May 21, 2025 • 57 mins
Ever wonder how someone transforms from a party-loving ski bum to one of the most influential LinkedIn voices in the world? Dennis Barry's story is a masterclass in reinvention, resilience, and finding your unique rhythm in business and life.
Dennis takes us through his remarkable journey that began in kitchens as a chef, through a life-changing sobriety decision in 2003, to building a thriving digital empire with over 115,000 LinkedIn subscribers. With disarming honesty, he shares how his past struggles became his greatest strengths, revealing the pivotal moment when he realized conventional employment would never satisfy his ambitions: "I want a shot at the big nut."
The conversation explores what Dennis calls "work-life rhythm" – a refreshing alternative to traditional balance that honors individual needs and priorities. His approach prioritizes health and relationships above all, using meditation, nature, and meaningful connections to temper his naturally high energy. "If you're laying in bed on Monday morning with the sheets over your head because you're scared to get out of bed and do that thing you have to do to pay the bills, it's because you're not doing what you're meant to do."
Perhaps most valuable is Dennis's straightforward advice for entrepreneurs starting from zero: build attention first. "It's the most valuable currency on the planet right now." He dismisses get-rich-quick schemes in favor of authentic relationship-building, explaining why most successful businesses take 2-5 years to establish – and why that timeline shouldn't discourage you. "The time's going to pass anyway."
Whether you're struggling with direction in your business, looking to leverage LinkedIn more effectively, or simply seeking a more aligned approach to work and life, this episode delivers actionable wisdom from someone who's truly walked the path. Subscribe now and join the conversation about building your empire through strategic attention and authentic connection.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's episode of the Influencer Empires podcast
is brought to you by the EmpireProgram with White Label Suite
powering our influencers andbuilding their empires.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcometo the show.
I'm your host, Walt Bayliss,and today on the show, I have to
say I am super, super excitedto be chatting to somebody who
is traveling the world.
In fact, he has suitcases inhis background while we're
(00:23):
talking.
He's the CEO of EpicEntrepreneur Media, but that's
not where he started.
He's also the author of FunkyWisdom.
He's the podcast host.
He is the sales trainer, mastercoach, chef and world traveler.
He is now one of the topLinkedIn voices in the world.
He has one of the highestsubscriptions of his digital, AI
(00:44):
and lifestyle newsletter and heis listed as a top contributor
on LinkedIn.
It gives me incredible pleasureand I'm trembling with
excitement as we bring on thechef, the man, the make money
magnet, that is, Dennis Barry.
Hey, man, thank you so much forjoining us.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
That was by far the most enthusiastic welcome I've
ever received in my life.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Dude, I had to trim that down.
There's so much here on yourbio, on your history.
I could have kept going for thewhole episode and just read off
your stuff.
Now, dude, you started life asa chef.
You got out of school, you werestraight into the kitchens.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, so I'm 52 years old.
So if we go back almost 35years when I graduated high
school and I, I went up to themountains to be a skier and I
was, uh, I did some ski racing,slash ski bumps, slash crazy
party guy right and that went onfor like about eight or nine
(01:40):
years and uh, but it was kind ofa destructive lifestyle.
It was a little crazy.
I went to culinary school, Idid all the the chef restaurant
stuff for a long time but um, asyou might imagine, with the ski
and the party and the chef andI was stoned pretty much for 15
years straight, wow and but ittook its toll on me and then
(02:02):
eventually, eventually in 2003,I had to get sober.
I was like dying physically,financially, no relationships.
My whole body was falling apart.
I was like I'm trying to dowhat do we do?
Pounds or kilos?
I was like, yeah, I was like240 pounds.
(02:22):
Now I'm like 175.
It depends if I'm eating but ornot?
so my whole life changed so muchover the last 30 years, like it
was worth a book.
So I was like I had like thatbook that you gave me an intro
to.
Uh, I didn't plan on writing abook, I was just like I would go
on long walks with the dog andlisten to inspiring podcasts and
(02:44):
this was, like you know, like10 years ago and YouTube videos,
like all these inspiring peopleand I was.
I was like, wow, that's reallyinspiring, cause I was doing my
growing up, my growing upjourney in my thirties and
forties and and I would writedown these notes on the phone.
And then, all of a sudden, Ihad like 100 pages of notes and
(03:05):
I was like I should put these ina book and so I started doing
that, and then that's how thebook came about.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I love it.
I love it so cool.
So, dude, you're saying yougrew up late, which I love that
quote from you.
And now I think yourcatchphrase is there over nail
the details and have fun.
Um, and I just love that.
I think that like your.
Your transition then.
So you've gone from, you'vegone from the chef, you've gone
from the party lifestyle, skibunny up in the snow.
(03:33):
You know chasing, chasing thegood time.
You, you got yourself into a,you know a serious position.
You've turned around and becomelike a, a serious coach to be
held up into the world in one ofthe top entrepreneur voices in
the world.
But you went through thisperiod where you were in sales
and you got the whole salesmanagement and sales experience
(03:53):
kind of background.
How did that happen?
How did you go from thekitchens, from the hustle and
the bustle of the grill, all theway into putting on a tie and
doing the sales thing?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Great question.
So it actually went from thekitchens my first adult job
quote, unquote, that's what Icall it.
It was 25 years ago and it wasat Cisco Food Service and the
reason was they hired me notbecause of my sales or anything
else other than I was a chef.
So I know how to speak to chefsso then, um, they hired me in
(04:24):
that respect and then theytaught me sales and so I started
learning.
I remember that cisco is a youknow, 25 years ago it was a 26
billion dollar company and wehad six weeks of training and
that first day, uh, I walked inthere and I started learning
right away.
I was, this is what I need todo.
(04:45):
I knew that I needed to dosales, business marketing, like
everything there, and I reallysunk myself into it and I spent
a few years there and I stillwasn't sober yet and I learned
so much, not just about sales,but about relationships, about
(05:05):
how, how businesses work.
And it was during that time,actually, that when because I
worked a lot, you know, and itwasn't a glamorous job sales,
really, it's hardly ever veryglamorous and, um, especially
restaurant sales.
So I would have to go torestaurants and you know, I'm
like looking in the dumpster tosee what they order.
I'm like so I could try to sellthem my version of that oil or
(05:29):
my toilet paper, or this or thatand all this stuff and, uh, I
was out there working 60 70hours a week and it was like
putting in the hustle and maybeI was making like 80 grand a
year and I would.
Would go back to the office andI noticed that my regional and
district sales managers weresitting in their nice offices
(05:51):
and they were wearing their niceties and jackets and they had
the air condition and they hadpictures of beaches on the wall
and I was like I want picturesof beaches on the wall.
And they were working like halfas much as me and making three
times as much money as me.
And I was like something isclearly wrong here.
And then I realized that Ciscowas a $26 billion company and I
(06:14):
was only making like 80 grand.
I was like I want to.
I want a shot at the big nut.
I want to shoot that whole thing, and that's really when my
entrepreneurial journey began.
What happened was I ended uplosing that job from a drinking
related thing we don't have togo into it, we can spend the
whole episode on that but I hada really bad car accident where
I almost died, and so I had tosign a return to work agreement
(06:39):
saying I wouldn't drink anymore,which of course, I signed it,
but I could not drink anymore,and so I ended up losing that
job, which propelled me intorehab for 30 days, and I'm
giving you the 32nd version.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, no, this is great.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
A much longer story.
Yeah, actually they gave me abunch of back.
Commissions said, sorry, wehave to let you go because of
this, and I went on a bender totry to kill myself with drugs
and alcohol, subconsciously forabout 10 days, and that was
March 27th to April 8th, andthen I ended up in a rehab on
(07:15):
April 10th of 2003.
I've been sober ever since.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
So that literally turned you around.
That rehab set completelychanged the frame.
It's funny.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
That's a great question too, and for people
that are listening, that arestruggling, and I still, I still
.
I did a lot of addictionrecovery coaching for a long
time.
Codependency worked with a lotof teens.
I did a lot of that stuff overthe last 20 years as well and
people always say that you know,oh, it was that rehab that
fixed it.
But you know, we always have toremember when you see somebody
(07:46):
is sober, it wasn't their firstattempt, likely not their first,
yeah, 90, whatever percent.
It was like a hundred attemptsbefore they got to that one that
you see, just like the onepercent in business, you know
when when we started swing yeah,I mean, being an entrepreneur
is just about the hardest thingin the world, outside of, maybe,
(08:06):
a relationship and parenting.
It's the hardest thing in theworld to do is to build a stable
, profitable business.
And we start here at one and wehave to go to 10.
And right around two it getshard.
Some people make it to four orfive, but most people quit by
that.
Very few make it to nine or 10.
(08:29):
And those are the 1%.
Those are the ones we hearabout, we see on the news, with
the ones that sell their billiondollar app on Instagram.
Those are like, those are theones that stick it out.
You know, it's not alwaysnecessarily that they're smarter
, better than we are.
They just didn't quit, you know.
And it's the same thing with,uh, getting sober.
(08:50):
Same thing with yourrelationships.
Like when we see thoselong-term relationships of 50
years, you're like, how did theydo it?
They didn't quit.
Back then there wasn't divorce,they didn't quit, they just
stuck it out.
And you find a way through, andso life is a lot of that, you
know you got to have grit.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Do you think that that's?
Do you think that's a sub, likea choice that people make day
by day?
Like thinking about theentrepreneur, who's who's got to
you know, maybe it's theirfirst swing, you know, and you
step out, you get lucky, youbuild an audience and build a
brand and make a million dollars.
It's a rare story but ithappens often enough to inspire
everybody else to have a shot.
But do you think that that's achoice that the entrepreneur,
the relationship, theprofessional sports athlete,
(09:32):
like anybody who's achieving atthose high levels, do you feel
like that's a choice theyconsciously make on a regular
basis?
Speaker 2 (09:38):
That they're going to be successful.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
That they're not going to quit.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
That is it yeah, well , you know what my favorite
speech was from steve jobs andhe's really one of my
entrepreneurial heroes.
He wasn't a great human I don'tknow if like who studied him a
lot, but and he wasn't a veryfavorite human being, but it's
hard to argue with his success.
But one of his speeches, whichhe was on some show in the 90s
(10:04):
or 80s or 90s he's like you know, people say you need to be
passionate about what you do,and it's so true.
And the reason is is becauseit's so hard.
It's really it's.
It's so hard and the differencebetween the ones who make it and
the ones they don't are thatthe ones that they, that made it
(10:24):
, they love what they did.
So if you're not passionateabout what you're gonna do and
you have to do it over a longperiod of time too so if you're
not passionate about it, you'regonna quit as soon as it gets
hard.
Maybe a little bit, like I said, maybe three, four, you'll make
it to five, but eventually thepassion is what pulls you
through so you can make thatdecision that I'm not going to
(10:46):
quit, but it needs to piggybackon your passion.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, yeah for sure.
I saw one of your posts onInstagram.
You had that picture of a clock5.30 in the morning and the
green and the red and the peoplethat hate their jobs are like,
oh no, it's 5.30.
And the people who love whatthey're doing are like, yeah,
let's go.
It's just, it's a choice and itis a passion, because it's what
makes you go, let's go.
Let's go again.
Let's go again If you, if youlove it, when, when people come
(11:12):
to you, so you're.
You've moved kind of out of thecoaching space now, dennis, as
I still coming to you and youslipping into that coach's role,
talking to them about theirjourney and finding out what
their holdups are and all thatkind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
That's another great.
You're the best podcast host,you really are?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yes, I got it?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
I know because we've both done hundreds of these
things.
You ask really great questionsand the answer to that is that
they're not separate.
Yeah, they're intimatelyconnected.
It's like if you're not workingon personal development and
managing your mindset, you'renot going to make it.
And if you make it, you mightmake money, but you're going to
(11:58):
suffer in your health or yourrelationships or somewhere else.
But they're intimatelyconnected, in fact.
So what I do is I do a lot oflinkedin training, a linkedin
coaching, so that's like one ofmy.
That's my main offering, wherea lot of my stuff comes.
It's not my high ticket offer,which I could tell you about
another time, but that's my mainone.
(12:19):
And it always starts with asyou might guess, as from any
business perspective a businessplan, right.
So it's like what do you?
What are we doing here?
It rarely goes as planned, butyou need to have a starting
point in some direction, right.
But we also need a vision planand I give a a vision plan, yeah
(12:41):
, and I can even share it in thenotes if you want, but I have a
vision plan outline, and it'sthe same thing as a business
plan, but for your life.
What's your vision?
Why are we doing this?
Why do we wake up and strugglewith our health, relationships
and our finances for five to 10years with no guarantee that
we'll make any money on thisbusiness?
You know why are we doing that.
(13:01):
So we need to have a clearvision.
What's my mission statement?
You know why are we doing that.
So we need to have a clearvision.
