March 10, 2025 • 32 mins
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Business not moving forward? Brad Martineau shares the secret skill you didn't know you needed: Business Adulting. Watch and follow these simple steps!
Have you ever felt trapped in a business that isn't working the way you planned? When you suddenly feel it runs you and you are violating all your own rules of prioritizing family time versus working hours? You're not alone. On today's episode, Brad Martineau, founder of 6th Division and creator of the Smooth Scaling System, reveals exactly why so many entrepreneurs struggle to grow their business consistently—and what you can do differently to create your success balance in how much you work and the amount of money you can make.
Brad takes us through the concept of "business adulting," an approach that helps entrepreneurs stop buying courses and chasing shiny objects. Instead, he shows you how to define your ideal business by first focusing on what matters: your time, your role, and your money goals.
Brad, a father of five, shares from his own personal experience practical examples, and powerful insights into how your mindset and intentionality shape your business outcomes. You'll learn how to stop making decisions based on fear or external pressures, and start building what you actually want—a business that is aligned with your values and real-life commitments.
Smooth Scaling is the method Brad developed to help you with running and scaling your business, Brad invites you to visit his website at smoothscaling.co. Explore more resources, get connected, and start the journey toward smooth and stress-free growth today. And don’t forget to let us know your favorite takeaway in the comments—we'd love to hear from you!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brad Martineau (00:00):
Hello. My name is Brad Martineau, founder of
(00:02):
SixthDivision and Plus This, andcreator of the SmoothScaling
System. And on my episode of theBusiness Growth Architect Show,
I discuss how to business adultand how we can get to business
adulting by designingintentionally the business that
we actually want, rather thanone that we just wake up one day
and unfortunately have. And themost important skill set you can
(00:23):
develop as an entrepreneur inorder to do that. And
BEATE CHELETTE (00:25):
hello, fabulous person! Beate Chelette, here. I
am the host of the BusinessGrowth Architect Show and I want
to welcome you to today'sepisode where we discuss how to
navigate strategy andspirituality to achieve time and
financial freedom. Trulysuccessful people have learned
how to master both a clearintention and a strategy to
(00:45):
execute that in a spiritualpractice that will help them to
stay in alignment and onpurpose. Please enjoy the show
and listen to what our guesttoday has to say about this very
topic. Welcome back. BeateChelette here. The host of the
Business Growth Architect today,I'm talking to somebody I've
known for a long time, or knownabout for a long time, but
(01:08):
didn't know until now I know himbetter. Brad Martineau is with
us from the SixthDivision, Brad,I'm really excited to have you
on the show. Welcome. Thank you.
I'm really excited to be here.
Excellent. So for somebody whodoes not know who you are or has
never heard about you, will youtell us who you are and what
problem do you solve for yourclients?
Brad Martineau (01:28):
Yeah. So my name is Brad Martineau, first and
foremost, married just past the24 year anniversary. So we
celebrated our Kobe Bryantanniversary last week. I got
five kids, a granddaughter and ason in law. I love basketball
and I love wearing fitted hats.
So that's like the personalside. The problem that we solve
is we help people that aretrying to use automation build a
(01:48):
fully automatic business intheir client journey. So whether
it's like the Keep or the HighLevel or the Active Campaign
tools, the CRMs and theautomation, they're trying to
make sense of them, and they'vegot way too many ideas that are
all over. The text of mess andit's all over. They don't feel
like they're in control. Theycan't actually see what's
working in their business. Wemake all that super easy. And
the whole goal of that is, isthat if we can dial in the
(02:09):
client journey, that is the coreelement that then leads to
something we're gonna talk abouttoday, which is the ability to
build a smooth, scalingbusiness. So which is the
business that you want, ratherthan just the one that you end
up one day waking up and belike, Oh, well, this is what I
got.
BEATE CHELETTE (02:24):
I want to talk about the smooth, smooth idea of
yours. So most of the time, andI talk about this extensively,
people that want to start abusiness go Google, some guru
online, and then they come tosome of the well known internet
marketers, like all thislanguage that we're now really,
really familiar with, and thenthey look at what they offer,
(02:48):
and they say, speaking fromstage sounds really good. Online
courses sound really good.
Funnels sound really good. Andnext thing, three years later,
they have bought, what, 50,$60,000 worth of stuff, and they
still don't have a business.
Tell me what's going wrong mostof the time.
Brad Martineau (03:09):
Okay, so we're talking about people that buy a
bunch of stuff but then don'thave a business. They're They're
skipping the first phase ofbuilding a business. In
particular, building a smoothskilling business, I call it the
prove it phase. And in the ProveIt phase, you need nothing
fancy. You don't really need anycourses. You don't really need
like, you don't need much ofanything. What you need is a
(03:30):
group of people that you want tohelp, that has a problem that
they want to solve and arecapable of paying to solve. And
then you just then you got to gofigure out how to get in front
of them. But you don't need afunnel to go get in front of
people. So the Prove It ofpeople. So the prove it phase is
literally about proving there'sthis group of people. I can get
in front of them, I can get themto give me some amount of money,
(03:50):
and I can deliver a thing thatmakes them happy. To some
degree, we're just proving thatin the most raw, unrefined,
unpolished, unautomated,unfunneled, un fancy, un
perfected way possible. Itliterally is just like raw brute
force. Can I go make thishappen? So you don't need all
(04:12):
the courses for that. You justneed to go find the people, pick
up the phone and call them. Youjust have to prove hey, I can
get in front of these people,and I can say a thing that will
get them to listen, and then Ican get them to give me money,
and I've done it with enoughconsistency over the last couple
of months. Like, okay, there'ssomething here. Then we'll go
stack other stuff. But untilthen, like, in the in the
context of a smooth scalingbusiness, like, we haven't
(04:33):
actually proven that we havesomething worth scaling. We
haven't proven that we havesomething worth putting a funnel
around. We haven't proven thatwe have something we're spending
the time, the energy, the money,the stress and all that of going
to speak or whatever. So we'retrying to do it in small scales
to prove it first, becauseanything else that we do is it's
a gamble, and in a lot of cases,it's a waste. So for me, it's if
(04:54):
I have an idea, how fast andcheaply and quickly can I prove
that there's. That anybodycares. And then once I've proven
it, now I've actually earned theright to start thinking about,
Okay, well now how am I going toautomate, refine, perfect,
improve this, scale this, butfirst you got to actually prove
that anybody cares.
BEATE CHELETTE (05:12):
I want to. I want to make this really, uh
tangible. So what's happened,and I've talked about this on
this podcast, is I losteverything in the Palisades fire
and now with a clean slate thatI have, I have no award, no Tear
Sheet, I have very littleprocesses and systems the way I
used to do things. I mean, Ihave my online stuff and my
(05:34):
automation. But what's happeningis, as I've gotten sort of older
and wiser in the way I dothings. I have recently, over
the last year, had more peopleask me, Can you give me
everything you created insteadof just teaching me how to run
my business? Can you give meeverything you've created? You
(05:56):
know, the strategic facilitationoutlines, the workbooks, so that
I can do what you do with myclients. My first reaction Brad
was, You want my IP Absolutelynot. And then my second thought
was, maybe there's somethinghere. So following your format,
what would you tell someone likeme that now says, Well, I have
(06:20):
this business. It's donewhatever it's done, but I feel
that there is a different levelto it that I now need to create.
How do I how do I prove aconcept? How do I build this
subscription model? So the ideais to have three different
subscription models, veryclassic kind of funnel
membership model, but obviouslywe want to start with the first
one. So how do I get my headaround this, to say there's a
(06:44):
new idea, and how do I do myproof of concept on this new
idea, other than people told methat they want it?
Brad Martineau (06:51):
Okay? Great question. And I think, I think
the first thing to consider, andthis will be really important
for anybody that is eithertrying to start a business or
finds themselves in a situationlike you, which is like, Yo, I'm
at this inflection point wherethere were a lot of things that
I used to think and believeabout how this business had to
be run, that, in your case, afire literally deleted all of
(07:11):
them. So it's like, Hey, I havea blank slate. I can decide to
do whatever I want. And therewill be other people that for
other reasons, in that samepoint of like, all right, maybe
what I've been doing is not thething that I want to keep doing.
And then for anybody that isjust kind of running their
business, this would be a reallygood time to stop and be like,
am I actually running thebusiness that I want? Or should
I just create my own inflectionpoint where I'm going to stop
(07:32):
and be like, Okay, let me makesure that the trajectory that
I'm on will lead to and have meend up with the business that I
actually, that actually want. Sothe very first thing that I
would say for anybody to do is,you define the return that you
want, and I've created a tool. Icall it the return document.
