Three Questions to Base All Your Decisions Around | 373

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Dan Kuschell

October 24, 2022

Dan Kuschell is a husband, dad, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor. He runs Breakthrough3X, a company that gives you instant access to a Fractional CMO Team. Breakthrough3X helps founders and CEOs grow their businesses 3 to 10x and generate more clients daily with a simple system that gets them free from the day-to-day. Dan has owned 12 companies since 1992, building multiple businesses with revenues exceeding eight figures before selling. He is also the host of the Growth to Freedom podcast, where he interviews industry leaders and experts in a variety of fields.


Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • Dan Kuschell shares how Breakthrough3X consults entrepreneurs and how he began advising
  • How Dan acquired and sold 11 companies
  • Marketing and sales strategies for creating authority and client trust
  • The importance of trust and respect in business relationships
  • Dan’s model for helping businesses maximize revenue and generate new clients
  • Three questions for formulating business decisions
  • Dan explains his personal and professional goals

In this episode…

Have you reached an impasse in your entrepreneurial journey? Encountering dilemmas during business growth is confusing and unsettling. So, how can you make effective decisions to determine your next course of action?

Business advisor Dan Kuschell says to focus on three key questions to identify opportunities — Who are you? What do you want? and What are your core values? During a health scare that impacted his business operations significantly, Dan identified his desires and values and honed his leadership style. By displaying introspection, you can rebuild yourself and your business to continue making an impact.

In today’s episode of Growth to Freedom, Matt Wolfe and Joe Fier of The Hustle & Flowchart Podcast chat with business advisor Dan Kuschell about effective entrepreneurial decision-making. Dan shares marketing and sales strategies for creating authority and client trust, his model for helping businesses maximize revenue and generate clients, and three critical questions for formulating business decisions.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode…

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com.

Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall in growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com.

In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:03

Welcome to growtofreedom.com, the show that brings you inspiration, transformation and leadership, we’re helping you connect the dots, see the blind spots, and get unstuck. So you can go out and generate more leads more sales, more profits. More importantly, so you can go out and have a bigger reach a bigger impact and make a bigger contribution.

Matt Wolfe  0:25

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, what’s up, everybody? You’re listening to TheHustle & FlowchartPodcast, when you boil my fear. kickin it old school.

Joe Fier  0:38

Old school. All right, you’re in for a treat today. I know we were when we spoke to this fine gentleman out of Phoenix, Dan Kuschell. This guy’s amazing. He, I don’t even know where to start. But essentially, if you want to think deeper about your business, and systemize a lot of the stuff, we’re not just talking like tools and tactics, and blah, blah, blah. But like real deep thinking, and ways to like reframe what you’re doing in business, you are in for a treat, for sure.

Matt Wolfe  1:08

Absolutely. So this this guy that we’re talking to Dan Kuschell, he’s started over 11 businesses, exited a bunch of them, some of them for eight figures. He goes and helps tons of other business owners do very similar things in their business and helps build systems and help grow these other businesses. He’s got a podcast, a killer podcast called Growth to Freedom. This guy is just on top of it and doing some really enormous stuff in the world.

Joe Fier  1:36

Yeah, I mean, he’s just amazing. And we just go down a lot of paths. But really, the impact is, at least for us. And our experience is the three questions he brings up. And these are three questions that Dan uses when he’s approaching things in life, essentially. But there are three key things that he pretty much lives by. And hint, it’s not make more money. So those questions are going to be asked, not really of you, but I highly recommend you jot those questions down. It’ll be in the show notes. And we’ll have you know, ways that you can you can basically dive into this but essentially do the work. And he actually challenged Matt and I he’s gonna follow up with us in 10 days. So baton nine. But these three questions are super powerful and and actually do them and spend some time because trust me, I feel like this is gonna reverberate into a better business for yourself. You’ll work a lot less and you’ll be happier.

Matt Wolfe  2:33

You’ll dig it, you’ll dig it. And let’s go talk to Dan because this is just an awesome conversation.

Joe Fier  2:37

get ready and get that notebook ready. Hey, Dan, we’re love how you doing?

Dan Kuschell  2:41

doing awesome, guys? Thank you.

Joe Fier  2:42

Yeah, for sure. No, it’s uh, let’s see, we met back in a New Media Summit in Austin, Texas A few months back. And that was yes. Yeah. What a blast. That was right. It was cool. And and I love the mastermind at the end. That’s kind of where what the 40 of us gathered and, and just kind of talk shops at some cool goals. And yeah, just it was just a good event. It was a whole week. So it was like immersion. You know,

Matt Wolfe  3:06

you actually said something at that mastermind after the event that actually had a pretty big impact on Joe and I but we’ll get to that later in the show.

Joe Fier  3:14

It was like a brief moment on the way out of the door. I think when you’re leaving I was like we need to get him on the show.

Matt Wolfe  3:21

That’s cool. So are you gonna be at the next New Media Summit?

Dan Kuschell  3:24

Yeah, in February I expect to be there God willing and you know it’s a great group of people Steve puts a great audience together and I think there’s a great way we can help contribute right.

Matt Wolfe  3:37

100% unfortunately we’re gonna miss the February one but then when he does the San Diego one a few months after that we’ll be back at that one too will happen.

Dan Kuschell  3:44

Yeah, tough life you guys have in San Diego you guys are beach dweller you get to hang out with guys like Roland and and guys like Steve regularly bi monthly. I mean, what a crazy world you live in a horrible, horrible life.

Joe Fier  3:55

We live in these crystal blue skies. In Phoenix isn’t that bad?

Dan Kuschell  4:00

It’s not terrible, either.

