Simplify Getting More Clients (Interview with Chris Harder) [PODCAST 182]

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Do you find yourself struggling with overwhelm and burnout? Sometimes as a business owner and entrepreneur, getting clients and growing the business can feel like climbing Mt Everest. Business growth specialist Dan Kuschell thinks otherwise. He believes that there is a much more simplified way to get more clients and make your business grow. Starting with his origin, he shares how his family, sports, belief systems, and dealing with workaholism has impacted the way he does business now. As someone who has built so many successful companies, he gives great insights about overcoming scarcity problems. He lays out a simplified process of getting more clients, and discusses the differences between buyer’s culture and selling culture.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Simplify Getting More Clients (Interview with Chris Harder) [PODCAST 182]

This show brings you inspiration, transformation and leadership. We’re helping you connect the dots, see the blind spots and get unstuck. You can go out and get more new clients, grow your sales and grow your profits so you can have a bigger reach, a bigger impact and a bigger contribution. Thanks for making us part of your day. We’ve got an amazing episode for you. This stems from an interview I did with a new friend, Chris Harder, on his show For The Love Of Money. If you want to check out what Chris is doing, you can go check out ForTheLoveOfMoney.com. We had so much fun together that I thought I’d share this up close and personal interview with you.

Why would you want to listen to this episode? If you’re looking for a way to simplify your process to get more new clients, be able to get those clients in a systematic, predictable way. If you’re looking to create a buyer’s culture instead of a selling culture. It’s the difference between you having to chase or convinced clients versus you being able to attract or compel clients. We’re going to give you some of the insights, some of the wisdom, some of the strategies we’re using with dozens of clients. If you never want to miss an episode, go to GrowthToFreedom.com/subscribe. Enjoy this session. Read to the end because we’ve got a special resource for you that we’re making available for you. Check it out and we’ll look forward to working with you.

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Welcome to another amazing episode of For The Love Of Money. I am excited to sit down with a gentleman named Dan Kuschell. He is literally an expert in coaching people’s businesses to the next level. He’s got 25 years of doing this. He’s coached thousands of people from over 180 different niche industries. When you’ve coached many different industries, you realize it’s your system that makes people successful. He shares many parts of his system with us in this interview. Dan is a regular media contributor. He is always on ESPN, NBC, Speed, Thrive, Huffington Post, you name it. We are honored to have him here. He delivers massive value to you. Dan, thank you so much for coming on the show.

It’s a pleasure to be with you, Chris. Thanks.

I’ve been looking forward to this ever since Mike connected us. I know we went back and forth trying to make it happen, but what’s meant to be certainly happens.

For both of us, we demonstrated one core quality of most successful people, which is persistence. Persistence is the ability to go even though people are saying no. Persistence was both of our middle names on this one.

Persistence is the ability to go even though people are saying no. – Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

It was meant to be and we made it happen. I usually start with a series of rapid-fire questions. I’m going to start easy. Where did you grow up?

Detroit, Michigan. Off of Springwells and Vernor Highway.

Where do you live now?

Westside, Goodyear, Arizona.

Favorite quote?

I would have to say my favorite quote is, “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” It’s from Tony Robbins.

What is one of your superpowers?

Simplifying the ability for a business owner to get clients. In a steady, predictable way, non-reliant on referrals, non-reliant on networking, non-reliant on shaking the trees and personal hustler charm. Literally having an automated machine do it.

What’s one of your all-time favorite books?

Think And Grow Rich. Let me add another one most people have never heard of, but it had a huge impact. My dad got it for me as a birthday gift when I was in my late teens and this is all the way back in the ‘80s. It’s a book called Mentally Tough by James Loehr. It’s how to apply Sports Psychology to winning in business.

What is one thing that you’re afraid of?

My daughter’s twelve, my son is ten. I suffer from a respectable addiction. I have several addictions, but one of them that show up actively is my workaholism. The thing I’m scared of the most is that I lose sight of my boundaries because it’s easy for me to work twenty hours a day and do that for a year straight. I have this way of going about things and not being present with my kids. It took a near-fatal experience for me to shift into a better, healthier way of living. It’s easy for me to fall back. I am always constantly checking. Thank goodness my wife gets me and so she gets me to check in too.

Who is someone who has changed your life?

