Quit Client Work and Work Less for More Money - With Rich Webster | Ep 359 - The Futur with Chris Do

Episode Transcript
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(00:53):
I was hiding a huge part of mypersonality from the world the entire
time that I have been an entrepreneur.
As soon as the wall came down,everything got a million times better.
The more that you can be inalignment with your life and your
business, the more money youcan make.
I'm Rich Webster and you'relistening to the Future.

(01:14):
When I first met my nextguest, he was going through a lot
of different explorations andchanges to his life and his business.
But the thing that that's beenvery consistent with the way he's
approached his life and hisbusiness is to work less, earn more,
and just prioritize his time.
And so it's been a number ofyears since we first talked, but
he's gone through thisbeautiful evolution of a person who

(01:35):
does service work, a personwho does teaching and service, and
now mostly teaching, coaching,and doing zero service.
Rich, welcome to the show.
Great to have me, Chris.
It's great to be here, Chris.
Yeah.
Okay, so rich people may knowyou of some other names.
Well, how else might they knowof you?
You maybe know me from theInternet as richwebs.

(01:58):
I've kind of built an audienceon Instagram, but if you don't know
me from there, basically mykind of TLDR life story is I'm an
entrepreneur, I'm a designer,I'm also a writer, and I'm just a
big fan of building likehighly profitable solo businesses.
I have a couple in my history.
First one was an agency.

(02:18):
I ran that business for adecade and I gotta say, this business
would not have reached thepeak that it reached without Chris
Do.
So we can maybe talk a littlebit more about that later on.
But at the end of its road, itwas making half a million bucks a
year in profit.
It took me 10 to 15 hours a week.
And I basically had kind ofdesigned this like perfect system,

(02:38):
leveraged agency business.
But as great as that sounds,that business doesn't exist anymore.
I actually shut it downofficially a year ago.
And then thanks to Chris Do, Istarted writing online and built
up this audience and kind oftook all the lessons I had from running
that business, all my systems,framework secrets and package that

(03:01):
up into a course which kind ofteaches people how to do that.
And yeah, now I basicallywrite, create and do consulting and
mentorship for folks that runsimilar businesses to me.
So generally speaking, sixfigures and up, trying to just design
really lean, mean, one personbusinesses with, you know, kind of

(03:21):
just a small team offreelancers that support them.
Let's try to forecast whatwe're Going to talk about.
It's not always easy to do atthe beginning, but let's see if we
can do that.
So what do you think is themost interesting or compelling part
of where you've landed so thatwe can set that up as the hook for
people to tune in?
Like, why should people watchthis episode?
I would say two things worthtalking about are why I decided to

(03:46):
shut down a design agency thatwas making half a million bucks a
year that only took me 10, 15hours a week to run.
And then on top of that, why Ihad a deep, dark secret for over
13 years that I never sharedwith anyone and why I'm sharing it
now and what it's done to my business.

(04:07):
What is that business called now?
What is, oh, what is thebusiness called?
You're supposed to mention that.
Well, it's called Work LessLLC is the name of the business.
It kind of sucks, but I don'tgo by the business name too often.
Mostly people just know me asmy name Rich.
All right, let's go into this.
So when you're leaving anagency or you decide to purposely

(04:31):
shut it down doing half amillion dollars a year, what are
you going to do now for money?
I mean, how much money does it make?
So, okay, well, this is agreat point.
And I think that at a certainpoint, a lot of entrepreneurs get
to an inflection point.
So I see it consistently.
I don't know, it took youprobably a bit longer, Chris.
For me, it was about a decadewhen I felt like there are diminishing

(04:55):
returns on me continuing todevote my time to my effort and my
focus, to the business that Ihad built.
It had kind of reached theform where it was.
It was grown up, right?
It was ready, it gone off tocollege, it was doing its own thing.
And for me, that was liketrying to reach the limits of how
much profit I could make as aone person business while still optimizing

(05:18):
for time.
So at the end of the road, forme, that was like half a million
bucks a year in profit.
This would not have happenedwithout Chris, by the way.
Chris was actually the lastpiece to create this business.
The one piece that I wasmissing that Chris helped me with
was actually delegation.
I had figured out price, I hadfigured out delivery, all this stuff.

(05:38):
And then just once Chrisslotted in, it was perfect.
So I had essentially builtthis lifestyle business, for lack
of a better term, where I wasworking 10, 15 hours a week.
That time was spent only doingthe stuff that, that I'm the best
at.
Right.
I basically said, if it's notthe thing that I am the best at,
that only I can do, I'm notdoing it.

(06:00):
And at the end, that was like10 hours a week.
And I ran that as a lifestylebusiness for probably, I don't know,
two, three years.
It made more and more money.
And yeah, towards the end ofit, what happened was I was like,
okay, well, I'm anentrepreneur, a creative person.
What's next?

(06:21):
And believe it or not, Chris,that's where we intersected.
You probably know that.
And you gave me advice whichchanged my life, which was to start
talking about what I've beendoing online.
Because for whatever reason,like, I was doing stuff that other
people weren't doing.
So I made the commitment.
And I don't even know if youremember this, this was like three
or four years ago to just postevery day online for a year.

(06:43):
And I had no expectation ofgrowing an audience, building a business,
nothing like that.
Like, I was literally justbrain dumping every day and just
talking about how I thinkabout entrepreneurship, how I like
to run businesses, why I likeit, you know, like, what are the
kind of tricks and tools andstuff that I've learned?
And it ended up taking offrelatively quickly and there was

(07:07):
interest.
And then from there I waslike, okay, well maybe there's a
path to do something with this.
You left your service businessand you're full time educator, coach,
consultant or something like that.
How much money do you projectto make at the end of this year?
This year I'll probably makeabove seven figures, but not high
seven figures.

(07:27):
So what you're talking aboutis a million plus.
Yeah.
Okay.
I just want people to knowthat because oftentimes when people
say I stopped doing this,they're like, oh, yeah, because you
couldn't hack it there.
These are very deliberate,intentional choices that one makes
when you're like, what elsecan I be doing with my time?
Let's do this.
Now.
Let's break this episode intotwo parts.
The life before the big changeand the life after.

(07:49):
And we can get into all thenitty gritty because I think so many
of the people are going to belistening to this, are in the exact
position that you are in thatyou want to run a small, lean business.
You call it a one personbusiness, but obviously there are
more than one person in there.
So let's define.
What do you mean when you sayone person business?
Sure.
So I think of it as me and no employees.

(08:10):
So whether the leverage existsfrom working with freelancers or
contractors from creatingsystems, from using tools, dare I
say AI.
I'm actually not like theperson to talk about AI with.
I'm like a boomer.
But, but all of those things,you know, it's basically a business

(08:31):
that's optimized for profitwhere there's one person at the center
of it.
And there are a lot ofbenefits to running your business
like this.
Mostly you can make a ton of profit.
But there are downsides too, right?
Like generally thesebusinesses are not sellable businesses.
They exist to create cash flow.
Often they can kind of createa good situation for you in terms

(08:53):
of how you live your life andbalance and things like that.
Um, so you're not killingyourself, but they have a lifespan.
So my agency, right, the onethat I was running was not an asset.
When it was time to shut itdown, there was, there was no fair
market value for it becauseI'm at the center of it, right?
And as soon as I'm gone,there's nothing else.