Joe Fier  4:02

You’re good. You’re good. Nice. Well catch us up. Because we don’t know. We know kind of on the fringes of what you do and what you have done. But it kept us all up. And you know what brought you to this point where you’re at now.

Dan Kuschell  4:16

Yeah, well, you you know how a lot of business owners guys entrepreneurs kind of struggle with getting a steady flow of new clients, right? Especially as it relates to running like paid ads, either online or offline. What we do what our superpower is, is helping business owners and entrepreneurs implement to be able to get a steady flow of predictable leads or sales or clients coming in. Leveraging, you know, paid media, referrals, create and creating systems so that the business owner can work more on the business and do it with actually with without more staff without more stress, and definitely in a place where err, it’s predictable. And so we have a lot of fun. But you my very first business I got started in the early 90s. So I’ve been doing this a while. And I got started because I got introduced to direct response marketing. Direct Mail is what it was back then. And I got so fascinated guys about, you know, how you could put like message on a piece of paper, or put it in a radio ad or put it on a TV ad, which is what we were doing back in the late 80s. And put that message out. And people would respond and literally respond fairly quickly, directly. It was why they call it direct responding, a direct response marketing, and actually buy your stuff. And I got obsessed with it. And I started learning, got several coaches and mentors way back then. And then I started my first company in 1992. And since that time, I’ve had 11 companies. And today we get to work with all kinds of experts and influencers and thought leaders or whatever, and help them grow and scale with less stress. So it’s a lot of fun.

Matt Wolfe  6:00

Wow. So 11 companies, so is that did you purchase some of those companies? Or did you actually found 11 companies,

Dan Kuschell  6:08

I found it 11. I’ve also bought companies and then also been fortunate and blessed to sell a few companies along the way. Out of the 11 that I founded and started I crashed three of them. So I had to bury three of them in the backyard, if you will. So I’ve been fortunate to learn from some of those mistakes. And then we’ve had a few of those that were, you know, high seven figure companies, couple of eight figure companies and have bought and sold companies along the way too.

Matt Wolfe  6:35

very cool. Was there any sort of trend among them? Was there any sort of theme among all these companies? Or were they just completely different niche industries and testing out different things?

Dan Kuschell  6:47

Well, I’m fascinated to test new things. But there are a couple industries that a lot is carried, like some similarities. So in the coaching industry, the publishing industry, consulting, right, these are some of the niches that we’ve been able to, you know, grow scale, and then help our clients really expand, you know, fitness, nutrition companies. Those are kind of what I would describe as our sweet spot. Because most people in those areas, struggled to a degree with their messaging or being positioned. You know, there’s like, for example, one of the greatest lies. I think that misleads a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs is this old way of looking at communicating, you know, this idea that you must get people to like you, and what trust you. And people following that old way? I think it causes problems, because, you know, the reality is, people don’t buy from us, per se, because they like us, they buy from us in the new way of really adapting this is they must trust us and respect us. Right? So in other what does that mean? It means that we have trust, and we have authority at the same time, right. And it’s that new way of really, you know, creating assets or branding, or you can even call it direct response branding, to position ourselves in the marketplace, to package ourselves in the marketplace, to then promote ourselves in the marketplace to create our following to create our impact have a bigger reach and a bigger contribution.

I think what misleads a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs is this old way of looking at communicating, this idea that you must get people to like you and trust you. I think it causes problems because the reality is people don't buy from… Click To Tweet

Joe Fier  8:21

That makes sense. So how would you? How would you then approach that? How would you create that authority in that trust?

Dan Kuschell  8:29

Well, there are all kinds of ways to create authority and trust, right? One, it’s just being a good human being that is also a big help. So, so there’s trust there having a good product or good service? And then how do you position yourself unique? You know, I love this quote from Sally Hogshead. And I’ll paraphrase it, which is it’s better to be different than better. Right? Now, if you can be better, great. But here’s the problem with shooting to be better. How many companies in your niche as you’re listening right now? Say they’re better? Like everybody, right? So by going at it from the perspective of trying to be better, you’re actually putting yourself at risk of being commoditized. So instead, why not position yourself to be unique or different. And then if you can say your unique and better, it gives you that double, double right, left cross, right, right, left combination, yeah, that creates power. So that’s a start. The other thing is, is really getting clear on your irresistible offer. And again, there’s a lot of depth to this. I mean, we could spend days in an event together and not scratch the surface on this. But you know, if you’re gonna if you’re brand new, and you’re listening to Matt, and these guys and their show, that I would encourage you one because how do you position yourself to be unique? Number two is how do you create your irresistible first your irresistible message and then your ears resistible offer, so, so guys, would it be alright, if I gave an example of like how I got my first company started? 100%? Yeah, so like, if you guys were business owners, right, or health club owners specifically, you know, again, this is all the way back in 1992. So if you guys had a health club, and it was independent wasn’t franchise zone, and you guys were kind of a mom and pop in that area, we’d come to you and go, hey, hey, Matt, if I could guarantee you that we’d help you add 200 to 300 new clients in the next 90 days or less, and it won’t cost you anything upfront, my company will risk and we’ll run direct mail for you. We’ll run TV ads for you, and we’ll run radio ads for you. And then when we profit from the sales, then we’ll split the profits on the back end, would you want to learn more?

Matt Wolfe  10:47

Absolutely. sounds sexy to me.

Joe Fier  10:50

I would love to see some case studies, maybe see how you’re going to do it roughly and then go forward.