I’m going to have to say, my dad. My dad introduced me to personal development when I was ten. I went to my first event which was geared for coaches. It was a clinic in Michigan. It was in Ypsilanti at a baseball clinic, Eastern Michigan University where I got to meet the coach. To this day, I can still picture the manual that I got because there was a section in there that stuck with me. The section was called Positive Mental Attitude, PMA and it said, “Success in life and in baseball or in sports is more than 90% mental, the rest physical.” My dad introduced me at ten. He encouraged me along the way with personal development, working on mindset. I’m grateful for that support.

 

What is one of your all-time favorite accomplishments so far?

The past football season with my son. Being able to coach, being able to be present, to be able to pick him up when he needed it. Be understanding, not to treat him like the typical prototype coach’s kid and keep those boundaries. He’s a quarterback and so being able to call plays for my son and interact with him as this little quarterback. I remember one point we were having conversations. I was like, “What do you want to run?” He would tell me and I’d go, “Let’s run that play.” I was letting him call his own plays.

What’s one regret that you have?

I shared a little bit earlier that I’ve had a tendency to suffer from that respectable addiction workaholism. I’ve been in business rebuilding and growing twelve companies since 1992. I’ve been at this a bit. I would say at least for the first decade, maybe even twelve-ish years or so, I didn’t enjoy a lot of all that I had built. I’ve been blessed to build several seven-figure companies, multiple eight-figure companies. I bought companies, sold companies. I’ve certainly had my fair share of success. I’ve had three companies I had to bury in the backyard. The thing I regret is not enjoying the process more and enjoying the memories that I was building. It was like, “What can I do next? Let me scratch this off my to-do list.” I’m in a much healthier place where I realized that the to-do list is one thing, the not-to-do list is more important than not. The not-now list is important, but more importantly it’s about enjoying all these kinds of moments, even the struggles.

What is something generous you have done recently?

I would say I try to live my life in generosity. Whether it’s helping somebody who needs to have a door held open to donating time or donating money to different groups or organizations. Those are important for me and my family. My buddy posted a challenge to some people to focus for a week minimally on being able to be more environmentally conscious in your neighborhood. I took him up on the challenge. I was seeing paper in the street. I was actively trying to be a good leader for my kids too to be aware of some of the weird stuff that we’ll find out there. Be a good person and pick it up. That’s one example of many.

It sounds like you’ve got that family life dialed in. You said your dad introduced you to personal development at age ten. I don’t want you to feel like you have to date yourself, but could you give us a rough estimate of what year this was?

At ten, it would have been 1979.

The to-do list is one thing. The not-to-do list is more important. – Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

In 1979, this was not commonplace. Personal development wasn’t talked about the way it is now. There weren’t stages with the next great personal development figure up there. There wasn’t a culture of any of that. Was this ahead of its time for your father to bring you? Did this shape what you do today?

I believe so. My perception is that, first of all being an entrepreneur, owning a business, building and growing companies is the greatest personal development platform in the world all by itself. As a business owner, you’ll go through more stuff. I could use some other fancy language around it, but more stuff in a week than most people deal within a year. It’s like this compressed, collapsed time capsule that you’re in. The second platform that I found that also mimics that is sports. Sports are another great builder of these entrepreneurial-type traits. It’s performance-based. You have drama. You’re going to have failed more times than you succeed. You have to learn.

The actual act of my dad getting me to these clinics when I was ten, kids like me weren’t supposed to be there. My dad brought me along as a coach’s kid. I got to sit in and I got a ton out of it. I remembered there are all kinds of drills they were sharing for the coaches. I came back out of that. I studied this book. It became my Bible for five to seven years. My dad, moving forward, he introduced me to a program. He introduced me to visualization, which was also ahead of its time when I was fifteen.

There’s a program, you can go look it up on YouTube called SyberVision. They used to have it for golf, bowling, skiing and tennis. They had one for baseball, which was my sport growing up. I remember this SyberVision was all about how to tap into your subconscious mind for peak performance. It was way ahead of its time in neuroscience. I know that’s a new term, but I was studying this stuff all the way back in the early ‘80s. I didn’t know it at the time how fortunate I was, but you can apply visualization. As you’re reading right now, imagine or picture yourself at your peak. It follows a Picasso quote which is, “If you can imagine it, it’s real.” They found proof. This program was one of those. There are all kinds of science around this.

