September 16, 2024 • 19 mins
In this episode of the “Get Off The Treadmill” podcast, Chuck Blakeman interviews Ben Kimball, co-owner of Kimball Productions, focusing on the shift from a "random hope" strategy to a deliberate, intention-driven approach in business.
Key points discussed include:
- Initial Challenges: Kimball describes his early business strategy, which relied on hope—specifically hoping to cover expenses and manage mortgages—rather than structured planning.
- Turning Point: The discovery of Chuck Blakeman’s book, “Making Money Is Killing Your Business”, and involvement with the 3to5 Club marked a pivotal shift in Kimball’s approach.
- Strategic Shifts: Kimball implemented intentional strategies, including: a. Effective Hiring: Recruiting skilled employees to alleviate the workload and improve operational efficiency. b. Work-Life Balance: Developing a clearer vision for balancing business demands with personal time.
- Results: These changes led to significant business improvements, highlighting the benefits of a well-defined plan over mere hope.
- Broader Implications: The episode underscores the importance of setting clear intentions and taking actionable steps to achieve both business and personal goals, emphasizing that while the process is challenging, it is both straightforward and transformative.
Check our special offer for the Making Money is Killing Your Business: https://bit.ly/m/3to5Club
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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.
Today I'm talking with Ben Kimball.
He's the co-owner of Kimball Productions and
the COO, senior editor, producer, and screenwriter.
He holds a master's of fine arts in
screenwriting and serves part-time as a public
affairs officer in the Colorado Air National Guard.
(00:48):
Kimball Productions is a creative team of dedicated
individuals focused on making great motion picture stories
of all kinds, ranging from continuing medical education
CMEs to corporate narrative and beyond.
Welcome, Ben.
It's great to have you with us today.
Thanks, Chuck.
It's great to be here.
Well, I'm excited about this topic today.
(01:08):
We're going to talk about the power of
intention, and we're going to contrast that with
the random hope strategy of business.
So I would love for you to just
start with where you were before you, I
know part of your story here today is
going to be that you found our book,
Making Money Is Killing Your Business and got
involved with what we were doing.
So let's go back to before that.
And what was your intention?
(01:30):
How did you run your business before you
got some of these wild ideas that we
throw out there?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So we actually, my dad and I own
the business, and we started this business in
2006.
And at that point, we hoped we could
pay our mortgages.
That was kind of the basic approach to
(01:53):
this.
We hoped that we could put food on
the table and make it through the month.
And really, for the first probably 13 years
in business, it was, we did, we squeaked
by some months, we did better other months,
but it was just the two of us
for many years.
And when we found the book, Making Money
(02:16):
Is Killing Your Business, and we're turned on
to three to five club, it was the
first time I think that we were introduced
to the concept that the intention makes it
more possible to attain things than hoping.
Yeah, and people hear me say this, like
almost every time I open my mouth, because
(02:36):
it's one of the things that came to
me, I think, I haven't found it anywhere
else in the internet.
So I might have actually made it up.
But I'm always suspicious of that.
But I say to myself all the time,
you get what you intend, not what you
hope for.
And I spent a lot of my life
hoping for stuff.
Wouldn't it be nice if someday I'm going
to, I sure hope that.
(02:56):
It's all that kind of stuff.
So yeah, I get it.
And that's, and that became a major writing
point throughout the book.
It's an undercurrent throughout the book is, hey,
do you want this?
So then what are you doing to get
it?
That's intention.
So I get it.
So before that, you were intending, you were
getting what you were intending.
We, yeah, we were.
Yeah, which was we paid our mortgages, which
(03:18):
was good.
Yeah.
So I would put you in the category
of my first, I don't know, six or
seven of my 13 businesses where I, I
wouldn't have identified it at the time, but
later on when I started helping myself and
other people, I would say now that back
then I was employing the random hope strategy
of business, which is, I think the 95
(03:39):
% of business owners start out with, and
maybe most of them stay with the random
hope strategy business, which is I'm going to
work really hard and I'm, I hope something
good happens.
I'm just going to work really hard.
And if I work really hard, something good
has to happen.
I don't know what it is, but I'm
just going to go out there and be
chaotic.
