January 17, 2026 • 30 mins
Zach Colman is the Founder of Creatitive a successful GRIT-Focused Branding Agency and expert in personal and corporate branding. He has helped countless professional athletes personal brands and athletic-driven corporate brands build mindsets and help them build their brands around community. Zach website: https://creatitive.com Show notes: https://successgrid.net/sg250/ If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to https://ratethispodcast.com/successgrid
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hallo, I welcome to the Success Great Podcast with also Santali.
I am excited to introduce you to a series of
conversations with some of the most successful and sparing individuals
from various industries. My aim is to dive into their
stories behind their success and explore the knowledge, strategiest, habits, mindsets,
and wisdom that have propelled their success. Each hibishud of
(00:21):
the Success Great Podcast will feature a different guest who
will share their unique journey, the challenges they faced, and
the reasons they have learned along the way. I would
also be covering topics from entrepreneurship and innovation to leadership
and personal development. Whether you are inspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned
business profession or just someone looking to improve your life,
(00:41):
the Success Great Podcast is for you. My goal is
to bring you valuable insights and inspiration that will help
you achieve your own success in business and life. So
get ready to learn and be inspired. The Success de
Great Podcast starts now. We are going to be talking
about the true meaning of success. My guest in this
episode his name is Zachary Coleman.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Zach is the founder of a Creative, a Successful Great
focused branding agency and an expert in personal corporate branding,
he has helped countess professional athletes, personal brands, and athletic
driven corporate brands build mindsets and help them build their
brands around a community. Zach, I am so glad that
(01:25):
you are joining me for this one here on the
Success Great Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Welcome, thank you, thank you for having me on. I
appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Awesome to So this is the Success Great Podcast. We
are going to be talking about success, what does it mean?
The true meaning of success? So this could be argumentative,
I guess so big topic means a lot of things
to a lot of people. But first things first, what
does success means to you? And what do you see
(01:52):
other people have misconceptions around success? Let's start from there.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah, so, you know, I think that's overall, it's gonna
be a tricky question, right is because I think that
every single human being on this planet has certain milestones
that they go through in life where success can pivot
me myself. You know, I grew up, you know, not
feeling very seen and heard by the people around me,
(02:20):
and so as I continue to grow my business, I
think I'm not going to say fell into the trap,
but I kind of got to the point where I
had like an identity crisis. You know, I got to
a point where I was like, you know, the true
meaning of success for me is I have to reach
it to that million. I have to reach it to
that two million, I have to reach it to ten million,
twenty million, and it's it's it's I think it's very common,
and it's still something that a lot of people thrive for.
(02:44):
And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with
thriving to make a good top line. But I've I've
kind of got to the point where I saw this
correlation between business development and where businesses are with mindset
issue what got me to where I was was no
longer getting me to where I needed to be. I
(03:06):
have two young children, I have a third one that's
going to be born here in just funny enough, like
three days, and that with a correlation with meeting in
a value death period in the business, I was clashing
with myself and I was like so much in the office,
I was working nine ten hours a day trying to
do the whole you know, hustle culture type atmosphere, like
(03:27):
I have to beat my competitors, I have to do
this and I had to really put it on myself
to kind of look at myself and be like, you
know what, why am I thriving for this invisible number
of And it came back to that feeling of being
unseen and unheard, right I was, I was. I have
this premise of thinking that, oh, me being able to
(03:48):
have a bank account with multiple millions of dollars in
it is somehow going to prove to everyone else that
I made it when they were they didn't see me
when I was younger, right, And so I think, like
you said, it's controversial because I think a lot of
people still somewhat are in that mindset. And there's nothing
wrong if your lower class or your middle class and
you're still thriving to move up in the game, but uh,
within the business or what you're doing. But at the
(04:11):
end of the day, I love my family and I'd
rather work five hours a day and work smart than
you know, work nine ten hours a day. And funny enough,
it was those KPIs of going back and looking at
myself and working on myself that actually are helping me
make more money because now I'm not, you know, burnt
(04:31):
out all the time. I'm looking at different things that
are going to help me make it to the next
level and not just trying to sit behind a desk
all day and rasp at every little possible thing to
try to make me happy.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Usually some some people, not some people. Other people. When
say someone is successful, July refers to money like you're
talking about also, And then the same time this this
person is lucky, and that she's loocky and he's lucky.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Luck exists in success, I do. I I mean, there's
always a little bit of luck. But at the end
of the day, it comes down to this, it's connection.
And so, you know, you hear a lot of people,
you hear a lot of people will say something along
the lines of, if you want to make a million dollars,
you have to put yourself around the people that make
million dollars. You want to make ten million, have to
put yourself around those people. But the funny thing, the
(05:22):
funny thing is is the way that people evolve and
change and grow is that they may not just be
ready to connect with those types of people yet. And
so I'm all about I'm all about like, hey, like
you know, when you start connecting with yourself more and
you start understanding who you are and what you truly
want out of your life, you're going to start attracting
(05:45):
people that have a very like minded personality. So, and
that comes around the things you do, the actions you take,
the way you act. It's basically fundamentals of branding, right
like how do you work on yourself to make sure
that your meaning of success? And then you will start
(06:06):
connecting with those types of people. So when you hear
about luck and you hear about people saying, oh, you know,
like I got lucky enough to be get connected with
this person and they liked me, Well, it's because of
all the wisdom and the way that you connect with
that person that's probably going to allow the situation to arise.