Just really quickly, I'll gothrough the basic elements of it
here, because I think this isthe very first step before we
(07:53):
get into deciding what thebusiness is going to look like,
is we decide what do we want toget out of the business. I
believe that the business'sfirst job, first and foremost,
is to return to the businessowner what the business owner
wanted in the first place, mostpeople get into business, and
they think that the first job isto deliver value to the clients.
It's not. It's how you get yourreturn. Is that you deliver
(08:15):
value to the clients. But thefirst thing is, if you have a
business and you're deliveringcrazy value to clients, but
you're not getting the returnthat you want, or it's not
returning the value back to you.
That's not a winning business.
That's not the way that's notthe way that it works. So the
way we define the return are,there's three questions that I
like to get really, really clearon. And what we're defining is,
what are the three elements ofreturn that we want? And I
believe there's only threecurrencies we can actually get.
(08:36):
It's time, energy and money. Sowhat we're going to get really
clear about is, before I gobuild the infrastructure of this
business, I'm gonna get clear onthe type of time that I want it
to afford me, and how much timeit can take for me. I'm gonna
get really clear on what I wannaspend my energy doing, meaning,
what is my role going to be inthis business? What do I want to
do? What do I want it to be,what I want it to look like. And
(08:58):
then the third piece is, andthen monetarily, like, where
does it need to sit in order forthis thing to actually work for
me? So as I'm just going to drawa quick picture here, as we go
through this, so I look overhere, and we have return, and
what I'm thinking is, as we lookat this, is there's time, so
we'll just do time here, andthen energy, which would be a
smiley face, and then we gotmoney right here. And this, when
(09:20):
we define this right here. Thisbecomes the litmus test for any
decision that we're eventuallygoing to make in our business
over here. So you got a lot ofquestions that come up in
business, should I do this?
Should I do that? And my firstquestion that I'm going to ask,
or the first thing I want tolook at, is, well, the decision
I'm about to make over here inthe business, does it align to
the return that I wanted, that Isaid that I wanted, so couple of
(09:41):
simple questions that we can runthrough as we look at this.
We'll just jump into here. WhenI look at time, what I'm looking
at is like, how much do I wantto be working in this? Do I work
weekends? Do I work at night? DoI am I traveling? Like? What is
this going to require me from atime standpoint, and I tend to
start. Start with this. When I,when I go through this with
people, I'll just say, Look,just kind of like, define your
(10:03):
ideal week. And keep in mind, bythe way, we're trying to do like
80% ish. So if you can get to80% of your ideal week, that
works great. So when you want tostart, are you a morning person?
Are you an afternoon like, Ilove to start really early, and
then I also love to be done
early. So I'm up at 4 (10:17):
30 I've got a whole thing that I go
through, I do all my workbasically by before our company
starts having meetings at likeeight, I do basically most of my
work for the company, but that'sthe way that I work, because I'm
building a business that worksfor me. So just be really clear
about what do you want yourschedule to look like? And then
you're going to decide a wholebunch of things in the business
based on what you want there. Sotime is one that you decide. So
(10:40):
I'm going to go through this oneby one, by one, but I'll just
stop any thoughts or anyquestions as we go through this.
BEATE CHELETTE (10:44):
Yeah. So the so the time is what I'm noticing
for myself is like you, I have agrandchild, and now with a
grandchild, suddenly time is alot more valuable than it used
to be, because if I have time, Irather do a face time with my
granddaughter, or go visit andplay or go to the playground,
(11:06):
because when I raised mydaughter, I was a single mom, I
feel like I couldn't do a lot ofthese really relaxed things,
because it was always stressingout to make the money and build
my business. But now that I canbe a grandparent, that is very
important. What I want to add isthat time also changes. That
it's okay to maybe say I'mwilling to put two years of this
(11:30):
in at this amount of time, butthen the goal has to be to scale
it down, because then that'swhat I want to get out talk
about that a little bit.
Brad Martineau (11:39):
Well, the goal, the goal. So, yes, the point is,
this is going to change, andthis is something that you
revisit frequently to make sure,because your target's going to
change, you're going to changeyour dynamics of your life are
going to like, things are goingto change. It'll become whatever
you want it to become, which itmight mean that it scales down.
It might mean that it's like,Well, right now I'm in this time
period where I don't have asmuch time, but later I want to
spend more time. The point is,you're building a business that
(12:01):
you actually love, and so youshould just be clear. And this
is where it's really important.
You start about by saying, Yeah,we come in, we hear the gurus,
and they say this and this andthis. You have to be really
careful to not let what thegurus are saying sound like it's
a definitive, universal truththat then you adopt as if it's
your own thing that you reallywant. The only reason why you're
doing is because you heard RyanDeiss or Alex Hormozi or whoever
(12:21):
I go down the list, because youheard somebody like, yo. That's
the thing that you should belike, Oh, I gotta do that. No,
you don't. You can do whateveryou want. You could go live in a
cabin in the mountains and notdo any of the things that they
say. And I'm not saying youshould go do that, but you have
to actually have the courage tobe like, No, this is what I
want. So a couple of thingsabout deciding time, and then
these will also apply when wetalk about energy and money. And
money, and then we can move onto what that looks like when we
(12:42):
get in to the business. So if weflip back over here, one is this
80% concept in everything we'redoing. It's like, if I can get
in that ballpark, then I alreadywon, so I don't need to beat
myself up. It's like, Oh well, Iwanted to work Monday through
Friday, but I wanted to be doneat three o'clock in the
afternoon so I could pick up mykids. But one day, this one
week, I had to stay until five.
(13:02):
That's fine. Like, you're doingpretty dang good. Like, let's
just be, let's be okay withthat, right? So it's about 80%
it's getting into that ballpark.
Number one, number two, you gotto be practical with this. And
really, what I mean by this isyou have to be real. When I did
this for the first time, so Ihave, I have five kids, they
were all younger, and I waslike, All right, I'm going to
define this schedule. And what Iwanted to do was I wanted to do
a quarterly vacation with mykids. I wanted to go on two
(13:24):
trips with my wife. I all thesethings I wanted to do and and
then I said, Wait a minute. Ihave two daughters that are in
competitive dance. And ifanybody has been in competitive
dance or had
BEATE CHELETTE (13:35):
kids in competitive dance, you're
already laughing, because I livefor weekends. This
Brad Martineau (13:39):
is, there is no exaggeration. There is, there
was one calendar week from themoment my oldest, the girls are
the oldest, from the moment theystarted competitive dance at
about the age of 10 or 12, wehad one week a year where there
was nothing happening, and itwas in July that was the only
time we were doing a familyvacation. So there has to be an
element of this being real, notOh well, I want to take all
(14:00):
these vacations again, because Iheard other people talking about
it's like, no, I am actuallyapplying this in my real life
with my real situations rightnow, which for me right now is
I've got two kids at home. One,I'm about to leave and serve a
mission for our church. Theother one plays basketball, so
like, basketball season lockedout. And then I have a
granddaughter in Utah. Sothere's an element of, like, my
life that is all right, well, Ineed time to go up there. I
(14:21):
don't really care about weeklong vacations. I want to be in
Utah about every other week, orevery three weeks, really, every
day, if I ask my wife. Butright? So like I'm my time
revolves around what I actuallywant in my life right now. So
that's to be real. Has to bepractical. And then the last
thing for me that I always tryto keep in mind as I'm looking
at this, is this one of I callit the floor, not the ceiling.
(14:43):
What we're defining is not it'llnever get better than this.
We're defining this is thefloor, meaning this is what it
takes for this to be acceptableand give me a return. But I'm
actually trying to beat it. Sofrom a chime standpoint, I might
say, Hey, I'm cool to work. Orwhat I want to work is I'll
work. Eight hours a day. Let'sjust say it's eight hours a day.
I want to start at five in themorning and be done at one, and
(15:04):
that works for me. It could befour hours a day, whatever you
want it to be. The point is, I'mnot saying that I'm never, ever,
ever going to make my businessbe where I could work less. I'm
just saying that's the target,and until I get there, like I'm
not really satisfied, likethat's what I'm working towards.