And, and, you know, I call it being
(04:00):
the pig pen strategy of business where, you
know, Charlie Brown's friend is just kicking up
dust all the time and really hard to
hope something good happens.
And you get what you intend.
So you hoped to pay your mortgage.
You intended, you didn't just hope to.
You might not have been able to get
there, but you got what you intended to.
And you got what you intended.
(04:20):
And too often we get what we intend.
I just wrote a blog post or an
entrepreneur magazine article on this idea of groundhog
year.
Because we get what we intend, we intend
to pay our mortgage every month.
Then we intend to pay it every year.
And we get to the end of the
beginning of next year and it's all the
same.
So I'm guessing you were probably having some
(04:43):
of that experience and not even realizing it.
Very much so.
Yeah, it, it reminds me, you mentioned groundhog
day.
That's, that's one of the things that in
the military, we talk about a deployment is
like groundhog day.
Every day is the same.
It's just this kind of monotonous thing where
it's like, it feels like you're not doing
anything different.
You're never any closer to the end.
It just feels like it's going to go
(05:03):
on forever.
And then ultimately, eventually it does end, which
is great.
But yeah, that was it.
And, and I think the toughest part is
on that and you, and you, you found
this book and just tell me how the
lights and what the lights were that went
on.
Yeah, I think the most exciting part about
it was the concept that number one, it
(05:26):
rightly identified me as particularly the COO and
the operations guy and the guy doing all
the production work as the guy who was
on the treadmill going at a pretty good
clip.
So it was like, Oh, this book sees
me that understands where I am right now.
You're telling me there's a way to get
off the treadmill.
(05:47):
That's, that's awesome.
I want to learn more about that.
And so we talked to somebody who's invited
us into a three to five club and,
and started to ask some of those questions
is like, you know, do you even think,
is it possible that anybody could ever do
what you do?
And, you know, in the outset of that
conversation, it was like, no, I'm the only
person who can do this job as well
(06:09):
as I can in the amount of time
that I can.
But after, you know, a short amount of
discussion and, and understanding a certain amount of
things like I, you know, I'm really not
as unique.
I mean, yes, I bring something unique to
this organization, but I could teach somebody.
I mean, I had to learn, right?
So I had to learn how to do
all the things.
(06:29):
So certainly I could teach someone how to
do all the things.
Maybe they have to have a particular aptitude
or maybe they have to, you know, have
a certain culture that is really important to
us as the business, but the very initial
idea that there could be, and here's, here
comes hope again, the sliver of hope that
I could get out of and off the
treadmill was very encouraging.
(06:51):
Well, and I would say there's two kinds
of hope.
There's, there's random hope, which is, I don't
know what I'm hoping for.
I just hope something good will happen.
And then there's the hope that we see
in the future that we know how to
get to.
We just don't have it yet.
And so I hope for this thing I've
not yet seen.
There you go.
And that really, you know, that's an exciting
hope.
And that comes from being intentional, you know,
(07:14):
about asking the question, what do I want?
So, yeah, but I want to go back
to what you just said.
You started out with, well, yeah, but my
business is unique and I do this talk
across the world.
And I can't wait to get to the
part where I say, you know, for the
last 45 minutes, you probably have been saying
to yourself, yeah, but my business is unique.
How many of you have been saying that
(07:35):
in your heads?
And almost every hand goes up.
Right.
Right.
Because it's true.
Every business is unique, but every single one
of them, I've yet to find a business,
an industry or profession where they, where I
couldn't already find somebody who has gotten off
the treadmill like this and been intentional about
doing so.
So you're absolutely right.
We're all unique.
And none of us have that as an
(07:56):
excuse for not getting off the treadmill.
Can't find an industry or a profession anywhere
where that hasn't happened.
So you felt that way.
And now you're to the point where you
feel like, yeah, I could teach somebody else
how to do this.
Yeah.
I mean, that's part, I just put that
out there because that's a powerful testimony.
That's not me barking.
That's you saying, yeah, I wasn't there.
I couldn't see it.
And now I can not just see it.
(08:16):
I could show somebody else how to do
it.
This is not complex, is it?
Or complicated?
Right.
No, that's a great point.