I was fortunate. Certainly, it’s been a catalyst. I’m a slow-learner, Chris. My wife even has said at times I’m a bull in a China shop 100% of the time, being this type A-driven personality type. I’m a little bit of a slow learner because I’ll go for something first and then learn my way through it. Whereas some people have to learn it first, then go do it. Whereas I dive in when I find something I’m excited about, committed to. Sports taught me that. Baseball, basketball and football were the things I did growing up, baseball especially. You fail typically. In the younger ages, it’s more like you failed six out of ten times. At the higher levels, it’s at least seven, if not closer to eight out of ten times. You have to learn how to deal with failure and make adjustments. That’s what life’s about too. It’s about adjustments. It’s being able to be flexible and adapt whether it’s being collaborative with other people, which is the ultimate skill. Tapping into other’s talents and abilities, not focused on the how or the what but the who. If you can tap into the who, which is a collaborative framework in and of itself, you can accomplish anything.

 

It’s fascinating the head start that you’ve got. Being exposed to all this, especially through sports, I can’t agree with you more. What was the first business that you started?

First business technically was a network marketing company. It was a skin care program. I got introduced to that. A little bit ahead of that, my sister got me a position in a direct response marketing company that, at that time, this is pre-internet if you can imagine back that far. This would have been in ‘85-ish or so. I got in this role and I got fascinated with the idea how you could put mail in and out and send it to specific people that you could choose who it would go to. In other words, targeting all the way back. You could target your mailer, then you could put specific messaging that compelled people to take action, if not buy. We would do this and mail. We did it on the radio. I got fascinated by the Psychology of Human Behavior and how people would take these actions with these things. Fast forward after a couple of years doing that, I started my first official company. It was my first seven-figure company, which was in 1992.

What did network marketing teach you about business? You’ve started many seven-figure businesses, many eight-figure businesses, you’ve sold businesses, the whole nine yards. Did you learn anything from your network marketing experience to help those?

The only place I was comfortable in my own skin or in life was on a sports field. If I was on a baseball field, you’d see the leader in me come out. If I was on the basketball court, you would see that leader in me come out. If I was on a football field, you’d see that leader. If you got me outside of that platform, I was this shy, quiet, introverted, self-conscious kid. I’ll give you an example. The biggest thing that had helped me overcomes a lot of my self-doubts. I won’t claim that I’ve even perfected that. I have insecurities, doubts and fears even now. Back then, what I recall is it helped me break habits. It helped me break old belief systems, which is the ultimate thing that we’re all working towards is breaking old habits, old rituals, old patterns, and false belief system to stretch ourselves to be the best of ourselves.

I had teeth that if you’d look at me back then before my braces, my parents couldn’t afford braces all the way back, I had to get my own, and so I did. I funded it and got on my own. I was self-conscious of even smiling. I would even talk out of the side of my mouth. I still carry that because I developed that habit unfortunately to some degree. I talked where I didn’t completely open because I didn’t want people to see. I had my great friends. You know how friends are, they bust on you. I had one friend of mine, he would call me 99 rows of teeth.

The ultimate thing that we’re all working towards is breaking old habits, rituals, patterns, and false belief systems to stretch ourselves to be the best version. Click To Tweet

That company I told you that direct response, as much as I was fascinated and fell in love with it, I started studying all the top experts back then. Tony Robbins and Tom Hopkins were my first couple and Brian Tracy was soon behind that. I dove into a lot of these self-education type programs. The owner of that particular direct response company told me, “You’ll never be any good at sales because people can’t look at you because of your smile. Your teeth are so jarred by.” You say that to a certain type of personality, he intends maybe me. You tell me I can’t do something, I’m going to figure out a way around it. I’ve got braces. I overcame that false belief. I know I had some of that. Another thing, my upbringing was one where we were poor.

At times my family was on welfare. My dad who worked for a big auto company was laid off a bunch. It was a lot of ups and downs. There were times our electricity was shut off. I had a lot of financial baggage, related to money or scarcity issues. These things helped me have a better version of what is abundance versus scarcity. The other thing that it’s done coming from these backgrounds, these are great places to be from as part of your journey. They’re not great places to stay. What could you take from my story? You might not be able to relate to any of it. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been. It doesn’t matter where you’re going. It matters where do you want to go? What can you imagine? Take that Picasso quote, “If you can imagine, it can be real.” What can you imagine now?

We’ve already heard how many successful companies you have started, bought, sold, etc. You brought something interesting up. You said you had scarcity issues and you had to work through those. We talk a lot about that on this show. How did you work through those scarcity issues in order to become as successful as you are now?

I would say it was a process. I would say that most of it had to do with false belief systems mindset. In one of my first books I wrote, I talked about this pretty regularly. I thought sports for me were going to be my way out of the city. In many ways, it was because I was fortunate to have some scholarships for school. I thought it was going to be much bigger. My bigger vision at that time was I was going to help my family. I wanted to help take care of my mom and dad, which I have been fortunate to do in different ways. Getting through those, I had this vision that I could do something.

