50: "I Changed my Marketing and made 8 Million in a Year": Marketing to x5 your Business
Behind Their Success: Ep 50
James Brown: [00:00:00] I changed my marketing.
James Brown: The very first week that I changed my marketing message, we signed 68 clients. we eventually built it and it was in less than five years to about 8 million a year
Welcome to behind their success. This podcast is for people who are feeling stuck on their entrepreneur journey or in their careers. It's for people who want to scale and grow their businesses, learn about the power of mindset, or they just know there's more out there and they want to start making changes.
Paden Squires: I'm Paden Squires, the host of the podcast. I was never cut out to be an employee, and when I was an employee, I was bored out of my mind. So I made a plan. I studied and passed the CPA exam in eight months while working, all with the end goal in mind of quitting my job and starting my own business. I did that in 2014, and it has been an amazing wild ride since.
Paden Squires: So now let's hear from other entrepreneurs, and what mindsets, and probably more important, what actions they have taken [00:01:00] that have created and led to their success.
Paden Squires: .
Paden Squires: Hello everybody. Welcome back to Behind Their Success Podcast. Today we have on James Brown. He is the CEO and founder of Business Accelerator Institute and Perseverance Squared. With a background in law and business, James launched his first successful business in 1994 and later transitions to coaching where he has driven significant growth for over 350 business owners nationwide.
Paden Squires: He is also the coauthor of the bestselling book Shift Happens, almost Had a slip there, correct? And recognize industry expert on management, marketing, and building a thriving business. Good morning, James. Welcome. Good morning, How are you? I'm doing good. So, um, yeah, James, kind of tell us where you got your start and up to where, where you are today.
James Brown: Yeah, it's kind of a interesting start. You know, I, um, I got married to the love of my life when I was 19. We've known each other since we were two years [00:02:00] old. Um, and we got married at 19. And I remember early on, like my parents telling me, you can't get married because you're not going to go to school.
James Brown: You're not going to do, you're not going to finish things. And, you know, one of the things that I've learned early on is don't ever tell me I can't do something, you know? And so at 19, I got a job at General Motors, um, on the assembly line, building cars, and I did that all through undergraduate and law school.
James Brown: Um, I was there about 11 years, and then right when I was getting ready to graduate law school, they, they made the announcement they were closing the plant. Okay? So what do I do? I take the bar and I, I passed the bar and I sent out 200 plus resumes, and I got zero response. Wow. None. And, and in hindsight, I wouldn't have hired me either,
James Brown: Um, I had never stepped foot in a law firm, never worked for one, never clerked for one. And so I was [00:03:00] almost forced to start my own. And I chose to go into bankruptcy law just because of the blue collar kind of background I had and seeing people get laid off and lose everything they own. And so me and my wife said, we're just going to do this.
James Brown: And at the time, we had a five year old, a two year old and a one year old. And it was like, I don't want to miss a thing from their, their growing up. So I'm going to build this firm so that. I don't have to be, I'm not going to be here past 4. 30, right? So, when we first started, I just looked at what everybody else was doing and copied it.
James Brown: Right? That was mistake number one. because everybody else is, and I'm talking about marketing mostly. Um, we were getting maybe three clients a week. but I was doing exactly what everybody else was doing. And then. We kept struggling. We only getting three clients were like barely making ends [00:04:00] meet.
James Brown: And then I started studying the human buying process and what makes people take action. And so I started asking my clients at the beginning of the console, like what brought you in? And I think this is where my superpower started to come in because I started to understand that human buying process and how people make decisions and I changed my marketing.
James Brown: The very first week that I changed my marketing message, we signed 68 clients. Wow. the second week was 72. The third week was 63 and it never slowed down. that was in 1994. In 96, I opened a second office in Detroit, Michigan. Um, and then in 98, we opened a third office in Kansas city. we eventually built it and it was in less than five years to about 8 million a year.
James Brown: And so that [00:05:00] that also taught me that it didn't matter what geographic area of the country. people are people are people and they will react the same way. And so that kind of blossomed into the 8 million business. Now, fast forward and my kids weren't interested in law school, not a single one of them.