(09:14):
So you have to think of it asa double edged sword.
And like, you know, what are,what are you optimizing for with
your business?
Yeah, okay, that makes a lotof sense.
So what you're saying is thereare people who help you do the things
that someone else is bettersuited to do that can be done for
less money than what it costsyou to do.
But you're not having them onpayroll, so it's not a recurring
expense to you unless you need it.

(09:35):
There are pros and cons to this.
I want to tell everybody thisbecause when you have people on staff,
well, maybe you can talk about it.
I'll talk to you.
What is the pro of havingsomeone on staff?
What are the downsides?
And then we can flip that andsay, well, why is it better to work
with contractors?
Why don't I start with why isit better to work with contractors?
Okay, I'll do the staff side.
You tell me what is thebenefit of having people on staff.

(09:56):
But I'll tell you the benefitof having contractors is when you
hire an employee, yourexpenses have ratcheted up to a new
level and they will never golower than that.
Right.
Once you bring someone on andyou're putting them on payroll, you
have up leveled to a certainpoint where you will always have
this amount of monthly expenses.

(10:17):
And with most kind of solobusinesses, creative businesses,
stuff like that, revenue islumpy sometimes.
You know, it goes up, it goesdown, it goes up, goes down and you
have your expense that isfixed throughout that process.
And what I see Happens a lotof the times is there becomes a temptation
to take on projects to pay thebills that aren't actually aligned

(10:39):
or aren't actually super profitable.
And that really distracts yourfocus away from doing good work and
working with clients that are ideal.
So the way I think about it iswhen you work with contractors, you
can essentially scale up andscale down with the revenue so that
your expenses are kind ofalways aligned with it.
So as you make more money, youcan ramp up the expenses.

(11:00):
And if you have a slowermonth, the cash flow is a little
bit lumpy.
You can fix it that way.
So that's why I like it.
Now you tell me the downsides.
The downside is you're workingwith a bunch of mercs, and they're
not always available for youbecause they need to make money,
too.
So when it's slow for you,they're doing work all the time,
and you never know if they'refully paying attention to your work

(11:20):
or not, because that's part ofthe gig.
It can be more expensive towork with contractors because they
have to charge you more money,because there's unpredictability
to this.
So sometimes you're notavailable, sometimes they're not
solely focused on you.
And you don't really have apartner in crime because there could
be moments when you're goingto your dark tunnel and you're like,
what am I supposed to do?
You're not going to call Joeor Mary contractor and say, hey,

(11:43):
you know, I'm typically theguy who sends you money from time
to time.
What do you think about mybusiness model?
What do you think about mylife crisis?
Yeah.
So it's a solo endeavor.
Right.
So let's talk about some of the.
The pros and cons of havingsomeone on staff.
Okay.
The big con you've alreadymentioned is you have consistent
expenses.
And you're right, it nevergoes down.

(12:03):
In fact, it just goes upbecause they, they want to raise,
they want to grow, and theyneed to make more money.
And businesses to continue topay their people more money, even
if they haven't acquired newskills, even if they haven't taken
on new responsibilities.
Here's another con.
You can, you can just notrebook a contractor.
There's a finite start and enddate, and there's no expectation
that it has to go on beyond that.

(12:25):
Whereas when you have anemployee, you have to deal with local
labor laws.
There's.
There's proper ways to dismiss somebody.
There's sometimes severancethat's involved, and there's a lot
of emotions that get involved.
And for a lot of creativefolks, firing someone is such a painful
process.
That's enough for them neverto hire someone because it takes
an emotional toll on yourpsyche, your body, your spirit.

(12:46):
You feel it, you feel aching,you've lost sleep over this and you're
avoiding that kind ofconfrontation that ultimately has
to happen.
And I'm guilty of this myself.
I'm not talking about atheoretical thing.
This is something I go throughevery single time we have to let
somebody go.
And the mistake that we allmake is we hire too fast and we fire
too slow.
So there's this period ofactual productivity and then there's

(13:08):
these weird parts of rampingsomebody up and then also whining
somebody out.
It could take weeks, sometimesmonths or even a year.
Especially too, if someone hasa disability, if someone's part of
a protected minority group orthey're going on maternity or paternity
leave, you can't get rid ofpeople then, so you have to kind
of just wait it out.
So there's a lot of that.

(13:28):
Now let's talk about the pros.
Number one is you have someonewho's in your corner who's dedicated
100% of their mental creativeenergy to helping you grow your business.
That's a theory.
That's what it's supposed tobe about.
And you can invest in them sothat they can level up, you can teach
and train them so thateventually their skills far exceed

(13:49):
the price in which you'repaying them and then move into senior
management position so you candelegate more and more until you
actually just disappear out ofthe company.
And the company can continueon without you, which is probably
leading to the next pro.
In theory, then your agency,your business can be sold because
there are assets, a book ofbusiness, there's a system in place
that can survive without yourinput in it every single day.

(14:13):
And the benefit is you canhave best in class people working
with you that become an assetthat is actually part of your pitch
and selling process.
If you say I hired the bestcopywriter, I've hired the best designer,
they're available for yourproject and only for your project.
That's a, that's a big plus.
Also, some big clients willnot hire you because they need to

(14:33):
know who's working on theproject, government contracts or
sometimes like that, thingsthat have IP that they have to be
very protective of.
The most extreme case is Apple.
Apple asked shy day to createa new agency and bring all the Apple
team over and create a Newagency called Media Arts Lab.
And.
And they have no other clientexcept for one.
They only have one client, andit's Apple.

(14:53):
Is that a pro or a con?
It depends on how you look at that.
I mean, could you imagine howmuch money Shy Day is making off
this one client?
So what they're saying is, wewant exclusivity, we want secrecy,
and we will pay you whatever's necessary.
So they create a new building,they firewall the whole operation.
They have dedicated teams, andit's a beautiful revenue generator.

(15:15):
And for some people who love,I guess, who love routine and predictability,
they kind of know the voice ofthe brand.
They know what's expected, andthey don't have to sit there and
stress out over it.
And they know that the.
The.
Their job is pretty safebecause Apple's not going anywhere,
in theory.
So those are the pros and cons.
Now, I have to say this, fromour very first conversation together,

(15:39):
a couple of things that stuckout about you.
You are extremely disciplined,borderline militant about how you
spend your time.
And you were telling me, like,I'm super crazy and maniacal about
this.
So let's talk about yourphilosophy on managing your time.
I would love to talk about itbecause I've actually evolved on
it.
Okay.

(15:59):
I think that this is.
So tell me where it was before.
You get to tell me where.
Okay.
Yeah.
So I've been a huge advocatefor time tracking when we met, and
I was super serious about it.
I think that time tracking isone of the most useful pieces of
information that anentrepreneur can have, especially
if it's just you.
Because basically, what areyour resources, your time and your

(16:20):
energy?
And you have money, right?
But at the end of the day, youhave a certain amount of hours, and
within those hours to get evenmore granular, you only have a certain
amount where you're reallyamped up in your energize.
Unless you're one of these,like, super energized people.
There's some.
There's a small section of thepopulation that only needs, like,
three, four hours of sleep.
I'm not one of those people.