Dan Kuschell  10:56

Right. And so what that is, is an example of an irresistible offer and an irresistible message, right? So you know, as you’re listening right now, what could you do to package up or position an irresistible message or an irresistible offer that essentially gets seven or eight out of 10? People that are your potential perfect ideal clients? To go yes, I want to learn more, right doesn’t mean that you’re going to work with them. It just means they want to learn more. And now you have to go through that’s the next phase, which is client selection, right? Here’s another common mistake that we see. People having a misunderstanding around marketing and selling, right. And I feel like I’ve learned this combination from two guys who I’ve one is has been a client. And another has been a mentor, which is Gary Halbert, the late great Gary Halbert copywriter, and Joe Polish, who runs Genius Network. And so they’re framing around the difference between sales and marketing, right. So as you’re listening right now, like what would your definition of selling be? Right? Or let’s start with marketing, what would your definition of marketing be? And there’s all kinds of definition years ago, when I first got started marketing was simply putting a message out to get people ready to buy for me. It was that simple, right? It’s a little different today. Right? See back then. And then 80s And early 90s. When I got my first business started, you literally if you could look at your marketing, you could strike a match call that irresistible offer message, throw it in the fireplace, where there are logs and you literally could catch a fire. In other words, people would buy your stuff in droves. Right? And you’d make have an immediate ROI many times very quickly. Today, because buyer culture has changed behavior has changed more educated consumers. Now when you strike a match and throw that match in the fireplace many times you don’t you don’t you get crickets, right, you don’t get a fire. So what is the approach? Does that mean marketing doesn’t work? No, it means what you’ve got to do is you strike a match, you light a piece of paper, you get a flame gun, then you put some kindling on that flame, then you get some sticks and put on top of that kindling. Now you got some heat, you got a little bit of fire brewing. Now what you do is now you walk over and put your law, right. So what is marketing today, and this is adapted from Gary Halbert in Joe, which is, you know, marketing is what you do to get somebody’s pre qualified, pre motivated, pre interested in ready to do business with you when they’re on the phone or face to face with you. Here’s another way you could look at it. It’s like field position in football, right? So like my son, guys, he’s now 12 or 11, my daughter just turned 13. So my son is now 11. And so let’s say there was a kickoff to my son, and he catches it at the goal line. And of course, a traditional field is 100 yard field. And he returns it five yards. And then he gets smacked and hammered and tackle, right. So he went five yards. Now he has 95 yards to go. So let’s put it in context, the business so in this example, his marketing got him five yards. So then what has to happen to take it the other 95 yards in the business model, sell it? Right. And today’s business climate really frowns heavily on a selling culture. What would happen if you would shift your model to become more of a buyers culture and how you can do that as effective marketing? Right. So another way to look at marketing is is marketing is storytelling. Right? Those companies, those brands, if you will, that tell a better story about their business or about their founders or about their people bought the buying experience, the breakthroughs, the outcomes, the transformation, the experience, are the ones who compel more people and build a bigger following build a bigger impact to reach and contribution right. So now let’s flip it to sales. What is sales so you years ago selling. You know, I learned from one of my early coaches, what is selling is simply helping people. Right. And I still believe that to be true today. But if we tie back into Gary and Joe’s definition, the context of it is, it’s what you do when someone is face to face with you, or on the phone with you. And they’re pre qualified, pre motivated, pre interested and ready to do business with you now go back to that football field position. So imagine like, you know, Matt, let’s say you catch the ball at the goal line, instead of my son, right, you’re a little bigger and stronger than him, you make a cut, you take it down the sideline, you make a Juke, you take 3540 more yards, and you get tackled at the opposition’s 20 yard line. So in other words, you took that kickoff, 80 yards, that’s your marketing, you’ve taken an 80 yards. Now you only have 20 more yards to go, what does that mean? You have less selling to do because the marketing created that field position, that authority that respect and trust, right? And so today, how can you go out and shift from the risk of a of a selling culture and have the reward of a buying culture the great companies like Apple and and Starbucks, if you think of those two companies, you know, they’re not selling us their stuff, they’ve created a buyers culture? Well, every business today can create their own version of a buyers culture by effectively using the new strategies of what we’re talking about with marketing and selling combined. And that’s that’s what we help people do.

Joe Fier  16:32

I like it would that would you say that someone’s like, creating a little ecosystem, like building a moat around your stuff, like, you know, your media, your content, your products, your offerings, and you’re all that marketing is just bringing them into that fold over the moat, we’ve given them a bridge to bring them into this thing where you can then do the selling.

Dan Kuschell  16:55

Absoluutely, great, great way to be thinking I might borrow that one as well. Yeah, great way to view it. And you know, and there’s, you know, not to get too far into tactics, another mistake we see a lot of people make in their business, they fall in love with tactics, oh, let me go run Facebook ads, and let me go run, you know, Instagram ads, and then those things all work. But if you focus on the strategy first, right, and what the purpose of the strategy is, and why and what you’re looking at, things coming go, right, today, you know, there’s a lot of people complaining at the time we’re doing this interview, that Facebook costs have increased quite a bit and more than doubled in the last year, compared to generating a client a year ago, right, I predict that it’s more gonna more than doubled in the next six to 12 months. Right. So the people who focus on strategy can adapt with that they’re flexible, they’re innovative, they can move to other platforms, and still maximize that opportunity, right, and talk about creating a great moat around the thing, basically, eliminate your competition, when you really, really get the strategy of this, then the tactics just become an arsenal, right? And when one tool in the toolbox is no longer valid, you just shift to another tool in the toolbox, or you have a series of tools working and as one become obsolete, you can double down on the others that are working.