You mentioned something and I want to explore
that a little bit.
You said, yeah, there's something that you got
to be at a place.
In one way, I call it coming to
the end of myself.
Sure.
I have to come to where I look
at this book or look at this idea
and say, yeah, but I really don't like
(08:36):
working five plus days a week and knowing
that if I stop, the business stops too.
That's the part that gets, okay, I can
work five days.
But if I go on vacation, business stops.
It's over.
Yeah.
And you have to get to the point
where that's not attractive anymore.
And I've found in many cases, I went
through some of the businesses for one, two,
even three years, maybe a little longer before
(08:58):
I got to the place where, you know,
this isn't working, this five day a week
thing.
So sometimes we have to come to the
end of ourselves.
What are some of the mindset things that
you guys had to work through when you
saw this idea that you could actually get
off the treadmill?
Yeah, that's good.
In screenwriting, we would call that the dark
night of the soul.
That's the time at which everything seems as
(09:20):
it's at the darkest it can be.
It's not looking good for the hero.
We're not sure they're going to make it.
And that is definitely where I think I
was.
If I were to plot that trajectory, when
the book came along, there was definitely a
sense of burnout that was kind of rearing
its ugly head.
(09:41):
And I just didn't care anymore as much
as I had about taking care of our
clients and giving them the best quality work.
It was kind of like, well, I'll turn
it in.
And if they pay us, they pay us
great.
But I know that's not who I am.
And so that was a good indicator for
us at that time that something has to
(10:01):
change.
We really need to make a pivot here.
And it was frustrating, too, for my dad
and business partner to have this desire to
do more and connect with more clients and
serve more people.
But his only bandwidth, me, was all tapped
(10:23):
out.
And getting crankier by the minute.
So his vision of where this thing could
go.
And he had run other businesses in the
past that had multiple employees and that sort
of thing.
So he had a better, clearer vision of
like, oh, this thing could be bigger.
But we were kind of stuck at this
point.
(10:44):
We're always the bottleneck, aren't we, as the
owners?
We're always the bottleneck.
Yes.
Yeah, that's for sure.
Nobody's as good.
I call it a bad case of the
nobodies.
Nobody's as good.
Nobody's as smart.
Nobody's as motivated.
Nobody's as educated.
Nobody's as invested.
Nobody's, nobody, nobody.
I've been there multiple times and pretty sure
nobody else could do this.
And then I heard somebody thought, wow, they
(11:04):
can do it a little better than I
could.
Maybe a little faster.
Yeah, that's true.
But I think that was one of our
turning points is when we hired our first
full-time employee outside of my dad and
myself.
And that was this guy that we had
been working with.
He had freelanced with us.
(11:25):
And so we had a really good sense
for his work ethic and his skill.
And we hired him.
And then it was suddenly, it wasn't half
as heavy.
It was like a quarter of the weight.
Like it was so much better almost instantly.
That's beautiful.
Which has a lot to do with hiring
(11:46):
somebody who already had skill sets, right?
It wasn't just a brand new person that
I had to teach everything to.
But yeah, I did still have to teach
him the way we do things.
So we haven't rehearsed any of this stuff.
So I'm just going to ask you this
question.
After you hired that person and you hired
other people, looking back 2020 hindsight, did you
(12:07):
say you hired too quickly or too slowly?
Did you get to that point where you
finally hired somebody and you could have done
that sooner?
Or no, I should have waited to do
it till later?
Or did I?
Oh, yeah.
No, for sure.
We waited too long to hire.
Anybody who's ever understood that question, I make
it hard.
(12:28):
I've never heard anybody say, oh, no, no.
I should have waited another year to hire
somebody.
But I know for myself, I was like,
oh, I don't know what I'm going to
do.
I'm going to have somebody who's like that.
And then to your point, oh, wow, this
is really great.
So it was great.
But that's intention too, isn't it?
That's the power.
You wanted to get somewhere.
So tell me a little bit more about
(12:48):
that.
We don't have a lot of time left,
but I want you.
Sure.
What were you intending?
Because that's the important part of this.
You get what you intend.
So what did you want when the light
went on to get off the treadmill?
You had to have a picture of it.