(16:41):
So for five, six years, andwhen we met, I was tracking my time
down to the minute.
Anytime that I was working.
Now, I wasn't always.
I wasn't tracking my time whenI was sitting around watching Netflix
or going for a walk oranything like that.
But if it was related tobusiness, the time was tracked.
And I've been a massiveadvocate of it.
Because time tracking is important.

(17:02):
Because at the end of the dayyou only have time.
As an entrepreneur, that'syour resource and how you allocate
that time determines how muchmoney you're going to make.
You can spend your money on aclient and if you don't have clarity,
it's the difference between,okay, well, they paid me, I'll give
you an example.
They paid me $5,000 for a project.

(17:24):
And if you don't track yourtime, you look at that and you Compare
it to $1,000 project and youjust think, okay, well, 5,000 is
bigger than a thousand,therefore I should do more of these
$5,000 projects.
But you might track your timeand you realize that the $5,000 project
took you 50 hours, right?
And the thousand dollarprojects took you one hour.

(17:47):
Very extreme example.
But what that really tells youis you have an effective hourly rate,
which is the value of your time.
And if you don't understandthat all of your decisions are going
to be just made on what hasthe biggest number, right?
As opposed to like what is thevalue of each hour that I put in.
So time tracking creates awareness.

(18:07):
Basically.
One of my Buddies namedPatrick McAndrew shared an insight
that I think is, is genius.
And this is why I startedrethinking all of this stuff.
So there are things like, youknow, an aura ring, right?
So you put on an aura ring andit's really helpful because it tells
you how much you slept, youknow, whether you were disturbed

(18:31):
by eating, you know, a bigpizza before you went to bed or something
like that.
And that data is reallyhelpful and you learn a lot about
what patterns are helpful andwhat patterns are not helpful.
But at a certain point whenyou start wearing these kind of wearable
things, you get to the pointwhere you check your ring and your

(18:51):
stats to see, did I sleep welllast night?
As opposed to just waking upbeing a human and feeling, do I feel
like I slept well?
Do I feel like I'm energizedand I've been guilty of this in the
past, right?
I'll check my aura ring orwhatever and be like, oh, I only
slept six hours.
Wow, I must be tired.

(19:12):
And it can become a selffulfilling prophecy.
So I see all of these tools,you know, your wearables, your oura
ring, your time tracking asessential for creating awareness
and building good habits.
Okay?
But there's that book what gotyou here won't get you there.
At a certain point, timetracking will not get you to the
next level.

(19:33):
Your wearable won't get you tothe next level.
Because at the Beginning likemost entrepreneurs don't know where
their time goes.
Time tracking allows you tounderstand the value of your time,
how to spend it.
Like you can use it tocalculate different levers in your
business, like how much moneyyou can spend on delegation.
Like what you can devote yourtime to different projects and clients.

(19:53):
But after you do it for a longenough period, time tracking basically
becomes internalized.
So for me, I did it for five years.
You don't need it, need to doit for five years.
But I can time track withouttracking time.
And the benefit of this isonce you have this, you can start
using internal awareness andinstead of focusing on start the

(20:17):
clock, measure it.
You can shift right, andlisten to your body and listen to
how you feel.
And the one big downside oftime tracking and why I think it
is helpful up until a certainpoint and then you need to let go
of it, is time tracking isfocused on spending time on things
that are revenue generating, right?

(20:37):
Like the goal is to spend asmuch time increasing your effective
hourly rate.
There are a lot of big thingsin business that will not make you
any money up front.
And if you're focused totallyon tracking your time and in living
in the short term, you don'tactually ever get to experience that.
So why I let go of the timetracking is because I've started

(20:59):
spending more time on morekind of long term leveraged things.
And if you're in the day today of just how many hours did I
work, how much money did I make?
Divide the number of money bythe number of hours, you don't get
those big hits, right?
So it's what got you herewon't get you there.
This is excellent.
So I'm going to drop twoquotes, I think to help people encapsulate

(21:21):
or understand everything thatyou just said.
We know in the fitnessindustry that if you don't track
your calories in your workout,you're really not sure what you're
doing at all.
And the fitness thing is thebest metaphor for this because it's
calories in and caloriesexpended through working out.
And so a coach doesn't evenneed to look at it.
You can just look at yournumbers and say you're not going

(21:42):
to hit your goals.
And they can tell.
And the quote is, I think fromPeter Drucker, what is measured improves.
And so it makes a lot of sensein that some portion of your solopreneur
lifestyle business, you musttrack everything, track how you're
spending money, track whererevenue comes from, track where your
leads come from and track howyou're spending your time so that
it provides analytical data,not just feelings about what I'm

(22:05):
doing and where we're going.
As a business quote, numbertwo is, I think it was from Ron Baker,
and he said that revenue isvanity, whereas profit is sanity.
So you have touched on thatwhere if you bring in a lot of money,
it's like, I am most excited.
I'll do more projects like that.
End of the year, you realizeI'm almost bankrupt.
What is going on?

(22:26):
Because the big numbers arevery alluring until you see the amount
of work that's required tofulfill that work.
And so you have to payattention to this because the data
is power, Information is power.
Okay, I love this part.
And this is a transition herewhere you said, you know, at some
point, you reached this momentwhen you realize always tracking,
optimizing for effectivehourly rate, or your ehr will just

(22:50):
be short term and you'll notinvest in the long term.
And here's the example, andI'd love to hear what you think of
is long term things.
Okay, let's say somebody callsyou up and says, rich, we want to
invite you to a dinner.
There's a bunch of people thatyou might like to get to know and
potential clients.
You're, nah, I don't seeanything here.
I'm gonna spend two hoursdriving there, an hour, two hours

(23:12):
there, and then whatever.
I don't see any benefit fromit because usually in these dinners,
nothing comes up immediately.
And you might forego that.
You might say, well, it'sgonna take me a week to really consume
this book.
And you won't do that.
And you know what?
Somebody's inviting you to dopublic speaking, and they don't have
a budget, but you know,they'll cover your expenses.

(23:32):
And you're like, that's a lotof time.
I'm gonna have to spend like amonth and a half developing a talk.
I don't know.
Those are some things that aremuch more beneficial to you long
term, in my point of view.
There's a lot more, but I'dlove to hear what you're seeing,
what you're thinking about.
Yeah, I think that militantanything is useful up until a certain

(23:54):
point, and then it's very,very destructive.
Right.
So counting calories is superhelpful for awareness in your, you
know, the example that you gave.
But at the end of the day, youknow, if you're this person who is
so obsessed with your caloriesthat you can't go out and enjoy a
meal.
It defeats the entire purposeof counting calories.

(24:14):
So the same thing withtracking time is why am I using it?
Right?
It's to grow a business.
It's to have, you know, a lifeand a business that I'm happy with.
And if you're missing thingslike, you know, you gave a perfect
example, relationships, right.
If you're optimizing foreffective hourly rate, people and
relationships are essentiallynot on the table, right?