And I want to in anything I'mdoing. I want to leave enough
buffer that once I hit thattarget, I could still go beyond
it. So it's floor. You just wantto think floor, not ceiling on
(15:24):
all of these okay? So number oneis time, and you should write
down, like, literally, justwrite out what your schedule
looks like. This is what itlooks like on a weekly basis. I
probably start about this time.
I'm done about this time. Theseare the days I'm working. These
it is I'm not working, generallyspeaking, I'm not traveling, I'm
not working on the weekends.
Whatever it is, just decide whatit is that works for you with
your schedule. I've also foundit to be really helpful for you
(15:45):
to then write why? Why is thatthe schedule that you want?
Because there's going to be atime when you're tempted to
cheat on your own goals, and youneed to look at why. I'm like,
Oh no, that's why I decided
BEATE CHELETTE (15:55):
use it. Yes, it's it's very easy. I find that
people are okay sitting down andmaking these goals, and then
life happens, and then they go,Well, you know, it's probably
best if I don't go on that trip.
It's too exhausting. And thenthey'll talk, or I've
Brad Martineau (16:13):
got this really important project, and I didn't
want to work after three. Butwhat's really, really important?
So it'll be okay, because mykids are going to watch a movie
anyway, so I'll just kind of letthem go watch a movie, rather
than hang with my kids while Islip into the back room. Not
that I'm sneaking from personalexperience or anything, but I'll
just go. I'll just go sneak,sneak in the back room, and I'll
do a little bit of extra work,or they'll put a movie on. We're
going to watch it as a family,which normally wouldn't do
(16:34):
during the week, but I'm goingto agree to it because I know we
can watch it. I can stillrecover my laptop and not really
be engaged, even though that'swhat I said, that I wanted to do
from the very beginning. Andrather than me be more organized
in my work time, I'm lessorganized in my work time, and
I'm having an affair. On what Isaid, I actually wanted my time
in the first
BEATE CHELETTE (16:51):
and that is, I think the that's part
discipline, and that is part tosay, what? Yes, if I have to
keep my word, if I don't keepthe word that I give to myself,
it can have catastrophicconsequences. So talk to me
(17:13):
about, how do you keep your ownword? How do you hold yourself
accountable when nobody'swatching? Okay,
Brad Martineau (17:21):
so it's a muscle. I believe, I believe
it's a muscle, and just like anymuscle, it has to be worked out.
I believe it's the mostimportant muscle. So what I did,
and this is what I've continuedto do, that has worked really,
really well for me, is the firststep is I forgave myself forever
having not do forever having notdone what I said I was going to
do. Now, that may sound weird tosome people, but it's actually a
(17:46):
really it did to me. I sat downand I free flow. Just wrote it's
in my journal. I have yet to goback and read this journal entry
without getting emotional, but Ijust went down. I said, I
forgive myself for boom. Andanything that just came to me, I
just wrote it down. I float outanything that's like, I forgive
myself. Yeah, I didn't do it,whatever. Now we're moving
forward. So I think that's acritical first step. Number one.
(18:07):
Number two, you start to rep themuscle of winning. Where winning
means you only you, you don'tyou do what you say you're going
to do, which also means, if youare not 100% confident you're
going to do it, don't say it,and you actually get really good
at being like, No, I'm not goingto commit to that. So and you
start like crazy, simple. Sohere's what it was for me. The
(18:30):
thing I started with was I amgoing to wake up at a particular
time every morning. It wasn'tthat it was the same time every
morning. It was that I was goingto wake up earlier than I wanted
to, and that as soon as I gotup, there was no debating or
questioning or thinking aboutgoing back to sleep. So I moved
my alarm. My alarm is 15 feetaway from my bed, so I wake up,
I have to go turn off my alarm.
By that time, like my brain haswoken up enough to be like,
(18:53):
Okay, I'm awake and I know whatI committed to. I also set my
alarm. I don't do you know whoEric Thomas is, the hip hop
preacher, motivation phenomenal.
He's got a clip, and in theclip, he says, most of you say
the most of you say you want tobe successful. You don't
actually want to be thatsuccessful, that bad, or
something like this. He says,You don't even want to be
successful more than you want tosleep. So he's got this clip. I
(19:14):
took that clip. I made it a songin my phone. It is my alarm when
I wake up every morning, andliterally, right about the time
I get to my alarm, I hear theline. Most of you don't want to
be successful as bad as you wantto sleep. And I was like, Ah, so
every morning it's just thisreminder. Like, okay, so that's
what it started with, was I'mjust going to wake up and I'm
not going back to bed. Andadmittedly, for the first couple
of days I was awake, I'm like, Idon't even know what to do, but
(19:35):
I can't go back to sleep. So Ijust kind of found something to
keep myself busy. Because thereason why I was doing it was
not about some morning formularoutine. It was about developing
the muscle that if I said I wasgoing to wake up, I'm waking up.
And so for me, the only timeI'll sleep in, like last night,
I went to bed really late. Ididn't get to bed till after
(19:57):
midnight. So I woke up laterthan I normally did, by about
half an. Hour. So the reason whyI do it is because it's a daily
rep of the muscle of I will dowhatever I say that I'm going to
do, and then, and then itprogressed. So there's one other
piece of this that I think isimportant. It progressed, and I
was like, I'm going to work out.
So during COVID, I built a gymin my garage so I have stuff to
work out at home. Like, I'mgoing to wake up and I'm going
to work out. And so I started todo that. Now here's where it got
(20:17):
really important that you haveto make sure that you have to
make sure that you don't sayyou're going to do something
you're not going to dootherwise. It undermines all the
progress. Like, all right, whatcan I do that? I know I'll work
out in the morning and I'm like,I got to go upper body. If I
start by telling myself I'mgoing to wake up on my own at
five o'clock in the morning andI'm going to go out and I'm
going to do squats or lunges orwhatever, there is no way I'm
going to do it. Like I'm justreally clear that I am not at
(20:39):
the point where I've developedthat muscle enough to make
muscle enough to make myself dothat. So I started for like the
first probably three or fourmonths, it's like, I'm gonna get
up and I would do chest and backone day, and then I'd do
shoulders and arms another day,but I'm gonna get up and I'm
gonna go work out. And it wasn'tuntil like three or four or five
months later, I'm like, Allright, it's time to start doing
legs. And then, because I wantedto make sure that I did what I
would say I was gonna do, Ididn't do legs at home. I went
(21:00):
back to my trainer. I used to goto they did all the stuff with
my legs, and I said, I'm comingback. These are the days that
I'm coming. So you then engineerthe game so that you win, which
is you only, you always do whatyou say you're going to do, and
you only say things that you'regoing to do. And then you start
to build the muscle. And thenyou do it on purpose, so that
you build the muscle so that youare consciously repping that,
(21:23):
which means that your confidencewill grow in your ability to
make yourself do something,which means now it's like, Hey,
I get home and my kids want todo so. It's like, No, I can
actually set that aside, becauseI built the muscle to have the
integrity with the thing that Isaid that I wanted in the first
place. I
BEATE CHELETTE (21:39):
think it's one of the single most important
things for us is to build ourown integrity muscle, and people
over commit all the time andpeople are not aware that the
day has 24 hours. I have aprogram that I did where I help
people to actually just take acalendar and put down in a
(22:01):
weekly calendar on what theysaid they wanted, quality time
with their kids every day, oneon one, time with their partner,
working out, quiet time, workingit hours, sleeping it hours, and
then there they already ran outof time four hours ago. And the
reason why people get sostressed out is because they
(22:25):
have a lack of understanding onwhat is possible in a 24 hour
period of time. So how do youset priorities? If you build a
business that allows you tosmooth sale, you're going to
have to make actual decisionsthat come from your heart, that
come from what matters to youmost. Then you have to put a
(22:47):
strategy behind it, to firstsay, if I have to make a
decision on building thestrategy and how to get that
that starts with my own personalintegrity. But now I'm running
into that I want to again overcommit. So how do you pull
yourself back Brett, and saythat it's just not humanly
possible to do this much in aday? Yeah,
Brad Martineau (23:08):
it's a great question. Let me just go back to
this real quick. You actuallycalled it out and described it
perfectly. So over here is you.
Anything you do in your businesshas to align to who you are as a
person. Number one, then numbertwo, before we start making
decisions over here in thebusiness, we want to get really
clear on what this looks like.
