527: The Anti-Hustle Approach to Entrepreneurial Success with Chad Brown

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the Leaders of Transformation podcast. The number one
show for business leaders and entrepreneurs passionate about uplifting
others and making a greater impact in the world. Now here's
your host, transformational coach, speaker, and business
advisor, Nicole Jansen.

(00:21):
What key question will be the catalyst for your success in
2025? Our guest today is Chad Brown. He is the
anti hustle coach and founder of the Founders
League. His focus is actually on helping creative entrepreneurs to grow
sustainable and scalable businesses and live a life that they
love. And today, we're gonna talk about how to identify

(00:42):
that key question, what he calls the single actionable question
and creating yours for 2025 and what it can mean for you going forward. So,
Chad, welcome to the leaders of transformation. We're glad you're here. Nicole, I'm so
excited to be here. I've been looking forward to this one. Yeah. Likewise.
And the fact that, you know, Dan Tacchini and Adrian Kaylor, and they're your
partners as well. Man, I know we're gonna have a good conversation, so this

(01:05):
is awesome. Well, let's dive in a little bit. I just gave him a very
brief sketch on what you do. So tell us a little bit more about yourself,
how you got into coaching start up founders. Yeah. The quick story
of it, and there's so many details in between about how I got here, but
I started a media company in 2009 in LA.
And very quickly, we hit the market the right time with

(01:26):
some serious hustle. We grew that company very quickly,
started working for brands like Volkswagen, Pixar Animation
Studios, Target. It was a
wild, wild ride. And, ultimately,
what I allowed to happen is I allowed my business to take over my life.
At the time, had been married for about 10 years,

(01:48):
about almost 10 years, and had 2 little girls.
And I had relocated our family to Southern California because I thought that would be
the great environment for us to start this business in. So that
meant my wife was at home with 2 little girls
alone over 300 days out of the year by the time we were
at our prime. Wow. We were traveling all over the

(02:10):
world creating promotional content, speaking from
stages. It was a wild ride. And, of course, I had the
lie that I was doing it all for them. That's the magical
entrepreneur lie. I'm doing it for them. In reality, I was doing it
for me. Ego stroke, feeling successful. We were
starting to to create a name for ourselves in the industry, and that was really

(02:33):
intoxicating. And through a few events that I won't go into the
details in, my business partner at the time and I, it all came
to a head, and we realized how quickly we could
lose everything. And everything that we were sacrificing the most
in what we said was the most important thing to us, We were
sacrificing that for something that could so easily be

(02:54):
lost. In that moment of realization, we drew a
line in the sand. Basically, together, we agreed. We said, hey. If we can't figure
out how to do this thing healthy in a healthy way, grow
it, run it by the way. Don't even, we haven't even talked about
how terrible of a leader I was, how much turnover we had in our
business with employees. We ran people into the ground. It was

(03:16):
terrible. If we said, if we can't figure this out in the next 6 months,
we're gonna close the doors, walk away. Because what we realized is that we stood
to lose something that was way more important than the business that we had
built, and it was imminent. It was not like a maybe someday that
we could lose that. It was like, no. If we continue this way, we'll
lose the people we love, the health we have. So we

(03:38):
decided 6 months, we gotta figure it out. We gotta get some resources,
and I hired a coach. I didn't even know business coaching
was a thing. We put it out to our network, said, Hey, this is the
situation that we're in. We need to figure something out. What can you tell us?
What do you know? And we got connected to a man by the name of
Adrian Kaylor, who you've had on the show. We hired him not

(04:00):
knowing, I mean, just desperate. We just all we needed was something
that could show us how to run this business in a way that it didn't
run us into the ground. And, of course, we thought it was the problem was
in the business. We thought it was the systems. We thought it was the demanding
clientele. We thought it that all these people these people that we hire, they don't
wanna work. Those are the stories we told ourselves, which probably is a

(04:20):
little relatable to some of the people that are listening to this. And
Adrian came in, I think it was the second call that we sat
down, 2nd coaching call, so 2nd week into this relationship.
I told him, I said, look, Adrian, I'm a family man. I'm dedicated
to my family. I love my family. They're the most important thing in the world.
And he said, you're lying. You're lying to yourself. And if you don't stop

(04:42):
lying to yourself, this relationship won't work. I can't coach you.
Good for him. So the first thing you've gotta do is get real
with the reality that you have created and what is most
important to you right now or up until now. Mhmm.
And it rocked my world.
Big brain explosion, just spirit explosion, heart explosion.