(24:36):
Going out to a networkingdinner, connecting with someone.
But what I found, you know, inbusiness, looking back on the patterns,
is people, relationships areactually the biggest lever movers.
You know, when I was runningmy agency, it wasn't the hours spent
by doing the design, doing the strategy.
It was actually therelationships that I forged with

(24:57):
people that would sometimes beone client that turned into 10.
Right.
So if you're constantly justpicking at, only do things that generate
revenue in the short term,you'll make a lot of money.
But some other examples,relationships are a huge 1/2 one
is things that compound over time.
Okay, so let's, it's somethingwhere there is very little upfront,

(25:19):
upfront benefit.
Something like building anaudience, right.
Spending time doing that.
The EHR sucks.
You know, all the benefit isin the long tail.
And if you're only focused onshort term ehr, it's not going to
benefit you.
Public speaking.
Another great one.
Another perfect example.
And this is one that I haveevolved on as well.

(25:40):
Catching me in an evolutionstate right now.
Chris, writing a book.
Okay.
I was approached when mycourse started popping off by a book
agent and he essentiallypitched me on.
I think this, you know, thisidea is amazing.
I love your writing, I lovehow you think about business.
Let's turn this into a bookand let's, let's like, you know,

(26:03):
send it out to the world.
And I started doing a littleresearch, kind of got halfway through
the process and was like, whatam I going to make like $3 a book
from this?
The EHR on this project sucks.
And as a result, I'm justgoing to go back to my $500 an hour
EHR, which is going to benefitme more in the short term.

(26:23):
But what you miss out is thelong tail.
And ironically I'm now workingon a different book.
And it's only because I'veshifted this so I've taken all of
the insights, all of theawareness that I have from knowing
the value of my time andknowing what moves the needle.
And now I can approach thatwith kind of holding two things loosely,

(26:43):
right?
Being effective, beingefficient, and then also planning
for the long term and kind ofmaking bets that are not going to
pay off in the short term.
I like seeing your evolution.
That's why when I pinged youto check in on you to see how things
are going, you're like, oh, abunch of things have changed since
we spoke last.
And I was like, maybe we needto do a podcast, because I can almost

(27:06):
predict these things.
Maybe, maybe.
So here's my generalprediction for folks.
When you do service work,you'll want to do strategic work.
That's a natural evolution.
Once you taste what it's liketo be hired as a consultant and pay
for your thinking, you'll say,somebody else who needs to do the
making parts.
Even though you used to loveit, you love this idea of thinking

(27:27):
more and getting paid for it.
And then when you get intosharing your thought leadership and
it starts to lead you downanother path where you're creating
kind of knowledge orinformation products, eventually,
if that works, you're not evenwant to do the other service work
because it still feels sorewarding, fulfilling to help people
and to be paid for it.
And so eventually you're goingto give up all the service work and

(27:50):
you just go 100% in oncoaching and content creation.
It seems like that's kind ofwhere you've netted out and I've
seen many others before you dothe exact same thing.
Let me ask you this question though.
In the time in which we weretalking together and I was just helping
you out with your business,I'm curious what your thought process
was then and what, what yousee now.
Looking back on the old rich,I'm curious.

(28:13):
So looking back on thatbusiness, and I think this is a perfect
seg into probably what hasbeen the entire theme of my 2024,
which is what I'm callingwork, life, alignment.
Okay.
And for me, looking back onthat business, I see a business that
was profoundly, profoundly misaligned.

(28:36):
And it's not for the reasonthat you might think it was.
The business itself was doing great.
It's not like I hated wakingup and running it or anything like
that.
It made money.
It was pretty, you know,pretty leveraged.
It was, it was a great business.
Right.
But the big missing piece isthat I was hiding a huge part of

(28:56):
my personality from the worldthe entire time that I have been
an entrepreneur.
And that reality is that I'm aperson in long term recovery from
addiction.
I've been in recovery for 13 years.
And from the time I started My business.
Until last year, no one knew that.
Christo didn't even know thatwhen we were working together, it

(29:17):
was a complete secret.
So I had essentially created afirewall between me and my business,
where the business is overhere on one side, just this tiny
compartmentalized thing.
It was a lifestyle business.
The goal of it was basicallycharge the most amount of money,
work the least amount of hoursso that I could bring myself and
my money over to life, whichis where I'm a person in recovery.

(29:40):
I have this active communityof people that I work with, that
I help.
I have all these hobbies, allthese things that I'm excited about.
But there was this massivefirewall between my life and my work.
And the past year hasbasically been about bringing down
that wall and aligning thosetwo things.
And I think the reason why I'mexcited about the work that I'm doing
now is because I finallyintegrated those two parts of my

(30:05):
life into one.
What are you addicted to currently?
Nothing other than my phone,but yeah, man.
So basically, my story is thatI grew up and on paper, I was probably,
like, the most ideal child possible.
I was a straight A student.

(30:26):
I played three sports.
I was, like, active in clubs.
I had a ton of friends, allthe above.
But throughout that entireprocess, I always felt like I kind
of had this hole or this voidor something.
And when I was 15 years old,for the first time, I smoked weed.
And that was like, somethingexploded in my brain, basically.

(30:50):
And I was like, oh, okay, thisis actually the solution to all of
my problems.
And if I can just do thisevery single day, forever, then this
void isn't here anymore, andI'll just be able to go about my
life and everything will be fine.
And from that point onward, Ibasically, like, speed ran the destruction

(31:11):
of my entire life.
So I started out, you know,like, smoking weed, being, like,
a normal high school studenttype of thing.
But it very quickly escalatedto, like, prescription opiates, illegal
opiates.
And by the end, I'd basicallyused every single drug under the
sun.
Think of, like, whatever bad,naughty thing that you can think

(31:31):
of.
Like, it's been in my body,but my drug of choice was opiates.
And this was at a time where,like, this was the early 2000s.
You could walk into any housein suburbia, open up a medicine cabinet,
and there's, like, high octaneprescription pain medication across

(31:52):
every household.
So I kind of fell backwardsinto it.
And as a result, things gotbad really fast, you know, So I started
using drugs when I was 15.
I got clean at 21.
So basically, it took me sixyears to completely dumpster my entire
life.
So I got kicked out ofcollege, could not hold on to any

(32:16):
jobs, could not hold on torelationships, Moved back in with
my parents.
And I'll tell you what, Chris,this is something that only.
Only a person who hasexperienced addiction will be able
to relate to this.
But I believe this honestly.
If I could hold down a job ata coffee shop making minimum wage

(32:38):
and still use drugs, I wouldstill be doing it right now.
But the addiction was so badfor me that I couldn't even stand
behind a counter and pour acup of coffee because I would just
keep getting fired.
And at the end of the day,what it looked like for me just to
paint a picture wasessentially like a full spiritual

(32:59):
death.
So I believe that everyone hassome, like, for lack of a better
term, like light inside them,some spirit.
And there was none of that.
It was completely turned down.
You know, I was kind of like awalking zombie.
I couldn't wake up withoutusing drugs.
You know, having to spendhundreds of dollars a day to support
the habit, doing all kinds ofnot cool stuff in order to make it

(33:22):
happen.
And that was my life from 16to 21.
Thanks for sharing that withme, Rich.
I know you're talking veryopenly about it, and it's.
It's been a big part of yourjourney and tearing down the wall
that exists between life and work.
And I think you're discoveringsomething about yourself and the
community that comes to youbecause they.
They are feeling.