I mean, I think the intention was to
borrow from your book is to make more
time.
Sorry.
The intention was to make more money in
(13:10):
less time to get some of my time
back.
The money actually had kind of stabilized to
the point where it's like, oh, we're doing
better than making just the mortgage.
We had enough money to hire somebody.
So that was an indication that money was
okay.
But like you said, it was as soon
as I step away from the business, the
money needle goes down and that wasn't sustainable.
(13:31):
So bringing somebody else on to share the
load, that was revolutionary for us.
And so the intention was to get some
of my time back.
And what wound up happening is not only
did I get some of my time back,
we got a great colleague and we grew
our company in a way that it was
(13:53):
suddenly going to be possible for me to
step away and everything wouldn't fall apart.
Obviously at first, not very long ago, but
over time and then through the ebb and
flow of our business, we hired more people.
And at one point we were able to
not, neither my dad nor I were present
(14:16):
on the day of a shoot.
Our employees were there filming and we weren't
there with them and the business was going
along.
And that'll be the next 50 podcasts to
figure out how did that happen?
I can say from my own experience, and
you can chime in, this is simple, but
(14:36):
it's not easy.
Yes.
It's hard in the sense that we've never
done it before and it's taken us in
different directions and that it's hard to have
a shoot for your example or any kind
of production go on where I'm not there
supervising it because I still am getting over
that bad case of the nobodies.
This doesn't happen overnight, but it doesn't take
(14:57):
years and years and years.
True.
Yeah.
And so it really goes back to the
power of intention.
You get what you want.
And so I'll throw this up just because
we have, this is video as well as
audio, these two slides here and I'll share
with people who aren't looking at it.
The random hope strategy business, we talked about
the power of intention.
(15:18):
You get what you intend, not what you
hope for.
The random hope strategy was different.
It had two intentions and one hope.
Intention number one, I intend to work really
hard.
Who doesn't?
Intention number two, I intend to make money,
cover my mortgage.
Who doesn't?
And hope number one, I hope it all
works out.
We just kind of, and we think we're
not in charge.
This is why we do these things.
(15:38):
This way, I'm in charge of working really
hard.
And to some degree, I'm in charge of
making some money, but I'm not in charge
and I'm not in control of anything else
that happens to me.
BS, you know, you get what you intend.
And if you intend to get time, not
just money, gee, what a surprise.
You not only got time, but you got
time and somebody that you can trust and
(15:59):
weight off your shoulders and you got a
lot more than you intended.
And that happens all the time.
So you get what you intend, not what
you hope for.
And the idea behind it is just to
use your business to build your ideal lifestyle.
What if we used our business to get
where we wanted to go?
We'd never have to sell the business.
Yeah, I think another quick point that I'd
(16:21):
just like to make there is with coupled
with intention, you talk about it being it's
simple, not easy.
And there was a point at which I
had to understand that I had permission to
dream of of a future lifestyle that did
not involve me working, you know, 60 hours,
(16:44):
80 hours a week.
I got that in your head, in your
mind, in your heart.
Right.
It was it was stuck in there.
And it was that was a scary moment.
Like, am I being selfish wanting this?
Like, I, you know, I ought to be
working hard.
I ought to be doing these things.
And there's there's just a lot of head
trash, I think, is a phrase that you
like to use that that was in there
(17:04):
that kind of had to be set to
the side and go, all right, just painting
a picture of the future, looking at, OK,
what would it be great if it was
like this?
And then working back from that and going,
all right, I think that that's reasonable.
I mean, for me, it wasn't a yacht.
And, you know, not that I'm dissing yachts.
(17:25):
Somebody else might want that.
It wasn't right.
It was it was not a yacht for
me.
It was, you know, the freedom to have
some more time than I currently had to
spend that time with my family and to
have money and resources that I didn't feel
I was a month or two away from
missing a payment on anything.
And and that's that was a big, big
(17:47):
shift for us to.
Now, I think the summary here is in
order to get off the treadmill, we have
to stop the random home strategy of business
and figure out what we actually want.
Stephen Covey, start with the end in mind.
What do I want a year, two years,
five years from now?
And then walk it, walk backwards, like you
said, work backwards and say, well, what can
I do today to make that happen one
(18:09):
day at a time?