What's my mission statement?
What's my summary?
Like, what am I doing?
You know what are my visions.
If you can't envision it, youcan't build it.
You know Napoleon Hill talksabout that in Thinking Grow Rich
.
You know we have to be able to.
If you can't conceive it inyour mind, it will never appear
(13:21):
in your bank account or in yourlife, right?
So we need to envision it, andour brains, as you probably know
, I'm sure, have 60 to 80,000thoughts per day.
So you can envision it, andthen it gets covered up by a
bunch of other shit.
But we write it down.
So it's a vision plan system.
Everybody's heard of visionboards.
(13:42):
It starts with the plan, so wewrite down what's my vision,
what are my goals, what's someshort-term milestones that we
can hit.
What's a SWOT analysis?
What are my strengths,weaknesses, opportunities and
threats?
What's a strategic plan to getthese things going?
Write all that stuff down andthen take that, put that on a
(14:05):
vision board, Not just like, oh,this is a cool picture to cut
out of this magazine, but likefrom your vision.
You know, take that vision andmake it visual and then reverse,
engineer that back out of thatplan and make it happen.
That's real good coaching rightthere, and that's when that's
how you create success.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
I was going to say, like that last three minutes.
People like you can just cutthat out, set it on replay and
set yourself up for a great life.
And speaking of which, so youjust came back from three months
in Europe, right?
So you, you are, you're what wewould consider to be a well
traveled entrepreneur.
How do you, how do you manage abusiness and still enjoy life
in the way that you do?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
yeah, there's a lot of balance.
You know, I have to share thisuh term that I heard was it's
been a couple months now, buteverybody talks about work-life
balance.
But, uh, I love, uh, do youknow, sad guru, yeah, yeah, yeah
, he said he's like that.
There is no work-life balance,it's all just life.
The balance has to come withinyou.
(15:08):
When you're balanced on theinside, everything is just
balanced on the inside.
Everything is just balanced onthe outside.
So I like that.
But what I really I heardrecently because it's also 2024,
you know, we have so much goingon and we have so many gadgets,
so much technology.
Ai, everybody's saying you're,you need to do this in order to
(15:28):
be happy, like all these things,and the better term is work
life rhythm.
My balances might not work foryou.
We need to find a rhythm thatworks for us, with us, our
lifestyle, our family, ourhealth, our finances.
We're all in, we're all havinga different experience here, so
(15:49):
we have to find a rhythm thatworks for us, and my rhythm
probably doesn't work for yourrhythm.
So for me, like we went tospain because she had we had
some, uh, some stuff that weneeded to take care of there,
and she's getting hernationality so we might be
moving there full-time, likethere was like stuff to do, so
we went for three months tovalencia and I
(16:10):
was like I need if we're going,because I live on the beach here
in mexico and I was like, ifwe're going, I need a beach
right.
And so that's how we landed invalencia.
But it's like you know, I wastwo blocks from the beach.
I set up my meetings.
You know, I I wake up.
I always have me time.
Right when I wake up, there'sexercise, there's water, there's
uh, getting focused andcentered.
(16:32):
For me, that involves my toesin the sand or outside somewhere
, and then uh, and theneverything else comes after that
, and then you know, it's a,we're entrepreneurs, we're not
business owners, we'refirefighters right always every
day is different, you know, andit's like the idea is.
(16:53):
Another thing I like talkingabout is to be prepared.
Our plans rarely go, thingsrarely go as planned, but
preparation is what has realvalue.
You know, if we're constantlyprepared, if we're moving from
center which you know we alwaysdo the best we can on that then
we have a better shot at makingthings work.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
So, as you're like, what's the day in the life of
now, you've got, you've got, um,incredible clients.
I mean I'm looking at, uh, epicmedia.
Um, so it's again guys, we'llhave the link in the notes there
, but it's Epic entrepreneurmedia.
I'm looking at some of thebrands that you've got on the on
the page there.
You know these are some of thebiggest companies in the world
that you've had the chance towork with, and I have no doubt
that your voice on LinkedIn hasfunneled so many amazing people
into your world as a result.
(17:36):
Now it's amazing to me to hearyour day starts with exercise,
starts with getting outside,starts with getting centered.
So tell me about a day in thelife of Dennis Barry.
How does that day play out foryou typically?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Well, I have, like we have to balance what we were
just talking about with thebalance, the rhythm.
So there's like, there's work,there's LinkedIn, which is where
I spend that.
I mean, that's where, like,most of my business comes from.
So I build those relationshipsthere.
Of course, we all have presenceon all these other social media
(18:14):
websites.
We have some automated stuff.
We have evil automated stuff wehave I have assistants doing
stuff and stuff, but nobodytouches my LinkedIn.
That's my stuff.
So, but I need time on LinkedIn.
I have sales meetings, I haveclient meetings, I have work and
writing that I need to do.
(18:35):
So, you know, it's finding thatrhythm.
It's different every day butfor the most part it's pretty
straightforward.
I mean, I could show you mycalendar.
It's like I usually have threeor four or two or three,
sometimes four, sales meetings aday on a heavy day and um, two,
20 to 30 minutes.
(18:55):
You know, on that I usuallywrite for one, between one and
two hours and I depending on,like you know what, what kind of
work we need done, um, and thenI apply in meetings at least
one a day, sometimes two per day.
We kind of stagger those outquite a bit and then, like
(19:18):
before we got on a call, here Iwas meeting with my team because
we were working on some stuffthat always pops up every day,
you know.
I mean it's justentrepreneurial.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
It sounds pretty busy .
Like you know, there's a fairpace.
That you've said there, whichis, which is cool.
What are the non-negotiablesfor you?
So I I've said to my team, um,before that my non-negotiables
are a weird.
You know, like, um, mynon-negotiables are if my kids
have an event at school, I'mgoing.
I don't care what else is on.
I will cancel the biggestmeeting of my life if my kids
(19:51):
have got a certificate beingpresented.
That's like, that's mynon-negotiable.
Like, what are some of thenon-negotiables for you, dennis?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
uh, health, nice number one health and
relationships.
Everybody always talks aboutall these things, but there's
only.
There's every, every, everylisticle or whatever you want to
call it of priorities, everylist of priorities.
Always the first two are bothnumber one and it's health and
(20:20):
relationships, and I let both ofthose go years ago and I'll
never do that again.
It comes before money.
It comes before anything elseis your health and relationships
.
It comes before money, comesbefore anything else is your
health and relationships, andit's different for everybody,
but for me it's like I madehealth a big priority.
Some of it is.
I'm a little crazy and I usedto use, so I have a lot of
energy, especially now becausebefore the show I made coffee,
(20:49):
so I have a lot of energy and Iused to use drugs and alcohol to
discipline my energy and now Iuse diet and exercise and
hydration, and love andmeditation and helping and
nature.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
So these soften your punches forward, like if you're
looking at an energy spike graphof Dennis Barrow, you're seeing
boom, boom, spiking up, up andthe things that you mentioned
there meditation, love, familyconnection, nature these are
kind of like softening the edgesof those spikes.
Right, so it's like youmentioned you're using diet,
(21:21):
exercise, love, nature tomoderate your high energy.
I love the fact that the thingsyou mentioned there are almost
like putting cushions on top ofthose spikes.
It's like softening that driveforward.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, well said, that's really nice.
I love that too.
And then the other thing that'sreally important is that I
don't do it if I don't want to.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
It's kind of a popular topic people talk about
now but saying, no, yeah, ittook me a long time to get into
that and it's a kind of apopular topic people talk about
now but saying, no, it took me along time to to get into that
and it's still hard sometimes.
You know, I think like it's,it's similar.
It's called having healthyboundaries and I think it gets
easier as you get older.
You know, I'm 52 now and so I.
You know we want, we all wantwhen we're younger, I think we
(22:08):
want especially now withInstagram and everything we want
to be liked.
We all want to be somebody.
So we do things we don'tnecessarily want to do or line
up with our value system orwhatever it is.
But eventually we kind of werelike I don't want to do that or
I'm not going to do that, and Ithink having those healthy
(22:34):
boundaries sticking to what youdo or don't want to do, and
being passionate about what youdo, like I love what I do it's
really all these means that weused to hear bumper stickers.
It's like when you love whatyou do, you don't work a day in
your life.
I mean, I get that now.
It took a long time to reallyto really feel that.
Not just say it, but to reallyfeel that.
It's like like when you, whenyou, land a, a deal, and even if
(22:57):
you don't, it's like.
I got to meet this person and Istill love what I do and nice I
don't have.
I don't have money problems.
I don't have health problemsright now.
Luckily, you know, I I I don'thave any like real big problems
and I think a lot of it isbecause I love what I do and I
don't do things I don't want todo.
If you're really unhappy, youhave to look at why are you
unhappy.
(23:17):
You know, in my opinion, again,we could probably do a whole
episode on this, and maybeyou've done episodes on this.
It's like Monday and it'sMonday, so I was reminded of it
today.
It's always a popular topic onMonday.
It's like if you're laying inbed on saturday night or monday
morning with the sheets overyour head because you're scared
(23:38):
to get out of bed and do thatthing that you have to do to pay
the bills, it's because you'renot doing what you're meant to
do.
You're not doing what you'rehere, what you were meant to be
doing here.
So only two things things canhappen.
It's like one go find anotherjob.
Or two build your own dreams.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
And people are scared of that, but it's like we're
not supposed to be stressed outand full of fear and anxiety and
like worried about who thepresident is and all these
things that were that aredrilled into our head with
marketing and buzz and socialmedia.
We're not supposed to be thatway.
And buzz and social media we'renot supposed to be that way.
Our inherent nature is reallyhappiness and you know, and
(24:16):
marketing plays a huge role inall the problems and everything
that's going on now.
You know it used to be we Imean, we're just creatures, you
know, and it used to be.
We woke up in the morning.
We're like I have basic needs.
I need food, water, shelter andclothing like that was and
warmth, like that's what I need.
The thing is, we still havethose same needs.
(24:39):
Nothing's changed but, they'reall in excess.
So now it's like, well, we wakeup in the morning, it's like,
all right, my needs are met.
So now, what do we do?
So now we worry about stupidthings that have no bearing on
our life, and then we do thingswe don't really want to do or
we're bored, so we end up eatinga bunch of crap that's making
us sick and unhealthy.
(25:00):
And then we worry about, likesome politician somewhere or
think what people I don't knowthink about me, or things like
that, when really life isn'tthat hard it was never it was
never meant to be like that,when really life isn't that hard
.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
It was never meant to be like that, I think.
So you've mentioned the wordsneed and want in that last
little section a lot, and I findthe I read something with Dan
Sullivan in one of his books 10Xis Easier Than 2X, and he was
talking about this kind ofpeaceful nature that he
discovered when he was like it'snot about what I need, it's
(25:34):
about designing, as you said,the vision plan, right, it's
about designing what I want.
And I was thinking, you know,just before we jumped on, we
were talking about moms andparents and you know all that
kind of stuff.
And, as an entrepreneur, what'sinteresting is like I would say
, what I want, I want the bighouse, I want the beach, I want
the travel, all that kind ofstuff.
And my parents are kind of likethat last generation and
(25:57):
they're like, oh yeah, but whatdo you need such a big house for
?
And it was Dan Sullivan.
It was like, no, mom, I don'tneed it.
I don't need that big house,right, I need a cave where the
rain doesn't come in and a fireat the back to keep myself dry.
I don't need the big house, mom, but I want it and so long as
I'm a good person, so long as Iactually can create and put out
(26:19):
into the world really greatstuff so that people are happy
to pay me for for that stuffthat I put out, I can have
whatever the damn hell I want.
So long as I want it, I createthe system to achieve it.
That's entrepreneurialism.
That's like.
I want this.
I need to create something inorder to achieve it.
So we're getting past thatneeds and wants thing.
So I noticed that yourspiritual journey you're
(26:39):
touching on Buddhism and you'retouching on a whole bunch of
different things there it seemslike that kind of understanding
of life has integrated with you.
So I want to bring it back tosome decisions that you've made
A couple of years ago, from whatI'm seeing.
A couple of years ago, youdecided that LinkedIn was your
thing and I think, when I lookat your growth, it started like
(27:02):
2021, you had 1500 LinkedInsubscribers.
As we're recording this, inSeptember 2024, you have over
115,000 LinkedIn subscribers.
Tell me about the decision andwhat happened between yeah, this
is my playground to being nowvoted one of the top
(27:23):
entrepreneurial voices in theworld on this platform.
How did that decision alignwith what you were trying to
create?
Speaker 2 (27:32):
like what?
How did that decision alignwith what you were trying to
create?
Well, I just saw it as a, asthe, the median to get what you
were talking about, all thosethings.
It's like I don't need thesethings, but I want these things.
I want freedom really is what.
What we want is freedom.