(33:43):
I think they understand whatyou're going through because they're
going through it themselves insome way.
I'm really happy for you.
And you've done what very fewpeople can do, which is by the time
you're 21, you're like, wait,this is not my life anymore.
How did you get clean?
And how do you stay sober?
It's a great question.
So for me, the end of the roadwas for the final two years of my

(34:05):
addiction.
I was in this pattern where Iwas doing everything in my power
to try to control theaddiction on my own.
So I would come up with all ofthese rules and strategies and things
to try to make it happen.
I'd be like, okay, well, I'llonly do drugs on the weekend or only

(34:26):
after sundown, or only thesespecific substances are okay, and
these are bad.
And what, I would just fallflat on my face every time.
You know, like, one day I'mfollowing the rules, and the next
I'm back to exactly where I started.
And that was a process ofabout two years where the consequences
just kept getting worse and worse.
Life just continued to circlethe drain for me.

(34:49):
But I felt like if I couldjust figure out how to use drugs
successfully, then all myproblems would be solved.
And that was the quest that Iwas always trying to figure out was
like, if I can just manage it.
And at the end, the moment forme was essentially where I surrendered
and I was sitting in the backof a car using, and there was some

(35:11):
voice that like appeared.
It was in my head.
I don't know if it was mine, Idon't know if it was something else,
but it said to me, this isn'tworking anymore.
We need to do something different.
And that day I checked intorehab and I credit that to nothing
that I did on my part otherthan running my life into the ground.

(35:34):
Because up until that I hadbeen trying to make it happen.
And for whatever reason onthat day I had had enough and I was
ready to do something different.
And yeah, basically gotshipped off, went to rehab and started
my recovery journey from there.
Wonderful.
So a couple different things here.

(35:55):
Did your parents know you were using?
Oh, they found out.
And did they still accept you, support.
You afterwards while I wasusing or when I got into recovery
while you're using?
Yeah.
So I was living in theirhouse, so they were basically paying

(36:15):
for me to eat.
But the consequences continuedto get worse.
So like the end of the roadwas the next step was I was out.
Yeah.
I just want to talk about thisbriefly, which is you love your children
when they are in a quest toself destruct, it hurts too much
to watch them do it.
And if you're powerless to dosomething, then you say, I'm not

(36:36):
going to enable you tocontinue doing it around me.
And sometimes we need that, ashard as it may be for the person
that's going through it.
Like, I need your support andlove right now, but you kind of have
to hit rock bottom sooner than later.
And I.
I have members in my familywho've had really bad drug addictions,
were homeless for a while, andhad to deal with the tough love after

(36:58):
trying to get help.
Couldn't do it.
They needed to hit rock bottom.
And thankfully they're alsokind of recovered.
There's this beautiful thingyou say to yourself, or some voice
says, this isn't working anymore.
I've had a similar voice.
It was my voice, but I don'tgive it to any kind of defined powers.
My voice, like, this sucks.
This is not gonna go well.
I wanna change the next day.

(37:19):
I made that change.
It sounds like you're.
You had that same moment.
You go and check yourself in.
Are you going throughwithdrawals and all that kind of
stuff while in detox?
Yeah.
So I started off, they put meinto a, you know, medical detox for
five days where basically theykind of taper you off of the drugs
in a supervised environment soyou don't end up with any kind of,

(37:39):
like, emergency situation.
And yeah, from there, ship youover to rehab.
You're stuck in there with awhole bunch of exciting characters
for 30 days, kind of justabsolutely feeling like garbage and
trying to piece your life backtogether and kind of wondering, like,
how did I get here?
Like, how did things get so bad?
Things.
Things were pretty good for a while.

(38:01):
I'm now sitting, you know, I got.
Got sent to a rehab inNortheast Philadelphia.
It was.
It was pretty crazy.
And.
Yeah, but throughout thatentire process, there was, for whatever
reason, I had made thisinternal decision that I was done
and I was going to do whateverit took in order to stay in recovery.

(38:23):
And I can only attribute thatto the two years prior to me finally,
like, going into treatmentwhere I had ran through every possible
scenario to try to make this happen.
Like, like I said, Chris, ifthere were no consequences, like,
I guarantee I would still beat it or be dead.
You know, like, that is wheremy disease took me.

(38:44):
So by the time I hit the endof the road, the rock bottom, if
you will, there were no other options.
I had.
All my smart ideas had beenplayed out and hadn't worked.
And I was like, I just needsomeone else to tell me what to do.
I'm willing to do whatever yousay, but I just can't run my life
on my own.
It's interesting that the waythat you get out of this is you run

(39:08):
out of resources.
So people who grow up inaffluent families who are maybe have
some source of income, thisthing never comes to an end.
They just keep on this pathbecause there's kind of no end to
it because I'm such a noob.
And when you said you probablyhave never done a drug.
Alcohol has not ever enteredmy body because when I say I'm straight
edge, I'm straight edge.

(39:28):
So I don't know.
So you go into detox, they,they, they kind of taper you off.
What are they using to taperyou off?
Is it some other drug?
Yeah, there was like a handfulof cocktails.
So this was 13 years ago.
Specifically, I think thedrugs that they were tapering me
off were like, Suboxone, somekind of, like, barbiturate thing,

(39:50):
and then a couple of, like,psychiatric meds that they give people
so that they don't, like, youknow, stay up for 48 hours or 72
hours straight.
Like, basically.
So you'll sleep and stuff like that.
Yeah.
And then after five days,basically all, like, for me, that
stuff was all done, cut off completely.
And the date of that stop isessentially my recovery date, which

(40:12):
is June 26th, 2011.
Wonderful.
And you've been sober since?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
100%.
Wow.
Coming up on 5,000 days very soon.
Wow.
Wow.
You take it a day at a time.
Is that the idea?
A hundred percent, yeah.
When I got out, I joinedrecovery community, and I've basically
been active in that for thelast 13 years.

(40:33):
And that's kind of been like,the saving grace kind of operating
system that's really allowedme to do everything that I've been
doing, like, in my life inentrepreneurship, and it's been the
secret operating system.
And despite that, I neverreally shared it with anyone because
I had all of these reasons inmy head as to why I didn't want to

(40:57):
share my story publicly.
Yeah.
A couple other questions onthis, and we'll get back to the business
stuff.
And some other observationsare having.
Did you have a sponsor?
I did.
I still do.
Okay.
Same person or different people?
It's been different people.
Okay.
Did you meet somebody in thosecast of characters who are going
through recovery themselvesthat wound up becoming something

(41:20):
that influenced your life in apositive way?
I have met a thousand peoplein the world of recovery that have
influenced my life in apositive way when I say it is the
most important thing in mystory, the missing piece of the puzzle
that makes everything click.
Yeah.
I would not be here without,you know, my recovery community.

(41:43):
My wife is also in recovery.
It is just, like, so ingrainedin everything that I do.
Can you share maybe one storyof somebody who had said something,
done something, where you'relike, wow, that really.
That.
That hit me?
Yeah, I'll try to.
So I'm in a fellowship that is anonymous.
Right.
So there's a certain degree ofthings that I can't share.