(05:05):
I broke down in tears, and I said thank you. Thank you.
Nobody has ever been willing to say something like that
to me. And from there on, I worked with Adrian as a coach.
He coached me for the next 4 or 5 years. He coached me
through amicably buying my partner out of the
business. He coached me through leaving the religion that I had been

(05:27):
in high demand religion that I had been in for most of my life, and
my entire family was entangled in. And it was just
unbelievable. And at some point, as we had become so
close, he just said, look, man. You really should think about coming and
doing this thing with me. You're really good at it. You understand it. You've gone
through the transformation or transformations. Would love to work

(05:49):
side by side with you. And that's when we started working. That's how I got
to where I am today. Been doing this work now with other business owners for
about 7 years, and I'm just so grateful. I
exited that media company in 2001, 2002, then this
has been my primary focus ever since. Wow. Well,
you know, that says so much because, Adrian, as you mentioned, I had him on

(06:10):
the show. And Dan but Adrian I didn't know Adrian. I had
heard Dan speak many, many years ago, but it was
Adrian. Somebody had reached out and connected me to Adrian. So here I am. I
get on this conversation with him at pre chat, and it's like,
wow, the conversation. And that's when you talk to somebody who is truly
into transformational work like you are as well

(06:32):
now. Right? It's like that truly transformational work. They
open up possibilities and opportunities that you've never thought
of, and they challenge. And that's why we said good for him because so
often I think coaches are afraid to tell people the truth. I just got off
a call a few minutes ago with somebody. He attended a workshop. He
said, can I have a conversation? I'm listening to him. He's telling me

(06:54):
all these things about how great he is, and then he's telling me, of course,
there's all these failings at the same time where he's not seeing the fruits in
his life. And I just had to call it. I'm like, look. I can blow
smoke or I can just tell you and that's love. Right? That's tough
love, but just say, look. This is what I see and here's why and
and pull it all together. And it's like you gotta have the courage to be
able to say that to somebody. And I think because right now, the

(07:17):
world is so noisy, like, you're the anti hustle coach. It
is so noisy around this idea of hustle and
grind. There are so many ingrained patterns and to
interrupt that pattern with a simple statement or a question is so
important right now. And so I would love for you to talk
about this idea of this work life balance, the myth

(07:39):
around it because you experienced it. I think so many people,
like, say, this is my top priority, and it's like, no. It's not.
You wanna know your top priority? Look at your calendar. Look at you where you
spend your money. That's where you'll know where your top priority is. So talk about
that. And then what is an alternative? Because obviously, you don't
operate in that same way. You're very successful in your business now, but you

(08:01):
found another way to do it. So, yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah. I wanna
comment really quick on just what you were talking about before that is I always
tell my clients or people who are in the conversation with me about coaching or
asking me what I do. I always tell them there's a dirty little secret that
nobody's no coach is gonna tell you. And the dirty little secret is
that we like to be liked too. We like to be

(08:23):
liked too. So there's a temptation for me
to not take courage and say the thing that needs to
be said, that could be the impetus for the transformation that's
needed. So each moment I have to remind myself
what my job is here and what I'm committed to. And that is what
calls out the things that need to be said rather than my desire

(08:46):
to be like or my ego to be stroked. So I just want people to
understand that. We're human. So work life balance. A tip
for coaches. Yeah. That's right. That's right on. Out of your own way. Yeah.
And practice. It's a practice. It's a concept. Fail. I
regularly come back to my clients and say, look, when we had this conversation
the other day, and here's what I didn't say. And that's been a really

(09:08):
meaningful practice for me as well and builds lots of
trust. So you asked about work life balance. So here's how I think about
it. Most people think about balance. They think about a scale. Right? We think about,
like, that justice scale, and there's what we work to put
in one thing on one side to balance out the other side, and then that
tips out of balance. And so we put something on the other side, and people

(09:29):
think about their life outside of work and their work in that terms.
The problem is, is that as we have all experienced is
it's unattainable. It's literally unattainable. And if you
obtained it, if you did the impossible, how long would it last?
It for a moment. It would last for a moment only. And
then something else would happen, some surprise you didn't anticipate,

(09:52):
somebody on your team would do something, and then everything's out of balance again. And
so you're working towards this. And I don't know about you, but I don't know
anything else more despairing than working towards something that's impossible.
Yeah. So the way that I think about it is I compare it. I don't
know I don't know if you ever had this experience, Nicole, but when I was
a kid, I was really good at avoiding my chores. One of my chores was
to sweep and mop the kitchen floor. And when I was supposed

(10:16):
to be sweeping the kitchen floor, getting all those disgusting crumbs out from the toe
kick, I actually found myself putting the broom on the palm
of my hand, so the bristles are up in the air towards the ceiling
and seeing timing myself to see how long I could balance the broom
upright like that. And the thing about this is I figured out
that if I wanna keep it in the air the longest, what do I have

(10:38):
to do? I have to focus on the bristles. Because if I focus on the
bristles, I can see what direction they're heading and almost
automatically my hand will correct for where the bottom needs to
go to keep the bristles in the air. I would do this over and over
and over and over and over again. It fall, and I put it back up,
fall, put it back up, time myself, get better and better. And I think