And we do get what we intend.
And so it's great to hear your story
of how you're getting what you intend.
And we'll just keep keep growing and saying,
what else do we want to get out
of this?
And let's make it happen.
Appreciate having you on the show.
It was a pleasure being here.
Thanks, Chuck.
Thank you.
That wraps up another episode of the Get
(18:30):
Off the Treadmill podcast.
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(18:50):
G-R-O-W at crankset group dot
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.
Today I'm talking with Ben Kimball.
He's the co-owner of Kimball Productions and
the COO, senior editor, producer, and screenwriter.
He holds a master's of fine arts in
screenwriting and serves part-time as a public
affairs officer in the Colorado Air National Guard.
(00:48):
Kimball Productions is a creative team of dedicated
individuals focused on making great motion picture stories
of all kinds, ranging from continuing medical education
CMEs to corporate narrative and beyond.
Welcome, Ben.
It's great to have you with us today.
Thanks, Chuck.
It's great to be here.
Well, I'm excited about this topic today.
(01:08):
We're going to talk about the power of
intention, and we're going to contrast that with
the random hope strategy of business.
So I would love for you to just
start with where you were before you, I
know part of your story here today is
going to be that you found our book,
Making Money Is Killing Your Business and got
involved with what we were doing.
So let's go back to before that.
And what was your intention?
(01:30):
How did you run your business before you
got some of these wild ideas that we
throw out there?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So we actually, my dad and I own
the business, and we started this business in
2006.
And at that point, we hoped we could
pay our mortgages.
That was kind of the basic approach to
(01:53):
this.
We hoped that we could put food on
the table and make it through the month.
And really, for the first probably 13 years
in business, it was, we did, we squeaked
by some months, we did better other months,
but it was just the two of us
for many years.
And when we found the book, Making Money
(02:16):
Is Killing Your Business, and we're turned on
to three to five club, it was the
first time I think that we were introduced
to the concept that the intention makes it
more possible to attain things than hoping.
Yeah, and people hear me say this, like
almost every time I open my mouth, because
(02:36):
it's one of the things that came to
me, I think, I haven't found it anywhere
else in the internet.
So I might have actually made it up.
But I'm always suspicious of that.
But I say to myself all the time,
you get what you intend, not what you
hope for.
And I spent a lot of my life
hoping for stuff.
Wouldn't it be nice if someday I'm going
to, I sure hope that.
(02:56):
It's all that kind of stuff.
So yeah, I get it.
And that's, and that became a major writing
point throughout the book.
It's an undercurrent throughout the book is, hey,
do you want this?
So then what are you doing to get
it?
That's intention.
So I get it.
So before that, you were intending, you were
getting what you were intending.
We, yeah, we were.
Yeah, which was we paid our mortgages, which
(03:18):
was good.
Yeah.
So I would put you in the category
of my first, I don't know, six or
seven of my 13 businesses where I, I
wouldn't have identified it at the time, but
later on when I started helping myself and
other people, I would say now that back
then I was employing the random hope strategy
of business, which is, I think the 95
(03:39):
% of business owners start out with, and
maybe most of them stay with the random
hope strategy business, which is I'm going to
work really hard and I'm, I hope something
good happens.
I'm just going to work really hard.
And if I work really hard, something good
has to happen.
I don't know what it is, but I'm
just going to go out there and be
chaotic.
And, and, you know, I call it being
(04:00):
the pig pen strategy of business where, you
know, Charlie Brown's friend is just kicking up
dust all the time and really hard to
hope something good happens.
And you get what you intend.
So you hoped to pay your mortgage.
You intended, you didn't just hope to.
You might not have been able to get
there, but you got what you intended to.
And you got what you intended.
(04:20):
And too often we get what we intend.
I just wrote a blog post or an
entrepreneur magazine article on this idea of groundhog
year.
Because we get what we intend, we intend
to pay our mortgage every month.
Then we intend to pay it every year.
And we get to the end of the
beginning of next year and it's all the
same.
So I'm guessing you were probably having some
(04:43):
of that experience and not even realizing it.
Very much so.