James Brown: So I always had the end game of, I'm going to sell the firm.
James Brown: I never intended to practice law past the age of 50. to me the law firm was just a vehicle to build a business. I loved building businesses. Yeah. Yeah. And so how can I help more people? And I told my wife, I said, we're gonna sell the firm by, by the time I'm 50. And so in, in 2014, we sold it.
James Brown: Um, I was 49 and I actually sold it in PI sold it to the managing attorneys in Detroit, in Kansas City. And then St. Louis. I sold it to one of my former associates. but that put me into the [00:06:00] coaching side and now I dedicate my time to working one on one with business owners. And I've expanded it now to professionals.
James Brown: So not just lawyers, but doctors, CPAs, um, marketing agency owners, um, dentists, and I help people really understand the simple concepts of starting up running and a successful, profitable business that doesn't require you putting in 70 to 80 hours a week.
James Brown: Yeah. And having that business serve you instead of the other way around. Yeah, that's, and I think that was the biggest benefit of owning a business is I could travel with my kids when they played hockey in other cities or other countries even. Um, I could volunteer for the Red Cross and go on a deployment and be gone [00:07:00] 30, 35 days, and my business doesn't miss a beat.
James Brown: Um, and when you have a business like that and it's serving you, it's, it's the best thing in the world.
Paden Squires: Very cool. You know, it's kind of interesting, you know, describing your background there of, uh, kind of as an attorney, but maybe you saw yourself more as an entrepreneur and not really like an attorney.
Paden Squires: Right. That was kind of your identity, but very similar. So I've been a CPA for over a decade running my own practice and, I'm paying for this a little bit because I've always seen my businesses like, okay, this is what I, this is kind of like my job that I create money to then go invest and buy other assets and whatnot, entrepreneur, real estate, whatever.
Paden Squires: Right. But I probably should have focused on my business first, getting it to the, the places you described now. And that's what I've been doing a lot of work in the last couple of years is fixing a lot of my stuff. So it's not, Payton working 70 80 hours a week all the time, right? And sometimes I enjoy that and I don't mind working hard, but other times it's like, okay, let's build a machine [00:08:00] that doesn't need Payton.
James Brown: Yeah. And let's, let's be careful that you. that you really enjoy it versus telling yourself that story that you enjoy it, right? Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. there's a doctrine. It's called the doctrine of sacrifice. And a lot of business owners will buy into the doctrine of sacrifice thinking, Oh, I have to work 70, 80 hours a week.
James Brown: And I brag about it. Yeah. But how much time are we taking away from the family? I think you can still be involved in your business without physically doing the work.
James Brown: One of the things to remember, and I don't mean to, I don't mean to monopolize your show. No, that's good. But one of the things to keep in mind is that the lowest and worst use of your time will always be production, doing the work yourself. The highest and best use of your time is doing like what you're doing right now is marketing and sales and, getting that going so that you can buy your time back and have other [00:09:00] people do the production.
Paden Squires: Oh yeah, for sure. we're all sales and marketing companies. Right. it's kind of a struggle too, or at least it, Especially on like professional services, especially started out.
Paden Squires: I started out as a solo guy and like, what's everybody buying? They're buying me. Right. And then you get all these relationships and it can be a struggle, as you grow to, get yourself out of it. Like you said, right. You, I mean, you've got to have a lot of hard conversations. You got to put in a lot of processes.
Paden Squires: You got to do, you got to do a lot of stuff. And, man, I've been slogging through a lot of that work the last couple of years fixing what I should have done probably. You know, eight years ago or something, .
James Brown: Yeah. You know, here's the thing that we don't know what we don't know. Yeah. You know, and so we go, we look at other businesses and how other people are doing it, and we think that's the way to go.