Matt Wolfe  18:20

Yeah, no, I love that so much. I mean, basically, once you have the fundamentals, and you totally understand the why of everything you’re doing, why you’re running Facebook ads, the way you’re doing it, why you’re running Google ads, then the tool doesn’t matter as much, because you can move from tool to tool and use the same apply the same philosophies, essentially.

Dan Kuschell  18:38

Exactly. And then hey, let’s give a quick example of like, even just a simple, applicable way that this probably shows up for almost anybody, every week of every year, right? How many times have we gone to an event, guys where you know, someone asks you or me, like what do you do? Right? Or you ask somebody, right, and you go, Hey, what do you do? And then the person on the other end, they like Firehose us with like, a five minute overview of what they do, right? And how they help you, which is great, right? Well, one little like, and again, it’s not inaccurate to take that approach, like, you know, even give like the traditional the old style elevator pitch, right? And you can do that in like 15 seconds valid, but what if there was a better way and this is a simple strategic move, that allows the tactic of an elevator pitch to work better and then you can extrapolate this to 40 or 50 other strategic and tactical moves you can make in marketing and selling. So instead of the next time someone asks you as you’re listening right now, well, what do you do and you go off and you’re well pretty well prepared, you probably haven’t well thought out you’ve probably followed these guys’s approach and some of the other experts out and get a great elevated, but by just making one little three degree turn, like and here’s an example to see how big of an impact is three degrees or four degrees make well when I was As a kid, guys, my very first car was a used Plymouth Verizon stick ship. And it was, you know, this was a car in the 80s. So, you know, when I’m talking about a stick shift, it also meant your timing belt had to be manually adjusted, right? If that timing belt in a stick ship was off by even like one or two degrees, the car would stall, right? If it was off four degrees, it actually wouldn’t even run, right. So. So similarly here, this three degree to four degree turn in how you might approach someone even with an elevator pitch once the next time someone asks you, well, what do you do? Instead of fire hosing them with your again, well thought out probably, by the book elevator pitch, add a question instead of an answer. In other words, whatever it is that you do think of your client, what is the big problem? That is the big problem that your clients face? Now for my clients, my clients face the big problem of getting a steady flow of clients coming in every day, right? So whenever I’m asked today, and I’m going to use my example, not because I’m beating on my chest, but I want you to, but as you’re listening, view how you can turn this into your method, the next time someone asks you, so here we go. So someone says, Well, Dan, what do you do? Well, you know, a lot of people struggle to get a steady flow of leads coming in every day. So what I do is, and then you give your 20 seconds. So instead of answering with an answer, ask the question, and what will happen is, if you position the problem the right way, they’ll lean in and go, Oh, yeah. And either they’re saying, oh, yeah, that’s me. Or B, they’re going oh, yeah, I know somebody who struggles with that. And that Oh, yeah. connects you to the audience versus them putting armor up. And or they’re nodding their head, but not really listening.

Joe Fier  21:55

Right? It’s a total connection. Yeah. And you open the door that way, and you open

Dan Kuschell  21:59

the door, right? So there’s so that’s a simple way that almost everybody could experience today or tomorrow. Because most business owners are gonna have somebody said, Well, what do you guys do? Right? And I would train your team, this method, ask the question first, and then go into what it is that you do. It has a huge impact in responsiveness.

Matt Wolfe  22:18

I love that. Now, I want to actually want to go back to something you said actually, towards the beginning of this call, because I, my brain, for some reason, has been spinning on it. And I want to I want to get your take on it. But you mentioned you know, you’re talking about the know, like and trust thing everybody says you got to get customers to know like and trust you. But one of the pitfalls is they put a little too much focus on the like, so I’m curious what sort of pitfalls come from focusing on getting people to like you, versus getting people to respect you.

Dan Kuschell  22:46

Sure, have you? Have you ever known somebody to be a people pleaser?

Matt Wolfe  22:50

Yes. Quite a few people. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Kuschell  22:53

So I’ll speak to me because I had a chant had a tendency in the past to be a people pleaser. And what is the people pleaser do in most small businesses, they create a lot of customized options. And when a customized options do it means you as the business owner are wearing 12 hats all the time, you’re basically a slave to your business. You can’t duplicate it, you can’t scale it typically. Right? So behaviorally, he creates a we’ll call it the success straps. Now, do I agree to some degree about the idea of know like, and trust there, I believe it’s a half truth. I just think it needs a broader range. And that’s where the trust respect comes in. Right? To have the authority because, you know, think about it this way. Like, have you guys ever been out at a restaurant? Right? And you’re with somebody that you know, maybe it’s a you know, a partner, friend, or whatever, and maybe you got into a little bit of a, a heated exchange with maybe you could even say it’s an argument, right? And you’re in the restaurant, you’re in that table, and you’re kind of heated in the moment you’re talking to the waitress walks up. What do you do?

Joe Fier  23:58

You stop?