(10:59):
about work life integration this way. You could use the word
balance, but I think balance has kind of been used in a in a way
that doesn't work. So I like to use a work life integration. But the way
that I think about it is the bristles of the broom are my
vision. They're my aim. It's the thing I said I'm committed
to. No matter what, I'm going to get there. And as long as I

(11:20):
keep my eye on the vision, on the aim, almost
automatically, I make the moves that are needed in
order to get there. So one always has a vision.
Right? And it's not always conscious. I would say that. I'm not saying that, like,
I'm right. I'm saying it, like, hey, think about that idea. We always have a
vision, even if it's an unconscious vision. When I was

(11:42):
in my business and it I allowed it to overcome my
life. I didn't have that language for it at the time. I was a victim
to it. But when I was a victim to my business, my
aim was prestige, fame, attention,
money, all of that. Right? And that's where my eyes were fixed.
And each decision I made took me

(12:04):
in that direction, almost automatically. I didn't even really need to
think much about it. The only time it changed
was when I was confronted and I changed my vision. I
got clear on what it is that I who I wanted to be first and
how I wanted that to look in my life. Like, honestly. Not
like, oh, wouldn't it be nice if I had time with my family? Like, no.

(12:27):
I'm gonna have this time with my family no matter
what. Birthdays, soccer games, they're off
the table. Like, there is no choice any longer.
I am there. And once I got clear on that, what do you
know? My decisions started changing. And it's not
like it didn't hurt the growth of our company. None of that

(12:49):
happened. What happened is is I actually started to get
the thing that I said I wanted so badly because of my
clarity of vision and my commitment to it. So it's
that balance is really this first step is get
very clear and specific about what it is that you want, how you want to
live life. And I would suggest to my clients, start with

(13:11):
yourself first. Whether that means spiritual, physical, mental,
start there. What are the non negotiables? Next, family.
What are the non negotiables with family? And what are the practices in
my Accelerators is the participants in my Accelerators actually go
into their calendar, and they put family things on the calendar,
and then they lock those in. Those are nonnegotiables

(13:34):
because it's so easy as a business owner to bump those things. Yeah. Right?
It's so easy for me to call Katie. Katie is my wife. Hey, Katie. You
know what? I know we had a date night tonight, but got this potential for
this really big contract, and they wanna meet with me tonight. So can we
just move it to Friday? And what happens is that just that multiplies.
So getting clear on that vision and then letting the decisions

(13:57):
you no longer have to toil over the decisions that you need to
make. They almost happen automatically. Wow. I love that. And, you
know, when we think about that work life balance, like you were saying, balancing the
different things, coming back to that is like you said, it's futile trying
to do that. And it creates so much stress. And when I was growing
up, I grew up in an entrepreneurial household. Yeah. My parents did work 7 days

(14:19):
a week, which was not healthy, right, in a sense, because I mean, like the
first real vacation I went on with them without business
connection and all the things was I was 19 years old.
And so, you know, we had the boat and we'd go up there on the
weekends and stuff, but like from an extended holiday. And so and yet at the
same time, they were very good at integrating family. We were

(14:41):
the priority. So when they went out for dinner, we went as a family for
dinner. Women did things. They were always involving us. And that's how I
got involved in their business so young is because it was the
way to connect, right, is like we were all doing this together. And I think
that I noticed even back then, there was a lot of people that their kids
don't even know what they do and why they do it. And so

(15:02):
they were frustrated because we were helping people with developing a side
hustle, basically. Right? I don't like to use the word hustle, but that side
business, part time business. And that was part of the is one of the things
that we did. And, you know, you see this resentment that builds up from the
family if they don't understand why you're doing what you're doing. So the vision is
for you, but it's also for them to understand what are we actually doing?

(15:23):
What is daddy doing when he does work? Whatever time that is. And I
think that's so so important. And like I was saying earlier, it's like, when you
wanna know what somebody's priority or look at their calendar and you'll see it. And
I love what you said there about blocking that family time,
making a priority. When we have a appointment with a doctor and it's an important
we're gonna go meet this, you know, a surgeon or we're gonna go for a

(15:45):
dentist appointment. We're gonna put that in our calendar. But do we
put family days in our calendar? Do we put those what
are we gonna actually do on our free days or weekends? I mean, that's
so important. These are simple, but so practical, these things. And that
whole idea, that vision of the broomstick, I think, is great. So let's
circle back there and talk about how this Can I add one thing to that

(16:07):
really quick? Just because I think it's really meaningful. I'm gonna one up
your analogy to the doctor appointment. What the term that I put it
in is with my clients is your family is your
first client. Yes. Your family is your first client
because the people I work with are so dedicated to
creating an incredible experience for their customers and their clients. They