Yeah, it, it reminds me, you mentioned groundhog
day.
That's, that's one of the things that in
the military, we talk about a deployment is
like groundhog day.
Every day is the same.
It's just this kind of monotonous thing where
it's like, it feels like you're not doing
anything different.
You're never any closer to the end.
It just feels like it's going to go
(05:03):
on forever.
And then ultimately, eventually it does end, which
is great.
But yeah, that was it.
And, and I think the toughest part is
on that and you, and you, you found
this book and just tell me how the
lights and what the lights were that went
on.
Yeah, I think the most exciting part about
it was the concept that number one, it
(05:26):
rightly identified me as particularly the COO and
the operations guy and the guy doing all
the production work as the guy who was
on the treadmill going at a pretty good
clip.
So it was like, Oh, this book sees
me that understands where I am right now.
You're telling me there's a way to get
off the treadmill.
(05:47):
That's, that's awesome.
I want to learn more about that.
And so we talked to somebody who's invited
us into a three to five club and,
and started to ask some of those questions
is like, you know, do you even think,
is it possible that anybody could ever do
what you do?
And, you know, in the outset of that
conversation, it was like, no, I'm the only
person who can do this job as well
(06:09):
as I can in the amount of time
that I can.
But after, you know, a short amount of
discussion and, and understanding a certain amount of
things like I, you know, I'm really not
as unique.
I mean, yes, I bring something unique to
this organization, but I could teach somebody.
I mean, I had to learn, right?
So I had to learn how to do
all the things.
(06:29):
So certainly I could teach someone how to
do all the things.
Maybe they have to have a particular aptitude
or maybe they have to, you know, have
a certain culture that is really important to
us as the business, but the very initial
idea that there could be, and here's, here
comes hope again, the sliver of hope that
I could get out of and off the
treadmill was very encouraging.
(06:51):
Well, and I would say there's two kinds
of hope.
There's, there's random hope, which is, I don't
know what I'm hoping for.
I just hope something good will happen.
And then there's the hope that we see
in the future that we know how to
get to.
We just don't have it yet.
And so I hope for this thing I've
not yet seen.
There you go.
And that really, you know, that's an exciting
hope.
And that comes from being intentional, you know,
(07:14):
about asking the question, what do I want?
So, yeah, but I want to go back
to what you just said.
You started out with, well, yeah, but my
business is unique and I do this talk
across the world.
And I can't wait to get to the
part where I say, you know, for the
last 45 minutes, you probably have been saying
to yourself, yeah, but my business is unique.
How many of you have been saying that
(07:35):
in your heads?
And almost every hand goes up.
Right.
Right.
Because it's true.
Every business is unique, but every single one
of them, I've yet to find a business,
an industry or profession where they, where I
couldn't already find somebody who has gotten off
the treadmill like this and been intentional about
doing so.
So you're absolutely right.
We're all unique.
And none of us have that as an
(07:56):
excuse for not getting off the treadmill.
Can't find an industry or a profession anywhere
where that hasn't happened.
So you felt that way.
And now you're to the point where you
feel like, yeah, I could teach somebody else
how to do this.
Yeah.
I mean, that's part, I just put that
out there because that's a powerful testimony.
That's not me barking.
That's you saying, yeah, I wasn't there.
I couldn't see it.
And now I can not just see it.
(08:16):
I could show somebody else how to do
it.
This is not complex, is it?
Or complicated?
Right.
No, that's a great point.
You mentioned something and I want to explore
that a little bit.
You said, yeah, there's something that you got
to be at a place.
In one way, I call it coming to
the end of myself.
Sure.
I have to come to where I look
at this book or look at this idea
and say, yeah, but I really don't like
(08:36):
working five plus days a week and knowing
that if I stop, the business stops too.
That's the part that gets, okay, I can
work five days.
But if I go on vacation, business stops.
It's over.
Yeah.
And you have to get to the point
where that's not attractive anymore.
And I've found in many cases, I went
through some of the businesses for one, two,
even three years, maybe a little longer before
(08:58):
I got to the place where, you know,
this isn't working, this five day a week
thing.
So sometimes we have to come to the
end of ourselves.
What are some of the mindset things that
you guys had to work through when you
saw this idea that you could actually get
off the treadmill?