(06:27):
For instance, we'll look at the entertainment industry. You look
at you know, you look at you know, there's a
lot of there's a lot of actors out there. They'll
be like, it's a huge luck game. But you know
a lot of times it's the way you act, the
way you treat certain people, and the way you are
with yourself that's going to allow you to connect with
that person. That's going to allow you to connect with
that other person. And so I do think there's always
(06:50):
going to be a sense of luck some certain person
walks into the room. But I'm a very I'm a
very big person now on energy and the energy that
we put out into the world. That things that we
do for other people and the things that we do
to help our society as a community as a whole
is something that's going to help push you towards the
direction that you're meant to go.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I love that, like you mentioned community, which is important,
and the connections which are important, and also you mention
the energy because generally, as humans, we have these bad days, right,
we all do, but like we have to even when
these days come, we have to try. I don't want
to fake it till you make it kind of positive way,
(07:33):
but be at least authentic and try to be energetic
towards other people and true to them because when they
see the true self of you, they will appreciate you
for that and they will have you will have certain
kinds of connection with them. Because generally in business, the
way I see it, it's mainly three things to me.
(07:54):
I know, I'm gonna tell tell you what they are,
and I think you might agree. So first thing is
skills and passions to solve problems. Second thing is the relationships,
and it's both ways who you know and who knows you,
and it's bitter to be aligned with these people. It's
good to know as much as you can. That's good,
but if it's aligned, that's bitter. The third is serving
(08:17):
and added value to people, and you do that in
multiple ways and going to the scale, which is silly.
So how do you see that?
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah, no, I would one hundred percent agree with you
on all those things. And I think that, you know,
there's a time as a business owner. You know, I
remember when I first started in business, I was just
scraping by. I was trying to get all these you know,
different jobs, just so I could, you know, start growing.
And then I got to a point where I realized, well,
maybe this mindset stuff is actually something, right, Like, maybe
(08:50):
this whole going in this energy situation is something. And
I was just not ready yet to see that because
I was it was all about the hustle and bustle.
You talk a lot about value, right, I consider value
very similar to our contribution pillar. Yeah, Like a lot
of people think when they hear about the word contribution,
they're like, hey, I'm just going to go out there
(09:12):
and you know, help help someone for free. I don't.
I don't consider that at all. I consider it more
like the who right, Like, you're going out there and
you're contributing to a certain a certain type of community
that you feel like you can contribute to the best
way you can if you can sell value to them.
There's nothing wrong with that because you know that you're
(09:32):
putting enough heart and energy into vision of building around
that community that it's going to You're going to be
able to make it to that next level because of that.
And so I would say that all of your pillars, yeah,
I think those are definitely one hundred percent something that
every person should take into consideration.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
How would you define the word community blending because there
might be like a personal brand for example, and the
business brand. So which one is it?
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I would say, you know, at the end of the day,
I think we all, especially in this day and age
of personal branding and everyone thinking they can do it
on their own, I think that there's a huge misconception there.
I think that leaders are brands. You know they are
when you build a business. When you build a business,
you're going to get to a point and I'll just
(10:23):
use this as an example. And I may be a
little bit biased because I see this on a daily
basis because I do marketing for a living, But I
can tell how good the organization is and how well
the leadership is just by looking at their marketing collateral,
because I look at it and I'm like, well, this
person doesn't care anything about, like you said, building the vision,
(10:45):
building a solid product around what they're doing, or communicating
that product to their marketing efforts. And so I would
say community branding is actually a step that you can
take if you're a person brand, or you're or you're
a business brand. I like to think of it as
in terms of going from a me to a WEE
(11:06):
to an US. Like usually you're a one man show.
Even if you did build, you know, a large corporation,
you start off somewhere and you are at this point
where you're like, hey, like I need to start going
from to a WEI, which really just means I need
to work with people, mostly internally, like the people that
(11:28):
you work with the people that you hire your strategic partners,
and I think that they need aigne with me. It's
back to that connection phase, right, and the values that
you represent, I think, is how you can go from
a me to a we. And then in US, I
think just comes down to your clients. You know, are
all three of you aligned aligned on the brand as
(11:49):
a whole and those three, those three pillars of the
individual leadership roles, the the the rest of the team,
and the client themselves. If all those are blind from
a braining perspective, I think that that's what would be
considered a community brand.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Like everyone utilized themselves to build the successful or the
success that they want. Like eventually, we as a business
we want to continue. We're in business because we want
to continue. We want profit. And people on the other
side of a spectrum want services or products that are
going to help them and save them and get them
(12:29):
to the resolution that they want from A to Z
as fast as quick as possible without the overwhelmed. So
building this community will help them, like make things easier
for them, even if they know they are going to
have to go this to go through this process of things.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, and I think going back to your sales and
selling value, right, what is sales? Sales is really all
about getting to know another person and making sure that
you guys align on the attribute. Money is really just
an energy, you know. Everyone looks at a dollar as
a different value, you know. And so it's funny when
people put price tags on things because I'm like, well,
(13:08):
someone over here may consider it this worth twenty grand,
where someone over here may consider hey, this this is nothing.
And so you really have to think about it in
terms of how are you able to help somebody where
when they are coming to you. I'm not saying our
friends by in means, but they're actually people that you're like, hey,
I could go golfing with that guy, or I can
(13:30):
go out to I can go out and have a
dinner with them and their family, and we don't have
to hustle and bustle and talk about business. We can
just enjoy life together and also work together. And so
and this is by no means saying hire your friends,
because I have a big thing against hiring friends, but
within the business, but overall, I think that that's really
(13:51):
what it comes down to is clients. In this world
of transactions and social media, it's so much easier for
people to build a community. The problem is people don't
use it to build a community. People use it to
people use social media, Google, whatever, they're using as more
(14:11):
of a transactional type situation. Let's get on a call,
you send me a scope, you show me the money,
and then we work together. I don't think that's how
it should be at all. You know, it's like, let's
have a conversation. What kind of animals do you have?
Tell me a little bit about your family, Like, let's
go like dig deep into your actual pain points and
the actual reasons why you want to do this. Because
I've seen so many clients come to me, for instance,
(14:34):
and be like, we want social media, we want to
do this, we want to do this, And I'm like,
you know that you're you're basically getting marketing fatigue, and
you're doing all these things because you want to be
seen and heard and noticed when in reality, you could
just be doing this, this and this and you could
be making a lot more money.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
You mentioned something that about hiring friends or maybe family members.