Dan Kuschell  24:00

You stop out of respect? Yeah. Right. Because you don’t know them, right? And you don’t want to look like a like a new start or whatever. to So you have respect for someone you haven’t quite met yet or, you know, know, their status or that sort of thing. But there’s high trust between you and the person at the table. And when they walk away, you might dive right back into that exchange, right? Yes, yes. Always trust increases, right. Comfort also goes up. Right. But what happens with respect people trust people that are unsafe, they respect people, they don’t completely know. It’s like, I’ll speak about my wife and this is just a sad truth about most relationship as time goes on respect, you know, can decrease a bit, right? Think about you know, like, I’ve been known to leave the toothpaste, cap off the toothpaste. Right. So my, my wife, God bless her. She doesn’t get upset about it. She just makes sure she has her own toothpaste and I have my own toothpaste. Right. So, so she doesn’t argue about it at all. But but there’s that trust respect. So when you can have the magic of trust and respect in a potential business or influence relationship, that’s where you get mag magnified results. Right. And so it’s creating, creating both. Now does likeability or knowing somebody have some something to do with trust? I do think it does. I think reputation can play into that too. But give me trust and respect in a potential business relationship. And I’ll show you how the results grow. There’s something called edification, right? You know, as you’re listening right now, you know, have you ever gone into a conversation and felt like, the person on the other end of the line was just expecting you to go into a big sales pitch, and they had their armor up, and they had their guard up, and they had like, all this baggage, and they really weren’t listening or connecting to what you had to say, right? Maybe we’ve all had that. Yeah, well, if you had to, like, let’s say, theoretically, depending on the size of your, but you had an assistant, just send out a preface message, a pre framing message to that person coming on to an appointment with you. And it said something like, Hey, you’re going to be meeting with Matt, and I just want to let you know, your time. Is it such and such, Matt is a definitive expert. And, you know, he probably won’t even say something like this. Right. But you know, he’s helped grow multiple businesses, and you know, helped interview hundreds, if not 1000s, of people, from world leaders to, you know, athletes to celebrities, right? And I imagine you guys are gonna really hit it off when you get a chance to speak. Right? So, Matt, in that example, getting that third party and don’t and I made some of that up, of course, but getting that third party endorsement about something true, right. And edifying, what it does is it positions Matt, in that example, as a trusted expert, right? He’s got trust and respect from the other party, ideally, creating a little bit less friction in the conversation. And, you know, and I, from my experience, you know, we’ve tested this in companies where we went into some companies, and we actually help them implement this edification strategy for their account executives, and it boosted results. 234, and five times we’ve had companies where they took people who are customer service people, they created this edaphic, we call it the edification breakthrough method, put this in place for even customer service people to follow up with their, you know, potential client candidates or prospects. And they started making sales hand over fist. Right? Non salespeople becoming salespeople, and, you know, creating, you know, optically optimizing the growth and so on, just on this idea of the trust and respect being framed, here’s another way to think about it, maybe the tactics I’m sharing are a little too fast, too quick. And maybe as you’re listening, you’re like, Oh, I kind of get it. But I know, here’s another way to think about if you get a painting, right, and let’s say let’s let’s just say it’s a Picasso, right, whether you’re into art, or not just bear with this example, if we get a Picasso and it comes in a tube, and I unroll it, and then I go, basically put duct tape in the corner, Picasso on my wall. That’s one way of framing. On the other hand, if I go out, and I get a professional framer, and I don’t know what it would cost to do it, but let’s say put a beautiful frame, the lighting around it, maybe I spend a couple grand to set it up, right, the lighting the place, the location, and so on. And now we put that Picasso on the wall, it’s received a whole lot different, right? So the trust respect is really, you know, a authentic genuine framing strategy to help open people’s hearts and minds to connect with who we are to give us both the best chance to help each other.

Joe Fier  29:07

I think that’s that’s amazing. And you talked about the the likability factor people pleaser like no, I have been guilty of that in the past, especially when you said the multiple options for offers. Yeah, when you’re selling someone on the phone it and I know a lot of people that have slipped into this, but it’s almost too easy to just create an offer on the fly that is outside of the systems that are in place. Yes. And I definitely wouldn’t say we got screwed by that. But we definitely caused a lot more stress in our lives. It didn’t mean

Dan Kuschell  29:41

I’ll say that in the past when I’ve made that mistake, I will say I’ve gotten screwed.

Joe Fier  29:45

I guess we have occasionally but usually we spin it around. Yeah. I mean, it’s if it wasn’t for Matt, he’s a lot more of a systems guy. I am more of the you know, kind of let’s chat. Let’s figure things out. In The trust is a big piece because I feel like what I have been told by others that know me pretty dang well, is you know you have the likability but the thing is, there’s trust, because there’s follow through. And a lot of folks who are the likability or they’re throwing options out there don’t really do what they say. And that’s a that’s a huge part right there. Without that, yeah, you can be likable, and I could see that being even worse than not likable. Yeah. So it’s that follow through is huge.

Matt Wolfe  30:27

Yeah, I like my volleyball analogy. I’m the setter, you’re the spiker. I’m basically doing all the systems that get people aware of us. And then you go and close the deal once people are already aware, and they have that respect and trust factor in the business. Yeah, but I love that.

Joe Fier  30:44

It’s great. Yeah, so yeah. And so I mean, what you’re doing there is just building all these systems, it seems like you’re spotting these, these almost like blind spots that folks can’t see themselves, you know, maybe with your clients. Is that something that you’re kind of looking out for?