Money doesn't buy happiness,but it buys freedom, you know,
and that's really what I wantand you know, along with the
freedom.
It's like I, I like going tothe beach and I like staying in
(27:54):
nicer places and I like eatinggood food.
Like the money contributes tothat.
So I saw LinkedIn as a, as ameans of getting getting that
done.
And you know, when I startedLinkedIn, it was years ago, but
then it kind of crapped out alittle bit and then it was like
four years ago or so, whatever.
(28:15):
I started diving into it againand I started building these
relationships with these people.
And it wasn't justtransactional, it was becoming
like I was becoming friends, wewere building friendships and
relationships and I wasn'tgrowing at a big rate or
anything like that.
We were I would just hop onthere.
And then it became like, youknow, because we could talk
(28:38):
about social media all day too.
But you know those little reddots that you see.
It's like you have a message,you know, or whatever it is.
It's like that's dopamine.
They know this.
It's false dopamine hits thatwe get and our brains go
somebody loves me so we check.
We're like rats in an experimentall day long.
We're like checking back in formore red dots, more dopamine
hits, and they know that, andthat's why social media.
(28:59):
There's five billion peopleusing social media every day.
So, um, but it was working thatway for me you know, I was like
you know, I was trying to figuresome stuff out.
I was in transition, I wassplitting up, uh, my uh, we call
it called marriage.
We were engaged for uh, eightand a half years, you know.
(29:19):
So, uh, I was kind of in alittle crossroads uh back then
too.
So I was finding like I wasbuilding relationships there and
they were fulfilling and itwasn't just business, but it was
like filling me up in otherways too, and a lot.
And then all of a sudden, Irealized I was learning more
things too.
You know, if you spend time onLinkedIn, cause LinkedIn?
(29:39):
I mean Instagram.
I have 130,000 followers, whichis like having a million on
Instagram or on any otherplatform.
You know these are moremeaningful connections, or
professionally minded people, um, with uh, similar interests
that we have and like that'swhat we're really looking for in
(29:59):
life.
We all create theserelationships.
So I started realizing I couldfind them there and so I started
spending more time there.
And if you spend time onlinkedin, you'll become you'll
become very intelligent in a lotof different areas, just by
osmosis, by spending time there.
It's like, look, I mybackground was a chef and then a
lot of addiction recovery stuff, and then I also had a
(30:23):
multimillion dollar coinbusiness and so that I knew
business, I knew some addictionrecovery, but then you hang out
on LinkedIn and all of a suddenyou're a leadership expert.
All of a sudden, you know aboutcareer development and now it is
like we're learning about AI.
Every day that you log on andyou're like, oh, I didn't know,
ai did that.
Wow, I can make a movie withChachi BD, so I started seeing
(30:48):
it as a means to buy my freedomhow we talked about right.
Money gives you.
It provides freedom.
So I was like wow.
And then I started learning moreabout setting up your sales
funnels and seamless workflows,which is kind of what I do now
is because every successfulbusiness in the world is set up
(31:09):
as a sales funnel successfulbusiness right.
So there's like people thatcome in the top of your funnel
from somewhere.
For me it's LinkedIn, becausethere's a billion people there.
It's a great top of funnel.
You know it used to be.
Years ago, decades ago, youopened a storefront and maybe
you had 50,000 people in thatarea, not more, because if you
had more, then there'scompetition.
(31:29):
So maybe you only ever hadbetween 10 and 50,000 potential
clients.
Now you have billions.
So I started seeing that getthem in the top of the funnel
and now there's like ways tocontinue to connect with them
newsletters, low ticket items,lead magnets, all these things
and I was like I love this wowand so I started setting all
(31:50):
those processes up and uhshooting them to different areas
, and then uh turned into myvery successful business that's
allowing me to travel around theworld.
I lived in tahiti for six monthsa few years ago, that'll do it
down closer to you right, okay,yeah, in f, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
So like how incredible to be able to, to, to
have a billion people walkacross your shop front.
So now, as you mentioned you,you, you love the building
blocks now where you go top offunnel, you know, nurture
sequences, automated systems,all that kind of stuff.
One of the big things for foryour brand, for your, your
current position in the world,is the newsletter that you're
(32:31):
running, so your broadcasting isit weekly?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Out to 100,000 people you're chatting about Is it
100,000?
And yeah, weekly I think it's113,000.
If I'm not traveling, then yeah, it's weekly, but weekly-.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
So you mentioned that you write for an hour to two
hours a day.
Is that linked to your blog oris that the newsletter content
that you're putting out there?
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, some of it is newsletter, some of it is emails
, some of it is content forLinkedIn or Twitter or something
like that, setting up theprocess.
There's a lot of writing, whichis amazing, which is amazing
yeah right, are you a writer too?
Do you write a lot?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
I'm not, I'm a, I'm a .
I'm a video guy.
So I like I'll sit down with avideo and just like blurt
everything that I'm thinking anddrop it into into a recording
system.
But writing for me, yeah, no,it's just, it's just my outlet,
but yeah well, writing, I found,is a.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
It's really everything.
I mean to go back to our 80 000thoughts per day, which is
almost one per second.
You know this goes back to alot of the addiction and life
mastery training that I used todo, but it's like if we had 80
000 constructive, awesome,productive thoughts every day,
how awesome would that be.
That would be.
But I would argue that you know, 99 or whatever percent are
(33:57):
useless or even harmful.
So what writing does?
It really helps us tocategorize our thinking and it's
like oh, this is useless, thisis dumb, this is harmful.
Oh my god, why was I eventhinking that?
that could have destroyed myrelationship or could destroy
something else.
So writing is a really good wayand I have all my clients write
.
You know all the time when Iused to do the addiction stuff
(34:22):
because we have to rememberaddiction, we always think drugs
, alcohol, those are the oneseverybody goes to.
But food, porn, doom, scrolling, uh, anything, there's so many.
They're all.
I call them distractions.
Drinking is not my problem, itwas what I was using to cope
with my real problem, which ismy thinking.
(34:42):
Writing helps to ease a lot ofthat, that burden of thinking so
much.
Right, so I can reallycategorize my thoughts.
One of the things I used to dois I would have my clients write
down for me every night beforeyou go to bed and it could be
after dinner or right before youclose your eyes the four and
fours.
This is a really useful toolthat everybody should use.
(35:02):
You know, write this downyourself, but it's like every
night before you go to bed,write down four things that went
well today, that you're proudof, four things that you did
well, and then four areas whereyou fell short, where you can
improve.
And it's such a powerfulexercise for a couple reasons.
One, it's slowing your braindown enough, right.
(35:23):
Two, there's gratitude with thefour things I did well.
And then if we, everything wedo is a pattern of behavior,
right, everything that we do theway we eat, the way we drink,
the way we speak, the way wewalk, everything's a
subconscious patterns ofbehavior that we were taught
over decades.
And if we start seeingbehaviors, areas where I fall
(35:44):
short, if those start showing upevery two for two, three, five
days a week or two weeks, now wehave something to work on and
improve and that one thing couldbe the one thing that takes
your business from two to level10.
So it's like it's such apowerful exercise to do, to
check in with yourself, forself-reflection, it's really
good.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I said I wasn't a writer, but I do journal every
single day and the four and fouris, I think, so powerful.
I actually I do it in threes,but fours, why not go four?
Like that's why you're, dennis,barry, right, because you've
gone the extra one.
But what I found super valuableas well, dennis, just to kind
of round that off as well, a lotof entrepreneurs that I talk to
(36:25):
have this self-doubt and fear.
That kind of dominates theirdaily activity.
You're looking at people going,you have something.
This is the sign behind me.
You have something reallyspecial just being an
entrepreneur.
You have magic in you, right?
And a lot of people that Ispeak to are like, oh yeah, but
I'm not really.
I'm not that, I'm not this.
What I've found with adding ontothe four and four is, at the
(36:46):
end of the week, on a Sunday forme, I do a weekly recap and I'm
literally recapping my wins.
So I went through a whole bunchof depression and that kind of
stuff as well, and what got meout of the depression was a good
friend of mine.
He said to me tell me threethings that you're proud of in
your life.
And I went, I had to thinkabout it for a minute and I was
like, okay, you know, I got ablack belt.
I worked hard to get my blackbelt done and I listed my things
(37:09):
that I was proud of and he said, so, you can do it.
And I was like, whoa, thatreflection back.
And again, as an entrepreneursorry, I should be letting you
do the talking, but as anentrepreneur, what I feel like
is that we're constantly lookingforward, right, we're
constantly going goal, goal,goal, achievement, achievement.
And that means that we're neverthere, we're never actually
(37:29):
feeling like we're fulfilled.
So this exercise for me oflooking back and going look what
you did during, look at yourwins, dude, look at this week
how many things have you tickedoff?
And every week, what I find,for me personally, is that gives
me the confidence to go.
You know what man?
I might not be at mydestination, I might not be at
my mountaintop right now, butlook how far I've come, man, and
(37:53):
that's the padding that you cankeep with you as you're going
into the next battle big time.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
I mean, like that was such a beautiful summary in in
sobriety that we talk a lotabout our, our shortcomings and
our character defects and thatone of the I used to go to AA a
lot and I stopped because Ithink it's kind of a dead end
and I I don't want to put itdown because I went for years
and it saved my life in thebeginning for sure, but I think
(38:21):
at some point it's like it'stime to move on, because you can
get addicted to aa just as much.
But one of the things, one ofthe reason one of the you know
lists of reasons I left was it'slike when you go to these
meetings that people sit thereand talk about their
shortcomings yeah, I'm badbecause they're yeah, they're
defects of character, and it'slike I'm not just a big walking
(38:43):
bag of character defects.
There's a lot of good stuffthere too and we really need to
focus.
Yeah, I mean, if you havedebilitating character defects
or even anything that are likeholding you back, like let's
talk about it.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Let's get it out of your head and let's deal with it
.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yeah, and then let's move beyond, but then move
beyond it.
You know, let's not live in itfor another 20 years.
That's what got us here, right,and so I don't like the staying
stuck too long on one thing,and that's where accountability
really comes in.
That's the one thing I hadreally good was they have that
sponsor.
The sponsorship is really goodbecause it's like if we don't
(39:20):
know something, ask for help.
I'm huge on that.
I say it in a lot of my postsall the time and my newsletters,
my content.
I always talk about it.
It's like if you don't know howto do something, ask for help.
So you get there Like I don'tknow how old you are.
I'm 52.
We didn't always have GoogleMaps right.
We had to stop and ask fordirections and there was a
stereotype for men.
(39:41):
Men would never stop and askdirections because we didn't
want to look stupid.
I always stopped and asked fordirections.
I was like I would rather looklike an idiot for one minute and
get there in 10 minutes thandrive around like an idiot for
two hours With my head in thesand.
Yeah, just tell me how to getthere.
So it's the same thing as I getolder.
It's like if I don't know, knowsomething, we need to drop the
(40:01):
ego and ask for help.
So it's like I was taught havean expert in every area of your
life.
So I'm not a lawyer.
If I need to go to court, Ineed a lawyer.
If I get sick, I need a doctor.
I hate doing my taxes, so Ineed an accountant, or I'm going
to get in trouble every year,right?
So and uh, maybe I'm not aspiritual giant, maybe I need
(40:23):
help with this business piece,maybe I know business really
well, but I don't know thispiece like ask for help.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
There's a million of every type of coach out there
nowadays and they're free, likea lot of that, that information,
like you don't having a coach.
There's like youtube, bro, tosee.
You know, I watch my kids dothings on youtube and like, how
did you?
Oh, I watch a youtube video.
How incredible is it to havethat information on demand.
It's incredible.
So think about that, like guyslike so for the, for the
(40:50):
business owners, for theentrepreneurs, for for the
people who are listening listento that message from Dennis
there, right?
So rather, ask for help.
Look dumb for 30 seconds andget there quickly and look at
all of the different areas ofbusiness.
And you know you mentioned youhave an accountant for your
taxes, you have a lawyer foryour legal issues.
But let's look at all of theother different areas of
business.
There are things like teammanagement.
(41:10):
There are things like goalsetting.
There are things like salesmarketing.
There are things like productbrand.
You know all of that kind ofstuff.
You can get help with that.
So you can either just put yourhead in the sand and go, I'll
figure it out.
You know I'll bust it.
I'm a smart guy, I'm sure I'llmake it or you can go hang on a
second Pause.
Research YouTube oh, look atthat.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
I'm 10 years ahead like straight away, or invest in
and I say invest in some sortof coaching.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Accountability coaching.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Yeah, I'm a coach.
I mean I want people to sign upfor my, my services.
Of course you know that's how Imake my money.
But uh, it's not a cost, it'san investment.
It really is.
And that's not, that's not asales pitch, it really it's like
if you, if you pay me 3000 or$5,000 to tell you something
(42:01):
that's going to make you$100,000.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
I mean you have to finance your dreams.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
That's what you have to think about.