So do you think that's some think that's good or
bad for the business any business in general, or do
you think from experience, if you had any it's not
a good idea.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
I think it's a gamble. I think it can work
out really well. I mean, you see someone like Alex
Hermosi and Leela Hermosi, where one of them's very big
on operations and one of the very big on sales.
I think that when you can find two people like
that that are in sync and can make it work,
then I think that that's what can exponentially grow a business. Yes,
(15:31):
but hiring friends or even employees that were like, hey,
I want to hire one of my friends to come on,
I feel like it's kind of an easy way out.
You're not necessarily building a family within the business. You're
kind of building you're building a team. Just because you
guys value similar things and you can help each other
and work with them, doesn't mean they're necessarily or family right, Like,
(15:52):
I really do feel adamant about like part of my
shift and understanding success shifted from oh I need to
make a million dollars to oh, now I want to
make sure that my my employees are learning, my employees
are growing. And when you have someone that's part of
your family, I think that it's just or a friend.
(16:13):
I think it's just really easy for situations to be
misconstrued from a communications perspective because of that friendship and
because of that or that family member, I've seen it work.
It can work, but I definitely think it's a it's
a it's a gamble.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
You'll get to this point where sometimes it's nobody's contributing
because you feel, I know this person is a friend
to family member, he's not gonna contribute. So you want
someone who's like eventually any employee I guess working for
other businesses, no matter how they work, it's it's not
their business, but a family member or a crosse friend.
(16:50):
If they are not taking it slightly like one hundred
percent seriously, the partnership should not be happening. Especially like
you mentioned in your exemple, you want someone if you
are not good as certain part and sales or marketing,
you want someone is good at that so the business
can build up with time because you want this kind
(17:10):
of mindset in the team that's working together, and you
want the potential growth that's happening and skating for the business.
So now we talked about mindset and this is my
success is a kind of a mindset game. But why
do you think that we sometimes have this idea of
having all the time thinking about the zone of like
(17:31):
this is a comfortable zone I want to stay in it,
I don't want to grow personally or the business. So
is it something that there's a fear of it, fear
of success for the business, fear of success some people
my thinking that I can't handle the growth of the
business or my personal growth.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I think that goes back to what I originally said
at the beginning of the cast where we talked about
we talked about you have to let go of some
of the things from the past to be able to
mose a forward and what you've learned, because it's a
completely different way of growth, and when you really look
down to it at the at the nitty gritty of
(18:12):
the whole situation, I think that, I mean, you know
business at this point, and so there's these value of
death periods that you know happen. I think with every business,
if it's a two hundred thousand, if it's at a million,
I mean usually they happen multiple times. But there's this
point that happens when you're top line in your bottom
line change. If you're a personal brand, for instance, you
(18:34):
know you could be making five hundred thousand dollars top
line and be making a forty to fifty percent profit
margin because you have all these people on your team
that are more delegators. You know, you just delegate to
them and they just get some work done. Where you know,
if you wanted to make it to that next level,
you have to start hiring leadership roles, and so your
(18:57):
mindset has to be more focused on, Hey, I'm okay
with no longer making a forty to fifty percent profit margin.
I now have to make a ten percent profit margin
in the business. And so there's actually, I don't think
anything wrong with people deciding, hey, I'm gonna stay in
this spectrum. This is where I choose to be. This
is what I like, I want to have. I want
(19:20):
to have a business where it's just me. There's lots
of people that do that. But I do think to
make it to that next level, there is that fear.
I went through it. You know, I was like, oh, man, like,
I'm making a lot of money here. I could live
happily now for over twenty years, and I'll be just
fine if I decide to shut down the business. But
(19:43):
being able to shift that mindset and then learn and
continue to grow and know it could take two to
three to four years just to like make it over
that hurdle. It takes some It takes a lot of mindset,
It takes a lot of pivoting, changing vision understanding. You're
going to have to bring more leadership roles type in
type people in and and and that can be hard
(20:04):
for some people, but I see it happen within every
business multiple times that at least I've worked with.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
So now, speaking of that, can you like shows or
tell us a bit if you have a story about
building the community around the athletic a living space that
you uh, you have seen all to work with.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Yeah, and so as of right now is we're actually
kind of we've kind of went through our shift in
part of our growth period, I had to look back
myself and you know, funny enough, the pillars that I
created with the connection, contribution and confidence side of things
like that was part of my shift. And I had
to look at myself and be like, who is who
(20:45):
is Who are the people that I want to serve?
Who are the people that I can bring the most
value to? And for me it was gym owners. You know,
it wasn't just the athlete it's but it was more
so the gym owners. They were my community. They are
they are who got me pass multiple different rebrand periods
in my life, and so I would say, you know,
(21:06):
usually there's a spot, and this is particularly for gyms
that have you know, membership type membership type services and
offers aligned with what they're doing. They usually get to
a spot and the business will say about five hundred thousand,
which is usually between stage two and three of gym ownership,
where the things that didn't work in the past don't
(21:29):
work now. I mean, for instance, you know, Facebook ads
could have been great for validating your gym and starting
to bring people in, but now you're spending all your
time going from a personal trainer to being a glorified
sales rep. That's just you know, taking calls that have
no conversion and so you're basically just trading one job
(21:50):
for another. So really having to look at yourself as
a community at this point, and so we've developed a
system where we have kind of ourselves said, hey, what
is how do we get people either from stage three
to stage four of gym ownership, which is five hundred
to a million, or gyms that are at that expansion
(22:11):
phase where they're at one to one to two million
and they're trying to open another location or two or
three where they're like, hey, how how does our mindset
need to shift? And that is really at the end
of the day around community, how do you start built
bringing in a sustainable lead flow. And so we really
focus very heavily on one positioning, finding out whue who
(22:33):
their true audience is, Who are the people that you
like to serve the most that come to your gym,
and we position you around that in your services so
that you can start attracting much more like minded individuals
into your locations. Two is the experience share. I know
when I look and I go to a gym or
(22:53):
anything that has some sort of retention slash membership type
service that I'm going to look at Google and I'm
going to say, what is the closest thing to me?