Yeah, that's good.
In screenwriting, we would call that the dark
night of the soul.
That's the time at which everything seems as
(09:20):
it's at the darkest it can be.
It's not looking good for the hero.
We're not sure they're going to make it.
And that is definitely where I think I
was.
If I were to plot that trajectory, when
the book came along, there was definitely a
sense of burnout that was kind of rearing
its ugly head.
(09:41):
And I just didn't care anymore as much
as I had about taking care of our
clients and giving them the best quality work.
It was kind of like, well, I'll turn
it in.
And if they pay us, they pay us
great.
But I know that's not who I am.
And so that was a good indicator for
us at that time that something has to
(10:01):
change.
We really need to make a pivot here.
And it was frustrating, too, for my dad
and business partner to have this desire to
do more and connect with more clients and
serve more people.
But his only bandwidth, me, was all tapped
(10:23):
out.
And getting crankier by the minute.
So his vision of where this thing could
go.
And he had run other businesses in the
past that had multiple employees and that sort
of thing.
So he had a better, clearer vision of
like, oh, this thing could be bigger.
But we were kind of stuck at this
point.
(10:44):
We're always the bottleneck, aren't we, as the
owners?
We're always the bottleneck.
Yes.
Yeah, that's for sure.
Nobody's as good.
I call it a bad case of the
nobodies.
Nobody's as good.
Nobody's as smart.
Nobody's as motivated.
Nobody's as educated.
Nobody's as invested.
Nobody's, nobody, nobody.
I've been there multiple times and pretty sure
nobody else could do this.
And then I heard somebody thought, wow, they
(11:04):
can do it a little better than I
could.
Maybe a little faster.
Yeah, that's true.
But I think that was one of our
turning points is when we hired our first
full-time employee outside of my dad and
myself.
And that was this guy that we had
been working with.
He had freelanced with us.
(11:25):
And so we had a really good sense
for his work ethic and his skill.
And we hired him.
And then it was suddenly, it wasn't half
as heavy.
It was like a quarter of the weight.
Like it was so much better almost instantly.
That's beautiful.
Which has a lot to do with hiring
(11:46):
somebody who already had skill sets, right?
It wasn't just a brand new person that
I had to teach everything to.
But yeah, I did still have to teach
him the way we do things.
So we haven't rehearsed any of this stuff.
So I'm just going to ask you this
question.
After you hired that person and you hired
other people, looking back 2020 hindsight, did you
(12:07):
say you hired too quickly or too slowly?
Did you get to that point where you
finally hired somebody and you could have done
that sooner?
Or no, I should have waited to do
it till later?
Or did I?
Oh, yeah.
No, for sure.
We waited too long to hire.
Anybody who's ever understood that question, I make
it hard.
(12:28):
I've never heard anybody say, oh, no, no.
I should have waited another year to hire
somebody.
But I know for myself, I was like,
oh, I don't know what I'm going to
do.
I'm going to have somebody who's like that.
And then to your point, oh, wow, this
is really great.
So it was great.
But that's intention too, isn't it?
That's the power.
You wanted to get somewhere.
So tell me a little bit more about
(12:48):
that.
We don't have a lot of time left,
but I want you.
Sure.
What were you intending?
Because that's the important part of this.
You get what you intend.
So what did you want when the light
went on to get off the treadmill?
You had to have a picture of it.
I mean, I think the intention was to
borrow from your book is to make more
time.
Sorry.
The intention was to make more money in
(13:10):
less time to get some of my time
back.
The money actually had kind of stabilized to
the point where it's like, oh, we're doing
better than making just the mortgage.
We had enough money to hire somebody.
So that was an indication that money was
okay.
But like you said, it was as soon
as I step away from the business, the
money needle goes down and that wasn't sustainable.
(13:31):
So bringing somebody else on to share the
load, that was revolutionary for us.
And so the intention was to get some
of my time back.
And what wound up happening is not only
did I get some of my time back,
we got a great colleague and we grew
our company in a way that it was
(13:53):
suddenly going to be possible for me to
step away and everything wouldn't fall apart.