And remember this line righthere about being practical. So
the exercise that you justtalked about, which is, let's
(23:30):
just go look at your calendarright here. Let's go look at
that and let's see what on earthis happening in here. So if we
put a calendar as you start todecide what you want, we're not
doing this exercise in a genericformat, where it's like, oh
yeah. And then I want to neverwork on the weekends or
whatever. We're actually fillingout the calendar, we're
budgeting your time. And thenyou stop and you look at like,
(23:50):
okay, Is that realistic based onlike, I can't come over here and
be like, All right, I want abillion dollar business, but I
want to work one hour a week.
Like, what I'm going to do overhere in the business has to
match with what I'm willing toput into the business, and what
I see it going like, like, whatit's going to take. So the
answer is, is that as you golook at this, and then as we get
into the role, as you get intoyour financial things you want,
(24:12):
you have to get clear on whetherthis is actually practical. It's
exactly what I went through. AndI was like, Okay, here's where
I'm going to go get like, wait aminute, I can't do that because
of my kids schedule. I don'thave enough time. So you have to
make the pieces fit. If theydon't fit on paper, they're not
going to magically fit in reallife. So if you can't lay out
what your schedule is going tolook like, then it's not going
to magically fit in real life.
(24:33):
So as you in the business, ifyou go to start making decisions
about what you're going tocommit to, what you're going to
do, it always has to then comeback to you got to stop and
actually look at your calendarand be like, All right, is this
something that I can actuallyfit into my calendar? Is that
you got to also ask, is thissomething that aligns with who I
am as a person, if we come backto this right? Does this
decision align to the calendarthat I want? Does it align to
(24:55):
the role that I want in thebusiness and the things I want
to be doing? Does it align tothe money I want to make? Does
it align to the person that Iwant to be? So this over here,
this is more about youridentity. So this is more about
your identity, and this is moreabout the actual logistics of
what the business is going toreturn to you. Every decision we
make over here, it has to lineup to that. And if not, then
(25:17):
you're kidding yourself. And thereason why it goes time let that
go away. The reason why it goestime and then energy, or your
role and then money, is becausethe most common thing that
you're going to probably make asacrifice for is your brain is
going to tell you that you'renot going to make the money you
want, or all the money is goingto go away. Money's last on
purpose, because if you startwith money and that becomes the
overarching priority, you'llsacrifice your time, you'll
(25:39):
sacrifice your role, you'llsacrifice everything else. So we
put money at the end to be like,No, this is the type of person I
want to be. Is what am Ischeduled to be? This is what
the role I want it to be. Andthen we'll get to money at the
end so that it doesn't becomethe thing that makes me cheat on
it. Yeah,
BEATE CHELETTE (25:53):
that's, it's very it's like business
adulting, but that's what I'm
Brad Martineau (25:58):
we talked about.
Like, the most important muscleis that you have integrity and
that you can be disciplined. Theother half of that equation,
though, is that you have to knowwhat you're being disciplined
to, which is why the return isso important. Because a lot of
people like, oh, I can makemyself do stuff. It's like,
Yeah, but do you know what youactually want to I want to make
intentional decisions in mybusiness. I want to make
intentional decisions over herethat make I love it, and I have
(26:19):
to know, I have to know whatthis is, because this arrow
right here, this is the filterof like, all right, I'm going to
do this decision because Ibelieve it's going to make this
happen. But if I don't have thisover here to vet it against,
then I'm just making decisionsover here, and then I just get
whatever happens to come out.
It's not an intentional decisionin here to make.
BEATE CHELETTE (26:40):
So, what I'm hearing from you, Brett, is that
there really it is businessadulting. That's, I think I can
sum up this episode in twowords, is that stop buying what
other people are selling withouthaving even looked at it on
whether or not it works for youbased on some very simple
criteria, and then commit andthen be in Integrity with your
(27:02):
own decision. What do we need towarn people about where you say
you are on the right track, ifthis happens when you follow my
model?
Brad Martineau (27:09):
So I think the first thing so warn about,
slash, be aware of, I think thevery first thing, and it goes to
exactly to what you're whatyou're saying, is that all of
this all comes back down to yourpersonal development and who you
are, and then who you'rebecoming as a person. So if
there's any part of you that ishoping that you can just make a
(27:30):
decision in the business andthen it's going to magically
solve all of your returncurrencies, but you're still
going to be this sort of scaredperson over here, you're wrong.
That's not the way it works. Youcan ask anybody, business is the
ultimate personal developmentgame. It is going to make you
develop, and it ought to be thething that you're chasing after
the most. So one thing that islike a be aware of, the first
(27:52):
and the foremost is yourbusiness will never outgrow your
capacity to lead it ever I'vetried multiple times, your
business cannot outgrow yourcapacity to sit at the helm and
to lead it, so it will only goas far as you grow. So the game
we're actually playing ispersonal development, personal
growth, and you becoming thebusiness adult, and then all of
(28:12):
the other things that are outthere for you in the universe
that God has in store for youthat would like, all the reasons
why I put you here, they justsit on the other side of you
growing, yeah,
BEATE CHELETTE (28:21):
and I and to that point, and we had talked
about it when we were in thegreen room earlier. So when
we're building these businesses,these purpose driven businesses,
or this integrity basedbusiness, finding out what you
want is the single mostimportant thing, and then you
have to just trust on andfinally, as we're closing this,
(28:41):
what do you tell people whenthey are losing faith, when it
gets really tough?
Brad Martineau (28:46):
That's a great question. I believe that the I'm
probably gonna butcher this. I'msure you've seen it. I'm sure
people that are watching thishave seen it, but it says hard
times create tough people. Toughpeople create easy times. Easy
times create weak people. Weakpeople create hard times is like
this cycle when we're in themiddle of hard times, it is
(29:08):
because, if we lean into it,it's because we're growing. I
think maybe in our culture alittle bit, maybe a lot. I think
we have shifted to where ourfocus is more on comfort than it
is on work. It's more onconsumption than it is on
creation. Creation is alwayshard, consumption is always easy
(29:33):
and comfortable and so and Idon't mean like it's always
hard, it's always a grind, Ijust mean creation takes real
work. So there's always going tobe something that doesn't seem
like it's working or that seemslike it's falling apart. I get
really nervous when I feel likethings are just flowing and
everything is super easy,because my guess is that I'm not
pushing hard enough. It meansthat I'm coasting. And so when
we're in the middle of a hardtime, it's like, well, yeah,
(29:55):
what? What did you expect?
You're up to something if youweren't up to anything? You'd
have no friction. If you're upto something, you're going to
have friction. Welcome to thegame. There was no guarantee
that I was going to not have anyproblems or whatever. So for me,
what I tell myself, what I tryto other people, is like, yeah,
you're in the middle of it. Thisis the game. Welcome to the
game. Imagine the person thatyou'll be when you come out the
(30:15):
other side. And not only that,imagine the tools and the gifts
that you will now have once youcome out the other side, that
you'll be able to use to serveother people. Because without
going through it, you don't getany of that. But when you go
through it, you become adifferent person, and you become
equipped to help other people ina way that you otherwise never
(30:36):
would
BEATE CHELETTE (30:37):
have. Powerful.
What a great way to end theinterview, and for somebody who
now is interested in workingwith you to figure out how to do
a smooth scaling business, wheredo we send them? Brett, best
Brad Martineau (30:47):
place to go would be, so I'll give a couple
of ways, depending on yourpreference. Number one, you can
go to smoothscaling.co there's aform on there you can fill out
just to sign up for the emaillist. There's not anything else
on there. Just sign up for theemail list. An email will go to
you for me, hit reply and belike, Yo, I saw you, and I want
to chat some more. Another wayis you can just send me an email
and be like, Hey, you talkedabout smooth scaling stuff. I
know you do some automationstuff. Want to talk about how my
(31:09):
work. So if you want to email medirect, you'll send an email to
brad@sixthdivision.com so it'ss, i, x, t, h, d, i, v, i, s, i,
o, n.com, just send me an emailabout cast like on the podcast.
Would love to chat. Here's whatI got going on. So email, if you
just want to go direct or youcan go sign up on the form, and
then it will send you the email.
If you go into that route,that's totally fine. And then if
you want connect on the socialsor whatever, thank you so much.
BEATE CHELETTE (31:30):
Well, Brad to have you on, have you on I think
I've been in your, in your inyour sphere of influence, I
guess, for what has been 20years now, and it is really
amazing to watch evolution, notjust in yourself, but also with
other people that you've seen.
And I love the work that you do,and really admire on how clear
you are and how many peopleyou're helping. So thank you so
(31:51):
much for being on the show.