James Brown: my number one rule from the very beginning was be different. and I think it stems from those people that told me I couldn't do anything. Mm-Hmm. , you [00:10:00] know, and this, this goes, goes all the way back, right? This goes all the way back to when you're a kid. Um, your subconscious mind is formed when you're before you're seven years old you know, I was always the heavy kid when I grew up and my mom and dad were always like, you're never going to be able to do like my brother played baseball.
James Brown: I said, I want to play baseball. You can't do that. You're overweight. played basketball. I want to play basketball. You can't do that. Um, so little league football, I want to play that. Okay. And then I never made it on the field. Yeah. so then when I was in junior high, I said, I want to try out for the football team.
James Brown: And they're like, why you didn't even make it on the field. And so I, I got tired of hearing you can't do things. And so I started varsity that year as a, as a freshman, And I never look back from there. And then you tell me, you know, you're not going to succeed because you're getting married. And then when I, ran into this, for a [00:11:00] very brief time, I worked for this one attorney, and I, I was doing well for his associate, and all of a sudden I get a letter one day with just one sentence that says you're no longer needed.
James Brown: And I was like, okay, and I heard through the grapevine that the owner of that firm said he'll never amount to anything as a lawyer. That's some good fire though, right? Well, it is and it was the big F you, right? Yeah. Um, and so when I look at how, businesses are supposed to run, I'm always like, no, I'm not going to buy into that.
James Brown: I'm going to be different. So rule number one is be different in marketing and and design your business in your mind first what you want it to be and then just go out and make it happen. Everything in this world is created twice. First in your mind and then in reality. And so how do you make it happen?
James Brown: Look at other businesses and say, how [00:12:00] can I use that in my business? that's exactly how I built the business the way I did. It wasn't a secret. Yeah,
Paden Squires: there are no secrets really. I mean, you just go around and look at other businesses and literally steal whatever they're doing and implement it in your own business, right?
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James Brown: I think it does go back to when I studied the human buying process and getting people to take action.
James Brown: So. What I learned was everybody kind of knows we have a left brain, right brain, right? And so the human being makes decisions in the emotional side of the brain. And then the logical side of the brain comes in immediately to justify that decision.
James Brown: So yeah, so the right side of the brain, unless I'm wrong on it, might be left or right, but the logical side of the brain is designed to protect you. [00:14:00] And so it's always looking for justification. And a lot of people will say, we make decisions on logic. You really don't. And, and here's the thing, a lot of marketing that's out there for professional services appeals to the logical side of the brain.
Paden Squires: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
James Brown: You know, if you think a lawyer, uh, commercials or anything like that, they'll talk about themselves. You know, I went to this law school and I've got 30 years experience and I care for you and blah, blah. Your prospect doesn't care. They want to know if you understand their problem. So that's where I made a big change in my marketing.
James Brown: Instead of just saying, stop foreclosure, stop repossession, my name is James, I've been doing this, blah, blah, blah, call me. Um, I started asking clients what brought them in. And somebody might tell me, I got a foreclosure notice. Well, that's not the emotional part. That's just a legal end to it. I'm like, so what does that mean to your family?
James Brown: Well, I'm [00:15:00] going to lose the house. All right. And if you lose the house, how will that affect you? And so it takes me five minutes to ask those questions. And what they end up saying is stuff like, I don't know where we'll go. We don't have family. We may have to live in the car and that wouldn't be a be safe.
James Brown: Um, if I have to move out of the area, then I'd have to pull my kids out of school and they'd leave their friends. It would be embarrassing to get a U Haul truck and move in the middle of the night. So my marketing message changed from stop foreclosure to, are you about to lose your home and can't tell your family you're going to live on the street?
James Brown: Well, our goal with marketing is, is one thing, and that's to enter the conversation going on in their head. And the conversation going on in somebody's head is not about me or how long I've been practicing. It's about what's keeping them up at night. And so once I figured that out, it was like the floodgates opened.
James Brown: And so it [00:16:00] doesn't matter what business we're talking about, everybody has a problem. And when you have a problem, you're always thinking about it. You know, your, your brain is looking for a solution. And here's the second part to that is We, we as humans, when we have a problem, let's say we go on the internet now, and we throw a question out there, I need to solve this problem, and all of a sudden thousands of options come up, right?