You have to finance your dreams.
It comes at a cost, and if youdon't want to spend that $3,000
or $5,000 and get there in thenext three to six months, you
can try to figure it outyourself, and it could take five
years.
And then at the end of the fiveyears you're going to ask for
help anyway because you're tiredof banging your head against
the wall for five years.
You could have got there fiveyears ago.
I like that.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
You have to invest in your, in your future, invest in
your dreams.
You have to actually put it up.
And getting a coach, Like youknow, again, there are so many
of the great people out therethat do what they do incredibly
well.
Get those people on your teamlike, pay somebody to be a
fractional coach for you andaccelerating your success Just
freaking, phenomenal, dude.
So, in the in the um, in thespirit of sales, startups and
(42:48):
side hustles, let me play a gamewith you.
Knowing what you know, now you,you've created your own ability
to learn your way out of any gap.
You've you've, you've learned,you've personally developed,
you've, you've read, you'velistened, you've engaged, you've
absorbed.
So let me play a game in astartup and side hustle place.
(43:08):
Let's say right now, you lostit all.
You had to start from zero.
You were one of the people thatare listening going.
I'm just one year in.
I'm three months.
I got to get out of my job.
I'm right at that beginningpiece.
I want to put that like.
You're on the starting squareof the board right now.
Dennis, knowing what you know,knowing what you know, you lost
everything.
Today, what would your firstfew moves be?
(43:29):
How would you attack the marketto achieve the dream that
you've got in front of you, ifyou had to start again from
scratch, Build attention.
Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
An audience.
It's the number one thing.
It's the most valuable currencyon the planet right now is
having attention.
So, if you think, that's alwayswhere I start too, because I
have my big high ticket itemwhich I was telling you about
earlier.
It's called Epic Biz Launch andthat's where we launch your
entire business in one week.
It's everything from thebusiness plan to the research,
(44:01):
to the testing, to the website,the LinkedIn, the social media.
Set up your marketingeverything in one week.
It's insane, but it's reallyexpensive, right, and so most
people create their high ticketitem.
That's like my big high ticketitem.
But I have another, normallypriced three thousand, five
(44:23):
thousand dollar uh ticket andmost people do my coaches, uh,
whatever, it is your high, your,your offer that you're making
and most people go with.
Here's my post.
I'm going to put up a post onlinkedin, instagram, tiktok,
facebook, whatever.
Buy my stuff.
I'm going to put up a post.
I'm going to wait for the phoneto ring.
So you buy my stuff, but why,like?
(44:46):
I don't know you.
So the first step is to buildattention.
If you think about, like SerenaWilliams or or Ronaldo or
somebody like, why can theystart any business?
They can start a clothing brandor a perfume brand, because
they have attention.
The number one thing, thenumber one place to start, is to
build attention.
And once you have attention, acaptive audience, then you can
(45:08):
sell stuff and you can sellanything you want.
So if you think about, like,elon musk has 200 million
followers, whatever, but teslahas like 20 million or 30
million, whatever, and thenthere's spacex and then there's
all these whatever else he'sdoing, right, bill gates has 100
million followers, butmicrosoft has like 10 million.
So you want to build your brandand then you can start whatever
(45:31):
you want you know.
So the number one thing is tostart building attention, build
relationships.
One thing I hate is those getrich quick schemes.
You know, and we all see themin our, in our feeds or whatever
your social media is.
You know, make six figures amonth or a week, yeah, Working
in your underwear one hour a dayon your phone without leaving
(45:53):
the house, and right, and it'slike people buy into that and
they're preying on these peopleand it pisses me off because
there's no shortcuts.
People are looking forshortcuts because they they one,
because one, they don't knowhow to do the work or they don't
want to do the work, so they'relooking for the shortcut.
The shortcut is buildingrelationships.
It's building a foundation.
(46:14):
That's the shortcut.
And it takes a little bit oftime, you know.
So like every once in a while,like you hear about Mr Beast or
some other little 16 year oldkid that sells an app and gets
lucky or something like that therest of us, it takes a.
It takes a good two to fiveyears to build a stable,
profitable business.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
I agree and I think, like you know, for the people
hearing that and going, I don'thave two to five years.
Yeah, you do, you do, cause thetime's going to pass anyway.
So you need to start like uh, Ilove the side hustle part of of
our podcasts, like startupsside hustles.
It's like build your attention,build your brand, build your
audience, post about what you'relearning about, because chances
(46:56):
are excellent that youraudience is wanting to learn the
same thing.
So, even if you don't have afollowing, learn from people
like Dennis, come and absorb,like the newsletter and stuff,
and then jump on a camera andtalk about it.
Hey, I just saw this great postblah, blah, blah.
As you're learning, youraudience is growing with you as
well.
And yeah, you do have time,because two to five years is
going to pass anyway.
And what I always say to people,like, if you need to pay your
(47:16):
bills today, like, start up aside hustle, right, go and get a
job, go on stack shelves,whatever it is I always try and
recommend don't do a job thattakes too much of your time so
that you've got headspace tothink about your real business,
but go and get your bills paidand build your brand and your
attention and start to actuallybe present in the audience.
And if you're shy, man, use it.
I did an Dennis.
I did an interview with one ofthe top YouTubers in the world
(47:39):
and he has a faceless YouTubechannel with 14 and a half
million subscribers, getting 60million views on a video, and
he's never been on camera.
It's like dude, you don't haveto be on camera to build.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Now there's AI printers.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Hey Jen and all of these amazing AI tools.
You can be anybody online.
You can be the hidden figurebehind the scenes of building a
multi-million dollar brand, justanything, and it doesn't even
have to be anything crazy.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
So in my act, like I raised a boy with autism and for
nine years I spent with her,like we, I raised this boy.
He had real autism, not like alittle on the spectrum, like
real autism, and so he watchedthese youtube videos.
So these people doing productreviews on Disney figures- yeah,
yeah.
And these kids were getting like100,000.
(48:29):
They showed them like, openingup this package, he goes we're
going to open the package nowand this is what it says on the
front, and this is what it sayson the back, and this and this,
and they would get like 100,000,200,000 views and they had like
dozens of videos.
They were making money doingproduct reviews.
So I mean, there's so manyopportunities right now which
will stop soon, you know, atsome point especially with AI,
(48:51):
because, uh, I mean we couldtalk about all this stuff
forever, but you know this, Imean like, when you create a
site, you need to index it, youneed to do SEO, you need to do
all these things blogging, uh,having articles with good copy
and all the links and all thestuff that you need to do.
Ai, I mean we used to have tospend a lot of time to write
(49:12):
that crap.
It takes a lot of time to writereally good copy and AI is
pumping out 100 articles in likefive minutes that are good
quality content.
So I mean, there's things aregoing to start changing soon,
and I even say, like what aunique, amazing time it is to
build an online business and youcould do it as a side hustle.
Like I said, what we saidearlier you have to finance your
(49:36):
dreams.
If you have to have a job rightnow to pay for your dreams, you
know that's what it is.
It's a means to an end.
Nobody sees the same job for 30years and retires anymore.
You're not going to do thateither.
It's like that.
That that's not how it worksanymore.
It's a different world now.
But so finance your dreams.
(49:57):
However, you need to do that,but you can do that, you know.
Hustle.
Do the side hustle and make afew bucks on that.
Watch your spending, learn howto invest intelligently.
I mean, there's so manyopportunities but eventually
some of the opportunity is goingto start to go away, because it
used to be that there were 2billion people online.
(50:19):
Now there's 5 billion peopleonline, and it used to be there
wasn't so much regulation.
Regulation it's starting tocreep up a little more.
You you don't need anycertifications or licensing to
be a coach, but you're gonna atsome point the government's
gonna want their greedy littlepaws and fees and certifications
and licensing and all thatstuff.
In the next 10 years thatthat's going to be a real thing.
So it's a unique opportunity.
(50:41):
If you're not paying attentionand diving in right now, I
recommend you do.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
I highly encourage you to do so.
I think you're right that theopportunity to be a voice is
going to be diminished over thenext few years because of AI,
because of the proliferation ofmass amounts of data coming in.
So if you can build even anaudience of 5,000, 10,000,
15,000 in the next six months,12 months, whatever it could be,
(51:07):
you have something unique.
You're going to be that kind ofspearhead as the rest of those
waves crash behind you.
So, man, I love it Buildingattention, creating
opportunities, setting goals,going out and getting it done,
building a life around yourdesign.
Dennis, I love your message.
Man, I love your message.
What's next for you?
What are we seeing on thehorizon for Dennis Barry?
(51:29):
What are we seeing on thehorizon for Epic Media?
Where are you guys going?
Speaker 2 (51:33):
You know what?
I really haven't looked thatfar ahead.
Epic Entrepreneur Media startedbecause I did what I didn
didn't do what I tell everybodyelse to do, and you always want
to begin with the end in mind.
Right, you need like an exitstrategy and I was building me
Dennis Berry, but I can't selldennisberrycom.
(51:54):
I mean, really I can't, unlessyou become like Tony Robbins,
but I'm not in Dennis Berry.
So so I can't have epicentrepreneur media.
I, I'm the epic entrepreneur,I'm the old ski racer, beach bum
guy who's built this life andso I love.
It's just my vibes.
So I built that and I'm reallyjust focused on that.
(52:14):
I love doing what I'm doingright now.
I, I don't know, I, I can't, Ican't answer that right now.
I'm in the moment.
I guess is the way to answerthat nice.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
You just You're having fun doing what you're
doing and expanding othercompanies or people that are
working with you.
Why should somebody come toEpic Entrepreneur Media?
What kind of business is goingto come to you and you're going
to be able to take them to theirnext level.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
My target is early stage entrepreneurs and
solopreneurs.
I don't like dealing so muchwith the CEOs and enterprise
level companies.
It's just not my thing, itnever was, but I like helping
people.
First of all, I like helpingpeople.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Cool stuff.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, because we're all supposed to do that.
That's like human, and I likehelping people figure it out,
because it took me a long timeto figure out how to do what I'm
doing and and you know, thetruth is is like whenever you
start a business, you want tohave that help, and even with
the help, it's still going totake you time to figure it out.
(53:17):
It does.
I don't care who you are.
It it still takes time tofigure your business out your
niche, your offering, your feestructures, your exact
demographic, everything that youneed to learn in order to make
it flow.
It takes time, and so it tookme a lot of time, a lot of
(53:43):
resources, a lot of wasted uh,both of those things, and so
what I love to do is help peoplenot have to waste so much time
and money, uh, to get that jobdone, and so that's my focus.
It was like I want people tocome to me because I'm going to
teach them one how to buildattention.
I don't lead with my let mebuild your whole business thing,
(54:03):
because it's most people can'tafford it.
What I lead with is let's startbuilding attention.
Let me teach you how to writecontent that attracts your ideal
people and creates a buzz, andthen start building your
attention and buildingrelationships.
And we can do from there.
We do some outreach, from therewe create your funnel, we
create that seamless workflow.
(54:25):
You need to have a seamless,simple workflow and simple is
hard.
It's hard to set simple up, andso I like to help people set
simple up.
And so that means like what'ssetting up a workflow means it's
the point of contact to thepoint of purchase.
So if you're writing a post,that's the first point of
(54:45):
contact and then most people gofrom read my post to buy my
stuff and there's a whole bunchof stuff and that's called a
workflow in the middle and thatworkflow needs to be seamless.
If there's any hiccups, thenthey're gone and they're never
going to come back.
They're going to go findsomebody with a seamless
(55:10):
workflow.
So I like to help people set upthat workflow and it's not too
hard, but it does take youunderstanding of business, which
is that's my offering, right,and to have somebody with you
along the way.
And then what I have is EpicEntrepreneurs.
So Epic entrepreneur media ismy media website.
But then I have groups and oneof them is Epic entrepreneurs
and that's a it's groups.
There's about 50 or 60influencers and entrepreneurs
(55:36):
and we all support each otherand we have meetings every
Wednesday and we sometimesthere's five people, sometimes
there's 25 people, and wesupport each other.
So you're not doing it alone.
Speaker 1 (55:45):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
That's the most important piece is like we don't
like.
Don't try to do everything byyourself, because you can't.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yeah, you, you one person doesn't make a
marketplace, jim Rohn.
So you need, you need themarketplace to survive.
You need and and don't do ityourself Like there's to be a
member of something like thatEpic Entrepreneurs, to be even
tapped in as a subscriber tohear the commentary like you're
not by yourself.
There are millions of peopleout there entrepreneuring their
(56:16):
way to an ideal dream lifestyleand you get to be connected and
part of that as well.
Dennis, I love who you are inthe marketplace.
I love who you are on theplanet, and this has been a
really truly enjoyable time forme, man, I'm looking forward to
keeping in touch.
So, guys, I'm going to makesure that all of Dennis's links
are right below the show.