Yeah, thank you for having me,and that is it for us, for
today. Thank you so much forlistening to or watching this
episode. Brad was using awhiteboard. So if you can catch
this show on our YouTube channelto just see some of the drawings
that he did that illustrate someof the concepts a little bit
(32:14):
further. I highly encourage youto do that. And if you are not
smooth scaling or smooth sailingwith your business, please, you
know, follow the advice andshare it with another person who
think, who needs to hear what weshared with you today, and with
that, I say goodbye. Soappreciate you being here. Thank
you so much for listening to theentire episode. Please subscribe
(32:37):
to the podcast, give us a fivestar, review, a comment and
share this episode with one moreperson so that you can help us
help more people. Thank youagain, until next time. Goodbye.
Hello. My name is Brad Martineau, founder of
(00:02):
SixthDivision and Plus This, andcreator of the SmoothScaling
System. And on my episode of theBusiness Growth Architect Show,
I discuss how to business adultand how we can get to business
adulting by designingintentionally the business that
we actually want, rather thanone that we just wake up one day
and unfortunately have. And themost important skill set you can
(00:23):
develop as an entrepreneur inorder to do that. And
BEATE CHELETTE (00:25):
hello, fabulous person! Beate Chelette, here. I
am the host of the BusinessGrowth Architect Show and I want
to welcome you to today'sepisode where we discuss how to
navigate strategy andspirituality to achieve time and
financial freedom. Trulysuccessful people have learned
how to master both a clearintention and a strategy to
(00:45):
execute that in a spiritualpractice that will help them to
stay in alignment and onpurpose. Please enjoy the show
and listen to what our guesttoday has to say about this very
topic. Welcome back. BeateChelette here. The host of the
Business Growth Architect today,I'm talking to somebody I've
known for a long time, or knownabout for a long time, but
(01:08):
didn't know until now I know himbetter. Brad Martineau is with
us from the SixthDivision, Brad,I'm really excited to have you
on the show. Welcome. Thank you.
I'm really excited to be here.
Excellent. So for somebody whodoes not know who you are or has
never heard about you, will youtell us who you are and what
problem do you solve for yourclients?
Brad Martineau (01:28):
Yeah. So my name is Brad Martineau, first and
foremost, married just past the24 year anniversary. So we
celebrated our Kobe Bryantanniversary last week. I got
five kids, a granddaughter and ason in law. I love basketball
and I love wearing fitted hats.
So that's like the personalside. The problem that we solve
is we help people that aretrying to use automation build a
(01:48):
fully automatic business intheir client journey. So whether
it's like the Keep or the HighLevel or the Active Campaign
tools, the CRMs and theautomation, they're trying to
make sense of them, and they'vegot way too many ideas that are
all over. The text of mess andit's all over. They don't feel
like they're in control. Theycan't actually see what's
working in their business. Wemake all that super easy. And
the whole goal of that is, isthat if we can dial in the
(02:09):
client journey, that is the coreelement that then leads to
something we're gonna talk abouttoday, which is the ability to
build a smooth, scalingbusiness. So which is the
business that you want, ratherthan just the one that you end
up one day waking up and belike, Oh, well, this is what I
got.
BEATE CHELETTE (02:24):
I want to talk about the smooth, smooth idea of
yours. So most of the time, andI talk about this extensively,
people that want to start abusiness go Google, some guru
online, and then they come tosome of the well known internet
marketers, like all thislanguage that we're now really,
really familiar with, and thenthey look at what they offer,
(02:48):
and they say, speaking fromstage sounds really good. Online
courses sound really good.
Funnels sound really good. Andnext thing, three years later,
they have bought, what, 50,$60,000 worth of stuff, and they
still don't have a business.
Tell me what's going wrong mostof the time.
Brad Martineau (03:09):
Okay, so we're talking about people that buy a
bunch of stuff but then don'thave a business. They're They're
skipping the first phase ofbuilding a business. In
particular, building a smoothskilling business, I call it the
prove it phase. And in the ProveIt phase, you need nothing
fancy. You don't really need anycourses. You don't really need
like, you don't need much ofanything. What you need is a
(03:30):
group of people that you want tohelp, that has a problem that
they want to solve and arecapable of paying to solve. And
then you just then you got to gofigure out how to get in front
of them. But you don't need afunnel to go get in front of
people. So the Prove It ofpeople. So the prove it phase is
literally about proving there'sthis group of people. I can get
in front of them, I can get themto give me some amount of money,
(03:50):
and I can deliver a thing thatmakes them happy. To some
degree, we're just proving thatin the most raw, unrefined,
unpolished, unautomated,unfunneled, un fancy, un
perfected way possible. Itliterally is just like raw brute
force. Can I go make thishappen? So you don't need all
(04:12):
the courses for that. You justneed to go find the people, pick
up the phone and call them. Youjust have to prove hey, I can
get in front of these people,and I can say a thing that will
get them to listen, and then Ican get them to give me money,
and I've done it with enoughconsistency over the last couple
of months. Like, okay, there'ssomething here. Then we'll go
stack other stuff. But untilthen, like, in the in the
context of a smooth scalingbusiness, like, we haven't
(04:33):
actually proven that we havesomething worth scaling. We
haven't proven that we havesomething worth putting a funnel
around. We haven't proven thatwe have something we're spending
the time, the energy, the money,the stress and all that of going
to speak or whatever. So we'retrying to do it in small scales
to prove it first, becauseanything else that we do is it's
a gamble, and in a lot of cases,it's a waste. So for me, it's if
(04:54):
I have an idea, how fast andcheaply and quickly can I prove
that there's. That anybodycares. And then once I've proven
it, now I've actually earned theright to start thinking about,
Okay, well now how am I going toautomate, refine, perfect,
improve this, scale this, butfirst you got to actually prove
that anybody cares.
BEATE CHELETTE (05:12):
I want to. I want to make this really, uh
tangible. So what's happened,and I've talked about this on
this podcast, is I losteverything in the Palisades fire
and now with a clean slate thatI have, I have no award, no Tear
Sheet, I have very littleprocesses and systems the way I
used to do things. I mean, Ihave my online stuff and my
(05:34):
automation. But what's happeningis, as I've gotten sort of older
and wiser in the way I dothings. I have recently, over
the last year, had more peopleask me, Can you give me
everything you created insteadof just teaching me how to run
my business? Can you give meeverything you've created? You
(05:56):
know, the strategic facilitationoutlines, the workbooks, so that
I can do what you do with myclients. My first reaction Brad
was, You want my IP Absolutelynot. And then my second thought
was, maybe there's somethinghere. So following your format,
what would you tell someone likeme that now says, Well, I have
(06:20):
this business. It's donewhatever it's done, but I feel
that there is a different levelto it that I now need to create.
How do I how do I prove aconcept? How do I build this
subscription model? So the ideais to have three different
subscription models, veryclassic kind of funnel
membership model, but obviouslywe want to start with the first
one. So how do I get my headaround this, to say there's a
(06:44):
new idea, and how do I do myproof of concept on this new
idea, other than people told methat they want it?
Brad Martineau (06:51):
Okay? Great question. And I think, I think
the first thing to consider, andthis will be really important
for anybody that is eithertrying to start a business or
finds themselves in a situationlike you, which is like, Yo, I'm
at this inflection point wherethere were a lot of things that
I used to think and believeabout how this business had to
be run, that, in your case, afire literally deleted all of
(07:11):
them. So it's like, Hey, I havea blank slate. I can decide to
do whatever I want. And therewill be other people that for
other reasons, in that samepoint of like, all right, maybe
what I've been doing is not thething that I want to keep doing.
And then for anybody that isjust kind of running their
business, this would be a reallygood time to stop and be like,
am I actually running thebusiness that I want? Or should
I just create my own inflectionpoint where I'm going to stop
(07:32):
and be like, Okay, let me makesure that the trajectory that
I'm on will lead to and have meend up with the business that I
actually, that actually want. Sothe very first thing that I
would say for anybody to do is,you define the return that you
want, and I've created a tool. Icall it the return document.
Just really quickly, I'll gothrough the basic elements of it
here, because I think this isthe very first step before we
(07:53):
get into deciding what thebusiness is going to look like,
is we decide what do we want toget out of the business. I
believe that the business'sfirst job, first and foremost,
is to return to the businessowner what the business owner
wanted in the first place, mostpeople get into business, and
they think that the first job isto deliver value to the clients.