 

I thought it would be one thing. It ended up being another. I still had to go through a financial education. One of the biggest problems now is the lack of awareness around finances. Simple things like saving money, credit card debt, interest rates. I had to learn those the hard way. In my history, I’ve been through bankruptcy. That’s no freaking fun at all. It sucks. That was a mistake and I have some regrets around that to a degree. Although it taught me a better way of being educated about finances and a better way of managing money. Fast forward now, I’ve reviewed 4,000 and some change businesses in the last few years. I reviewed their business, their model met many of them and their financials. Even some high-level people that are successful. The basics of finance, understanding profit and loss statements.

For so long I was intimidated, I shoved it over in a corner, suppressed it and didn’t look at it. I had this belief, “More sales will solve all my problems.” There is some truth to that, but it’s not the full truth. Unfortunately, when you don’t have the full truth, something’s missing. It’s not a 360-degree circle. It’s not becoming a PhD at some of this stuff. It’s getting an understanding, some basic fundamentals. I became a huge fan in sports of John Wooden, his practical psychology and his fundamentals that he used to teach. He would have his players come in at the beginning of every single season, whether they were freshmen, whether they were a senior, and anywhere in between.

They would come in and he would walk them through the fundamentals to start the year. He would teach them literally how to put socks on. He would teach them how to tie their shoes. I heard this from a martial arts teacher. I’ve heard versions of this from the late Chet Holmes, which are many people get focused on trying to learn and master thousands of things. When in reality what is better service for all of us is to focus on mastering ten things. Even better, focus on mastering one and then surround our self with the other complementary people who have mastered the other nine things, and now you’ve got ten things you’ve mastered.

Speaking of mastering and helping people master business, you’ve literally coached thousands of people from 180 different industries. You put any one of them in front of you, it doesn’t matter. You can help somebody with that. You said you help clients simplify their process of attaining more clients. Can you walk us through that? That’s an area that everybody would love to get better at.

It’s deep. There are layers of this. How do you take almost 30 years of experience? Many mistakes, just as a reminder. I don’t want anybody to think everything I’ve done has been a success because it hasn’t. I’ve had my fair share of failures. Ideally, I learned from those and then I can help people eliminate those. Many times figure things out of necessity. You beat your head against the wall for so long and you go, “There’s got to be a better way.” That’s been my evolution. As I view it with client acquisition, I see a few key pieces to it.

You have to learn how to deal with failure and make adjustments. That is what life’s all about. – Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

I don’t mean to oversimplify it but in many ways, I learned part of this Gary Halbert. The late Gary Halbert said that you only need three things in a business. I’m going to add to this a little bit. The three things that he said are: You need a product or service, you need a sales message and you need a delivery system. Many people overcomplicate, do way more things that are outside of those three. Those are the three key things you need. I’m going to add my layers to this building on Gary’s platform. As I look at where have I struggled in the history of my career, the companies that I had to bury in the backyard, they were the pit of misery. Instead of the other option where based on the fact that number one, the product, I focused on the wrong things with the product or service. What is that? We call this the BOTE framework. It’s a real simple acronym: Breakthrough, Outcome, Transformation, Experience.

Naveen Jain, who I got a chance to meet in a group called Genius Network. He’s funny. If you talk to Naveen, if you ask him, “How do you build a $10 billion company?” He goes, “It’s easy, just help 100 billion people.” He just says it as matter of fact as you and I like, “What are you having for that coffee there?” “I’m going to have the cappuccino.” That’s how simple it is for him, part of it because he lives in that space. The idea is like what is the transformation, the breakthrough, the outcome, an experience that you create for your clients and stay focused on your clients? Not you, not your message but the message to them. Like you, always focus on you. Here’s what it does for you. Here’s what it means for you. Here’s what the outcome for you will be. I’ve made the mistake of not doing that, focusing on BOTE for them.

The other part is the offer. You know how sometimes you go full circle? I don’t know if you’ve experienced this. You had something that worked and then it works so well you got freaking bored with it. You stopped doing it. You come back and go, “That was something that I could have, should have kept doing. That was working pretty good.” Here’s how I would simplify that. It comes back to somebody’s offer. What is an offer? We can have an offer that convinces people or we can have an offer that compels people. Another way to view it is what is your model around your offer? Is it a model or an offer that is a selling offer or selling model? Is it a buyer’s model, the buyer’s culture? Do you have to sell it or do people just buy it? By the way, we structure our offers, the way you structure your offer and will determine like, “Do you have a model that’s more of a selling culture or one that’s a buying culture?”