Reach out, say hi, let him knowthat you heard the episode and
(56:37):
some of the things that he'scommented to you.
I hope that you get to go backand re-listen to this.
Find your true place, point andmeaning on this planet.
Drive and deliver exactly thevalue that you have inside of
you out to the marketplace andbe rewarded for it.
And Dennis, again, man, thankyou so much for the chance to
come and hang out.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
Yeah, thank you.
I would like to do it againsometime, because I think we can
keep going.
Speaker 1 (57:01):
I think so too's.
Let's do a follow.
I think this would be a greatthing to uh, to move forward
with people.
I love it, man.
Thank you, bud.
Take care, we'll speak soon.
Speaker 2 (57:08):
All right, adios cheers man.
Today's episode of the Influencer Empires podcast
is brought to you by the EmpireProgram with White Label Suite
powering our influencers andbuilding their empires.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcometo the show.
I'm your host, Walt Bayliss,and today on the show, I have to
say I am super, super excitedto be chatting to somebody who
is traveling the world.
In fact, he has suitcases inhis background while we're
(00:23):
talking.
He's the CEO of EpicEntrepreneur Media, but that's
not where he started.
He's also the author of FunkyWisdom.
He's the podcast host.
He is the sales trainer, mastercoach, chef and world traveler.
He is now one of the topLinkedIn voices in the world.
He has one of the highestsubscriptions of his digital, AI
(00:44):
and lifestyle newsletter and heis listed as a top contributor
on LinkedIn.
It gives me incredible pleasureand I'm trembling with
excitement as we bring on thechef, the man, the make money
magnet, that is, Dennis Barry.
Hey, man, thank you so much forjoining us.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
That was by far the most enthusiastic welcome I've
ever received in my life.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Dude, I had to trim that down.
There's so much here on yourbio, on your history.
I could have kept going for thewhole episode and just read off
your stuff.
Now, dude, you started life asa chef.
You got out of school, you werestraight into the kitchens.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, so I'm 52 years old.
So if we go back almost 35years when I graduated high
school and I, I went up to themountains to be a skier and I
was, uh, I did some ski racing,slash ski bumps, slash crazy
party guy right and that went onfor like about eight or nine
(01:40):
years and uh, but it was kind ofa destructive lifestyle.
It was a little crazy.
I went to culinary school, Idid all the the chef restaurant
stuff for a long time but um, asyou might imagine, with the ski
and the party and the chef andI was stoned pretty much for 15
years straight, wow and but ittook its toll on me and then
(02:02):
eventually, eventually in 2003,I had to get sober.
I was like dying physically,financially, no relationships.
My whole body was falling apart.
I was like I'm trying to dowhat do we do?
Pounds or kilos?
I was like, yeah, I was like240 pounds.
(02:22):
Now I'm like 175.
It depends if I'm eating but ornot?
so my whole life changed so muchover the last 30 years, like it
was worth a book.
So I was like I had like thatbook that you gave me an intro
to.
Uh, I didn't plan on writing abook, I was just like I would go
on long walks with the dog andlisten to inspiring podcasts and
(02:44):
this was, like you know, like10 years ago and YouTube videos,
like all these inspiring peopleand I was.
I was like, wow, that's reallyinspiring, cause I was doing my
growing up, my growing upjourney in my thirties and
forties and and I would writedown these notes on the phone.
And then, all of a sudden, Ihad like 100 pages of notes and
(03:05):
I was like I should put these ina book and so I started doing
that, and then that's how thebook came about.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I love it.
I love it so cool.
So, dude, you're saying yougrew up late, which I love that
quote from you.
And now I think yourcatchphrase is there over nail
the details and have fun.
Um, and I just love that.
I think that like your.
Your transition then.
So you've gone from, you'vegone from the chef, you've gone
from the party lifestyle, skibunny up in the snow.
(03:33):
You know chasing, chasing thegood time.
You, you got yourself into a,you know a serious position.
You've turned around and becomelike a, a serious coach to be
held up into the world in one ofthe top entrepreneur voices in
the world.
But you went through thisperiod where you were in sales
and you got the whole salesmanagement and sales experience
(03:53):
kind of background.
How did that happen?
How did you go from thekitchens, from the hustle and
the bustle of the grill, all theway into putting on a tie and
doing the sales thing?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Great question.
So it actually went from thekitchens my first adult job
quote, unquote, that's what Icall it.
It was 25 years ago and it wasat Cisco Food Service and the
reason was they hired me notbecause of my sales or anything
else other than I was a chef.
So I know how to speak to chefsso then, um, they hired me in
(04:24):
that respect and then theytaught me sales and so I started
learning.
I remember that cisco is a youknow, 25 years ago it was a 26
billion dollar company and wehad six weeks of training and
that first day, uh, I walked inthere and I started learning
right away.
I was, this is what I need todo.
(04:45):
I knew that I needed to dosales, business marketing, like
everything there, and I reallysunk myself into it and I spent
a few years there and I stillwasn't sober yet and I learned
so much, not just about sales,but about relationships, about
(05:05):
how, how businesses work.
And it was during that time,actually, that when because I
worked a lot, you know, and itwasn't a glamorous job sales,
really, it's hardly ever veryglamorous and, um, especially
restaurant sales.
So I would have to go torestaurants and you know, I'm
like looking in the dumpster tosee what they order.
I'm like so I could try to sellthem my version of that oil or
(05:29):
my toilet paper, or this or thatand all this stuff and, uh, I
was out there working 60 70hours a week and it was like
putting in the hustle and maybeI was making like 80 grand a
year and I would.
Would go back to the office andI noticed that my regional and
district sales managers weresitting in their nice offices
(05:51):
and they were wearing their niceties and jackets and they had
the air condition and they hadpictures of beaches on the wall
and I was like I want picturesof beaches on the wall.
And they were working like halfas much as me and making three
times as much money as me.
And I was like something isclearly wrong here.
And then I realized that Ciscowas a $26 billion company and I
(06:14):
was only making like 80 grand.
I was like I want to.
I want a shot at the big nut.
I want to shoot that whole thing, and that's really when my
entrepreneurial journey began.
What happened was I ended uplosing that job from a drinking
related thing we don't have togo into it, we can spend the
whole episode on that but I hada really bad car accident where
I almost died, and so I had tosign a return to work agreement
(06:39):
saying I wouldn't drink anymore,which of course, I signed it,
but I could not drink anymore,and so I ended up losing that
job, which propelled me intorehab for 30 days, and I'm
giving you the 32nd version.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, no, this is great.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
A much longer story.
Yeah, actually they gave me abunch of back.
Commissions said, sorry, wehave to let you go because of
this, and I went on a bender totry to kill myself with drugs
and alcohol, subconsciously forabout 10 days, and that was
March 27th to April 8th, andthen I ended up in a rehab on
(07:15):
April 10th of 2003.
I've been sober ever since.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
So that literally turned you around.
That rehab set completelychanged the frame.
It's funny.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
That's a great question too, and for people
that are listening, that arestruggling, and I still, I still
.
I did a lot of addictionrecovery coaching for a long
time.
Codependency worked with a lotof teens.
I did a lot of that stuff overthe last 20 years as well and
people always say that you know,oh, it was that rehab that
fixed it.
But you know, we always have toremember when you see somebody
(07:46):
is sober, it wasn't their firstattempt, likely not their first,
yeah, 90, whatever percent.
It was like a hundred attemptsbefore they got to that one that
you see, just like the onepercent in business, you know
when when we started swing yeah,I mean, being an entrepreneur
is just about the hardest thingin the world, outside of, maybe,
(08:06):
a relationship and parenting.
It's the hardest thing in theworld to do is to build a stable
, profitable business.
And we start here at one and wehave to go to 10.
And right around two it getshard.
Some people make it to four orfive, but most people quit by
that.
Very few make it to nine or 10.
(08:29):
And those are the 1%.
Those are the ones we hearabout, we see on the news, with
the ones that sell their billiondollar app on Instagram.
Those are like, those are theones that stick it out.
You know, it's not alwaysnecessarily that they're smarter
, better than we are.
They just didn't quit, you know.
And it's the same thing with,uh, getting sober.
(08:50):
Same thing with yourrelationships.
Like when we see thoselong-term relationships of 50
years, you're like, how did theydo it?
They didn't quit.
Back then there wasn't divorce,they didn't quit, they just
stuck it out.
And you find a way through, andso life is a lot of that, you
know you got to have grit.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Do you think that that's?
Do you think that's a sub, likea choice that people make day
by day?
Like thinking about theentrepreneur, who's who's got to
you know, maybe it's theirfirst swing, you know, and you
step out, you get lucky, youbuild an audience and build a
brand and make a million dollars.
It's a rare story but ithappens often enough to inspire
everybody else to have a shot.
But do you think that that's achoice that the entrepreneur,
the relationship, theprofessional sports athlete,
(09:32):
like anybody who's achieving atthose high levels, do you feel
like that's a choice theyconsciously make on a regular
basis?
Speaker 2 (09:38):
That they're going to be successful.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
That they're not going to quit.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
That is it yeah, well , you know what my favorite
speech was from steve jobs andhe's really one of my
entrepreneurial heroes.
He wasn't a great human I don'tknow if like who studied him a
lot, but and he wasn't a veryfavorite human being, but it's
hard to argue with his success.
But one of his speeches, whichhe was on some show in the 90s
(10:04):
or 80s or 90s he's like you know, people say you need to be
passionate about what you do,and it's so true.
And the reason is is becauseit's so hard.
It's really it's.
It's so hard and the differencebetween the ones who make it and
the ones they don't are thatthe ones that they, that made it
(10:24):
, they love what they did.
So if you're not passionateabout what you're gonna do and
you have to do it over a longperiod of time too so if you're
not passionate about it, you'regonna quit as soon as it gets
hard.
Maybe a little bit, like I said, maybe three, four, you'll make
it to five, but eventually thepassion is what pulls you
through so you can make thatdecision that I'm not going to
(10:46):
quit, but it needs to piggybackon your passion.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, yeah for sure.
I saw one of your posts onInstagram.
You had that picture of a clock5.30 in the morning and the
green and the red and the peoplethat hate their jobs are like,
oh no, it's 5.30.
And the people who love whatthey're doing are like, yeah,
let's go.
It's just, it's a choice and itis a passion, because it's what
makes you go, let's go.
Let's go again.
Let's go again If you, if youlove it, when, when people come
(11:12):
to you, so you're.
You've moved kind of out of thecoaching space now, dennis, as
I still coming to you and youslipping into that coach's role,
talking to them about theirjourney and finding out what
their holdups are and all thatkind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
That's another great.
You're the best podcast host,you really are?
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yes, I got it?
Speaker 2 (11:37):
I know because we've both done hundreds of these
things.
You ask really great questionsand the answer to that is that
they're not separate.
Yeah, they're intimatelyconnected.
It's like if you're not workingon personal development and
managing your mindset, you'renot going to make it.
And if you make it, you mightmake money, but you're going to
(11:58):
suffer in your health or yourrelationships or somewhere else.
But they're intimatelyconnected, in fact.
So what I do is I do a lot oflinkedin training, a linkedin
coaching, so that's like one ofmy.
That's my main offering, wherea lot of my stuff comes.
It's not my high ticket offer,which I could tell you about
another time, but that's my mainone.
(12:19):
And it always starts with asyou might guess, as from any
business perspective a businessplan, right.
So it's like what do you?
What are we doing here?
It rarely goes as planned, butyou need to have a starting
point in some direction, right.
But we also need a vision planand I give a a vision plan, yeah
(12:41):
, and I can even share it in thenotes if you want, but I have a
vision plan outline, and it'sthe same thing as a business
plan, but for your life.
What's your vision?
Why are we doing this?
Why do we wake up and strugglewith our health, relationships
and our finances for five to 10years with no guarantee that
we'll make any money on thisbusiness?
You know why are we doing that.
(13:01):
So we need to have a clearvision.
What's my mission statement?
You know why are we doing that.
So we need to have a clearvision.
What's my mission statement?
What's my summary?
Like, what am I doing?
You know what are my visions.
If you can't envision it, youcan't build it.
You know Napoleon Hill talksabout that in Thinking Grow Rich
.
You know we have to be able to.
If you can't conceive it inyour mind, it will never appear
(13:21):
in your bank account or in yourlife, right?
So we need to envision it, andour brains, as you probably know
, I'm sure, have 60 to 80,000thoughts per day.
So you can envision it, andthen it gets covered up by a
bunch of other shit.
But we write it down.
So it's a vision plan system.
Everybody's heard of visionboards.
(13:42):
It starts with the plan, so wewrite down what's my vision,
what are my goals, what's someshort-term milestones that we
can hit.
What's a SWOT analysis?
What are my strengths,weaknesses, opportunities and
threats?
What's a strategic plan to getthese things going?