It's not. It's how you get yourreturn. Is that you deliver
(08:15):
value to the clients. But thefirst thing is, if you have a
business and you're deliveringcrazy value to clients, but
you're not getting the returnthat you want, or it's not
returning the value back to you.
That's not a winning business.
That's not the way that's notthe way that it works. So the
way we define the return are,there's three questions that I
like to get really, really clearon. And what we're defining is,
what are the three elements ofreturn that we want? And I
believe there's only threecurrencies we can actually get.
(08:36):
It's time, energy and money. Sowhat we're going to get really
clear about is, before I gobuild the infrastructure of this
business, I'm gonna get clear onthe type of time that I want it
to afford me, and how much timeit can take for me. I'm gonna
get really clear on what I wannaspend my energy doing, meaning,
what is my role going to be inthis business? What do I want to
do? What do I want it to be,what I want it to look like. And
(08:58):
then the third piece is, andthen monetarily, like, where
does it need to sit in order forthis thing to actually work for
me? So as I'm just going to drawa quick picture here, as we go
through this, so I look overhere, and we have return, and
what I'm thinking is, as we lookat this, is there's time, so
we'll just do time here, andthen energy, which would be a
smiley face, and then we gotmoney right here. And this, when
(09:20):
we define this right here. Thisbecomes the litmus test for any
decision that we're eventuallygoing to make in our business
over here. So you got a lot ofquestions that come up in
business, should I do this?
Should I do that? And my firstquestion that I'm going to ask,
or the first thing I want tolook at, is, well, the decision
I'm about to make over here inthe business, does it align to
the return that I wanted, that Isaid that I wanted, so couple of
(09:41):
simple questions that we can runthrough as we look at this.
We'll just jump into here. WhenI look at time, what I'm looking
at is like, how much do I wantto be working in this? Do I work
weekends? Do I work at night? DoI am I traveling? Like? What is
this going to require me from atime standpoint, and I tend to
start. Start with this. When I,when I go through this with
people, I'll just say, Look,just kind of like, define your
(10:03):
ideal week. And keep in mind, bythe way, we're trying to do like
80% ish. So if you can get to80% of your ideal week, that
works great. So when you want tostart, are you a morning person?
Are you an afternoon like, Ilove to start really early, and
then I also love to be done
early. So I'm up at 4 (10:17):
30 I've got a whole thing that I go
through, I do all my workbasically by before our company
starts having meetings at likeeight, I do basically most of my
work for the company, but that'sthe way that I work, because I'm
building a business that worksfor me. So just be really clear
about what do you want yourschedule to look like? And then
you're going to decide a wholebunch of things in the business
based on what you want there. Sotime is one that you decide. So
(10:40):
I'm going to go through this oneby one, by one, but I'll just
stop any thoughts or anyquestions as we go through this.
BEATE CHELETTE (10:44):
Yeah. So the so the time is what I'm noticing
for myself is like you, I have agrandchild, and now with a
grandchild, suddenly time is alot more valuable than it used
to be, because if I have time, Irather do a face time with my
granddaughter, or go visit andplay or go to the playground,
(11:06):
because when I raised mydaughter, I was a single mom, I
feel like I couldn't do a lot ofthese really relaxed things,
because it was always stressingout to make the money and build
my business. But now that I canbe a grandparent, that is very
important. What I want to add isthat time also changes. That
it's okay to maybe say I'mwilling to put two years of this
(11:30):
in at this amount of time, butthen the goal has to be to scale
it down, because then that'swhat I want to get out talk
about that a little bit.
Brad Martineau (11:39):
Well, the goal, the goal. So, yes, the point is,
this is going to change, andthis is something that you
revisit frequently to make sure,because your target's going to
change, you're going to changeyour dynamics of your life are
going to like, things are goingto change. It'll become whatever
you want it to become, which itmight mean that it scales down.
It might mean that it's like,Well, right now I'm in this time
period where I don't have asmuch time, but later I want to
spend more time. The point is,you're building a business that
(12:01):
you actually love, and so youshould just be clear. And this
is where it's really important.
You start about by saying, Yeah,we come in, we hear the gurus,
and they say this and this andthis. You have to be really
careful to not let what thegurus are saying sound like it's
a definitive, universal truththat then you adopt as if it's
your own thing that you reallywant. The only reason why you're
doing is because you heard RyanDeiss or Alex Hormozi or whoever
(12:21):
I go down the list, because youheard somebody like, yo. That's
the thing that you should belike, Oh, I gotta do that. No,
you don't. You can do whateveryou want. You could go live in a
cabin in the mountains and notdo any of the things that they
say. And I'm not saying youshould go do that, but you have
to actually have the courage tobe like, No, this is what I
want. So a couple of thingsabout deciding time, and then
these will also apply when wetalk about energy and money. And
money, and then we can move onto what that looks like when we
(12:42):
get in to the business. So if weflip back over here, one is this
80% concept in everything we'redoing. It's like, if I can get
in that ballpark, then I alreadywon, so I don't need to beat
myself up. It's like, Oh well, Iwanted to work Monday through
Friday, but I wanted to be doneat three o'clock in the
afternoon so I could pick up mykids. But one day, this one
week, I had to stay until five.
(13:02):
That's fine. Like, you're doingpretty dang good. Like, let's
just be, let's be okay withthat, right? So it's about 80%
it's getting into that ballpark.
Number one, number two, you gotto be practical with this. And
really, what I mean by this isyou have to be real. When I did
this for the first time, so Ihave, I have five kids, they
were all younger, and I waslike, All right, I'm going to
define this schedule. And what Iwanted to do was I wanted to do
a quarterly vacation with mykids. I wanted to go on two
(13:24):
trips with my wife. I all thesethings I wanted to do and and
then I said, Wait a minute. Ihave two daughters that are in
competitive dance. And ifanybody has been in competitive
dance or had
BEATE CHELETTE (13:35):
kids in competitive dance, you're
already laughing, because I livefor weekends. This
Brad Martineau (13:39):
is, there is no exaggeration. There is, there
was one calendar week from themoment my oldest, the girls are
the oldest, from the moment theystarted competitive dance at
about the age of 10 or 12, wehad one week a year where there
was nothing happening, and itwas in July that was the only
time we were doing a familyvacation. So there has to be an
element of this being real, notOh well, I want to take all
(14:00):
these vacations again, because Iheard other people talking about
it's like, no, I am actuallyapplying this in my real life
with my real situations rightnow, which for me right now is
I've got two kids at home. One,I'm about to leave and serve a
mission for our church. Theother one plays basketball, so
like, basketball season lockedout. And then I have a
granddaughter in Utah. Sothere's an element of, like, my
life that is all right, well, Ineed time to go up there. I
(14:21):
don't really care about weeklong vacations. I want to be in
Utah about every other week, orevery three weeks, really, every
day, if I ask my wife. Butright? So like I'm my time
revolves around what I actuallywant in my life right now. So
that's to be real. Has to bepractical. And then the last
thing for me that I always tryto keep in mind as I'm looking
at this, is this one of I callit the floor, not the ceiling.
(14:43):
What we're defining is not it'llnever get better than this.
We're defining this is thefloor, meaning this is what it
takes for this to be acceptableand give me a return. But I'm
actually trying to beat it. Sofrom a chime standpoint, I might
say, Hey, I'm cool to work. Orwhat I want to work is I'll
work. Eight hours a day. Let'sjust say it's eight hours a day.
I want to start at five in themorning and be done at one, and
(15:04):
that works for me. It could befour hours a day, whatever you
want it to be. The point is, I'mnot saying that I'm never, ever,
ever going to make my businessbe where I could work less. I'm
just saying that's the target,and until I get there, like I'm
not really satisfied, likethat's what I'm working towards.
And I want to in anything I'mdoing. I want to leave enough
buffer that once I hit thattarget, I could still go beyond
it. So it's floor. You just wantto think floor, not ceiling on
(15:24):
all of these okay? So number oneis time, and you should write
down, like, literally, justwrite out what your schedule
looks like. This is what itlooks like on a weekly basis. I
probably start about this time.
I'm done about this time. Theseare the days I'm working. These
it is I'm not working, generallyspeaking, I'm not traveling, I'm
not working on the weekends.
Whatever it is, just decide whatit is that works for you with
your schedule. I've also foundit to be really helpful for you
(15:45):
to then write why? Why is thatthe schedule that you want?