 

Fast forward ten, fifteen, twenty years as things continue to go the way they’re going, I believe that people are going to resonate with those companies that build their culture around a buyer’s culture. The companies that are built on a selling culture are going to be gone. I believe that in my heart. Here’s a differentiator for it to bring it to a level where it’s more than theory. Apple, people line up for Apple products and they’re more expensive. We’ll line up for it and nobody sells us these products. We just buy it. It’s a culture of buying. Starbucks is another good example. We’re not sold Starbucks, which is four times than a typical cup of coffee that you can get at McDonald’s. You look at a niche coffee company that’s one of the fastest growing and the only one in its niche, like Bulletproof Coffee run by Dave Asprey. These are buyer’s cultures, not selling cultures.

What you might say to yourself is, “Dan, I get that. How do I create my buyer’s culture?” There’s more to this. Do I want to give at least a framework to think about how do you create your amazing, compelling offer for people to buy it from you not having to be sold it? It starts with a couple of things. I’m going to use Dave Asprey as the example here. Dave, as I’ve assessed his company, I’ve gotten a chance to know David a little bit through Genius Network. Looking from the outside in, I see a few things. Every offer ideally will have these four layers in them.

Number one is what is the unique market that you go after? The key phrase here, unique market. Not just market. There’s a lot of people will go, do the avatar exercise, focus on your market. This goes beyond that and goes deeper. What is the unique message of what it is you offer? What is the unique method in how you deliver it? What is that offer? There’s more but those are good, simple starting. Let me give you an example of my assessment of Dave Asprey and Bulletproof Coffee, one of the fastest growing in the in the world.

Ideally, as you’re reading, you can connect the dots for your niche or your industry as it relates to how I share Dave’s story and his methodology. His unique market he looked at and said, “There are people who are in the fitness industry who love drinking coffee.” Most of the brands have gone out in the coffee and what do they do? They focus on people who drink coffee. He niched it. He got a unique market of fitness enthusiasts who liked drinking coffee. I’ve fallen into this trap myself. I still deal with this. The clients we advise and such, we run into this all the time. Here’s what I have truly found. If you can let go to test, call it a test because you can always go back to the broader market.

When you niche down, you attract more people anyway. You don’t think that that’s going to because it’s more of the scarcity thing. We all deal with it probably in one way or another. If you’ll let go, “I’m going to test narrowing it down to see what happens.” I can always go back and market to the masses, to everybody. Niche it down. What you’ll find is you’ll attract so many more than you think, it has been my experience. His are fitness enthusiasts who like coffee. What is his unique message? His unique message is simply getting fit while you drink coffee. Nobody in the market had ever gone to both fitness and coffee and combined them. Similarly, the message is unique. That goes to his unique method. How do you do this? You add grass-fed butter to your coffee.

You tell me I can’t do something, I’m going to figure out a way around it. – Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

Who would have thought that would have such amazing properties that it would do this? Lo and behold, he was the leader of the pack. Others have tried to knock that off and he’s added some other nuances. The core of it was based on adding grass-fed butter to coffee to get those extra, whether you got his coffee or not was irrelevant. It was that unique method that captured people’s heart and soul. His unique offer is called Bulletproof Coffee. As you’re reading, how could you structure your four layers of your unique market, your unique message, your unique method and your unique offer itself?

We have a client we worked with, his name is Dr. Scot. Dr. Scot was focused on helping chiropractors do better online paid advertising to get clients. He’s good at what he does. We worked with him and we have a process where we unpack and help people come up with this. We do it with you and we help you build it. While we went through this process, Dr. Scot came out of it. What happened is he went from serving clients. They were paying him $500 a month for the service, really well at what he does. He wanted to attract higher caliber, higher affluent and higher value kinds of clients who also appreciate him and his team doing what they did a whole lot more. We were able to rejuvenate his packaging this way with this process. He calls his process the Patient Infusion Method. Literally, he can guarantee you, he will fill your seats as a doctor for your small event. Conversion of those people did to new patients that are giving you cash versus relying on insurance billing.