And the only two things that change my mind from
going from the one one mile away to the one
two to three to four miles away is that experience,
that customer service, that that positioning right, and so making
(23:14):
sure that you are providing an experience for your gym
goers that really match the feeling and the vibe of
why they want to come and work out at your
gym to begin with. And so that's stage two, and
then step three of that pillar's reputation. You don't need
to do a whole bunch of Facebook ads, you don't
need to do a whole bunch of gimmicky marketing material
anymore like your past validation stage right now, you need
(23:36):
to focus on sustainability and retention. And so how do
you build that within the gym environment? Is you really
focus on your reputation management, focusing on your existing members,
how they can bring like minded people to your gym
through community building efforts, if that be going to a
trade fair, going to setting up a trade you know,
(23:58):
a trade show in your local area, down to as
simple as what we really focus on is the reputation management.
How do we get you so many reviews from your
existing members that it actually attracts, it actually attracts and
brings in like minded individuals into your gym. And that
is probably I'm not going to see the biggest bang
(24:21):
for gyms, for gyms in general, but companies that have
a brick and order biggest bang for their buck. But
it definitely is something that they don't have to get
marketing fatigue. They don't have to spend thousands of thousands
of dollars on ads. They can still if they want,
but I've seen if you want to be a healthy gym,
you need to really focus around that reputation and then
(24:44):
in that those community building efforts. And so those are
our three stages that we have to help gyms of on.
In stage three, in stage four.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Some some article of video, I was speaking of positive
underlying community for the business. The example I thought of,
I think, I'm not sure, but if you have seen
already the same that Planet Fitness, I think so a
lot of huge number of their subscribers. They subscribe for
(25:14):
three months six months a year, and they don't come
to the gyms, right, this is what happens usually. So
what they have done instead when you go to the
gym you see these images of bodybuilders, big huge biceps,
motivational codes and these type of things. But I think
they did the others think the reverse, putting things like
(25:35):
don't judge me, having TVs showing games video sports. Basically,
they wanted to only attract the people who would pay
the money the subscription, and they would know that most
likely that they are ninety percent I'm not going to
come to the gym because they are Basically, these are
(25:56):
people giving them revenue without that much of expensive fusing
the gym. So I don't know how you've seen this example.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Yeah, it's crazy. I mean there's so many some of
those bigger box gyms. That's more of a stage five
of being a gym owner because at that point you
have a corporate facility that has to worry about design
consistency and that in itself. Yeah, you would probably bring
social media ads back on and you would be doing
that stuff, but at the end of the day that experience.
(26:24):
Planet Fitness is a good example of I mean, I
think it's the most common example because they were so
out there with how the type of market that they
were going to reach on what the kind of goers
they want. And I'll be honest, I mean it's very
similar to you know, buying you know, we'll just say,
you know, I'll use it. Because we're talking about gyms
(26:45):
right now, Like workout gloves. If I'm going to buy
these workout gloves, for instance, first thing I want to
think when I when I see these gloves, I'm like, man,
I want to go to the gym today and use
these gloves. If I buy a bike, I'm like I'm
going right home and I'm riding that bike, and it's
the packaging and the experience of perching that and the
way it looks that really gives you that that motivation
to really push that experience. And gyms need to do
(27:07):
that too. A lot of them look very similar or
they don't put a lot of energy into the way
the experience on the inside of the gym. I mean,
what is what is the ninety five percent of people
go to gyms for the mental health? You know, you
do have five percent that go there for just losing weight,
(27:27):
but realistically those people it is a mental It is
a mental thing, you know, so you need to relay
your experience around it. And I think Planet Fitness is
a good example of a gym that found found its
place and said, hey, we're going to just stick in
our lane. These are the types of people that we
want to work with and help.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Can you tell us about the worst advice that you
have received?
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Oh, the worst advice that I ever received? I think,
I think a very common one that I hear all
the time. I think we've all heard it at least
eight times. When you're at a certain point, people say, oh,
just delegate just delegate that out. Just delegate just to
create a process and delegate because as much as I
as I delegate my my stuff and I have a team,
(28:13):
now you can't. You're going to be a business owner.
You're never going to be You're never going to be
one hundred percent outside of the business. And allowing yourself
to come to that realization so you can delegate more
efficiently and more effectively, and becoming more of a leader
and less so of a delegator, I think is key.
So that's probably some of the worst advice that I've heard.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
I think delegation is important, but at the same time,
I think that you're kind of like me sometimes if
it's like you don't feel like it's one hundred percent
how you want it, Like who can't release it?
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's that's the heart of a brander.
That's something I personally have had to work on a
lot myself because I'm very critical over the branding and
the design and the experiences that we provide for our customers,
and so I'm like that that's how we have to
show our stuff to our customers. But there's a time
and a place, right Sometimes I've had to learn to
take a step back and be like, all right, well,
(29:08):
you know, like do we really need to show this
in this way right now or do we need to
wait until we have a little bit more structure under
our belts before we kind of push that direction.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
So, Zach, what can I tell us some kind of
a resource book or a tool that you might find
beneficial or a book.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
That you're Yeah, so you know, I'm very big on
the book Grit by Angela Duckworth. I think that that's
a great book for anyone to kind of move away
from the hustle culture kind of situation and try to
get more into a perseverance of learning, trying, and growing.
We took that book to heart, as you can tell
(29:51):
by our tagline for our agency, Great and perseverance is
one of our values internally, so we try to live
by that on a constant basis. So I would say
that that was probably my first real enlightenment book that
I read.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Awesome, Thank you very much Zach for joining me for
this episode. New perspective and new insights into things and
success and now a community is the first thing that
you should look after, is because you actually have to
kind of give without expecting anything in return in general
as humans, So thank you very much for being today
with me on this episode of the Succestate podcast.