Write all that stuff down andthen take that, put that on a
(14:05):
vision board, Not just like, oh,this is a cool picture to cut
out of this magazine, but likefrom your vision.
You know, take that vision andmake it visual and then reverse,
engineer that back out of thatplan and make it happen.
That's real good coaching rightthere, and that's when that's
how you create success.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
I was going to say, like that last three minutes.
People like you can just cutthat out, set it on replay and
set yourself up for a great life.
And speaking of which, so youjust came back from three months
in Europe, right?
So you, you are, you're what wewould consider to be a well
traveled entrepreneur.
How do you, how do you manage abusiness and still enjoy life
in the way that you do?
Speaker 2 (14:46):
yeah, there's a lot of balance.
You know, I have to share thisuh term that I heard was it's
been a couple months now, buteverybody talks about work-life
balance.
But, uh, I love, uh, do youknow, sad guru, yeah, yeah, yeah
, he said he's like that.
There is no work-life balance,it's all just life.
The balance has to come withinyou.
(15:08):
When you're balanced on theinside, everything is just
balanced on the inside.
Everything is just balanced onthe outside.
So I like that.
But what I really I heardrecently because it's also 2024,
you know, we have so much goingon and we have so many gadgets,
so much technology.
Ai, everybody's saying you're,you need to do this in order to
(15:28):
be happy, like all these things,and the better term is work
life rhythm.
My balances might not work foryou.
We need to find a rhythm thatworks for us, with us, our
lifestyle, our family, ourhealth, our finances.
We're all in, we're all havinga different experience here, so
(15:49):
we have to find a rhythm thatworks for us, and my rhythm
probably doesn't work for yourrhythm.
So for me, like we went tospain because she had we had
some, uh, some stuff that weneeded to take care of there,
and she's getting hernationality so we might be
moving there full-time, likethere was like stuff to do, so
we went for three months tovalencia and I
(16:10):
was like I need if we're going,because I live on the beach here
in mexico and I was like, ifwe're going, I need a beach
right.
And so that's how we landed invalencia.
But it's like you know, I wastwo blocks from the beach.
I set up my meetings.
You know, I I wake up.
I always have me time.
Right when I wake up, there'sexercise, there's water, there's
uh, getting focused andcentered.
(16:32):
For me, that involves my toesin the sand or outside somewhere
, and then uh, and theneverything else comes after that
, and then you know, it's a,we're entrepreneurs, we're not
business owners, we'refirefighters right always every
day is different, you know, andit's like the idea is.
(16:53):
Another thing I like talkingabout is to be prepared.
Our plans rarely go, thingsrarely go as planned, but
preparation is what has realvalue.
You know, if we're constantlyprepared, if we're moving from
center which you know we alwaysdo the best we can on that then
we have a better shot at makingthings work.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
So, as you're like, what's the day in the life of
now, you've got, you've got, um,incredible clients.
I mean I'm looking at, uh, epicmedia.
Um, so it's again guys, we'llhave the link in the notes there
, but it's Epic entrepreneurmedia.
I'm looking at some of thebrands that you've got on the on
the page there.
You know these are some of thebiggest companies in the world
that you've had the chance towork with, and I have no doubt
that your voice on LinkedIn hasfunneled so many amazing people
into your world as a result.
(17:36):
Now it's amazing to me to hearyour day starts with exercise,
starts with getting outside,starts with getting centered.
So tell me about a day in thelife of Dennis Barry.
How does that day play out foryou typically?
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Well, I have, like we have to balance what we were
just talking about with thebalance, the rhythm.
So there's like, there's work,there's LinkedIn, which is where
I spend that.
I mean, that's where, like,most of my business comes from.
So I build those relationshipsthere.
Of course, we all have presenceon all these other social media
(18:14):
websites.
We have some automated stuff.
We have evil automated stuff wehave I have assistants doing
stuff and stuff, but nobodytouches my LinkedIn.
That's my stuff.
So, but I need time on LinkedIn.
I have sales meetings, I haveclient meetings, I have work and
writing that I need to do.
(18:35):
So, you know, it's finding thatrhythm.
It's different every day butfor the most part it's pretty
straightforward.
I mean, I could show you mycalendar.
It's like I usually have threeor four or two or three,
sometimes four, sales meetings aday on a heavy day and um, two,
20 to 30 minutes.
(18:55):
You know, on that I usuallywrite for one, between one and
two hours and I depending on,like you know what, what kind of
work we need done, um, and thenI apply in meetings at least
one a day, sometimes two per day.
We kind of stagger those outquite a bit and then, like
(19:18):
before we got on a call, here Iwas meeting with my team because
we were working on some stuffthat always pops up every day,
you know.
I mean it's justentrepreneurial.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
It sounds pretty busy .
Like you know, there's a fairpace.
That you've said there, whichis, which is cool.
What are the non-negotiablesfor you?
So I I've said to my team, um,before that my non-negotiables
are a weird.
You know, like, um, mynon-negotiables are if my kids
have an event at school, I'mgoing.
I don't care what else is on.
I will cancel the biggestmeeting of my life if my kids
(19:51):
have got a certificate beingpresented.
That's like, that's mynon-negotiable.
Like, what are some of thenon-negotiables for you, dennis?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
uh, health, nice number one health and
relationships.
Everybody always talks aboutall these things, but there's
only.
There's every, every, everylisticle or whatever you want to
call it of priorities, everylist of priorities.
Always the first two are bothnumber one and it's health and
(20:20):
relationships, and I let both ofthose go years ago and I'll
never do that again.
It comes before money.
It comes before anything elseis your health and relationships
.
It comes before money, comesbefore anything else is your
health and relationships, andit's different for everybody,
but for me it's like I madehealth a big priority.
Some of it is.
I'm a little crazy and I usedto use, so I have a lot of
energy, especially now becausebefore the show I made coffee,
(20:49):
so I have a lot of energy and Iused to use drugs and alcohol to
discipline my energy and now Iuse diet and exercise and
hydration, and love andmeditation and helping and
nature.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
So these soften your punches forward, like if you're
looking at an energy spike graphof Dennis Barrow, you're seeing
boom, boom, spiking up, up andthe things that you mentioned
there meditation, love, familyconnection, nature these are
kind of like softening the edgesof those spikes.
Right, so it's like youmentioned you're using diet,
(21:21):
exercise, love, nature tomoderate your high energy.
I love the fact that the thingsyou mentioned there are almost
like putting cushions on top ofthose spikes.
It's like softening that driveforward.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, well said, that's really nice.
I love that too.
And then the other thing that'sreally important is that I
don't do it if I don't want to.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
It's kind of a popular topic people talk about
now but saying, no, yeah, ittook me a long time to get into
that and it's a kind of apopular topic people talk about
now but saying, no, it took me along time to to get into that
and it's still hard sometimes.
You know, I think like it's,it's similar.
It's called having healthyboundaries and I think it gets
easier as you get older.
You know, I'm 52 now and so I.
You know we want, we all wantwhen we're younger, I think we
(22:08):
want especially now withInstagram and everything we want
to be liked.
We all want to be somebody.
So we do things we don'tnecessarily want to do or line
up with our value system orwhatever it is.
But eventually we kind of werelike I don't want to do that or
I'm not going to do that, and Ithink having those healthy
(22:34):
boundaries sticking to what youdo or don't want to do, and
being passionate about what youdo, like I love what I do it's
really all these means that weused to hear bumper stickers.
It's like when you love whatyou do, you don't work a day in
your life.
I mean, I get that now.
It took a long time to reallyto really feel that.
Not just say it, but to reallyfeel that.
It's like like when you, whenyou, land a, a deal, and even if
(22:57):
you don't, it's like.
I got to meet this person and Istill love what I do and nice I
don't have.
I don't have money problems.
I don't have health problemsright now.
Luckily, you know, I I I don'thave any like real big problems
and I think a lot of it isbecause I love what I do and I
don't do things I don't want todo.
If you're really unhappy, youhave to look at why are you
unhappy.
(23:17):
You know, in my opinion, again,we could probably do a whole
episode on this, and maybeyou've done episodes on this.
It's like Monday and it'sMonday, so I was reminded of it
today.
It's always a popular topic onMonday.
It's like if you're laying inbed on saturday night or monday
morning with the sheets overyour head because you're scared
(23:38):
to get out of bed and do thatthing that you have to do to pay
the bills, it's because you'renot doing what you're meant to
do.
You're not doing what you'rehere, what you were meant to be
doing here.
So only two things things canhappen.
It's like one go find anotherjob.
Or two build your own dreams.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
And people are scared of that, but it's like we're
not supposed to be stressed outand full of fear and anxiety and
like worried about who thepresident is and all these
things that were that aredrilled into our head with
marketing and buzz and socialmedia.
We're not supposed to be thatway.
And buzz and social media we'renot supposed to be that way.
Our inherent nature is reallyhappiness and you know, and
(24:16):
marketing plays a huge role inall the problems and everything
that's going on now.
You know it used to be we Imean, we're just creatures, you
know, and it used to be.
We woke up in the morning.
We're like I have basic needs.
I need food, water, shelter andclothing like that was and
warmth, like that's what I need.
The thing is, we still havethose same needs.
(24:39):
Nothing's changed but, they'reall in excess.
So now it's like, well, we wakeup in the morning, it's like,
all right, my needs are met.
So now, what do we do?
So now we worry about stupidthings that have no bearing on
our life, and then we do thingswe don't really want to do or
we're bored, so we end up eatinga bunch of crap that's making
us sick and unhealthy.
(25:00):
And then we worry about, likesome politician somewhere or
think what people I don't knowthink about me, or things like
that, when really life isn'tthat hard it was never it was
never meant to be like that,when really life isn't that hard
.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
It was never meant to be like that, I think.
So you've mentioned the wordsneed and want in that last
little section a lot, and I findthe I read something with Dan
Sullivan in one of his books 10Xis Easier Than 2X, and he was
talking about this kind ofpeaceful nature that he
discovered when he was like it'snot about what I need, it's
(25:34):
about designing, as you said,the vision plan, right, it's
about designing what I want.
And I was thinking, you know,just before we jumped on, we
were talking about moms andparents and you know all that
kind of stuff.
And, as an entrepreneur, what'sinteresting is like I would say
, what I want, I want the bighouse, I want the beach, I want
the travel, all that kind ofstuff.
And my parents are kind of likethat last generation and
(25:57):
they're like, oh yeah, but whatdo you need such a big house for
?
And it was Dan Sullivan.
It was like, no, mom, I don'tneed it.
I don't need that big house,right, I need a cave where the
rain doesn't come in and a fireat the back to keep myself dry.
I don't need the big house, mom, but I want it and so long as
I'm a good person, so long as Iactually can create and put out
(26:19):
into the world really greatstuff so that people are happy
to pay me for for that stuffthat I put out, I can have
whatever the damn hell I want.
So long as I want it, I createthe system to achieve it.
That's entrepreneurialism.
That's like.
I want this.
I need to create something inorder to achieve it.
So we're getting past thatneeds and wants thing.
So I noticed that yourspiritual journey you're
(26:39):
touching on Buddhism and you'retouching on a whole bunch of
different things there it seemslike that kind of understanding
of life has integrated with you.
So I want to bring it back tosome decisions that you've made
A couple of years ago, from whatI'm seeing.
A couple of years ago, youdecided that LinkedIn was your
thing and I think, when I lookat your growth, it started like
(27:02):
2021, you had 1500 LinkedInsubscribers.
As we're recording this, inSeptember 2024, you have over
115,000 LinkedIn subscribers.
Tell me about the decision andwhat happened between yeah, this
is my playground to being nowvoted one of the top
(27:23):
entrepreneurial voices in theworld on this platform.
How did that decision alignwith what you were trying to
create?
Speaker 2 (27:32):
like what?
How did that decision alignwith what you were trying to
create?
Well, I just saw it as a, asthe, the median to get what you
were talking about, all thosethings.
It's like I don't need thesethings, but I want these things.
I want freedom really is what.
What we want is freedom.
Money doesn't buy happiness,but it buys freedom, you know,
and that's really what I wantand you know, along with the
freedom.
It's like I, I like going tothe beach and I like staying in
(27:54):
nicer places and I like eatinggood food.
Like the money contributes tothat.
So I saw LinkedIn as a, as ameans of getting getting that
done.
And you know, when I startedLinkedIn, it was years ago, but
then it kind of crapped out alittle bit and then it was like
four years ago or so, whatever.
(28:15):
I started diving into it againand I started building these
relationships with these people.
And it wasn't justtransactional, it was becoming
like I was becoming friends, wewere building friendships and
relationships and I wasn'tgrowing at a big rate or
anything like that.
We were I would just hop onthere.
And then it became like, youknow, because we could talk
(28:38):
about social media all day too.
But you know those little reddots that you see.