When he made this transformation from $500 a month to $5,000, he hosted a small event. It wasn’t like he had hundreds. We were just getting started. He had eleven people come to his first event where he hosted. He did what he does, shared what he did. He got six people to enroll in his $5,000 a month or $60,000 a year ongoing program. He’s literally doing virtually the same thing he was doing for the $500 that he was chasing and having a hard time, because of his unique offering. Guess what he wants to do and we are doing as a client? He goes, “That event worked so well, I should do more of those.” We were like, “That probably would be a good idea. You should probably look at two, three, four, five, six of those a year instead of one.” He agreed. It’s on track. He’s already in less than six months of us working. There are many other factors we worked with him on, but this was one critical piece. His business has already doubled in less than six months.

The message is don’t be afraid to niche down, don’t be afraid to get unique. You have even challenged me while you’re talking. I’ve been thinking about the different verticals that we have. Are they unique enough? For some of them blatantly, no. I’m going to go back and revisit that. How do we make these more unique to truly speak clearly to the right people?

I’ll give you another example of a client we had worked with, Joe Polish and Genius Network. There were many different factors but Joe is already successful. He had built a stable, profitable company. He was going to be successful whether we had any role with him or not, let me be clear on that. When we came in I noticed some things that we could help with and we were able to help support some things. One of the things with Joe was not having a predictable flow of clients. The year before our company had gotten there, he had 37 candidates for his big program called Genius Network. It’s a $25,000 a year program, which is pretty solid. 37, it’s a couple of months for that commitment and the quality of people that he attracted.

Don’t be afraid to niche down. Don’t be afraid to get unique. - Chris Harder Click To Tweet

Most of that was based on Joe’s hustle, him going out to the events, traveling and doing what Joe does. I said, “There’s got to be a better way.” We looked at his assets, one of those being this key part here which is related to the offer. The other part was how you take the assets he’s got and build a machine to automatically, predictably create a steady flow of these candidates that will be there for him, not relying on Joe. We put these things in place. What we did is we were able to take it from that 37 a year candidates’ applications coming into over 100 a month.

He went from 67 members in Genius Network to over 200 and some. It might be close to 220 the last count. He has this annual event he hosts. Where that annual event, prior to this process is in place, he’d have an annual event that was most of his members and ten, twelve, fifteen people that would come. It’s a $10,000 event if you’re not a member. Ten to fifteen people is pretty good. With this process, this annual event sells out every year, his members are over 200, plus over 100 plus people. At last count the last few years, they’ve had these VIP Lounges, an overflow room. Those were also filled up too.

 

I learned this from an old dude from years ago. I asked him, “How did you get success?” Here was his response. He goes, “Here’s how you do it. Here’s how you build success. Slowly, slowly, slowly, then suddenly.” The suddenly is what people see. They don’t get to see that slowly and then they wonder what’s wrong with them. With Joe, I came into that situation in the right place, right time, and a lot of great assets. I was able to leverage them right. A little lever can move some big things when it’s done and put in place correctly. I was able to help advance that. Joe had twenty-some years of all these amazing other assets that I was able to help take advantage of and capitalize on. That’s the thing most people don’t recognize is there are many assets we have. Little things, little hinges can swing those big doors. One domino can tip over 2,000 when it’s done right. Where’s that one domino, Joe? Where’s that one domino, Chris? Where’s that one domino in your business where we can help you and we can help you create a huge momentum that takes it off of your shoulders?

That’s what everyone’s looking for. What is that one tipping point? That one adjustment they can make? Don’t sell yourself short in working with Joe. The details that you were able to work with him on made a big difference. This show is all about money mindset and millionaire’s mindset. I know you interviewed T. Harv Eker. You also had created something called the Millionaire’s Mindset. You’re definitely an expert in this area. I wanted to ask you a question about this because it’s probably one of the biggest things that my audience continues to work on. When you worked with T. Harv Eker, what was one of the biggest lessons you took from him? A lesson that we haven’t heard already?

I’m going to use a metaphor that I didn’t get from Harv. I’ll say that working around Harv got me to think of it this way. Bringing the two together, I first heard this also from Gary Halbert. It’s a really easy visual. If you pull out a $1 bill out of your wallet and you pull out a $100 bill. You put them on top of each other, you’ll notice something. If you hold them in your hand, you’ll notice something, a few things. I’m going to point out a few of these things. Number one, you’re going to notice they’re the exact same size. You’re going to notice they’re the exact same weight. You’re going to notice they’re the exact same color ink. There’s only one difference between a $1 bill and a $100 bill. It’s the message on the paper.