Hallo, I welcome to the Success Great Podcast with also Santali.
I am excited to introduce you to a series of
conversations with some of the most successful and sparing individuals
from various industries. My aim is to dive into their
stories behind their success and explore the knowledge, strategiest, habits, mindsets,
and wisdom that have propelled their success. Each hibishud of
(00:21):
the Success Great Podcast will feature a different guest who
will share their unique journey, the challenges they faced, and
the reasons they have learned along the way. I would
also be covering topics from entrepreneurship and innovation to leadership
and personal development. Whether you are inspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned
business profession or just someone looking to improve your life,
(00:41):
the Success Great Podcast is for you. My goal is
to bring you valuable insights and inspiration that will help
you achieve your own success in business and life. So
get ready to learn and be inspired. The Success de
Great Podcast starts now. We are going to be talking
about the true meaning of success. My guest in this
episode his name is Zachary Coleman.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Zach is the founder of a Creative, a Successful Great
focused branding agency and an expert in personal corporate branding,
he has helped countess professional athletes, personal brands, and athletic
driven corporate brands build mindsets and help them build their
brands around a community. Zach, I am so glad that
(01:25):
you are joining me for this one here on the
Success Great Podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Welcome, thank you, thank you for having me on. I
appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Awesome to So this is the Success Great Podcast. We
are going to be talking about success, what does it mean?
The true meaning of success? So this could be argumentative,
I guess so big topic means a lot of things
to a lot of people. But first things first, what
does success means to you? And what do you see
(01:52):
other people have misconceptions around success? Let's start from there.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yeah, so, you know, I think that's overall, it's gonna
be a tricky question, right is because I think that
every single human being on this planet has certain milestones
that they go through in life where success can pivot
me myself. You know, I grew up, you know, not
feeling very seen and heard by the people around me,
(02:20):
and so as I continue to grow my business, I
think I'm not going to say fell into the trap,
but I kind of got to the point where I
had like an identity crisis. You know, I got to
a point where I was like, you know, the true
meaning of success for me is I have to reach
it to that million. I have to reach it to
that two million, I have to reach it to ten million,
twenty million, and it's it's it's I think it's very common,
and it's still something that a lot of people thrive for.
(02:44):
And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with
thriving to make a good top line. But I've I've
kind of got to the point where I saw this
correlation between business development and where businesses are with mindset
issue what got me to where I was was no
longer getting me to where I needed to be. I
(03:06):
have two young children, I have a third one that's
going to be born here in just funny enough, like
three days, and that with a correlation with meeting in
a value death period in the business, I was clashing
with myself and I was like so much in the office,
I was working nine ten hours a day trying to
do the whole you know, hustle culture type atmosphere, like
(03:27):
I have to beat my competitors, I have to do
this and I had to really put it on myself
to kind of look at myself and be like, you
know what, why am I thriving for this invisible number
of And it came back to that feeling of being
unseen and unheard, right I was, I was. I have
this premise of thinking that, oh, me being able to
(03:48):
have a bank account with multiple millions of dollars in
it is somehow going to prove to everyone else that
I made it when they were they didn't see me
when I was younger, right, And so I think, like
you said, it's controversial because I think a lot of
people still somewhat are in that mindset. And there's nothing
wrong if your lower class or your middle class and
you're still thriving to move up in the game, but uh,
within the business or what you're doing. But at the
(04:11):
end of the day, I love my family and I'd
rather work five hours a day and work smart than
you know, work nine ten hours a day. And funny enough,
it was those KPIs of going back and looking at
myself and working on myself that actually are helping me
make more money because now I'm not, you know, burnt
(04:31):
out all the time. I'm looking at different things that
are going to help me make it to the next
level and not just trying to sit behind a desk
all day and rasp at every little possible thing to
try to make me happy.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Usually some some people, not some people. Other people. When
say someone is successful, July refers to money like you're
talking about also, And then the same time this this
person is lucky, and that she's loocky and he's lucky.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Luck exists in success, I do. I I mean, there's
always a little bit of luck. But at the end
of the day, it comes down to this, it's connection.
And so, you know, you hear a lot of people,
you hear a lot of people will say something along
the lines of, if you want to make a million dollars,
you have to put yourself around the people that make
million dollars. You want to make ten million, have to
put yourself around those people. But the funny thing, the
(05:22):
funny thing is is the way that people evolve and
change and grow is that they may not just be
ready to connect with those types of people yet. And
so I'm all about I'm all about like, hey, like
you know, when you start connecting with yourself more and
you start understanding who you are and what you truly
want out of your life, you're going to start attracting
(05:45):
people that have a very like minded personality. So, and
that comes around the things you do, the actions you take,
the way you act. It's basically fundamentals of branding, right
like how do you work on yourself to make sure
that your meaning of success? And then you will start
(06:06):
connecting with those types of people. So when you hear
about luck and you hear about people saying, oh, you know,
like I got lucky enough to be get connected with
this person and they liked me, Well, it's because of
all the wisdom and the way that you connect with
that person that's probably going to allow the situation to arise.
(06:27):
For instance, we'll look at the entertainment industry. You look
at you know, you look at you know, there's a
lot of there's a lot of actors out there. They'll
be like, it's a huge luck game. But you know
a lot of times it's the way you act, the
way you treat certain people, and the way you are
with yourself that's going to allow you to connect with
that person. That's going to allow you to connect with
that other person. And so I do think there's always
(06:50):
going to be a sense of luck some certain person
walks into the room. But I'm a very I'm a
very big person now on energy and the energy that
we put out into the world. That things that we
do for other people and the things that we do
to help our society as a community as a whole
is something that's going to help push you towards the
direction that you're meant to go.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I love that, like you mentioned community, which is important,
and the connections which are important, and also you mention
the energy because generally, as humans, we have these bad days, right,
we all do, but like we have to even when
these days come, we have to try. I don't want
to fake it till you make it kind of positive way,
(07:33):
but be at least authentic and try to be energetic
towards other people and true to them because when they
see the true self of you, they will appreciate you
for that and they will have you will have certain
kinds of connection with them. Because generally in business, the
way I see it, it's mainly three things to me.