(42:07):
But I'll tell you, one ofactually had two really great mentors
throughout the process, andthe first was really inspirational
to me because he was also anentrepreneur, and he was not running
an online business or anythinglike that.
But, you know, a lot of timesin the recovery world, they say,
like, find someone who haswhat you want.

(42:29):
And when I met this dude, Isaw that he was running a business,
and he seemed like, not onlywas he successful, but he was extremely
happy.
And he seemed like he hadprinciples and values and, like,
friends and all this stuff.
And this was really my firstkind of entrepreneurial role model
as I was able to see someonewho was able to navigate the world

(42:50):
of business in a way that waskind of more principled than what
I had kind of seen in TV andthings like that.
And that was, like, where Ilearned the first things about.
About business.
He ran a bunch of, like, hehad real estate in Philadelphia.
He had a.

(43:11):
It was a barbecue shop.
And I was just payingattention and I was taking notes
and I was kind of soaking it in.
And then my secondentrepreneurial role model was actually
the person who taught meeverything that I know about design.
I didn't go to design school.
I never really thought that Iwanted to be a designer or anything

(43:31):
like that.
But I met this dude and we'restill friends now, and I literally
just sat behind his shoulderwatching him in InDesign for probably
two years straight, just, youknow, asking him not only like, hey,
what's that keyboard shortcutthat you did?
Or, hey, like, you know, like,why'd you pick that typeface?
We're really asking him toexplain the why behind the decisions

(43:55):
that he made intuitively.
And I feel like I learned morefrom that mentorship than any other
kind of design books ortraining or anything.
And I was basically justpicking this dude's brain.
So the reason that I'm inentrepreneurship now is because I'm
in recovery.
Like, that was the secret paththat led me to here.

(44:16):
Great.
So you just connected the dotsand you've answered the question
I was going to ask you, whichis, how does one go from rock bottom
being sober to having abusiness doing now a million plus
a year?
So two people, it sounds like.
And it's kind of interestinghow you selected these two.
One about entrepreneurship andone about design or design entrepreneur.
And learning from these twopeople and then forming what you're

(44:38):
going to do.
How long does it take you foryou to actually get some traction
with your own design business?
Post recovery?
That's a good question.
So I basically started out andI had no.
There was no Christo.
Well, I mean, you were alive.
But when I started, when Istarted the business, the amount
of resources that wereavailable were very slim.

(45:00):
Like, I really had to go outof my way to try to even understand
anything about running a business.
Like it was not readilyavailable the way that it is now
with YouTube and corporatecourses and all that stuff.
It was harder to find.
So what I did was Iessentially just said yes to every
single paid opportunity thatwas thrown in front of me for maybe
the first, like, three, four,five years of running my business.

(45:24):
And a lot of times, like, Iwould get paid to do something that
I didn't know how to do.
And I always thought that wasthe best thing.
Someone would be like, hey,can you, like, animate this thing
for me?
And I'd be like, sure.
All right, now I'm on theclock, getting paid to learn and,
and deliver this thing.
And a lot of it was just,like, not structured, you know, trial

(45:44):
by error, buildingrelationships, working with people,
and really just building uplike a book of business organically.
Because for the entire decadeI was running my business.
I was not.
There was no social media.
It was all like, irl, reallife relationships.
I.
I didn't have an Instagram account.
I didn't have a Facebook page.

(46:05):
You know, I had a website thatwas basically just like a little
portfolio, but it wasn't asales page.
And it all happened reallynaturally and organically by just
continuing to do good work andbuild relationships.
I want to go back to the wholerevelation or the transformation
of the evolution of Rich Webster.

(46:25):
I remember in one of ourearlier coaching calls, you said,
chris, man, if somebody couldhelp me do this, it'd be fantastic.
I don't know if you rememberthis conversation or not, but at
that point, I think you werejust still kind of bumping around
on Instagram.
I think you had under 15,000followers, and you set a pretty modest
goal.
Like, if I could just get tohere, that'd be fantastic.
And you're plugging away atit, and you're also plugging away

(46:47):
at Twitter, and then something happens.
So do you remember thisconversation at all?
I don't, so you got to clue me in.
Yeah, so I have the transcriptfrom it somewhere or on my notes.
I mean, it's not that important.
It's just like saying, I seethe importance of media.
I want to get better at it.
I understand how it's going tohelp me grow in my service business.

(47:08):
And then later on, when youlaunch your course and build your
personal brand becomes really important.
So I think at that point youmust have been less than 10,000 followers
or right around there.
How many followers you got onInstagram now?
Now like 300,000 and some change.
And I saw a pretty rapid ascent.
There was something thatyou're doing.
I don't want to say.
But you'll say it, probablythat you started doing, and then

(47:31):
all of a sudden it started to skyrocket.
Do you.
Do you know what point thatwas and what you were doing?
You.
You got to fill me in.
I.
Okay, so you're starting topost carousels.
Yes.
And then that's working.
And then you start doing thesesimple line animation things in your
voice.
You don't remember this?

(47:51):
I know your count better now.
I do, yeah.
I started doing this and thenall of a sudden I could see, like,
some of them went viral.
Oh, crazy.
Yeah.
No, one of them had 30 million views.
Like, Kim Kardashian shared it.
Like, it.
It freaking popped up.
That might have helped alittle bit.
I gotta say, none of thepeople that Kim Kardashian brought
me have bought anything.

(48:11):
So.
How do you know, though?
I mean, I talked to most ofthe people that buy stuff for me.
But did you find me throughKim, Doug?
No.
They're like, the Kim funneldid not pay off.
Okay, so tell me a little bitabout your transition.
Also from.
We talk about.
There's a.
There's a term people will use.
It's called performancemarketing or direct marketing, when

(48:34):
you create a piece of contentin the spirit of trying to get business.
And then there's somethingcalled brand building, which doesn't
have an immediate effect.
And the more performancemarketing you do, the less powerful
your personal brand becomes,because you're selling all the time.
And so you're saying, youknow, sometimes we have to take a
longer view.
We have to do things thatdon't pay us up front, that we can't

(48:56):
see the immediate return, butit opens certain doors.
So what has changed in yourlife and your business having grown
from, say, 10,000 followers to300,000 followers on Instagram, what
doors that are open for you?
It's interesting because thebest part about this story is growing
from 10k to 300,000 Instagramfollowers did nothing for my agency

(49:18):
business.
And the reason being I wasn'ttalking to agency clients.
I wasn't saying anything thatwould resonate or, you know, interest
someone who wanted to hiresomeone for creative services at
all.
I was really speaking to entrepreneurs.
And as a result, I attractedpeople who own businesses, business

(49:41):
owners.
And basically I spent most ofthat time period not necessarily
pushing super hard to sellanything, but really just like sharing
my insights and what I wasthinking about.
And I had this entire 10 yearbacklog of basically, like, thoughts
and insights and systems andideas and strategies.