Dan Kuschell  31:00

Oh, yeah, yeah, I would say, you know, one of my gifts and superpowers and then we’ve got a team that helps implement a lot of these things as we help connect the dots, see the blind spots. And really, you know, a simple framing is get on stuck around some of these areas, because so many people are just that, like, it’s two degrees off three degrees off, you build a, you know, an edification model, or, you know, you have a whole sequence of strategies and tactics, like we just went through like another popular one right now that we’re helping with his like, we call it the mini series, breakthrough traffic strategy, right. And you can really duplicate what Amazon has done and duplicate what Netflix is doing in your own small business, right and create a mini series method inside it to create trust and respect and authority. Like, for example, literally, you could go in and create a one minute video, you don’t even have to be on camera, right. And you could create a message, consider it like a one minute educational entertainment video, and provides value and it could drive to say a short article, but you create this one minute video, it could be what’s called a kinetic video, what that means is just like text on the page, kind of flashing and flashing now you can find, you know, a lot of different freelance sites to do this for you. Right, but create this one minute video and then go into Facebook, and target certain audiences certain behavior, certain interest groups that are your perfect clients age, demographics, etc. In in your area locally. Or you could even do this nationwide, we’ve done this with multiple clients like one of our H vac, we have an h vac client right now a very large company on the East Coast. And we’re driving hundreds of leads a month for them, for appointments for their team to go out to. But one of the strategy is this mini series video method. And for literally less than 10 cents of view, actually, it’s closer to two to three cents of you. We’re building up like in a few weeks, we can build up an audience of perfect potential clients based on income based on interest based on behavior based on location of 10s of 1000s of people. And you can put one video and then based on how much they watched that video, you could put another video to kind of move them down the path of trust and respect with you. And then after they viewed, let’s say, 50% of the video or 50% of two videos. Now you put your irresistible offer. And because your trust and respect, they feel like you’re everywhere. Oh my gosh, man. Oh my god, Joe, I see you guys everywhere, right? Yep. That’s a simple, literally for pennies on the dollar for your perfect clients so that that’s a way that you can also apply some of this in, you know, real terms using the technology that’s there right now.

Matt Wolfe  33:48

Yeah, no, it’s super smart. That’s actually you pretty much kind of described our main marketing strategy right there with using short Facebook videos and bringing people deeper and deeper down the funnel based on percentages of the videos they watch and things like that. We actually have a really great podcast episode with a guy named Kurt Molly, who sort of breaks that process down step by step for anybody who wants to go figure out how to actually build that. But it’s, it’s really, really, really powerful.

Joe Fier  34:15

So when you’re working with your clients, I’m just kind of curious. So the HVAC company? Are you doing that kind of setup, like you describe back in your direct marketing days, you know, with paper are you going in there and kind of essentially getting a piece of the company?

Dan Kuschell  34:31

Each company or depending on which program they’re in, we have a different path. So that particular company or private client, so not only do we have a fee based model per month, but we also get a performance bonus based on the results of what we actually create. And then after we’ve hit certain criteria, then there is a ability to have like either an equity ownership or like a profit sharing opportunity in the companies. And that’s typically the way we like with with the private clients. And these are typical clients that are doing In excess of a million a year in business already, we can help them double, triple, quadruple their their top line revenue, and many times exponentially grow their bottom line. So that’s the kind of what I would describe as our perfect client scenario, a company that’s looking to grow and scale, they’re at a million or more a year, they want to grow upwards of 10. And part of our criteria is like a question we’d ask, do you really have the drive and desire to grow your company at least $10 million in the next two to three years? Right from where you are right now? And if they say no, well, then for that program, they’re not really we have other things that we can suit them for. But for the private client relationship, where we were working with them as an advisor, almost like their outsourced marketing team, right? We help drive the implementation, and we’ll you know, we’ll actually script the videos well, create the video campaigns will run the traffic and different things like that, again, because we do have a high upside of interest, the performance bonuses, etc.

Joe Fier  36:07

Yeah. Cool. Yeah, thanks for breaking that down. I always like to kind of dig into a business model just for the listeners to kind of get some ideas of what to try.

Dan Kuschell  36:14

Yeah. And then our other model that we sued for companies under a million around which let’s face it, that’s the majority, right? We have a small group of program that we work with, that allows us to scale we maximize it, where it’s high, high touch, and highly personalized, we limited to 14 companies, each session that we do, but we literally walk them through our eight, eight step formula, of how to be able to attract clients, how to be able to convert clients, how to be able to maximize it with paid traffic, and then how to optimize it, you know, optimize profits in the company. Right? Which, of course, you know, truth is, it also creates the opportunity correctly, that they can transition to become more one of our potential private clients, right. So it can be looked at as a feeder system, but that model, we even, you know, write their video sales letter for them, right, which you guys know what, you know, a lot of the experts are charging and that program is geared again, for the small business that a million or under, and or, you know, they’re still stuck with, you know, their digital marketing and things like that, what we do is we allow people our full fee for that program is right around $12,000. But I’m so confident in our methods that we allow people to start with a small deposit of 25%. And then only after they’ve increased the results eight times without deposit, then they pay the rest and only then.

Joe Fier  37:40

That’s really cool. So Wow. Okay,

Matt Wolfe  37:44

So I have a question for you that’s totally stolen from Steve Hoelscher. And beyond eight figure podcast. But I’m gonna give him a shout out. So it’s okay. What are the bullets on there was that you talked about the three key questions that you use to base decisions on. And I’m curious if you’d be willing to dive into that for us as well.