(07:54):
I know, I'm gonna tell tell you what they are,
and I think you might agree. So first thing is
skills and passions to solve problems. Second thing is the relationships,
and it's both ways who you know and who knows you,
and it's bitter to be aligned with these people. It's
good to know as much as you can. That's good,
but if it's aligned, that's bitter. The third is serving
(08:17):
and added value to people, and you do that in
multiple ways and going to the scale, which is silly.
So how do you see that?
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah, no, I would one hundred percent agree with you
on all those things. And I think that, you know,
there's a time as a business owner. You know, I
remember when I first started in business, I was just
scraping by. I was trying to get all these you know,
different jobs, just so I could, you know, start growing.
And then I got to a point where I realized, well,
maybe this mindset stuff is actually something, right, Like, maybe
(08:50):
this whole going in this energy situation is something. And
I was just not ready yet to see that because
I was it was all about the hustle and bustle.
You talk a lot about value, right, I consider value
very similar to our contribution pillar. Yeah, Like a lot
of people think when they hear about the word contribution,
they're like, hey, I'm just going to go out there
(09:12):
and you know, help help someone for free. I don't.
I don't consider that at all. I consider it more
like the who right, Like, you're going out there and
you're contributing to a certain a certain type of community
that you feel like you can contribute to the best
way you can if you can sell value to them.
There's nothing wrong with that because you know that you're
(09:32):
putting enough heart and energy into vision of building around
that community that it's going to You're going to be
able to make it to that next level because of that.
And so I would say that all of your pillars, yeah,
I think those are definitely one hundred percent something that
every person should take into consideration.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
How would you define the word community blending because there
might be like a personal brand for example, and the
business brand. So which one is it?
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I would say, you know, at the end of the day,
I think we all, especially in this day and age
of personal branding and everyone thinking they can do it
on their own, I think that there's a huge misconception there.
I think that leaders are brands. You know they are
when you build a business. When you build a business,
you're going to get to a point and I'll just
(10:23):
use this as an example. And I may be a
little bit biased because I see this on a daily
basis because I do marketing for a living, But I
can tell how good the organization is and how well
the leadership is just by looking at their marketing collateral,
because I look at it and I'm like, well, this
person doesn't care anything about, like you said, building the vision,
(10:45):
building a solid product around what they're doing, or communicating
that product to their marketing efforts. And so I would
say community branding is actually a step that you can
take if you're a person brand, or you're or you're
a business brand. I like to think of it as
in terms of going from a me to a WEE
(11:06):
to an US. Like usually you're a one man show.
Even if you did build, you know, a large corporation,
you start off somewhere and you are at this point
where you're like, hey, like I need to start going
from to a WEI, which really just means I need
to work with people, mostly internally, like the people that
(11:28):
you work with the people that you hire your strategic partners,
and I think that they need aigne with me. It's
back to that connection phase, right, and the values that
you represent, I think, is how you can go from
a me to a we. And then in US, I
think just comes down to your clients. You know, are
all three of you aligned aligned on the brand as
(11:49):
a whole and those three, those three pillars of the
individual leadership roles, the the the rest of the team,
and the client themselves. If all those are blind from
a braining perspective, I think that that's what would be
considered a community brand.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Like everyone utilized themselves to build the successful or the
success that they want. Like eventually, we as a business
we want to continue. We're in business because we want
to continue. We want profit. And people on the other
side of a spectrum want services or products that are
going to help them and save them and get them
(12:29):
to the resolution that they want from A to Z
as fast as quick as possible without the overwhelmed. So
building this community will help them, like make things easier
for them, even if they know they are going to
have to go this to go through this process of things.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, and I think going back to your sales and
selling value, right, what is sales? Sales is really all
about getting to know another person and making sure that
you guys align on the attribute. Money is really just
an energy, you know. Everyone looks at a dollar as
a different value, you know. And so it's funny when
people put price tags on things because I'm like, well,
(13:08):
someone over here may consider it this worth twenty grand,
where someone over here may consider hey, this this is nothing.
And so you really have to think about it in
terms of how are you able to help somebody where
when they are coming to you. I'm not saying our
friends by in means, but they're actually people that you're like, hey,
I could go golfing with that guy, or I can
(13:30):
go out to I can go out and have a
dinner with them and their family, and we don't have
to hustle and bustle and talk about business. We can
just enjoy life together and also work together. And so
and this is by no means saying hire your friends,
because I have a big thing against hiring friends, but
within the business, but overall, I think that that's really
(13:51):
what it comes down to is clients. In this world
of transactions and social media, it's so much easier for
people to build a community. The problem is people don't
use it to build a community. People use it to
people use social media, Google, whatever, they're using as more
(14:11):
of a transactional type situation. Let's get on a call,
you send me a scope, you show me the money,
and then we work together. I don't think that's how
it should be at all. You know, it's like, let's
have a conversation. What kind of animals do you have?
Tell me a little bit about your family, Like, let's
go like dig deep into your actual pain points and
the actual reasons why you want to do this. Because
I've seen so many clients come to me, for instance,
(14:34):
and be like, we want social media, we want to
do this, we want to do this, And I'm like,
you know that you're you're basically getting marketing fatigue, and
you're doing all these things because you want to be
seen and heard and noticed when in reality, you could
just be doing this, this and this and you could
be making a lot more money.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
You mentioned something that about hiring friends or maybe family members.