(50:04):
That I just felt like werebacked up and I needed to get them
out.
And I was just using socialmedia essentially, as an outlet to
do that.
And the beauty of it is whenyou run a design business and, you
know, a little bit, you canuse all of those skills that you
used to help clients with onyour own stuff.
So for me, where things, like,really took off was I've always been

(50:26):
a good writer.
I'm a clear writer.
It's just been a skill thatI've always had.
And when I combined thatwriting with the design and the visuals
and.
And, you know, working with anincredible animator, it just, like,
freaking exploded, man.
Like, people resonated with, Ithink, the simplicity of the message.
They resonated with the depthof the message because, you know,

(50:49):
you can post, like,productivity platitudes all day long
and it won't resonate with people.
I think when you have depthand you have a story and you have
experience, people can sense that.
Right?
And just the energy of thework so that the design, the taste,
the aesthetics, my voice,people resonated with that as well.

(51:10):
And all those things kind ofcame together into this, like, great
package, which just, like,really blew things up.
And yeah, I think probably theascent from like, whatever 10k to
300k, the last 150,000 or200,000, happened in the period of
maybe like three months or something.

(51:31):
Yeah, I saw that.
It was really amazing to watchand just kind of see from afar and
cheer you on.
Now you were sharing thingsabout your general philosophy about
working less, making more,creating greater impact, and then
teaching people the systemsand processes you built.
And you do that through social.
So that I'm assuming here, butyou tell me if I'm wrong, that leads

(51:54):
people into a evergreen coursethat you make, and then it brings
people into community that you coach.
And that's the business now, right?
So, yeah, basically thebusiness was.
This is kind of an interestingpath in terms of how it all played
out.
So my agency was running.
I was committing the, like, 10hours a week to keep that thing humming.

(52:15):
You know, work, make myclients happy, all that good stuff.
And then on the side, I hadreached some traction and decided
that I wanted to createsomething that would capitalize on
this attention.
And I created this course, andit was called how to Work Less.
And I highly.
If you're ever going to builda course or anything online, I highly,

(52:38):
highly, highly recommend doingit this way.
Chris recommended that I do this.
You suggested that.
I started with a workshop.
What I ended up doing wasInstead of just, like, renting out
the studio, getting the biglights, you know, like having a DP
hired and the whole crew, Iactually just taught the course live.
And the first time that Iaudit it was not to a ton of people.

(53:00):
I think maybe only 13 peopletook it the very first time.
How much was it at that time?
I think it was like, 800 bucksor something.
Yeah.
And it was with me 12 sessionsover a month.
And the crazy thing was what Ithought people wanted and what they
actually wanted were not thesame at all.

(53:23):
So I thought, oh, I'm this,like, productivity guy.
I'm going to tell you how to,like, track your time and be super
organized and, like, you know,more efficient and manage your energy
and focus and all this stuff.
And I talked about that.
And at the end, I had these,like, two bonus lessons where I was
like, and I'm going to showyou how I apply this to my business.

(53:43):
When I did those two, everyonewas like, that's me leaning forward.
Yeah.
They're like, I'm interested.
Tell me more.
And that was the signal that Ineeded to basically, like, strip
the entire thing down and redo it.
And the second time that Itaught it, it was basically my philosophy
on business and entrepreneurship.

(54:04):
And that's when things reallytook off.
And I taught it live five more times.
Like 400 people have taken it.
And after iterating each timemaking the product better, I was
like, okay, this thing is ready.
It's like it's dialed.
The freaking results are offthe chain.
Like, you know, everyone'smade a ton of money doing it, like,

(54:27):
fix their businesses, all thisawesome stuff, that the testimonials
speak for themselves.
But it's only because Icommitted two years of my life to
making this thing the bestpossible course ever.
And if I had just said, Well,I got 10,000 Instagram followers,
let me just, like, record someshit that I think people want and

(54:47):
post it, and then it doesn't sell.
I would be like, well, what happened?
You know, you need to actuallyvalidate what you're doing.
So the only way to get to theplace where, like, you've got a successful
product is to treat it like aproduct and not like this thing that
you think people want.
You need to actually test it.

(55:07):
So anyway, I did that.
After the sixth cohort, Idecided, this is perfect.
It will only be incrementallybetter to the point where each hour
I put in will not make it 10% better.
It'll make it, like 0.05% better.
And then from there Ibasically like was like I, I was

(55:31):
running my agency.
You know, our minimum rate was $60,000.
A lot of times projects wouldbe in the six figures.
I gotta sell something more expensive.
And that kind of transition towhat I also do now, which is more
like mentorship slash consulting.
And I think the beauty of thatwork and I really only work with

(55:55):
entrepreneurs that are likeminimum making six figures, like
that's kind of my, my cutoff there.
The beauty and why I call itlike mentorship and consulting is
the mentorship comes from myrecovery stuff.
Right.
Like I know how to help people.
I have this well of expertisethat I had been tapping into the

(56:19):
entire time but just wasn'taware of it.
Right.
Like I understand empathy.
I understand what's reallyimportant when you've been basically
to death and back.
I think you have a uniqueperspective on business and on life
and what really matters and toreally be able to connect with people
and help them.

(56:39):
So I love the mentorshipaspect of it, but at heart I'm essentially
a consultant.
That's what my agency turnedinto when you get down to 10 hours
and it's no fat, just the meat.
It is selling thinking andstrategy and insights and being able
to combine those two things,which is essentially like my decade

(57:02):
of entrepreneurship and youknow, my philosophy on business and
how I think about it with therecovery has been like the missing
piece.
And that's where everythingkind of locked in for me.
How do you price thismentorship in coaching or consulting?
Well, okay, I can tell you theprice now, but this is an artifact

(57:23):
that is locked in time.
So if you're watching thisnext year, it may not be the price,
but it's basically 12 grandfor six months to work with me.
And it's in a like group setting.
It's not one on one.
When you finish doing theprototyping and testing of the Karadka
itself, did you go back and rerecord it as here's the standalone

(57:44):
course so I can sell this.
I thought I was going to, butit turns out that I didn't need to.
That like the energy of thelive recordings were actually more
beneficial for people than me.
Like setting up a studio andawkwardly going through slides like
in my house.
So I actually just, you know,took, you know, I basically take,

(58:07):
done it five times, the bestpossible takes, you know, and kind
of packaged it all together,edited it up and that was it.
And how much does that coursesell for?
3 grand.
So you took the live Zoomrecordings edited together and put,
put Structured it as a courseand then people pay for that.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's basicallystructured as.
Because it was live, it'sessentially like a four week journey.

(58:30):
And you know, there's twolessons you go through every week
and you're kind of goingthrough it.
Like, I just encourage peopleto, if they're going to buy something,
to actually do it.
So I'm like, let's puteverything on the calendar, schedule
it out.
Like you're actually doingthis thing live.
Do the assignments, like, getit done.

(58:50):
So it's.
Yeah, it's like eight lessonsover a month, and then you basically
have it all.
I think that gets us caught upto speed here.
I'm just curious, is there, isthere anything else you think you
want to tell the audience?
So the last thing that I wantto say is just around this idea of
work life alignment.

(59:10):
So for me, I had this likesuper, huge, huge part of my life
that I had basically put afirewall up on.
And I told myself all thesereasons why I shouldn't share it
publicly.
Like, oh, there's the stigmaof, of addiction, like, you know,
or like that you're a criminalor whatever.