(16:29):
would never move something that is on the calendar
when they're serving their clients. Right. And that's, like, an unlock for them. It's,
like Yes. Oh, okay. I see. I would never
move that, but I'm totally willing to always move that. So anyway Yeah. I just
wanted to add that. Great. Great. Great point. Yes. When we talk about
this single actionable question, and I

(16:51):
attached obviously to the vision. Right? Where does that come from? Because I
know you have a cool story around where that came from. What is it, and
how do we identify it for ourselves as we're starting this new
year 2025? The people that are listening most likely are
the ones who are gonna have ambition. They're gonna have goals. They're gonna have
new year's resolutions, whatever, you know, they're gonna

(17:13):
have, and I just wanna be able to equip them with that single
actionable question that they can take away and and really focus on for
this year? Yeah. Absolutely. So I built this concept off of a
story that I heard a couple of years ago. It's about the 2,000 English
Olympic rowing team. So you have to understand a little bit about the history of
the English rowing team at this point. This is the 4 man rowing team,

(17:36):
And the history of it is that they had not even been considered
competitive since, like, 19 0 8, something like that.
Wow. The program was a joke. There was 0 expectation,
0 funding, 0 backup from the country, but these
4 men in 2,000 did something absolutely
wild. They called their shot. They said, we're gonna take it. We're taking gold this

(17:59):
year. And nobody paid any attention because nobody
expected anything from this program. So what
happened? They get the gold. Sydney, 2000. They have 4 man
rowing team. They take the gold home. Afterwards, oh, everybody's
questions now. Right? Oh, how did you do it? What did you do? Congratulations.
Everybody's on board now. What they talked about was this

(18:21):
idea of a single actionable question, not their name for it. That's my
name for it. The SAQ acronym has really helped. But they
talked about this idea of a single actionable question. And they said,
we came together as a team. We developed one question to ask
ourselves. Whenever we had a decision to make during our training
time, one single question. We had the aim. The goal was the goal.

(18:43):
There was no matter what, we're getting it. How are we gonna get it? We're
gonna ask ourselves one question anytime a decision comes up
when we're training for this Olympics. The one question was, will it
make the boat go faster? Will it make the boat go
faster? When you hear it, it seems so silly and
simple. Like, duh. That's their job. That's what they're there. Like, that's what's

(19:05):
gonna get them the gold. And it the way that this team talks about is
it transformed their experience. Because every time there was a decision
available to them, do we go out to the pub on Friday night with the
boys? Will it make the boat go faster? Do we train 4 hours
instead of 2 hours every Tuesday morning? Will it make the boat go faster?
Do we take holidays? You know, all of that sort of stuff. And every

(19:26):
decision that they had in front of them, they asked themselves this single
question. And this I loved this, and I actually tested it
for myself, and it worked amazingly because now
it simplifies every decision that I've got to make. Each
person listening to this, if they're a business owner, if they're an entrepreneur, if they're
a leader, they're making a million decisions a day. Some of them they're really

(19:48):
confirmed in. Some of them they're questioning. And this just I mean, it put it
on a sticky note right in front of myself, right in front of my desk,
single actionable question, and everything comes to that. And if I
can't say yes to the question, then it's not for me. It's
not for now. That's so good. So there's 2 things. There's having
that clear vision and focus on what you actually

(20:10):
are shooting for and then creating that question. I love that because there's
so many I've said to entrepreneur clients that I've had is like, look,
it's easy to say no to the bad opportunities. They're easy to identify.
What's hard is to say no to the good opportunities that are just not the
right one for you because they're not gonna get you where you're shooting, you know,
where you're focused to go. And so that's where we can get into the like

(20:32):
you said, that question is simple. It's obvious where it goes, duh. Yes. But
how often do we get busy in the busy work? How often do we get
distracted? How much of our day is actually spent doing
everything but the very thing that is gonna move us forward
in our business and or in our life and the whole, you know, the
idea of, like, having that lifestyle. Like you said, my family is important.

(20:54):
So what was the question for you or is the question for
you? I don't know if it changes for you over time, but what is that
single actionable question for you now as an entrepreneur
who values his family and his and wants to
prioritize them as first but also wants to serve the clients and
make a big difference in the world and all that good stuff? Yeah. So it's

(21:16):
multiple questions in different areas, right? Because I've got different
visions for they integrate, but vision for the business vision for the
family. One that's really simple for me to explain right now is I have a
vision for 2025 to help a 100 creative entrepreneurs
scale their business by increasing their profitability and reducing the
working time in the business. So very clear vision. I

(21:38):
know exactly what it's gonna take to get there. And so the
single actual question that I use inside of that vision
is, will this help the client? Will this help the
client scale? Very simple. So as I'm thinking about
that, even in my marketing, every decision, if I'm gonna type
out an email and send it out to my email list, does this help them