So do you think that's some think that's good or
bad for the business any business in general, or do
you think from experience, if you had any it's not
a good idea.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
I think it's a gamble. I think it can work
out really well. I mean, you see someone like Alex
Hermosi and Leela Hermosi, where one of them's very big
on operations and one of the very big on sales.
I think that when you can find two people like
that that are in sync and can make it work,
then I think that that's what can exponentially grow a business. Yes,
(15:31):
but hiring friends or even employees that were like, hey,
I want to hire one of my friends to come on,
I feel like it's kind of an easy way out.
You're not necessarily building a family within the business. You're
kind of building you're building a team. Just because you
guys value similar things and you can help each other
and work with them, doesn't mean they're necessarily or family right, Like,
(15:52):
I really do feel adamant about like part of my
shift and understanding success shifted from oh I need to
make a million dollars to oh, now I want to
make sure that my my employees are learning, my employees
are growing. And when you have someone that's part of
your family, I think that it's just or a friend.
(16:13):
I think it's just really easy for situations to be
misconstrued from a communications perspective because of that friendship and
because of that or that family member, I've seen it work.
It can work, but I definitely think it's a it's
a it's a gamble.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
You'll get to this point where sometimes it's nobody's contributing
because you feel, I know this person is a friend
to family member, he's not gonna contribute. So you want
someone who's like eventually any employee I guess working for
other businesses, no matter how they work, it's it's not
their business, but a family member or a crosse friend.
(16:50):
If they are not taking it slightly like one hundred
percent seriously, the partnership should not be happening. Especially like
you mentioned in your exemple, you want someone if you
are not good as certain part and sales or marketing,
you want someone is good at that so the business
can build up with time because you want this kind
(17:10):
of mindset in the team that's working together, and you
want the potential growth that's happening and skating for the business.
So now we talked about mindset and this is my
success is a kind of a mindset game. But why
do you think that we sometimes have this idea of
having all the time thinking about the zone of like
(17:31):
this is a comfortable zone I want to stay in it,
I don't want to grow personally or the business. So
is it something that there's a fear of it, fear
of success for the business, fear of success some people
my thinking that I can't handle the growth of the
business or my personal growth.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
I think that goes back to what I originally said
at the beginning of the cast where we talked about
we talked about you have to let go of some
of the things from the past to be able to
mose a forward and what you've learned, because it's a
completely different way of growth, and when you really look
down to it at the at the nitty gritty of
(18:12):
the whole situation, I think that, I mean, you know
business at this point, and so there's these value of
death periods that you know happen. I think with every business,
if it's a two hundred thousand, if it's at a million,
I mean usually they happen multiple times. But there's this
point that happens when you're top line in your bottom
line change. If you're a personal brand, for instance, you
(18:34):
know you could be making five hundred thousand dollars top
line and be making a forty to fifty percent profit
margin because you have all these people on your team
that are more delegators. You know, you just delegate to
them and they just get some work done. Where you know,
if you wanted to make it to that next level,
you have to start hiring leadership roles, and so your
(18:57):
mindset has to be more focused on, Hey, I'm okay
with no longer making a forty to fifty percent profit margin.
I now have to make a ten percent profit margin
in the business. And so there's actually, I don't think
anything wrong with people deciding, hey, I'm gonna stay in
this spectrum. This is where I choose to be. This
is what I like, I want to have. I want
(19:20):
to have a business where it's just me. There's lots
of people that do that. But I do think to
make it to that next level, there is that fear.
I went through it. You know, I was like, oh, man, like,
I'm making a lot of money here. I could live
happily now for over twenty years, and I'll be just
fine if I decide to shut down the business. But
(19:43):
being able to shift that mindset and then learn and
continue to grow and know it could take two to
three to four years just to like make it over
that hurdle. It takes some It takes a lot of mindset,
It takes a lot of pivoting, changing vision understanding. You're
going to have to bring more leadership roles type in
type people in and and and that can be hard
(20:04):
for some people, but I see it happen within every
business multiple times that at least I've worked with.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
So now, speaking of that, can you like shows or
tell us a bit if you have a story about
building the community around the athletic a living space that
you uh, you have seen all to work with.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Yeah, and so as of right now is we're actually
kind of we've kind of went through our shift in
part of our growth period, I had to look back
myself and you know, funny enough, the pillars that I
created with the connection, contribution and confidence side of things
like that was part of my shift. And I had
to look at myself and be like, who is who
(20:45):
is Who are the people that I want to serve?
Who are the people that I can bring the most
value to? And for me it was gym owners. You know,
it wasn't just the athlete it's but it was more
so the gym owners. They were my community. They are
they are who got me pass multiple different rebrand periods
in my life, and so I would say, you know,
(21:06):
usually there's a spot, and this is particularly for gyms
that have you know, membership type membership type services and
offers aligned with what they're doing. They usually get to
a spot and the business will say about five hundred thousand,
which is usually between stage two and three of gym ownership,
where the things that didn't work in the past don't
(21:29):
work now. I mean, for instance, you know, Facebook ads
could have been great for validating your gym and starting
to bring people in, but now you're spending all your
time going from a personal trainer to being a glorified
sales rep. That's just you know, taking calls that have
no conversion and so you're basically just trading one job
(21:50):
for another. So really having to look at yourself as
a community at this point, and so we've developed a
system where we have kind of ourselves said, hey, what
is how do we get people either from stage three
to stage four of gym ownership, which is five hundred
to a million, or gyms that are at that expansion
(22:11):
phase where they're at one to one to two million
and they're trying to open another location or two or
three where they're like, hey, how how does our mindset
need to shift? And that is really at the end
of the day around community, how do you start built
bringing in a sustainable lead flow. And so we really
focus very heavily on one positioning, finding out whue who
(22:33):
their true audience is, Who are the people that you
like to serve the most that come to your gym,
and we position you around that in your services so
that you can start attracting much more like minded individuals
into your locations. Two is the experience share. I know
when I look and I go to a gym or
(22:53):
anything that has some sort of retention slash membership type
service that I'm going to look at Google and I'm
going to say, what is the closest thing to me?