Because there's going to be atime when you're tempted to
cheat on your own goals, and youneed to look at why. I'm like,
Oh no, that's why I decided
BEATE CHELETTE (15:55):
use it. Yes, it's it's very easy. I find that
people are okay sitting down andmaking these goals, and then
life happens, and then they go,Well, you know, it's probably
best if I don't go on that trip.
It's too exhausting. And thenthey'll talk, or I've
Brad Martineau (16:13):
got this really important project, and I didn't
want to work after three. Butwhat's really, really important?
So it'll be okay, because mykids are going to watch a movie
anyway, so I'll just kind of letthem go watch a movie, rather
than hang with my kids while Islip into the back room. Not
that I'm sneaking from personalexperience or anything, but I'll
just go. I'll just go sneak,sneak in the back room, and I'll
do a little bit of extra work,or they'll put a movie on. We're
going to watch it as a family,which normally wouldn't do
(16:34):
during the week, but I'm goingto agree to it because I know we
can watch it. I can stillrecover my laptop and not really
be engaged, even though that'swhat I said, that I wanted to do
from the very beginning. Andrather than me be more organized
in my work time, I'm lessorganized in my work time, and
I'm having an affair. On what Isaid, I actually wanted my time
in the first
BEATE CHELETTE (16:51):
and that is, I think the that's part
discipline, and that is part tosay, what? Yes, if I have to
keep my word, if I don't keepthe word that I give to myself,
it can have catastrophicconsequences. So talk to me
(17:13):
about, how do you keep your ownword? How do you hold yourself
accountable when nobody'swatching? Okay,
Brad Martineau (17:21):
so it's a muscle. I believe, I believe
it's a muscle, and just like anymuscle, it has to be worked out.
I believe it's the mostimportant muscle. So what I did,
and this is what I've continuedto do, that has worked really,
really well for me, is the firststep is I forgave myself forever
having not do forever having notdone what I said I was going to
do. Now, that may sound weird tosome people, but it's actually a
(17:46):
really it did to me. I sat downand I free flow. Just wrote it's
in my journal. I have yet to goback and read this journal entry
without getting emotional, but Ijust went down. I said, I
forgive myself for boom. Andanything that just came to me, I
just wrote it down. I float outanything that's like, I forgive
myself. Yeah, I didn't do it,whatever. Now we're moving
forward. So I think that's acritical first step. Number one.
(18:07):
Number two, you start to rep themuscle of winning. Where winning
means you only you, you don'tyou do what you say you're going
to do, which also means, if youare not 100% confident you're
going to do it, don't say it,and you actually get really good
at being like, No, I'm not goingto commit to that. So and you
start like crazy, simple. Sohere's what it was for me. The
(18:30):
thing I started with was I amgoing to wake up at a particular
time every morning. It wasn'tthat it was the same time every
morning. It was that I was goingto wake up earlier than I wanted
to, and that as soon as I gotup, there was no debating or
questioning or thinking aboutgoing back to sleep. So I moved
my alarm. My alarm is 15 feetaway from my bed, so I wake up,
I have to go turn off my alarm.
By that time, like my brain haswoken up enough to be like,
(18:53):
Okay, I'm awake and I know whatI committed to. I also set my
alarm. I don't do you know whoEric Thomas is, the hip hop
preacher, motivation phenomenal.
He's got a clip, and in theclip, he says, most of you say
the most of you say you want tobe successful. You don't
actually want to be thatsuccessful, that bad, or
something like this. He says,You don't even want to be
successful more than you want tosleep. So he's got this clip. I
(19:14):
took that clip. I made it a songin my phone. It is my alarm when
I wake up every morning, andliterally, right about the time
I get to my alarm, I hear theline. Most of you don't want to
be successful as bad as you wantto sleep. And I was like, Ah, so
every morning it's just thisreminder. Like, okay, so that's
what it started with, was I'mjust going to wake up and I'm
not going back to bed. Andadmittedly, for the first couple
of days I was awake, I'm like, Idon't even know what to do, but
(19:35):
I can't go back to sleep. So Ijust kind of found something to
keep myself busy. Because thereason why I was doing it was
not about some morning formularoutine. It was about developing
the muscle that if I said I wasgoing to wake up, I'm waking up.
And so for me, the only timeI'll sleep in, like last night,
I went to bed really late. Ididn't get to bed till after
(19:57):
midnight. So I woke up laterthan I normally did, by about
half an. Hour. So the reason whyI do it is because it's a daily
rep of the muscle of I will dowhatever I say that I'm going to
do, and then, and then itprogressed. So there's one other
piece of this that I think isimportant. It progressed, and I
was like, I'm going to work out.
So during COVID, I built a gymin my garage so I have stuff to
work out at home. Like, I'mgoing to wake up and I'm going
to work out. And so I started todo that. Now here's where it got
(20:17):
really important that you haveto make sure that you have to
make sure that you don't sayyou're going to do something
you're not going to dootherwise. It undermines all the
progress. Like, all right, whatcan I do that? I know I'll work
out in the morning and I'm like,I got to go upper body. If I
start by telling myself I'mgoing to wake up on my own at
five o'clock in the morning andI'm going to go out and I'm
going to do squats or lunges orwhatever, there is no way I'm
going to do it. Like I'm justreally clear that I am not at
(20:39):
the point where I've developedthat muscle enough to make
muscle enough to make myself dothat. So I started for like the
first probably three or fourmonths, it's like, I'm gonna get
up and I would do chest and backone day, and then I'd do
shoulders and arms another day,but I'm gonna get up and I'm
gonna go work out. And it wasn'tuntil like three or four or five
months later, I'm like, Allright, it's time to start doing
legs. And then, because I wantedto make sure that I did what I
would say I was gonna do, Ididn't do legs at home. I went
(21:00):
back to my trainer. I used to goto they did all the stuff with
my legs, and I said, I'm comingback. These are the days that
I'm coming. So you then engineerthe game so that you win, which
is you only, you always do whatyou say you're going to do, and
you only say things that you'regoing to do. And then you start
to build the muscle. And thenyou do it on purpose, so that
you build the muscle so that youare consciously repping that,
(21:23):
which means that your confidencewill grow in your ability to
make yourself do something,which means now it's like, Hey,
I get home and my kids want todo so. It's like, No, I can
actually set that aside, becauseI built the muscle to have the
integrity with the thing that Isaid that I wanted in the first
place. I
BEATE CHELETTE (21:39):
think it's one of the single most important
things for us is to build ourown integrity muscle, and people
over commit all the time andpeople are not aware that the
day has 24 hours. I have aprogram that I did where I help
people to actually just take acalendar and put down in a
(22:01):
weekly calendar on what theysaid they wanted, quality time
with their kids every day, oneon one, time with their partner,
working out, quiet time, workingit hours, sleeping it hours, and
then there they already ran outof time four hours ago. And the
reason why people get sostressed out is because they
(22:25):
have a lack of understanding onwhat is possible in a 24 hour
period of time. So how do youset priorities? If you build a
business that allows you tosmooth sale, you're going to
have to make actual decisionsthat come from your heart, that
come from what matters to youmost. Then you have to put a
(22:47):
strategy behind it, to firstsay, if I have to make a
decision on building thestrategy and how to get that
that starts with my own personalintegrity. But now I'm running
into that I want to again overcommit. So how do you pull
yourself back Brett, and saythat it's just not humanly
possible to do this much in aday? Yeah,
Brad Martineau (23:08):
it's a great question. Let me just go back to
this real quick. You actuallycalled it out and described it
perfectly. So over here is you.
Anything you do in your businesshas to align to who you are as a
person. Number one, then numbertwo, before we start making
decisions over here in thebusiness, we want to get really
clear on what this looks like.
And remember this line righthere about being practical. So
the exercise that you justtalked about, which is, let's
(23:30):
just go look at your calendarright here. Let's go look at
that and let's see what on earthis happening in here. So if we
put a calendar as you start todecide what you want, we're not
doing this exercise in a genericformat, where it's like, oh
yeah. And then I want to neverwork on the weekends or
whatever. We're actually fillingout the calendar, we're
budgeting your time. And thenyou stop and you look at like,
(23:50):
okay, Is that realistic based onlike, I can't come over here and
be like, All right, I want abillion dollar business, but I
want to work one hour a week.
Like, what I'm going to do overhere in the business has to
match with what I'm willing toput into the business, and what
I see it going like, like, whatit's going to take. So the
answer is, is that as you golook at this, and then as we get
into the role, as you get intoyour financial things you want,
(24:12):
you have to get clear on whetherthis is actually practical. It's
exactly what I went through. AndI was like, Okay, here's where
I'm going to go get like, wait aminute, I can't do that because
of my kids schedule. I don'thave enough time. So you have to
make the pieces fit. If theydon't fit on paper, they're not
going to magically fit in reallife. So if you can't lay out
what your schedule is going tolook like, then it's not going
to magically fit in real life.