It's like you have a message,you know, or whatever it is.
It's like that's dopamine.
They know this.
It's false dopamine hits thatwe get and our brains go
somebody loves me so we check.
We're like rats in an experimentall day long.
We're like checking back in formore red dots, more dopamine
hits, and they know that, andthat's why social media.
(28:59):
There's five billion peopleusing social media every day.
So, um, but it was working thatway for me you know, I was like
you know, I was trying to figuresome stuff out.
I was in transition, I wassplitting up, uh, my uh, we call
it called marriage.
We were engaged for uh, eightand a half years, you know.
(29:19):
So, uh, I was kind of in alittle crossroads uh back then
too.
So I was finding like I wasbuilding relationships there and
they were fulfilling and itwasn't just business, but it was
like filling me up in otherways too, and a lot.
And then all of a sudden, Irealized I was learning more
things too.
You know, if you spend time onLinkedIn, cause LinkedIn?
(29:39):
I mean Instagram.
I have 130,000 followers, whichis like having a million on
Instagram or on any otherplatform.
You know these are moremeaningful connections, or
professionally minded people, um, with uh, similar interests
that we have and like that'swhat we're really looking for in
(29:59):
life.
We all create theserelationships.
So I started realizing I couldfind them there and so I started
spending more time there.
And if you spend time onlinkedin, you'll become you'll
become very intelligent in a lotof different areas, just by
osmosis, by spending time there.
It's like, look, I mybackground was a chef and then a
lot of addiction recovery stuff, and then I also had a
(30:23):
multimillion dollar coinbusiness and so that I knew
business, I knew some addictionrecovery, but then you hang out
on LinkedIn and all of a suddenyou're a leadership expert.
All of a sudden, you know aboutcareer development and now it is
like we're learning about AI.
Every day that you log on andyou're like, oh, I didn't know,
ai did that.
Wow, I can make a movie withChachi BD, so I started seeing
(30:48):
it as a means to buy my freedomhow we talked about right.
Money gives you.
It provides freedom.
So I was like wow.
And then I started learning moreabout setting up your sales
funnels and seamless workflows,which is kind of what I do now
is because every successfulbusiness in the world is set up
(31:09):
as a sales funnel successfulbusiness right.
So there's like people thatcome in the top of your funnel
from somewhere.
For me it's LinkedIn, becausethere's a billion people there.
It's a great top of funnel.
You know it used to be.
Years ago, decades ago, youopened a storefront and maybe
you had 50,000 people in thatarea, not more, because if you
had more, then there'scompetition.
(31:29):
So maybe you only ever hadbetween 10 and 50,000 potential
clients.
Now you have billions.
So I started seeing that getthem in the top of the funnel
and now there's like ways tocontinue to connect with them
newsletters, low ticket items,lead magnets, all these things
and I was like I love this wowand so I started setting all
(31:50):
those processes up and uhshooting them to different areas
, and then uh turned into myvery successful business that's
allowing me to travel around theworld.
I lived in tahiti for six monthsa few years ago, that'll do it
down closer to you right, okay,yeah, in f, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
So like how incredible to be able to, to, to
have a billion people walkacross your shop front.
So now, as you mentioned you,you, you love the building
blocks now where you go top offunnel, you know, nurture
sequences, automated systems,all that kind of stuff.
One of the big things for foryour brand, for your, your
current position in the world,is the newsletter that you're
(32:31):
running, so your broadcasting isit weekly?
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Out to 100,000 people you're chatting about Is it
100,000?
And yeah, weekly I think it's113,000.
If I'm not traveling, then yeah, it's weekly, but weekly-.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
So you mentioned that you write for an hour to two
hours a day.
Is that linked to your blog oris that the newsletter content
that you're putting out there?
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, some of it is newsletter, some of it is emails
, some of it is content forLinkedIn or Twitter or something
like that, setting up theprocess.
There's a lot of writing, whichis amazing, which is amazing
yeah right, are you a writer too?
Do you write a lot?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
I'm not, I'm a, I'm a .
I'm a video guy.
So I like I'll sit down with avideo and just like blurt
everything that I'm thinking anddrop it into into a recording
system.
But writing for me, yeah, no,it's just, it's just my outlet,
but yeah well, writing, I found,is a.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
It's really everything.
I mean to go back to our 80 000thoughts per day, which is
almost one per second.
You know this goes back to alot of the addiction and life
mastery training that I used todo, but it's like if we had 80
000 constructive, awesome,productive thoughts every day,
how awesome would that be.
That would be.
But I would argue that you know, 99 or whatever percent are
(33:57):
useless or even harmful.
So what writing does?
It really helps us tocategorize our thinking and it's
like oh, this is useless, thisis dumb, this is harmful.
Oh my god, why was I eventhinking that?
that could have destroyed myrelationship or could destroy
something else.
So writing is a really good wayand I have all my clients write
.
You know all the time when Iused to do the addiction stuff
(34:22):
because we have to rememberaddiction, we always think drugs
, alcohol, those are the oneseverybody goes to.
But food, porn, doom, scrolling, uh, anything, there's so many.
They're all.
I call them distractions.
Drinking is not my problem, itwas what I was using to cope
with my real problem, which ismy thinking.
(34:42):
Writing helps to ease a lot ofthat, that burden of thinking so
much.
Right, so I can reallycategorize my thoughts.
One of the things I used to dois I would have my clients write
down for me every night beforeyou go to bed and it could be
after dinner or right before youclose your eyes the four and
fours.
This is a really useful toolthat everybody should use.
(35:02):
You know, write this downyourself, but it's like every
night before you go to bed,write down four things that went
well today, that you're proudof, four things that you did
well, and then four areas whereyou fell short, where you can
improve.
And it's such a powerfulexercise for a couple reasons.
One, it's slowing your braindown enough, right.
(35:23):
Two, there's gratitude with thefour things I did well.
And then if we, everything wedo is a pattern of behavior,
right, everything that we do theway we eat, the way we drink,
the way we speak, the way wewalk, everything's a
subconscious patterns ofbehavior that we were taught
over decades.
And if we start seeingbehaviors, areas where I fall
(35:44):
short, if those start showing upevery two for two, three, five
days a week or two weeks, now wehave something to work on and
improve and that one thing couldbe the one thing that takes
your business from two to level10.
So it's like it's such apowerful exercise to do, to
check in with yourself, forself-reflection, it's really
good.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I said I wasn't a writer, but I do journal every
single day and the four and fouris, I think, so powerful.
I actually I do it in threes,but fours, why not go four?
Like that's why you're, dennis,barry, right, because you've
gone the extra one.
But what I found super valuableas well, dennis, just to kind
of round that off as well, a lotof entrepreneurs that I talk to
(36:25):
have this self-doubt and fear.
That kind of dominates theirdaily activity.
You're looking at people going,you have something.
This is the sign behind me.
You have something reallyspecial just being an
entrepreneur.
You have magic in you, right?
And a lot of people that Ispeak to are like, oh yeah, but
I'm not really.
I'm not that, I'm not this.
What I've found with adding ontothe four and four is, at the
(36:46):
end of the week, on a Sunday forme, I do a weekly recap and I'm
literally recapping my wins.
So I went through a whole bunchof depression and that kind of
stuff as well, and what got meout of the depression was a good
friend of mine.
He said to me tell me threethings that you're proud of in
your life.
And I went, I had to thinkabout it for a minute and I was
like, okay, you know, I got ablack belt.
I worked hard to get my blackbelt done and I listed my things
(37:09):
that I was proud of and he said, so, you can do it.
And I was like, whoa, thatreflection back.
And again, as an entrepreneursorry, I should be letting you
do the talking, but as anentrepreneur, what I feel like
is that we're constantly lookingforward, right, we're
constantly going goal, goal,goal, achievement, achievement.
And that means that we're neverthere, we're never actually
(37:29):
feeling like we're fulfilled.
So this exercise for me oflooking back and going look what
you did during, look at yourwins, dude, look at this week
how many things have you tickedoff?
And every week, what I find,for me personally, is that gives
me the confidence to go.
You know what man?
I might not be at mydestination, I might not be at
my mountaintop right now, butlook how far I've come, man, and
(37:53):
that's the padding that you cankeep with you as you're going
into the next battle big time.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
I mean, like that was such a beautiful summary in in
sobriety that we talk a lotabout our, our shortcomings and
our character defects and thatone of the I used to go to AA a
lot and I stopped because Ithink it's kind of a dead end
and I I don't want to put itdown because I went for years
and it saved my life in thebeginning for sure, but I think
(38:21):
at some point it's like it'stime to move on, because you can
get addicted to aa just as much.
But one of the things, one ofthe reason one of the you know
lists of reasons I left was it'slike when you go to these
meetings that people sit thereand talk about their
shortcomings yeah, I'm badbecause they're yeah, they're
defects of character, and it'slike I'm not just a big walking
(38:43):
bag of character defects.
There's a lot of good stuffthere too and we really need to
focus.
Yeah, I mean, if you havedebilitating character defects
or even anything that are likeholding you back, like let's
talk about it.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Let's get it out of your head and let's deal with it
.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yeah, and then let's move beyond, but then move
beyond it.
You know, let's not live in itfor another 20 years.
That's what got us here, right,and so I don't like the staying
stuck too long on one thing,and that's where accountability
really comes in.
That's the one thing I hadreally good was they have that
sponsor.
The sponsorship is really goodbecause it's like if we don't
(39:20):
know something, ask for help.
I'm huge on that.
I say it in a lot of my postsall the time and my newsletters,
my content.
I always talk about it.
It's like if you don't know howto do something, ask for help.
So you get there Like I don'tknow how old you are.
I'm 52.
We didn't always have GoogleMaps right.
We had to stop and ask fordirections and there was a
stereotype for men.
(39:41):
Men would never stop and askdirections because we didn't
want to look stupid.
I always stopped and asked fordirections.
I was like I would rather looklike an idiot for one minute and
get there in 10 minutes thandrive around like an idiot for
two hours With my head in thesand.
Yeah, just tell me how to getthere.
So it's the same thing as I getolder.
It's like if I don't know, knowsomething, we need to drop the
(40:01):
ego and ask for help.
So it's like I was taught havean expert in every area of your
life.
So I'm not a lawyer.
If I need to go to court, Ineed a lawyer.
If I get sick, I need a doctor.
I hate doing my taxes, so Ineed an accountant, or I'm going
to get in trouble every year,right?
So and uh, maybe I'm not aspiritual giant, maybe I need
(40:23):
help with this business piece,maybe I know business really
well, but I don't know thispiece like ask for help.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
There's a million of every type of coach out there
nowadays and they're free, likea lot of that, that information,
like you don't having a coach.
There's like youtube, bro, tosee.
You know, I watch my kids dothings on youtube and like, how
did you?
Oh, I watch a youtube video.
How incredible is it to havethat information on demand.
It's incredible.
So think about that, like guyslike so for the, for the
(40:50):
business owners, for theentrepreneurs, for for the
people who are listening listento that message from Dennis
there, right?
So rather, ask for help.
Look dumb for 30 seconds andget there quickly and look at
all of the different areas ofbusiness.
And you know you mentioned youhave an accountant for your
taxes, you have a lawyer foryour legal issues.
But let's look at all of theother different areas of
business.
There are things like teammanagement.
(41:10):
There are things like goalsetting.
There are things like salesmarketing.
There are things like productbrand.
You know all of that kind ofstuff.
You can get help with that.
So you can either just put yourhead in the sand and go, I'll
figure it out.
You know I'll bust it.
I'm a smart guy, I'm sure I'llmake it or you can go hang on a
second Pause.
Research YouTube oh, look atthat.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
I'm 10 years ahead like straight away, or invest in
and I say invest in some sortof coaching.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Accountability coaching.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Yeah, I'm a coach.
I mean I want people to sign upfor my, my services.
Of course you know that's how Imake my money.
But uh, it's not a cost, it'san investment.
It really is.
And that's not, that's not asales pitch, it really it's like
if you, if you pay me 3000 or$5,000 to tell you something
(42:01):
that's going to make you$100,000.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
I mean you have to finance your dreams.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
That's what you have to think about.
You have to finance your dreams.
It comes at a cost, and if youdon't want to spend that $3,000
or $5,000 and get there in thenext three to six months, you
can try to figure it outyourself, and it could take five
years.
And then at the end of the fiveyears you're going to ask for
help anyway because you're tiredof banging your head against
the wall for five years.
You could have got there fiveyears ago.
I like that.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
You have to invest in your, in your future, invest in
your dreams.
You have to actually put it up.
And getting a coach, Like youknow, again, there are so many
of the great people out therethat do what they do incredibly
well.
Get those people on your teamlike, pay somebody to be a
fractional coach for you andaccelerating your success Just
freaking, phenomenal, dude.
So, in the in the um, in thespirit of sales, startups and
(42:48):
side hustles, let me play a gamewith you.