Dan Kuschell  38:03

Totally. And this came at a place where I, you know, I ended up in a hospital a couple of weeks after my son, Kai, there was born with chest pains, I had built up a company that had done a lot of business, and we had 175 employees through three offices, and plus a bunch of outsource people. And we were doing well from the business side. But I woke up, you know, with these chest pains ended up in the hospital, came out of that experience. And you know what I would say, I couldn’t tell if it was Joe or Matt who asked the question doesn’t matter. Cool. I was at a place of, you know, really making a decision of where I wanted to go next. So I hired a another coach, I’ve always had coaching, I believe in coaching and consulting, I’ve probably invested in close to a million dollars in my education over the years, since 1990, something and my coach got me to really focus in on three critical questions that Now ultimately, every decision I make has filtered through these three questions is so critical, as a framing and a starting why and why it’s important, it’s because I don’t know, I don’t know about you guys, Joe, Matt. I like I’ve at times made poor decisions based on how I felt about things versus like, making reality based decisions. Sometimes being an entrepreneur, it’s a gift and a curse. Because you know, we can take opportunities, right and make even a bad opportunity, get some kind of momentum out of it. But our time is best spent with opportunities that are on a eight to a 10 on an eight to a 10 on a 10 scale, and then taking them to the next level. And so I I was at a crossroads I was I was, you know, in this health crisis, my coach sat down and said, Hey, what do you want? And she had me write this on a piece of paper and this is the first question is identifying what do you want? Now? What are your kids want? Not who your spouse wanted your best for tends not to, you know, if you have hundreds of employees or it’s just you or anywhere in between, but like, what do you and maybe even add the word really, really wants? Right? And, you know, get clarity around that. And I shared this at Steve’s event, I think, guys, right? And when I, when she got me to ask that question, I sat there, I wrote one answer on the piece of paper, and I stared at it for the rest of our session. And then I went home. And she said, work on it. And I went home, and I supposed to come back the next week. And I was so embarrassed because I hadn’t gotten past one. I didn’t go back to next week, and I didn’t go back the following week, and I didn’t go back the following, it took almost a month for me to kind of get unstuck here. And really get clear on what did I really want, right. And I came back and I had a list and we talked through it, and we, you know, isolated and what was important, what was most important, right? We put up a hierarchy of those items of, you know, from least important and most important, and she had me go to the second question, which is, you know, what, are who are you? And it got me to look like a giver a blank, right? Imagine sitting in this office with your coach, and you know, she says, well, well, who are you? And you look at her like, like I don’t even know, like, right, that’s how that’s where I was, you know, like 12 or so years ago. And I sat there and I didn’t didn’t take me four weeks on this one. But it took me, you know, half the session to kind of get unstuck on this one. But what she got me to understand, you know, don’t look at the labels, don’t look at the titles. Don’t look at all those false things that you you’ve named yourself by or known yourself, or rather think of it Who who are you as a human being not the human doing stuff? Right? That was the first time I’d ever heard that term before, which he shared with me, you know, about 12 years ago or so, at the time, we’re doing this. And I got a lot of clarity on like, who am I? Right? And then the third question is, what do you stand for? And these are kind of these are like, your core values as a human being? Right? So we hear all the time you know, as a company, you have great core values narrowed down to your three to five core values, right? My company, we have a set of core values based on this acronym, called champion, right? Or I should say my family core values are based on this acronym called champion. Like if you ask my 13 year old and 11 year old and you said, Hey, Cara, what are your What are your what are the Kuschell values, they would go choose health action, mastery purpose, invest in yourself, be an opportunity seeker and never quit on you, which is the acronym for being a champion, Cha MPRN. Right? In our company, we have three core values, the first value is related to growth, the second is related to teamwork, the third is related to contribution. Right. So when you get clear on your values, then what’s most important is not what you do, but it’s what you say no to the no list, or the not to do list becomes way more important than the yes list or the not to do or the to do list. And so. So those three questions now, like even being on your guys’s show, right, is filtered through these three questions and how it fits. And you know, for me, this was like a total easy, yes, the impact you guys are making in you what you guys stand for. Right in alignment, right. And so, you know, as you’re listening or hearing this, what would happen for you, if you sat down and got really crystal clear on like, what do you want? Right?

Don't look at the labels; don't look at the titles. Don't look at all those false things that you've named yourself or know yourself as. Rather, think of it, ‘Who are you as a human being?’ not the human doing stuff? -Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

Joe Fier  43:46

Yeah, that’s That’s power. This is this is probably some of the best work

Dan Kuschell  43:50

175 employees is awesome. Having the ability to impact a lot of people is great. But I don’t want 175 employees. So like two years later, I actually set the stage and it’s really a big part of the choice of what led me to sell my companies and exit.

Joe Fier  44:08

Well, that’s, that’s what’s fascinating is I remember you mentioned that in the mastermind. And I think that is what really triggered to us or, you know, Matt and I weren’t even sitting by each other, not even talking that you were leaving the room. And I think you were saying that you sold your companies. And you know, you talked briefly about your time in the hospital, kind of the health scare there and the wake up call really. And then you that was your shift, and then it was basically simplicity. But big impact still.

Matt Wolfe  44:37

Yeah. Well, to sort of set the scene a little bit. We were sitting in this, this mastermind, and we did this little exercise where we sort of went around the room and everybody said, Okay, this is my goal. This is my earnings goal for 2019. This is what I want to make in the year 2019. And we went around the table, everybody threw out their numbers. The numbers aren’t important, but the number that you threw out, somebody asked you a question as you were walking out the door. or you had to leave early to catch a plane or something. And somebody said, you know, I noticed you’ve had so much success, you’ve exited these businesses, you’ve just been wildly successful in your career. Why is your goal number lower than what you’ve managed to achieve in the past? And the I believe you pretty much ran us through that same concept that you just explained. But that that message was super impactful for us after that event.