James Brown: So then, and they all look the same, and when they all look the same, the human brain gets confused, so what do we do? We resort to lowest price. And that's how businesses get price shoppers. And so when I have somebody tell me, man, we have a lot of people calling, but they're like, how much is this going to cost?
James Brown: It's because they can't tell you apart from anybody else. So be different and do a marketing message that stands apart so that, and actually that brings value to the prospect. It's like, holy crap, [00:17:00] all of these options. And then look at this message. I was in, um, Miami a few years ago and, um, I just happened to look for a divorce lawyer in Miami.
James Brown: I wasn't looking for a divorce. I just doing research. Right. And the top one said, AV rated family law lawyer. The second one said top rated divorce lawyer. And the third one said, is he sleeping with her right now? And I'm like, dang, right. Third one gets clicked on. Then I guarantee you that third one was outperforming the others.
James Brown: Right. And so that's an example of really. Entering the conversation going on in somebody's head
Paden Squires: and you know, I, I think, you know, kudos to you is that I think you got curious enough, right? And we talked about and I got a good friend that curiosity. All he talks about is curiosity and asking great [00:18:00] questions.
Paden Squires: But like you got curious, you took the time to ask great questions of your clients. I posted on online the other day that like all business problems can be solved by talking to your customers. Right. Absolutely. were curious enough and humble enough to go to your customers and just ask them what they want.
Paden Squires: And then you took the action to go, okay, well now I'm going to go to design something to give them what they want.
James Brown: Yes, absolutely. You know, and another part to that is a lot of times business owners will choose media before they understand their market, which is what you're talking about here. an example for me, when we talk about lessons I've learned and How expensive they are in terms of time and money.
James Brown: I was in a mastermind group and these guys were all talking about, man, we're on radio and it's killing it for us, and I'm just sitting here taking notes. Okay. Yeah. What radio format? What stations are you on? Well, it's News Talk, sports Talk. Okay. So I came home and I threw $5,000 at News Talk Radio [00:19:00] and got zero.
James Brown: And I'm like, well, why? If people are, people are people. Then why did that happen? And so I was like, go to my customers and ask them, Hey, do you listen to the radio? Yeah, we listen to it every day. What stations? And the top stations that came up were jazz and an urban contemporary station. And I'm like, let me take that 5, 000 and put it on that station.
James Brown: And boom, the phone just rang off the hook. And what that told me was you have to understand where your people get their information from before you choose your marketing channels. And by doing that, you tilt the odds in your favor to be a very successful campaign. So that's the first thing I ask people when they're like, well, what do you think I should do to market?
James Brown: Well, Who's your a plus customer? What is their typical day? What are their fears and concerns and where do they hang out at [00:20:00] and then we can figure out what marketing channels to use? Yeah, that's good stuff.
Paden Squires: That's good stuff. james? What would you say is the best decision you've ever made on your entrepreneur journey?
James Brown: I would say that the You There's a couple of areas where there was a quantum leap in revenue. one of those was early on I accepted, I had read about the doctrine of sacrifice, right? Where you're putting in 70, 80 hours a week and every, you know, that people think that's normal. And I'm like, I don't want to do that.
James Brown: I got young kids. And so I started taking the hats off. You know, every business has the same seven parts. We just sell something different. you're wearing all the hats when you first start. Okay. And for me, I was doing marketing, I was doing sales. And then as we started filing cases, I had to go to court.
James Brown: And then now I'm marking off the sales book because I'm in court, [00:21:00] right? Well, then the revenue starts to come down. So my very first thing was hire a contract person that can appear in court for me. And when I did that, now I can be in sales. Revenue came back up, but then I was in sales so much that marketing fell off and appointments were coming.
James Brown: So next thing I did was hire a salesperson. Yeah. So I think one of the best decisions I ever made, one of the first ones is quantum leap was pushing the work down to the lowest paid, competent person. And I'm not saying hire stupid people. I'm just saying there's a better salesperson than me. And if my time is worth 450 an hour, why am I doing that?