Knowing what you know, now you,you've created your own ability
to learn your way out of any gap.
You've you've, you've learned,you've personally developed,
you've, you've read, you'velistened, you've engaged, you've
absorbed.
So let me play a game in astartup and side hustle place.
(43:08):
Let's say right now, you lostit all.
You had to start from zero.
You were one of the people thatare listening going.
I'm just one year in.
I'm three months.
I got to get out of my job.
I'm right at that beginningpiece.
I want to put that like.
You're on the starting squareof the board right now.
Dennis, knowing what you know,knowing what you know, you lost
everything.
Today, what would your firstfew moves be?
(43:29):
How would you attack the marketto achieve the dream that
you've got in front of you, ifyou had to start again from
scratch, Build attention.
Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
An audience.
It's the number one thing.
It's the most valuable currencyon the planet right now is
having attention.
So, if you think, that's alwayswhere I start too, because I
have my big high ticket itemwhich I was telling you about
earlier.
It's called Epic Biz Launch andthat's where we launch your
entire business in one week.
It's everything from thebusiness plan to the research,
(44:01):
to the testing, to the website,the LinkedIn, the social media.
Set up your marketingeverything in one week.
It's insane, but it's reallyexpensive, right, and so most
people create their high ticketitem.
That's like my big high ticketitem.
But I have another, normallypriced three thousand, five
(44:23):
thousand dollar uh ticket andmost people do my coaches, uh,
whatever, it is your high, your,your offer that you're making
and most people go with.
Here's my post.
I'm going to put up a post onlinkedin, instagram, tiktok,
facebook, whatever.
Buy my stuff.
I'm going to put up a post.
I'm going to wait for the phoneto ring.
So you buy my stuff, but why,like?
(44:46):
I don't know you.
So the first step is to buildattention.
If you think about, like SerenaWilliams or or Ronaldo or
somebody like, why can theystart any business?
They can start a clothing brandor a perfume brand, because
they have attention.
The number one thing, thenumber one place to start, is to
build attention.
And once you have attention, acaptive audience, then you can
(45:08):
sell stuff and you can sellanything you want.
So if you think about, like,elon musk has 200 million
followers, whatever, but teslahas like 20 million or 30
million, whatever, and thenthere's spacex and then there's
all these whatever else he'sdoing, right, bill gates has 100
million followers, butmicrosoft has like 10 million.
So you want to build your brandand then you can start whatever
(45:31):
you want you know.
So the number one thing is tostart building attention, build
relationships.
One thing I hate is those getrich quick schemes.
You know, and we all see themin our, in our feeds or whatever
your social media is.
You know, make six figures amonth or a week, yeah, Working
in your underwear one hour a dayon your phone without leaving
(45:53):
the house, and right, and it'slike people buy into that and
they're preying on these peopleand it pisses me off because
there's no shortcuts.
People are looking forshortcuts because they they one,
because one, they don't knowhow to do the work or they don't
want to do the work, so they'relooking for the shortcut.
The shortcut is buildingrelationships.
It's building a foundation.
(46:14):
That's the shortcut.
And it takes a little bit oftime, you know.
So like every once in a while,like you hear about Mr Beast or
some other little 16 year oldkid that sells an app and gets
lucky or something like that therest of us, it takes a.
It takes a good two to fiveyears to build a stable,
profitable business.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
I agree and I think, like you know, for the people
hearing that and going, I don'thave two to five years.
Yeah, you do, you do, cause thetime's going to pass anyway.
So you need to start like uh, Ilove the side hustle part of of
our podcasts, like startupsside hustles.
It's like build your attention,build your brand, build your
audience, post about what you'relearning about, because chances
(46:56):
are excellent that youraudience is wanting to learn the
same thing.
So, even if you don't have afollowing, learn from people
like Dennis, come and absorb,like the newsletter and stuff,
and then jump on a camera andtalk about it.
Hey, I just saw this great postblah, blah, blah.
As you're learning, youraudience is growing with you as
well.
And yeah, you do have time,because two to five years is
going to pass anyway.
And what I always say to people,like, if you need to pay your
(47:16):
bills today, like, start up aside hustle, right, go and get a
job, go on stack shelves,whatever it is I always try and
recommend don't do a job thattakes too much of your time so
that you've got headspace tothink about your real business,
but go and get your bills paidand build your brand and your
attention and start to actuallybe present in the audience.
And if you're shy, man, use it.
I did an Dennis.
I did an interview with one ofthe top YouTubers in the world
(47:39):
and he has a faceless YouTubechannel with 14 and a half
million subscribers, getting 60million views on a video, and
he's never been on camera.
It's like dude, you don't haveto be on camera to build.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Now there's AI printers.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Hey Jen and all of these amazing AI tools.
You can be anybody online.
You can be the hidden figurebehind the scenes of building a
multi-million dollar brand, justanything, and it doesn't even
have to be anything crazy.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
So in my act, like I raised a boy with autism and for
nine years I spent with her,like we, I raised this boy.
He had real autism, not like alittle on the spectrum, like
real autism, and so he watchedthese youtube videos.
So these people doing productreviews on Disney figures- yeah,
yeah.
And these kids were getting like100,000.
(48:29):
They showed them like, openingup this package, he goes we're
going to open the package nowand this is what it says on the
front, and this is what it sayson the back, and this and this,
and they would get like 100,000,200,000 views and they had like
dozens of videos.
They were making money doingproduct reviews.
So I mean, there's so manyopportunities right now which
will stop soon, you know, atsome point especially with AI,
(48:51):
because, uh, I mean we couldtalk about all this stuff
forever, but you know this, Imean like, when you create a
site, you need to index it, youneed to do SEO, you need to do
all these things blogging, uh,having articles with good copy
and all the links and all thestuff that you need to do.
Ai, I mean we used to have tospend a lot of time to write
(49:12):
that crap.
It takes a lot of time to writereally good copy and AI is
pumping out 100 articles in likefive minutes that are good
quality content.
So I mean, there's things aregoing to start changing soon,
and I even say, like what aunique, amazing time it is to
build an online business and youcould do it as a side hustle.
Like I said, what we saidearlier you have to finance your
(49:36):
dreams.
If you have to have a job rightnow to pay for your dreams, you
know that's what it is.
It's a means to an end.
Nobody sees the same job for 30years and retires anymore.
You're not going to do thateither.
It's like that.
That that's not how it worksanymore.
It's a different world now.
But so finance your dreams.
(49:57):
However, you need to do that,but you can do that, you know.
Hustle.
Do the side hustle and make afew bucks on that.
Watch your spending, learn howto invest intelligently.
I mean, there's so manyopportunities but eventually
some of the opportunity is goingto start to go away, because it
used to be that there were 2billion people online.
(50:19):
Now there's 5 billion peopleonline, and it used to be there
wasn't so much regulation.
Regulation it's starting tocreep up a little more.
You you don't need anycertifications or licensing to
be a coach, but you're gonna atsome point the government's
gonna want their greedy littlepaws and fees and certifications
and licensing and all thatstuff.
In the next 10 years thatthat's going to be a real thing.
So it's a unique opportunity.
(50:41):
If you're not paying attentionand diving in right now, I
recommend you do.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
I highly encourage you to do so.
I think you're right that theopportunity to be a voice is
going to be diminished over thenext few years because of AI,
because of the proliferation ofmass amounts of data coming in.
So if you can build even anaudience of 5,000, 10,000,
15,000 in the next six months,12 months, whatever it could be,
(51:07):
you have something unique.
You're going to be that kind ofspearhead as the rest of those
waves crash behind you.
So, man, I love it Buildingattention, creating
opportunities, setting goals,going out and getting it done,
building a life around yourdesign.
Dennis, I love your message.
Man, I love your message.
What's next for you?
What are we seeing on thehorizon for Dennis Barry?
(51:29):
What are we seeing on thehorizon for Epic Media?
Where are you guys going?
Speaker 2 (51:33):
You know what?
I really haven't looked thatfar ahead.
Epic Entrepreneur Media startedbecause I did what I didn
didn't do what I tell everybodyelse to do, and you always want
to begin with the end in mind.
Right, you need like an exitstrategy and I was building me
Dennis Berry, but I can't selldennisberrycom.
(51:54):
I mean, really I can't, unlessyou become like Tony Robbins,
but I'm not in Dennis Berry.
So so I can't have epicentrepreneur media.
I, I'm the epic entrepreneur,I'm the old ski racer, beach bum
guy who's built this life andso I love.
It's just my vibes.
So I built that and I'm reallyjust focused on that.
(52:14):
I love doing what I'm doingright now.
I, I don't know, I, I can't, Ican't answer that right now.
I'm in the moment.
I guess is the way to answerthat nice.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
You just You're having fun doing what you're
doing and expanding othercompanies or people that are
working with you.
Why should somebody come toEpic Entrepreneur Media?
What kind of business is goingto come to you and you're going
to be able to take them to theirnext level.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
My target is early stage entrepreneurs and
solopreneurs.
I don't like dealing so muchwith the CEOs and enterprise
level companies.
It's just not my thing, itnever was, but I like helping
people.
First of all, I like helpingpeople.
Speaker 1 (52:55):
Cool stuff.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, because we're all supposed to do that.
That's like human, and I likehelping people figure it out,
because it took me a long timeto figure out how to do what I'm
doing and and you know, thetruth is is like whenever you
start a business, you want tohave that help, and even with
the help, it's still going totake you time to figure it out.
(53:17):
It does.
I don't care who you are.
It it still takes time tofigure your business out your
niche, your offering, your feestructures, your exact
demographic, everything that youneed to learn in order to make
it flow.
It takes time, and so it tookme a lot of time, a lot of
(53:43):
resources, a lot of wasted uh,both of those things, and so
what I love to do is help peoplenot have to waste so much time
and money, uh, to get that jobdone, and so that's my focus.
It was like I want people tocome to me because I'm going to
teach them one how to buildattention.
I don't lead with my let mebuild your whole business thing,
(54:03):
because it's most people can'tafford it.
What I lead with is let's startbuilding attention.
Let me teach you how to writecontent that attracts your ideal
people and creates a buzz, andthen start building your
attention and buildingrelationships.
And we can do from there.
We do some outreach, from therewe create your funnel, we
create that seamless workflow.
(54:25):
You need to have a seamless,simple workflow and simple is
hard.
It's hard to set simple up, andso I like to help people set
simple up.
And so that means like what'ssetting up a workflow means it's
the point of contact to thepoint of purchase.
So if you're writing a post,that's the first point of
(54:45):
contact and then most people gofrom read my post to buy my
stuff and there's a whole bunchof stuff and that's called a
workflow in the middle and thatworkflow needs to be seamless.
If there's any hiccups, thenthey're gone and they're never
going to come back.
They're going to go findsomebody with a seamless
(55:10):
workflow.
So I like to help people set upthat workflow and it's not too
hard, but it does take youunderstanding of business, which
is that's my offering, right,and to have somebody with you
along the way.
And then what I have is EpicEntrepreneurs.
So Epic entrepreneur media ismy media website.
But then I have groups and oneof them is Epic entrepreneurs
and that's a it's groups.
There's about 50 or 60influencers and entrepreneurs
(55:36):
and we all support each otherand we have meetings every
Wednesday and we sometimesthere's five people, sometimes
there's 25 people, and wesupport each other.
So you're not doing it alone.
Speaker 1 (55:45):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
That's the most important piece is like we don't
like.
Don't try to do everything byyourself, because you can't.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yeah, you, you one person doesn't make a
marketplace, jim Rohn.
So you need, you need themarketplace to survive.
You need and and don't do ityourself Like there's to be a
member of something like thatEpic Entrepreneurs, to be even
tapped in as a subscriber tohear the commentary like you're
not by yourself.
There are millions of peopleout there entrepreneuring their
(56:16):
way to an ideal dream lifestyleand you get to be connected and
part of that as well.
Dennis, I love who you are inthe marketplace.
I love who you are on theplanet, and this has been a
really truly enjoyable time forme, man, I'm looking forward to
keeping in touch.
So, guys, I'm going to makesure that all of Dennis's links
are right below the show.
Reach out, say hi, let him knowthat you heard the episode and
(56:37):
some of the things that he'scommented to you.
I hope that you get to go backand re-listen to this.
Find your true place, point andmeaning on this planet.
Drive and deliver exactly thevalue that you have inside of
you out to the marketplace andbe rewarded for it.
And Dennis, again, man, thankyou so much for the chance to
come and hang out.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
Yeah, thank you.
I would like to do it againsometime, because I think we can
keep going.
Speaker 1 (57:01):
I think so too's.
Let's do a follow.
I think this would be a greatthing to uh, to move forward
with people.
I love it, man.
Thank you, bud.
Take care, we'll speak soon.
Speaker 2 (57:08):
All right, adios cheers man.
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