(22:00):
scale? Period. Yeah. Because if I'm doing that job, I don't
need to worry about getting clients. I don't need to worry about any of
that sort of stuff. If I'm doing the job that I'm really good at and
I'm making a difference for these people, helping them scale, I don't have to worry
about anything else, and every decision could be made up to that. That is so
good. And I love this because we're making this practical for

(22:22):
people. And I was just gonna ask you about this because
if somebody is just starting out, we have some startup entrepreneurs,
aspiring entrepreneurs that literally are just at ideation phase and are launching
their business, and they're going like, I need clients. So a lot of times
what the question is, how do I get more clients? Which is not
necessarily the best question and not judging it. But I'm just saying

(22:45):
is, is it been in relation to what the bigger outcome is?
What would you say for them who they may not have a pipeline. Maybe they
don't have like, I always say there's 3 things that an entrepreneur needs to grow
their business. They need visibility in terms of marketing. Visibility, you're the expert
in this. So visibility, credibility, and consistency. You gotta have some
visibility. People gotta know you exist, like who that you're even there.

(23:08):
Credibility, you gotta establish some credibility in that in that visibility, and
then you gotta have some consistency so people can build trust for you and
in you, I should say. And so anyway, coming back to this, what would you
say to them if they're just like brand new and
they're like, I have this big vision and I wanna build cause I hear that
so often people have these, I get this big thing I wanna do and you

(23:29):
can either do 1 of 2 things. You can focus on that big, beautiful thing
and I'm gonna do this. And then they're like, just all they're doing is like
they're in dreaming mode all the time and visioning and planning,
and I'm planning. I'm planning. I'm planning. And or they're showing
the nitty gritty that they forgot this, and there's kinda, like, 2 contrasts. So
Yes. Talk about that. Yeah. I'm so glad you asked this. This is so

(23:50):
present for me right now because I'm starting a new business that's launching in
2025. I'm launching a residential cleaning business with
a partner, and it's been an interesting I won't go into how
this got started, but here's the thing. We
are starting with very few clients. We
will launch with a few clients, which is really great. That's I feel really grateful

(24:12):
about that, but not anything meaningful to where my vision is for this.
My vision for this is that we will be the premier residential cleaning
company in Utah. Now, there's a big gap
between that and where we are. And if I'm
lost in where we're going and I'm not honest with
myself about where we are, I will miss the opportunities.

(24:34):
Right? And if it's all about the focus for me so if I go out
into the world, if we break out January, we're doing some prep work with it,
but if I break out January and I'm like, I gotta get some clients. I
gotta get some clients. Where do I find some clients? Where do I get some
clients? I'm gonna set myself up in the business and the people who are gonna
work for me for failure. I know that. If we launch in January
and say, Let's make a difference for the person that's in front

(24:57):
of us right now, let's go clean their house, the best service
they've ever had at the cleanest they've ever had, the most respectful, the highest
amount of communication that they've ever experienced from a cleaner. If I
go make that difference with that one person, it's possible
that that one person now turns into 5. I don't know that to be true,
but it's the thing within my control at the moment. Yes. And

(25:21):
so, we are focusing on the difference we can make for
each person and everything else will come out of
that. Meaning, it's not that we're going to ignore marketing, but you know who's going
to give us the best marketing? It's the people we made a difference for. 1,
they're going to tell us about their fears they had in hiring a cleaner. They're
going to tell us about all the things that we did differently from those who

(25:42):
they've tried in the past. That that's our market differentiator. They're going to
be willing to give testimonials. They're gonna talk to their friends. So it's all
about it all surrounds, it all comes out of, grows
out of the difference that we're making. And then we can go and do all
of those little marketing things that we know are gonna work once we've been making
a difference for people. Oh, I love this because this applies at any level

(26:05):
when you're talking about a commercial cleaning business, residential cleaning business,
I should say, or your franchise. I think about a client I
had who became a client, but we were talking and he is a franchise, and
I've had this multiple times with franchisors. And you think that
they have the training and understand, you know, what they're actually in business to
do. Right? But it's so funny because I've had them say, and this one

(26:26):
particular one is like, my goal is to sell more
franchises. And I said, okay. So how are your
current franchisees doing? And they're like, well, some, you know I
don't make money though on those. You know, I make money on selling
more franchises. And I said and you're laughing because like therein lies the
problem. The very best clients you have, you know, that they're gonna look

(26:49):
at through a due diligence checklist and go through all the documents. And you
know what? They're gonna reach out to your franchisees, and they're gonna ask them, how's
it going? And when they say, oh, it's not going so well. I don't care
how good your marketing is. I don't care how big of an ambassador you are
for the brand. That's your focus. Let's get these franchisees making
money. Let's get these franchisees thriving in their business, loving their business,