(59:31):
Two, like, it was just reallyspecial and personal to me.
I didn't, I didn't know if Iwanted to combine that with the world
of commerce.
And then I just like, had toldmyself that, well, I don't want to
like, monetize somethingthat's so important and so special
to me.
Like, oh, here's like myrecovery story.

(59:52):
Now buy my $49 course on howyou can start your recovery journey.
Like, I just never had anyinterest in doing any of that.
But what I realized was thatwas all cop out, right?
These were all just lies andexcuses that I told myself because
I just didn't want to bevulnerable and be honest with people
about my story.

(01:00:13):
And the irony was that wasmassively, massively throttling me
from just a, an energeticperspective and what I was able to
bring to work.
So basically, as soon as Istarted telling this, this story
to my clients, to the world,it was like I had picked up jet fuel

(01:00:34):
and I had realized that like,all these recovery things that I've
learned, I had been bringingto work, but it actually takes a
ton of energy to translate andkind of sanitize something for, you
know, for an audience.
So I might like, have somestory that like, was from my, from

(01:00:55):
my recovery journey or from myaddiction or whatever.
And I would be like, well,okay, how, you know, use the processing
power sanitize it, turn itinto a story that has nothing to
do with that.
And that was massivelythrottling me because I was constantly
having to just like, negotiatebetween these two parts of my brain.
And as soon as the wall camedown, everything got a million times

(01:01:18):
better.
The results I was able to getfrom my clients were so much better
because I could actually godeep with them and get to the root
cause of, like, what's goingon with them, what are their issues?
And at the end of the day,like, there's a deeper reason why
we are all good at whateverwe're good at.
And for the longest time onpaper, you would think, okay, well,

(01:01:40):
the reason that Rich is goodat business is because, you know,
he worked really hard and, youknow, he tried and, you know, like,
never gave up and all this stuff.
When in reality, if you pullback the curtain, like, the reason
why I'm good at what I do isbecause I have 13 years of living

(01:02:01):
this life of recovery.
And I believe that everyonehas this deep reason that, you know,
is the reason behind whythey're good at what they do.
And it's totally personal,totally unique to them.
And the hack is secret is themore that you can be in alignment
with your life and yourbusiness, the more money you can

(01:02:22):
make.
You know, like, the worlddoesn't need more throttled closed
off people.
Right.
I think AI and social media isdoing enough to make us not be ourselves
right now.
And my pitch is basically justlike, we all have these stories,
we all have these things aboutus that we feel like we're not comfortable

(01:02:43):
sharing.
But if you can take the timeand really do it and really integrate
it and kind of like bring yourlife and your work together, the
results are immense.
I think what you're talkingabout speaks to me because I talk
about how we show up as a persPersona, a fragment of who we really

(01:03:06):
are.
It takes some courage andfortitude to be able to say, you
know what?
I've been only showing you 10,15% because it's presentable on camera,
it's palatable for people.
And then when I show you intothe dark side, my dark history and
my shadow self, somethingsometimes people feel shame or guilt
over, and we release that, wethink the reaction is going to be

(01:03:29):
the world's going to stab usand want to destroy us.
But in fact, there are a lotof other people who you give strength
and voice to who are still inthe shadow.
They're not quite ready to sayor come out themselves, but then
they Find power and strengthin what you're doing, and so they're
drawn to you.
The very fact of us holdingback the vulnerable shadow self is

(01:03:49):
the thing that keeps peopleaway from us.
And I'm not saying thateverybody on your first year of recovery
just go and blurt that out, oryou're two years into a struggling
business for you to go and sayall that stuff.
There's a time and place foreach one of us.
It's different, and you'llhave to figure it out.
But you're.
You're testifying to the factthat, you know what?
I was running a life in abusiness that was misaligned with
who I was.

(01:04:09):
And when I finally becameclean and talked about it, it freed
me.
It's like an empowering thing.
And then now you don't feellike you have to show up as half
or 3% or 5% of who you are.
You could just be 100% you.
I wrote this line recentlywhen I was presenting on stage about
personal branding.
The line is, the more you youare, the more you are.

(01:04:31):
And it seems like you are 100%a whole person, not a person with
a whole.
That's beautiful, Chris.
I love when you quote yourself.
I think it's I.
Chef's kiss.
Yeah, I'll say in to get tozoom out to the meta level, because

(01:04:51):
I've heard you talking a lotabout this recently.
There's this YouTube videothat has, like, a thousand views
on it.
Like, I don't think anyone'sseen it except for me, and maybe
I am half of those thousandviews, but it's by this dude named
Joseph Arthur.
He's a musician.
And the video is about thisconcept called strategic originality.

(01:05:12):
And it's basically the ideathat, like, in 2025, being yourself
is basically the onlystrategic advantage that's going
to be left.
Anything that AI can munch upand swirl around and spit out is
going to be done a million times.
And the only thing that'sgoing to last is us being humans

(01:05:35):
and being ourselves.
So the way I see it is if youknow who you are and you have the
courage to share it honestly,you're going to be rewarded.
And if you don't, it'sprobably not gonna be great for you.
Yeah.
But I think even beyond thereward, it's freeing.
It's like, you don't have to,like, hide the secret, because carrying

(01:05:57):
a secret around is a burden in itself.
And it's just.
Maybe you just feel lighter,maybe more joyful.
Thirteen years was was a longtime to hold it in.
And when I look back on it, Iknow that everything was supposed
to happen at the time thatit's supposed to.
But if I had done it, youknow, from the beginning, I can't

(01:06:18):
imagine where I would be now.
Do you think your.
Your life would be.
Would.
Would you, if you could, wantto shorten that time of holding onto
this piece of information?
I think in hindsight,everything has played out perfectly
to get me where I am rightnow, and I'm very, very happy with
it.
But I do believe that therewas a time period early on where

(01:06:43):
I was not ready to handle theresponsibility of speaking publicly
about this stuff and, youknow, like, being a face.
And I think that at a certainpoint, I crossed that threshold,
and maybe if I had done it,then I would have been able to help
more people.
But listen, dude, I'm 35, youknow, God willing.

(01:07:06):
I have a long life ahead ofme, and, you know, it starts now.
Rich, it's been a realpleasure talking to you.
I appreciate your honesty,your transparency, and it was just
really super awesome to catchup with you and see this arc that
you've been on.
It's been super exciting towitness it from afar, so I can't
wait to see what happens inthe next couple of years.
Best of luck to you.
Thanks, Chris.

(01:07:26):
Appreciate it, man.
I will say, Christo plug for Chris.
I would never have built anaudience online if it weren't for
Chris.
I would not have the businessthat I have now if it weren't for
Chris.
So I just can't thank youenough, man.
Thank you, buddy.
If people want to go, and ifpeople are so inspired to chat with
you, to have you be theirbusiness mentor and coach, where

(01:07:49):
should we send them to?
Just go to richwebster.co.
all of the stuff is there.
I send out a weekly newsletter.
Like 30,000 people read it.
You'll also see my Instagramon there.
If you want to just start there.
But if you want to work withme, there's a video on there.
You can check it out, and ifit resonates with you, just send
me a message or something.

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Quit Client Work and Work Less for More Money - With Rich Webster | Ep 359

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Quit Client Work and Work Less for More Money - With Rich Webster | Ep 359