Dan Kuschell  45:26

Well, I’m I am glad to hear that, you know, a lot of people are chasing I and I won’t speak for anybody else speak to me. At times I’ve chased growth, just out of the desire to grow. versus, you know, the the impact of it, right? Like, my focus right now is I want to build a have a great business and continue to build a great business, while also being incredibly available, and present with my kids. Right? I don’t want to be one of those dads that like when they ask their kids, oh, my God, what was your dad like? Well, he was great at business, but he was never there for me, right? I’m fortunate and blessed. I think, you know, I have all this, you know, I’m fortunate to have all this background and some results, I was blessed to be able to exit and sell my companies and you know, these sorts of things, that relationship capital, which is the most important capital any of us can have. And, you know, it gives me some leverage and flexibility. And I get it, can I get to coach like my son’s football team, I’m able to be at all of his practices, three, four days a week, attend all of his games, right? Because of the way I’ve structured my businesses, and still run a very high profit, high impact business. So everybody’s going to be a little ill the biggest thing I, I’ll share the trap that I was in that kind of led to this. So I forget which one of you guys mentioned that Joe are mad about? Simplicity, if I had to narrow it down to like, What’s one word of why? It’s simplicity, right? And it’s also what I want, right? It’s not what the outside wants. It’s not like, you know, I’ve had many of my friends asked me the same thing, like very close friends that if I mentioned the names, you most of you would know these people. And they’d be like, so like, why are you like you had built this $25 million, your company expanded over time and done over $100 million. And you’re essentially, compared to that running a small business? Well, don’t let the Small Business confuse you, with us being small minded about impact, because of the small business is having a huge impact. Through the different businesses, we’re able to impact there reaches in the 10s of 1000s. Right, hundreds of 1000s, if you really calculate probably close to millions, with the different companies that we’re working with, to help them grow in scale, and to have a bigger impact, too. So but the key is, is what do you want? Like, what is it for you is what will you say yes to? But what do you want to say no to? That’s non negotiable, right? If I have, you know, of course, there’s no such thing as an absolute like a net, I’ll never do this, or I only do that. But the guide, these are garden part of this is me knowing me like, I’m an addict by nature, guys, I left my own devices, I’m a workaholic, that would easily and can easily work 20 plus hours a day, for years straight to the choir. Right. And I think that’s a DNA trait of most entrepreneurs, right? It can be a gift, and it can be a curse. And there’s a time to that it can be used, but it also can be something that can hurt us. So for me, it’s like how do you create I don’t believe in balance either. Like a lot of people that will You must like really strive for balance? No, I think balance is bullshit. You know, I believe integration is critical. So like, when I’m able to be with my son in practice, like literally, I’m not just showing up as a like an assistant, like volunteer coach, I’m practicing with my son, like, I’m on the field running routes, I’m on defense, when he’s playing quarterback trying to knock passes down for him, right? Like I am there. And I’m engaged. Like, it’s, it’s being active. And you know, there’s all kinds of abilities, either as the business owner or entrepreneur or that we look for in our team, and one that rarely gets discussed, is this ability called availability. Right? What is your availability, but again, it comes back to being clear on these three, quite what do you want? Who are you? And then what do you stand for, and then it just allows you to make decisions in your heart that are the right things. And you know, not comparing yourself to others, right? That which is also a gift and a curse of many entrepreneurs. That’s my image and allow you to stay true to you your values, and you know the impact that you’re meant to have and that that gift that you’re taking out to the world.

There are all kinds of abilities, either as the business owner or entrepreneur or that we look for in our team. And one that rarely gets discussed is this ability called availability. It comes back to being clear on these three: ‘what do you… Click To Tweet

Matt Wolfe  49:53

Love it. I can’t think of a better note to go ahead and wrap this discussion up on so we Really thank you for the time you’ve spent, I do have a couple of super quick questions. The first one being Do you have any books that you tend to recommend often? Or you find yourself revisiting often?

Dan Kuschell  50:11

Oh, yeah, I’ve got got several. So one that I love recently is written by a friend, Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference. Not only is it about negotiating, and how this ex FBI agent negotiated high stakes and techniques and strategies, but it’s really about just better communication, right? Better communication flow, even for me, it helps you be in a better dad communicating with my my now 13 and 11 year old kids, my wife and spouse, right. So so that’s one that I highly recommend, if you haven’t checked it out. Another. Another book that I referenced regularly, is Tested Advertising Methods, which I love going back to that one, because it’s got some of the basics. But yet some of the basics are still very advanced fundamentals today, strategies that just work. And so you can find both of those, I imagine on Amazon, but those are two and then another one I would throw out there is Think and Grow Rich, which is classic by Napoleon Hill.

Joe Fier  51:13

It’s like a solid foundation right there. Man, where should folks go and check all your stuff out? I know you’re doing a lot, and we’d even touch on your podcast, which we normally do. But I know you have a great podcast as well.

Dan Kuschell  51:25

Well, thanks. Short version, if you want to check out our podcast, we’ve got over 200 hours of insights, wisdom strategies from a lot of experts in a variety of business topics to help grow and scale with less stress. And that’s it growthtofreedom.com growthtofreedom.com. We have an ongoing a free 100% Free On Demand training that we rotate that you can go get the latest version about on helping you generate more leads or a steady flow of clients, some of the strategies and techniques that we’re using right now in real time. You can check that out at championbusinessblueprint.com.

Joe Fier  52:01

Perfect. And we’ll link everything in the show notes at Evergreenprofits.com. You will find it all there. Cool. Dan, this has been awesome. And I am definitely going to think on those questions for a while. It probably will take some time. But it’s super impactful. So thank you for sharing.

Dan Kuschell  52:19

I would love to hold you accountable. So like, if I check in with you in like 10 days or so deal. I’d love to hear how you’ve progressed or if you’re stuck somewhere. I’d love to help you make sure that you’re not stuck because I know what a difference this can really make. And and I’d love to be there for you.

Matt Wolfe  52:35

Joe and I are both big journalers. So we’ve got you know, we’ve got the medium.

Joe Fier  52:42

Well, we’ll expect that 10 day putting us on the fire. All right, Dan, take care of me. All right. Thanks, guys. You got it. All right.

Outro  52:51

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. Do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free Small Business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com That’s activate that breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com

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