(27:10):
loving their life, and they will be the best marketers for you. And people
will go in and be like, wow, I want one of these in my town
or whatever. And so whether it's on a small scale, what's on a big scale,
I just love how this is applicable to anyone, even somebody who's running
a massive company. Now maybe let's talk about that, is somebody who's running
this big company, and they've got thousands of employees, and

(27:31):
they're like because you mentioned about having multiple questions. You know, they they've got,
well, yeah, but we're dealing we're working on this, and we're working on that. We
got multiple divisions and product lines and channels
and countries and all the things. How do you help them to
identify what is that single most important question that they all need to be asking
for themselves? Or is it that there are multiple questions? And then as a

(27:53):
leader, you they have to manage multiple questions? I think it's yes. And I
currently am a fractional head of talent development for a
SaaS company, a tech SaaS company, they're fast growing, not anywhere near 1000
of employees. But we currently have 56 employees, I
think. And I work with them part time on a fractional basis, and we
have an SAQ for the entire company. And that SAQ

(28:16):
is what we all can rally around. Also,
it's a central part to the pops team, the people ops
team. And we have our own SAQ question that
we rally around. So but that question contributes
to the main question of the company that we've decided, and
announced, and got committed to that this was gonna guide our our

(28:38):
action. So I don't think it's one or the other. There's not, like, a
perfect science to it, but the idea is how do we hone the
focus? How do we take the peripheral, bring it in?
So what I was imagining when you were talking about these franchisees
or franchiser is that you're looking through a scope. And you can
aim the scope at any any element of building

(29:00):
a business. And, that becomes your focus and your decisions
start you start making your decisions based on what you see through the scope.
And, not a lot of business owners, not a lot of entrepreneurs
without some prompting or some coaching or some work, they don't
often question what they're aiming the scope at. And so, that's part
of my job is, like, hey. And that's where the single actual question comes

(29:22):
in so powerfully is, like, hey. Are you asking yourself the best
question? Because the question you're asking is gonna get you some results. Like, how do
I sell more franchises? It's gonna produce a result.
But is it the best question for the impact that you wanna make
Yeah. And the vision that you have? So good. I love this. We could talk
for hours because I know there's so much more that we can unpack here.

(29:45):
I wanna talk about the types of trust because you said something
in some of the initial material that you sent me, and you said there
are 2 types of trust, one that devastates a team and the other one
that accelerates a team. So talk to us about what are they
and how do we avoid the devastation? Yeah.
I think about this, you know, when the conversation

(30:07):
around trust for most people is really interesting. I don't hear a
lot of nuance in it. It's like a lot of people talk about trust like
we all know what we mean when we talk about trust, but then we don't.
When you drill down to the specifics of it, we don't know what we're talking
about. Start asking people, like, what is trust? How do you gain it?
How do you get it? How do you grow it? How do you build it?

(30:27):
And people don't have answers around that. And that's okay. I'm okay with
questions that don't have answers. But if we actually wanna utilize something, then
we might need to be able to get specific about it. And what I discovered,
actually, this is something that Dan, my mentor, and you mentioned him at the
beginning of the episode, this is something that really he
taught me that has been so powerful is that there's 2 types of

(30:50):
trust. Really, there's 3, but we'll talk about 2 of them. The one that we
won't talk about is infant trust. That's the trust of an infant. They
have no choice to trust. They depend on you for their food, their survival, their
warmth, their love, the roof, you know, all of that sort of stuff. The second
type of trust is what we call immature trust. And in fact, when most
people talk about trust, this is the kind of trust that they're referencing.

(31:11):
Immature trust is, I trust you, Nicole, so I
don't have to pay attention to you. It's a freeing of
space in the relationship and in the mind of, like, I
trust you so much. I don't have to worry about you. You got
it. I know you. That's a fun one. I know you so well that I
can trust you. I know you would never do anything to betray me. All of

(31:32):
that sort of stuff. Right? That is what we call immature trust. Really,
what it is, is it is a survival mechanism of, I
don't have the bandwidth to pay attention to all of you, so I have got
to decide who I trust, who I don't trust, make it black and
white, put you in that category, and then I don't have to pay attention. Mature
trust is And then the responsibility is on you, but we that's a whole other

(31:54):
yeah. Yes. Yeah. Well, we could talk about that. Yeah. Like, how many
entrepreneurs I've sat down with that are just
flabbergasted, blown away that somebody on their team took
advantage of them or betrayed them in some way, stole some money, stole
some time, whatever. Whatever that might be, stole some clients, whatever it is.
Right? The amount of times I've sat down and they're absolutely shocked

(32:17):
that this had happened. I trusted them. Okay. That's
great. Let's start there. That was immature trust. So anybody listening to this is
going, okay. What's the alternative? And the alternative
is mature trust. Jordan Peterson talks about this in a
really meaningful way for me. It really took it home for me because of the
visual. Jordan Peterson says, we all have snakes in us,