And the only two things that change my mind from
going from the one one mile away to the one
two to three to four miles away is that experience,
that customer service, that that positioning right, and so making
(23:14):
sure that you are providing an experience for your gym
goers that really match the feeling and the vibe of
why they want to come and work out at your
gym to begin with. And so that's stage two, and
then step three of that pillar's reputation. You don't need
to do a whole bunch of Facebook ads, you don't
need to do a whole bunch of gimmicky marketing material
anymore like your past validation stage right now, you need
(23:36):
to focus on sustainability and retention. And so how do
you build that within the gym environment? Is you really
focus on your reputation management, focusing on your existing members,
how they can bring like minded people to your gym
through community building efforts, if that be going to a
trade fair, going to setting up a trade you know,
(23:58):
a trade show in your local area, down to as
simple as what we really focus on is the reputation management.
How do we get you so many reviews from your
existing members that it actually attracts, it actually attracts and
brings in like minded individuals into your gym. And that
is probably I'm not going to see the biggest bang
(24:21):
for gyms, for gyms in general, but companies that have
a brick and order biggest bang for their buck. But
it definitely is something that they don't have to get
marketing fatigue. They don't have to spend thousands of thousands
of dollars on ads. They can still if they want,
but I've seen if you want to be a healthy gym,
you need to really focus around that reputation and then
(24:44):
in that those community building efforts. And so those are
our three stages that we have to help gyms of on.
In stage three, in stage four.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Some some article of video, I was speaking of positive
underlying community for the business. The example I thought of,
I think, I'm not sure, but if you have seen
already the same that Planet Fitness, I think so a
lot of huge number of their subscribers. They subscribe for
(25:14):
three months six months a year, and they don't come
to the gyms, right, this is what happens usually. So
what they have done instead when you go to the
gym you see these images of bodybuilders, big huge biceps,
motivational codes and these type of things. But I think
they did the others think the reverse, putting things like
(25:35):
don't judge me, having TVs showing games video sports. Basically,
they wanted to only attract the people who would pay
the money the subscription, and they would know that most
likely that they are ninety percent I'm not going to
come to the gym because they are Basically, these are
(25:56):
people giving them revenue without that much of expensive fusing
the gym. So I don't know how you've seen this example.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Yeah, it's crazy. I mean there's so many some of
those bigger box gyms. That's more of a stage five
of being a gym owner because at that point you
have a corporate facility that has to worry about design
consistency and that in itself. Yeah, you would probably bring
social media ads back on and you would be doing
that stuff, but at the end of the day that experience.
(26:24):
Planet Fitness is a good example of I mean, I
think it's the most common example because they were so
out there with how the type of market that they
were going to reach on what the kind of goers
they want. And I'll be honest, I mean it's very
similar to you know, buying you know, we'll just say,
you know, I'll use it. Because we're talking about gyms
(26:45):
right now, Like workout gloves. If I'm going to buy
these workout gloves, for instance, first thing I want to
think when I when I see these gloves, I'm like, man,
I want to go to the gym today and use
these gloves. If I buy a bike, I'm like I'm
going right home and I'm riding that bike, and it's
the packaging and the experience of perching that and the
way it looks that really gives you that that motivation
to really push that experience. And gyms need to do
(27:07):
that too. A lot of them look very similar or
they don't put a lot of energy into the way
the experience on the inside of the gym. I mean,
what is what is the ninety five percent of people
go to gyms for the mental health? You know, you
do have five percent that go there for just losing weight,
(27:27):
but realistically those people it is a mental It is
a mental thing, you know, so you need to relay
your experience around it. And I think Planet Fitness is
a good example of a gym that found found its
place and said, hey, we're going to just stick in
our lane. These are the types of people that we
want to work with and help.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Can you tell us about the worst advice that you
have received?
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Oh, the worst advice that I ever received? I think,
I think a very common one that I hear all
the time. I think we've all heard it at least
eight times. When you're at a certain point, people say, oh,
just delegate just delegate that out. Just delegate just to
create a process and delegate because as much as I
as I delegate my my stuff and I have a team,
(28:13):
now you can't. You're going to be a business owner.
You're never going to be You're never going to be
one hundred percent outside of the business. And allowing yourself
to come to that realization so you can delegate more
efficiently and more effectively, and becoming more of a leader
and less so of a delegator, I think is key.
So that's probably some of the worst advice that I've heard.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
I think delegation is important, but at the same time,
I think that you're kind of like me sometimes if
it's like you don't feel like it's one hundred percent
how you want it, Like who can't release it?
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's that's the heart of a brander.
That's something I personally have had to work on a
lot myself because I'm very critical over the branding and
the design and the experiences that we provide for our customers,
and so I'm like that that's how we have to
show our stuff to our customers. But there's a time
and a place, right Sometimes I've had to learn to
take a step back and be like, all right, well,
(29:08):
you know, like do we really need to show this
in this way right now or do we need to
wait until we have a little bit more structure under
our belts before we kind of push that direction.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
So, Zach, what can I tell us some kind of
a resource book or a tool that you might find
beneficial or a book.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
That you're Yeah, so you know, I'm very big on
the book Grit by Angela Duckworth. I think that that's
a great book for anyone to kind of move away
from the hustle culture kind of situation and try to
get more into a perseverance of learning, trying, and growing.
We took that book to heart, as you can tell
(29:51):
by our tagline for our agency, Great and perseverance is
one of our values internally, so we try to live
by that on a constant basis. So I would say
that that was probably my first real enlightenment book that
I read.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Awesome, Thank you very much Zach for joining me for
this episode. New perspective and new insights into things and
success and now a community is the first thing that
you should look after, is because you actually have to
kind of give without expecting anything in return in general
as humans, So thank you very much for being today
with me on this episode of the Succestate podcast.
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