What is that message you’re telling yourself? The subconscious mind has so much more to do with our mindset around money or success than we probably realize. What can you do to start shifting your internal messaging? It’s an inside-out type of proposition. What are you doing to constantly feed the internal message of you? What is amazing information transformation you feeding it? When you call it a hundred-dollar messaging compared to dollar messaging in your internal mindset. Ultimately, you’ve got to be the person to do the thing that has to be done to take the action.

I remembered a question you asked me. I’ve always worked hard. Growing up in a blue-collar family, it was ingrained in us. Building businesses in my early years, I found that I was motivated to make money. Obviously, when you don’t have it, it’s a big deal. I was hustling and grinding it. It seemed the harder I chased money, the further it got away from me. I wrote about this in my first book. I finally got to a point where I gave up internally. This was the big transformation for me. This ties in even with Harv. I was focused on the result, in other words, the fruit of my labor. That old adage, “Buy your fruits, you’ll know them.” My fruit was money or lack of it. The internal fruit, the seed, was not as solid.

At one point, I remember I was ready to walk away from business and entrepreneurship. I remember going to one of my mentors telling her I was going to leave the industry and take a break. What ended up happening was I let go of all my financial goals and I started focusing on me as a human being. I forget where I learned it. I didn’t invent it. I’m a person that if you tell me I need to read for an hour, I’m not. I’m bailing. If you tell me, “Why don’t you try reading for five minutes or exercise for ten minutes a day?” I’m a simple person. It has to be short, condensed, and consumable like these long drawn-out processes. They suck for me. They don’t work. I came up with this process for me that worked and then I’ve shared it with thousands. People seem to resonate. I use a journal, but you can write it on a piece of paper. It’s three questions that were the foundation.

I ask different questions now because it can get monotonous if you keep doing the same thing all the time for fifteen years. It took me a couple of years to realize that. It took me also fifteen years to, “I have control of this. I can ask different questions. Who would have thought?” The three questions that served me well may serve you as you’re reading and totally transformed my money game, which is, “What am I grateful for right now?” Leading with gratitude and truly living in that spirit of gratitude. The second question is what am I happy about right now?

The number three thing for me was critical because I had been self-critical. Meaning, I’d beat myself up if even if I was doing great things, I’d find something wrong that I did, etc. What did I do well today? I started noting five to ten things a twice a day. I did that for several months and then it went to once a day. I can share with you that I live in this place. Like you asked earlier as well, what are you excited about? Being able to go to bed with my kids, ask them one of these three questions, and get their feedback. Have them grounded and having a spiritual, whether it’s prayer or acknowledging a higher power. Your belief systems, they are such a gift.

 

There is something bigger than all of us out there. Being able to commit to serving something greater than ourselves is powerful. That switch of moving from me focused on trying to get money to be grounded, grateful, happy, and I’m doing great no matter what. I would say it’s probably the biggest thing that’s transformed my world. It’s not a business tactic. It’s not a sexy tactic. There are people and many different ways of shared versions of this over time. I can share with you if you all take five minutes a day and acknowledge these three questions. A couple of answers for each of them, your life will change.

Do you journal them or just think about them?

I will say that I do both. I’m not one of these coaches or people that go, “I do this,” and then you go hang out with them and find out they’re full of it. I’ve met a bunch of those. I’m sure you have. I spend probably about 50% of the time now, it’s in my journal. I do it 100% of the time with my kids before they go to bed.

“What am I grateful for right now? What am I happy about right now? What did I do well today?” The majority of people read a blog like this, they’re hard chargers. They got big dreams. They’re trying to get better every single day. By default, they suffer from the same thing that you talked about. I know I do. You’re hard on yourself. These are great questions to focus in on at the end of the day, middle of the day or wherever somebody feels it’s going to serve them best. You’ve given so much great value so far. I’m so grateful, Dan. Where can we find you? Where can we follow you? Where’s the best place to check into some of your expertise?

The best way to do that is we have a rotating on-demand training platform that we’ve built. It’s called The Unusual 3 Step Method To Triple Your Business – without more staff, more costs or more stress. You can go get access to that for free. You can do that at ChampionBusinessBluePrint.com. We found there are three critical things that most people seem to get stuck on as it relates to getting new clients. That’s what this particular one is all about. Getting new clients in a predictable way and taking you behind the veil.