(32:39):
and trusting is knowing that we could get bit and
survive it. That's good. That's applicable in personal and
business. That's everywhere, right across the board. Wow. Everywhere.
I love that visual. We all have snakes in us, and trust is knowing that
we could be bit and survive it. Meaning, mature trust is, hey,
Nicole. I trust you so much, and I know you could betray me

(33:02):
at any moment. Not like, I am not suspicious. I am
not, you know, anxious about it. I just know that you're
a human with a stack of concerns that
inform your decision making. I'm not always
aware of where I'm at in that stack of concerns.
So, it's helpful to check-in with you, to

(33:24):
find out, not make up that I know, but to find out
where are your stack of concerns. What is work? What's going on for you?
Where are we in our relationship? Where are you in relation to your work if
you're one of my employees? How do you feel about your role? What's
going well? What's not going well? What feedback do you have for me as a
leader? How is this system working? What results is it producing?

(33:46):
You know, all of that sort of stuff are things that I'm gonna be checking
in on, not because I don't trust you, but because I trust you
knowing that your stack of concerns could change at any moment. It's
like I had this team I was working with, and one of their highest
performers, he was an AE, and he was just a rock
star. And almost overnight, his

(34:08):
performance went down. He disconnected from the team. I mean, he was,
like, playing the role, right? So he would still talk, but it was clear
something was up. And everybody's wondering, what's going on? What's going on with this
guy? Where did he go? What happened? And I won't share the details
of what happened, but literally overnight, something tragic
happened in his family with one of his children that he wasn't talking

(34:29):
about. He didn't let anybody know, but his stack of concerns
had completely shifted, and nobody knew. And to just
say, well, I trust that guy. I don't need to pay attention. That would be
a huge miss. Blame him and say, you know what? I trusted him, and he's
this way, and we go into judgment That's right. About this person without actually
realizing what's actually going on for somebody if somebody changes

(34:52):
and shifts like that to find out. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why
I say trust is a choice. You know, I think it's a I fly in
the face of this idea that we build trust. I don't we don't build
trust. I don't believe it. I just don't believe it. Nobody up to this point.
If there's a listener out here listening to this that can prove me wrong, please,
I would love to be proved wrong. The line of question that I use to

(35:14):
talk about this is, okay. If trust is built,
like, certain things have to happen in order to get this trust, in order for
trust to exist or appear. That's how people talk about trust. It's like, if
there's enough amount of time or enough experience with this thing, then trust
will appear. And I just say, well, okay. What's the amount of
time? Well, I don't know. Okay. How many times do you need to see

(35:36):
me do this thing before you trust me? Maybe
3, 4, 5. But if you didn't do it quite right, then maybe it's 7
and 8. And it proves my point, which is and this is a valuable point
along this conversation, is that at some point, you
just choose to trust the person. Whatever evidence you've looked
for and found has been enough for you in your

(35:59):
subjective idea of trust to just choose to trust.
So why not start with trust? Why not trust from
moment 1 and make it mature trust? Pay attention. Yeah.
Listen to the signs they're giving you in their language. Pay attention to their
actions. Believe them when they show you who they are. All those you will listen
and you will watch in a very different way if you start with trust

(36:21):
first. That's good. And I can hear people going, yeah, but you don't
understand what happened to me. Yeah. Yeah. All that. Yeah. We know. We
know. And it's entertaining that that possibility of what and
even looking at it and saying, like, what does it mean to trust? When we
say, like you said, mature trust, I think that's important. So that
is good. I've just my mind is going different places, and I'm like,

(36:43):
we don't have time for that. We're gonna wrap it up. But, we can do
it all day. Yeah. We can because you know what? When you go down this,
like I said, responsibility, the responsibility of it, even just like the
choice. When you say choosing to trust, I think about even like in my
personal life, some of the things that I've gone through in my personal life, and
it's there's a choice, and people don't necessarily understand. I talk

(37:03):
about it holding loosely. And what I mean by that is
you can love fiercely and hold something loosely at the same
time. And it's hard to explain because people are so
in a box of judgment, and it's gotta be
this way or it's this, you know, and they make decisions about meaning about things
or meaning meaning making machines. But to really and that's what I

(37:26):
love about what you're talking about. It takes it outside that box and
just saying, like, what if? Right? What if it wasn't all of that? And
what if it was something completely different? And letting people just sit with that.
So we're gonna leave people in that and just sit with that, to say
consider that challenge it. And I love what you said there is
if you want to refute me, you know, then reach out. It's like challenge

(37:48):
it, Be open to it and reach out if you need some support
and so forth. So let's talk about that because I know you work with creative
entrepreneurs. Talk about who is a good client for you, and I know you've got
a free gift and you got some stuff that's coming up in your accelerators.
Talk a little bit about how people can go into your world and experience more
of all that awesomeness that you got going on there. Yeah. Thank you for the

