probably has trained you
to focus on making money and other unproductive
distractions, and unfortunately, when you look at other
businesses, you see that most of them are
focused on making money too, but average businesses
all set a bad example for us.
They're dangerously following each other like lemmings toward
(10:57):
the money-making cliff, and I've learned lemmings,
in fact, don't voluntarily jump into the water
and drown, but like many business owners, they
take their cues from those around them and
assume that, well, it must be normal to
at least hang around the cliff just because
everybody else is doing it.
The point is, it's not normal to have
a business that never grows up.
It is clearly average, everybody's doing it, but
(11:19):
it is definitely not normal.
We'll discover what is normal throughout this podcast.
We will regularly give feedback and get feedback
that what we're sharing is very counterintuitive, but
it's actually not.
It's counter-logical, but very intuitive.
I believe you'll find yourself leaning in intuitively
to understand that the very things you need
to move from average to normal will probably
(11:41):
cut deeply into your idea of how business
is run, so let's start the business epitome.
Let the healing begin.
I look forward to your regular feedback on
this podcast and other tools we offer that
might be helpful to you, and as we
grow together, I'm going to learn from you
as well.
That is my intention for me.
That is my intention for you, that you
will have a relentless curiosity.
(12:03):
Remember, you get what you intend, not what
you hope for.
Let's stay disoriented, and let's set our intention
for listening and learning, and let's do it
together.
Thanks.
That wraps up another episode of the Get
Off the Treadmill podcast.
If you found this podcast helpful, please subscribe
and hit the like button to ensure you
are receiving the latest tools you need to
(12:24):
grow your business and to get off the
treadmill.
If you want more information on the 3
to 5 Club, the Crankset Group, or to
book Chuck as a business advisor, speaker, or
workshop leader, you can contact us at grow,
G-R-O-W, at cranksetgroup.com.
Until next time, have a great week.
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Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
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