Number one, we show you how to leverage millions of dollars in research. Where you can quickly and easily create your winning sales model in your niche in twenty minutes or less, and it’s free. It also shows you and uncovers how did they mystify? How to do that with paid traffic? I’m a big advocate of using paid traffic. If you can make paid traffic work, even in small amounts, it makes it that much easier for referrals and joint ventures. Strategy number two, this one is more tactical. We have stumbled into something and it’s called The Unique Mini-Series Traffic Method. That will bring you perfect clients without requiring a website, without requiring a big risk, and you can test it for less than $20. I am shocked and surprised to this day how well it is working. You can build audiences for pennies on the dollar in this unique, fun, compelling way using this mini-series traffic method.

The third strategy is how to use the unusual. We call it The Underground Interview Method. What it does is it brings you sales without you feeling like you’re being salesy. Without you feeling like you’re being slimy like you have to sell your soul. Here’s a little hint. What we’re doing right now is a version of it. The most successful people in the world utilize this. Oprah uses this strategy. A guy named Colin Cowherd in sports uses this strategy. A lot of the top most successful people around use this strategy. There are a couple little nuances that can transform the game for you when you do it correctly, and it can mean a lot. We’ve put this unique interview method in place where we were able to have customer service people become top performers in what would traditionally be considered a sales company.

That is definitely one of those much-needed tactical things. It’s not just one of these hype things. I love these questions because we try and link generosity with success. We try and link the fact that when good people make good money, they do great things. We also try and encourage people to come up with new ways to give back. What is one of your all-time favorite moments of giving?

Having the ability to contribute to Richard Branson’s foundation was a big honor and privilege to participate with Virgin Unite. A collaborative thing Joe Polish and Yanik Silver set up many times over the years. Another one has been the Boys & Girls Club of The East Valley in Phoenix. I had a group of people in our company set up a fundraiser. We were able to raise a whole bunch of money for kids over a few years. Another one that’s a fun experience for you to do with your team, with your family, is donating time to Habitat for Humanity. A lot of people in need out there with homes or lack of homes and you can go build a home. There’s this bonding experience that happens in this act of service. Those are a couple. Plus, I would say I was good to my wife. That’s always a good thing.

Why should people be unapologetic about their pursuit of wealth and success?

In my opinion, it’s go forth and prosper at this point. We’re built to serve and the ultimate service is contribution. As a business owner, an entrepreneur, we create opportunities, we create jobs, and we create momentum. We talked about create an ultimate personal development. I believe, for our teams even, we’re leading by example. It’s in my opinion a demonstration of being a servant and service leader by doing what we do as an entrepreneur. The byproducts, I heard this from Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach, “Money earned ethically is simply a byproduct of value creation.”

You gave a lot of value. Dan, I can’t thank you enough. When I say you have a lot of value, you really did. You loaded us up with actionable tips, good stories. I can’t say thank you enough.

It’s been a pleasure, Chris. Thank you. I look forward to us being able to help each other more down the road too.

Thanks for being here. If you loved this episode and know of someone else who is as successful as they are generous, please pass them on to me. It would mean the world to me if you help me get this cause and this message out to as many readers as I can. Please, if you liked what you heard, it goes a long way if you take 30 seconds, leave me a five-star review and share this with your friends. I’ll be forever grateful. Until the next episode, cheers to your success.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Dan Kuschell on For The Love Of Money
• ForTheLoveOfMoney.com
• For The Love Of Money
• Think And Grow Rich
• Mentally Tough
• SyberVision
• John Wooden
• Naveen Jain
• Genius Network
• Bulletproof Coffee
• Dr. Scot
• Joe Polish
• Harv Eker on Growth To Freedom episode
• ChampionBusinessBluePrint.com
• Virgin Unite
• Boys & Girls Club of The East Valley
• Habitat for Humanity

About Dan Kuschell

Dan is a husband, dad, serial entrepreneur and angel investor.  He’s the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Breakthrough3X. He helps business owners like you connect the dots, see the blind-spots, and get unstuck, by helping you implement unique sales and marketing systems so you get more clients, growth, and profits and have a bigger impact, reach, and contribution.

With over 25 years of business experience, he’s started 11+ companies, coached over 5,329 business owners from over 180 niche industries, 9 countries, and had clients and partners like Joe Polish, Dean Graziosi, Genius Network, and more. He’s bought and sold multiple companies, is a regular media contributor, hosts his own radio show, and been a guest featured on multiple TV, radio, print, and online publications (like ESPN, NBC, Speed, Thrive, Huffington Post, and more).

He was recently rated as one of the top 25 Influencers by Influencive and his podcast was recommended for Ultra Lean Businesses in Forbes.