(38:10):
opportunity to talk about it. I do work with mostly creative
entrepreneurs, those who are where I've been. So when I talk about
creative entrepreneurs, these are typically creatives who have taken their art
and made it into a business. This can be video, photo, design, and
there's a unique opportunity with that type of
business. The results aren't always as tangible that you provide for

(38:32):
your clients, and so there's some ways to make those connections for people. So that's
what I specialize in, is helping the artist really think like a business
owner and think like a business owner that wants to and is committed to scaling
their business. So, I created an assessment. It's called the scalability
scan. I forget how many questions it is, but you do it in under 5
minutes. I think it's about 12 questions. And, it really

(38:54):
dives deep into the functionality of your business, how you think about
your business, how much it's connected to you, how much you're the center of
it, how significant you are to the operations and the outcomes
of the business, how much time you spend in versus on, you know, stuff like
that. It's really the value of it is it's a self assessment.

(39:16):
Connecting with you. But as you're feeling it out, you're going to be self
assessing and realizing where there are opportunities, where you've
done really well, and where there are opportunities for that scalability.
I define scalability as a certain threshold of
profitability and a certain threshold of the business not
depending on you being in it. When we take those two elements

(39:38):
together, then we can create something that's scalable because beyond
only your influence, and it can also sustain the lifestyle that you say
you want. So that's an opportunity. I think you're going to put a link somewhere.
Yes. So people can show you that. Yes. For sure. Yeah. Go take that scan.
It's so interesting. Then if you want to have a conversation with me about it,
I want to have a conversation with you about it. Then, my January cohort for

(39:59):
the Accelerator is sold out, but I'll be opening up a new one.
I think somewhere mid February, I'll have more information on that way before this
episode comes out. So, you can check my website, founderfreedom.
Founder freedom.com. There'll be information for any accelerators
coming up there. And connect with me on LinkedIn. I love having conversations. I
don't spend a lot of time posting on it, but I spend a lot of

(40:21):
time in the direct messages having conversations with people. So those
are a couple of different places to interact with me. Brilliant. Thank you. And we'll
make sure that the link to your LinkedIn, because it's Chad Brown might be there
might be several Chad Brown's. We'll make sure that link is in the show
notes. Chad, this has been such a pleasure. Seriously,
I love having this conversation. We can go deep and get real. I love

(40:43):
your sign behind you that says give a damn. You know, it's like literally caring
enough to tell people the truth and to be honest and loving
about it, but to really even and that starts with us being honest with ourselves.
We get to be honest with ourselves and ask ourselves quality
questions because the quality of our questions determines the quality of our life.
And so, yeah, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. And I always

(41:05):
say leader is a transformation take action. Sometimes
that action is getting out there and actually doing something, but sometimes
some people need even procrastinating long enough, get out there and step out of
the boat and start making some things happen. A lot of times what it is
is actually it's stepping back. That first action is stepping
back and being reflective and saying and asking yourself different questions,

(41:28):
challenging what you believe to be true, challenging your
judgments, challenging those things and questioning that. And
as Chad has said, I decide what is your vision? What really
is what you're shooting? What are you shooting for? What is that thing that you
really want? And then what is that key question where all of your
decisions are gonna be based on it? So I encourage you to take action on

(41:51):
something that you learned here today. He speaks it and is more eloquent than
me in terms of doing that. You can go back and listen to this episode.
That's the beautiful thing about podcast. You can go back and listen to it as
many times as you want. If you wanna rewind and go back to it, you
can. But do this for yourself. Do yourself a favor this year. I will
say this. Let's do yourself a favor this year and don't do this year like
you did every other year in the past. If you want different results, you gotta

(42:14):
do some things different. So I encourage you to do that. We'd love to hear
your stories. You can go on leaders of transformation dot com. Reach out to us
there. Of course, if you're this is on social, comment below, whatever you wanna do
there. But let us know how this has impacted you. We'd love to hear it.
Reach out to Chad. Take that scalability scan. It's
free. Get some insight and start moving yourself in the right direction this year. So
and this year could be the best year of your life, the best year direction

(42:35):
this year. So and this year could be the best year of your life, the
best year business wise, personal, and all the areas that are important to
you, and it's your choice. Thanks for being here. We really enjoyed
it, and I hope that you enjoyed it as well. Join us next week for
another great episode of the Leaders of Transformation. Have a good one.
Thank you for listening to the Leaders of Transformation podcast with

(42:58):
Nicole Jansen. If you're enjoying the show, please click the follow
or subscribe button, and leave a rating and review wherever you listen
to your podcasts. And remember to join us on social and
get connected. Together, we can make this world a better
place for everyone. We'll see you next time.

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