(24:33):
So as you in the business, ifyou go to start making decisions
about what you're going tocommit to, what you're going to
do, it always has to then comeback to you got to stop and
actually look at your calendarand be like, All right, is this
something that I can actuallyfit into my calendar? Is that
you got to also ask, is thissomething that aligns with who I
am as a person, if we come backto this right? Does this
decision align to the calendarthat I want? Does it align to
(24:55):
the role that I want in thebusiness and the things I want
to be doing? Does it align tothe money I want to make? Does
it align to the person that Iwant to be? So this over here,
this is more about youridentity. So this is more about
your identity, and this is moreabout the actual logistics of
what the business is going toreturn to you. Every decision we
make over here, it has to lineup to that. And if not, then
(25:17):
you're kidding yourself. And thereason why it goes time let that
go away. The reason why it goestime and then energy, or your
role and then money, is becausethe most common thing that
you're going to probably make asacrifice for is your brain is
going to tell you that you'renot going to make the money you
want, or all the money is goingto go away. Money's last on
purpose, because if you startwith money and that becomes the
overarching priority, you'llsacrifice your time, you'll
(25:39):
sacrifice your role, you'llsacrifice everything else. So we
put money at the end to be like,No, this is the type of person I
want to be. Is what am Ischeduled to be? This is what
the role I want it to be. Andthen we'll get to money at the
end so that it doesn't becomethe thing that makes me cheat on
it. Yeah,
BEATE CHELETTE (25:53):
that's, it's very it's like business
adulting, but that's what I'm
Brad Martineau (25:58):
we talked about.
Like, the most important muscleis that you have integrity and
that you can be disciplined. Theother half of that equation,
though, is that you have to knowwhat you're being disciplined
to, which is why the return isso important. Because a lot of
people like, oh, I can makemyself do stuff. It's like,
Yeah, but do you know what youactually want to I want to make
intentional decisions in mybusiness. I want to make
intentional decisions over herethat make I love it, and I have
(26:19):
to know, I have to know whatthis is, because this arrow
right here, this is the filterof like, all right, I'm going to
do this decision because Ibelieve it's going to make this
happen. But if I don't have thisover here to vet it against,
then I'm just making decisionsover here, and then I just get
whatever happens to come out.
It's not an intentional decisionin here to make.
BEATE CHELETTE (26:40):
So, what I'm hearing from you, Brett, is that
there really it is businessadulting. That's, I think I can
sum up this episode in twowords, is that stop buying what
other people are selling withouthaving even looked at it on
whether or not it works for youbased on some very simple
criteria, and then commit andthen be in Integrity with your
(27:02):
own decision. What do we need towarn people about where you say
you are on the right track, ifthis happens when you follow my
model?
Brad Martineau (27:09):
So I think the first thing so warn about,
slash, be aware of, I think thevery first thing, and it goes to
exactly to what you're whatyou're saying, is that all of
this all comes back down to yourpersonal development and who you
are, and then who you'rebecoming as a person. So if
there's any part of you that ishoping that you can just make a
(27:30):
decision in the business andthen it's going to magically
solve all of your returncurrencies, but you're still
going to be this sort of scaredperson over here, you're wrong.
That's not the way it works. Youcan ask anybody, business is the
ultimate personal developmentgame. It is going to make you
develop, and it ought to be thething that you're chasing after
the most. So one thing that islike a be aware of, the first
(27:52):
and the foremost is yourbusiness will never outgrow your
capacity to lead it ever I'vetried multiple times, your
business cannot outgrow yourcapacity to sit at the helm and
to lead it, so it will only goas far as you grow. So the game
we're actually playing ispersonal development, personal
growth, and you becoming thebusiness adult, and then all of
(28:12):
the other things that are outthere for you in the universe
that God has in store for youthat would like, all the reasons
why I put you here, they justsit on the other side of you
growing, yeah,
BEATE CHELETTE (28:21):
and I and to that point, and we had talked
about it when we were in thegreen room earlier. So when
we're building these businesses,these purpose driven businesses,
or this integrity basedbusiness, finding out what you
want is the single mostimportant thing, and then you
have to just trust on andfinally, as we're closing this,
(28:41):
what do you tell people whenthey are losing faith, when it
gets really tough?
Brad Martineau (28:46):
That's a great question. I believe that the I'm
probably gonna butcher this. I'msure you've seen it. I'm sure
people that are watching thishave seen it, but it says hard
times create tough people. Toughpeople create easy times. Easy
times create weak people. Weakpeople create hard times is like
this cycle when we're in themiddle of hard times, it is
(29:08):
because, if we lean into it,it's because we're growing. I
think maybe in our culture alittle bit, maybe a lot. I think
we have shifted to where ourfocus is more on comfort than it
is on work. It's more onconsumption than it is on
creation. Creation is alwayshard, consumption is always easy
(29:33):
and comfortable and so and Idon't mean like it's always
hard, it's always a grind, Ijust mean creation takes real
work. So there's always going tobe something that doesn't seem
like it's working or that seemslike it's falling apart. I get
really nervous when I feel likethings are just flowing and
everything is super easy,because my guess is that I'm not
pushing hard enough. It meansthat I'm coasting. And so when
we're in the middle of a hardtime, it's like, well, yeah,
(29:55):
what? What did you expect?
You're up to something if youweren't up to anything? You'd
have no friction. If you're upto something, you're going to
have friction. Welcome to thegame. There was no guarantee
that I was going to not have anyproblems or whatever. So for me,
what I tell myself, what I tryto other people, is like, yeah,
you're in the middle of it. Thisis the game. Welcome to the
game. Imagine the person thatyou'll be when you come out the
(30:15):
other side. And not only that,imagine the tools and the gifts
that you will now have once youcome out the other side, that
you'll be able to use to serveother people. Because without
going through it, you don't getany of that. But when you go
through it, you become adifferent person, and you become
equipped to help other people ina way that you otherwise never
(30:36):
would
BEATE CHELETTE (30:37):
have. Powerful.
What a great way to end theinterview, and for somebody who
now is interested in workingwith you to figure out how to do
a smooth scaling business, wheredo we send them? Brett, best
Brad Martineau (30:47):
place to go would be, so I'll give a couple
of ways, depending on yourpreference. Number one, you can
go to smoothscaling.co there's aform on there you can fill out
just to sign up for the emaillist. There's not anything else
on there. Just sign up for theemail list. An email will go to
you for me, hit reply and belike, Yo, I saw you, and I want
to chat some more. Another wayis you can just send me an email
and be like, Hey, you talkedabout smooth scaling stuff. I
know you do some automationstuff. Want to talk about how my
(31:09):
work. So if you want to email medirect, you'll send an email to
brad@sixthdivision.com so it'ss, i, x, t, h, d, i, v, i, s, i,
o, n.com, just send me an emailabout cast like on the podcast.
Would love to chat. Here's whatI got going on. So email, if you
just want to go direct or youcan go sign up on the form, and
then it will send you the email.
If you go into that route,that's totally fine. And then if
you want connect on the socialsor whatever, thank you so much.
BEATE CHELETTE (31:30):
Well, Brad to have you on, have you on I think
I've been in your, in your inyour sphere of influence, I
guess, for what has been 20years now, and it is really
amazing to watch evolution, notjust in yourself, but also with
other people that you've seen.
And I love the work that you do,and really admire on how clear
you are and how many peopleyou're helping. So thank you so
(31:51):
much for being on the show.
Yeah, thank you for having me,and that is it for us, for
today. Thank you so much forlistening to or watching this
episode. Brad was using awhiteboard. So if you can catch
this show on our YouTube channelto just see some of the drawings
that he did that illustrate someof the concepts a little bit
(32:14):
further. I highly encourage youto do that. And if you are not
smooth scaling or smooth sailingwith your business, please, you
know, follow the advice andshare it with another person who
think, who needs to hear what weshared with you today, and with
that, I say goodbye. Soappreciate you being here. Thank
you so much for listening to theentire episode. Please subscribe
(32:37):
to the podcast, give us a fivestar, review, a comment and
share this episode with one moreperson so that you can help us
help more people. Thank youagain, until next time. Goodbye.
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