Obviously at first, not very long ago, but
over time and then through the ebb and
flow of our business, we hired more people.
And at one point we were able to
not, neither my dad nor I were present
(14:16):
on the day of a shoot.
Our employees were there filming and we weren't
there with them and the business was going
along.
And that'll be the next 50 podcasts to
figure out how did that happen?
I can say from my own experience, and
you can chime in, this is simple, but
(14:36):
it's not easy.
Yes.
It's hard in the sense that we've never
done it before and it's taken us in
different directions and that it's hard to have
a shoot for your example or any kind
of production go on where I'm not there
supervising it because I still am getting over
that bad case of the nobodies.
This doesn't happen overnight, but it doesn't take
(14:57):
years and years and years.
True.
Yeah.
And so it really goes back to the
power of intention.
You get what you want.
And so I'll throw this up just because
we have, this is video as well as
audio, these two slides here and I'll share
with people who aren't looking at it.
The random hope strategy business, we talked about
the power of intention.
(15:18):
You get what you intend, not what you
hope for.
The random hope strategy was different.
It had two intentions and one hope.
Intention number one, I intend to work really
hard.
Who doesn't?
Intention number two, I intend to make money,
cover my mortgage.
Who doesn't?
And hope number one, I hope it all
works out.
We just kind of, and we think we're
not in charge.
This is why we do these things.
(15:38):
This way, I'm in charge of working really
hard.
And to some degree, I'm in charge of
making some money, but I'm not in charge
and I'm not in control of anything else
that happens to me.
BS, you know, you get what you intend.
And if you intend to get time, not
just money, gee, what a surprise.
You not only got time, but you got
time and somebody that you can trust and
(15:59):
weight off your shoulders and you got a
lot more than you intended.
And that happens all the time.
So you get what you intend, not what
you hope for.
And the idea behind it is just to
use your business to build your ideal lifestyle.
What if we used our business to get
where we wanted to go?
We'd never have to sell the business.
Yeah, I think another quick point that I'd
(16:21):
just like to make there is with coupled
with intention, you talk about it being it's
simple, not easy.
And there was a point at which I
had to understand that I had permission to
dream of of a future lifestyle that did
not involve me working, you know, 60 hours,
(16:44):
80 hours a week.
I got that in your head, in your
mind, in your heart.
Right.
It was it was stuck in there.
And it was that was a scary moment.
Like, am I being selfish wanting this?
Like, I, you know, I ought to be
working hard.
I ought to be doing these things.
And there's there's just a lot of head
trash, I think, is a phrase that you
like to use that that was in there
(17:04):
that kind of had to be set to
the side and go, all right, just painting
a picture of the future, looking at, OK,
what would it be great if it was
like this?
And then working back from that and going,
all right, I think that that's reasonable.
I mean, for me, it wasn't a yacht.
And, you know, not that I'm dissing yachts.
(17:25):
Somebody else might want that.
It wasn't right.
It was it was not a yacht for
me.
It was, you know, the freedom to have
some more time than I currently had to
spend that time with my family and to
have money and resources that I didn't feel
I was a month or two away from
missing a payment on anything.
And and that's that was a big, big
(17:47):
shift for us to.
Now, I think the summary here is in
order to get off the treadmill, we have
to stop the random home strategy of business
and figure out what we actually want.
Stephen Covey, start with the end in mind.
What do I want a year, two years,
five years from now?
And then walk it, walk backwards, like you
said, work backwards and say, well, what can
I do today to make that happen one
(18:09):
day at a time?
And we do get what we intend.
And so it's great to hear your story
of how you're getting what you intend.
And we'll just keep keep growing and saying,
what else do we want to get out
of this?
And let's make it happen.
Appreciate having you on the show.
It was a pleasure being here.
Thanks, Chuck.
Thank you.
That wraps up another episode of the Get
(18:30):
Off the Treadmill podcast.
If you found this podcast helpful, please subscribe
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are receiving the latest tools you need to
grow your business and to get off the
treadmill.
If you want more information on the three
to five club, the crankset group or to
book Chuck as a business advisor, speaker or
workshop leader, you can contact us at grow
(18:50):
G-R-O-W at crankset group dot
com.
Until next time, have a great week.
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