James Brown: I can hire somebody in it. 30 or 40 an hour and have them do it. So push that work down and lowest and worst use of a business owner's time is actually doing the physical work. [00:22:00] Hire people to do it for you. and here's the thing. A lot of people will look at that as an expense. They look at marketing as an expense and they look at people as an expense and you have to look at it as an investment.
James Brown: When I hire somebody, I want a four to five X return on that person. So with a lawyer, for example, and this could be for a dentist, it could be for anybody. If I bill a lawyer out at $350 an hour and I hire 'em in at a hundred thousand dollars a year, you know it's gonna cost me 120,000 a year for that employee.
James Brown: But if they bill $350 an hour and they're doing 1400 hours a year, that's 540,000 of revenue they generate. Yeah, that's a five x return. Mm-Hmm, , right. So then all now I don't have to do that. And now I just bring, I just have to make sure that the pipeline is full. Yeah, you're just looking for talent, right?
James Brown: Right. [00:23:00] And the same thing goes for like a dentist. You know, how many root canals can we do and how much is that? We'll hire a dentist in to do those. And it's the same thing. You just build it at a four to five X return. So if, as long as you're always looking at your employees as an investment, you're arranging their compensation structure in that way.
James Brown: How can you not be profitable? And the same thing goes for marketing. I looked for a 10 X return, you know, in the St. Louis office, I was spending 23, 000 a month on marketing. And people were like, Oh my goodness. You know, how are you spending that much? I'm like, we're bringing in 360,000 a month. Yeah,
Paden Squires: yeah.
James Brown: You
Paden Squires: know your numbers, right? Yeah.
James Brown: You know, if I, if I give you $10, if you give me $10 today and I give you back a hundred next week, would you do it? Yeah. Well, it won't , you know, if you give me a thousand today and I give you 10,000 next week, would you do it? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, the [00:24:00] marketing's no different.
James Brown: And we just have to make sure we tilt the odds in our favor before we throw money at it, which is what I was talking about before.
Paden Squires: Yeah, yeah, and it's, it's understanding your business to the level that, okay, I put 10 in this machine and 50 spit out or whatever that is, right? Yes. Then you can, once you understand that, have that machine built, then it's all like, oh man, let's throw all the capital we can in here and let's blow this thing, let's dump the gas.
James Brown: Yeah, and a lot of times people get in trouble and the way they fall back into, oh, well, that's an expense I can't afford, is because you, you've taken your eye off the ball of your financials. And if you manage your business by ratios, you will stay profitable. I see businesses that will double their growth, but then their expenses more than double.
James Brown: And now the owner's like, hey, I made twice as much gross revenue, but I personally made less money. We didn't manage our ratios. You know, and so [00:25:00] I always tell people, you don't keep your, keep your employee costs between 33 and 43%. Keep your marketing costs between nine and 11%, your occupancy between four and 6%.
James Brown: And if you do that as you grow and you manage the ratios, Then your net margin will stay between 30 and 40 percent and that's where you want it to be
Paden Squires: you're spot on with all that the the issue The issue I see in my world, you know being an accountant being You know money kind of guy.
Paden Squires: Um No one very few people are competent in those areas or Not that they can't be confident. They're intimidated by those areas and it never ceases to shock me how many multi million dollar revenue businesses that I see constantly that their finances are a disaster. One hundred percent. Accounting system, like taxes, all of it, like just a complete mess.
James Brown: They're one, that's one hundred percent. They're scared [00:26:00] of their numbers. And here's the thing I tell people is stop putting a label on stuff. Right. There was times where I would have payroll coming due in three days and it was 14, 000 and I had 200 bucks in our, our operating account. Okay. Well, I can go, Oh, man, that's so bad.
James Brown: That sucks. What am I going to do? It's not going to change the numbers, right? But if I look at it and say it just is now, it opens up my creativity to find ways to solve it. Right. And so numbers are just numbers, you know, and if and if you can manage the ratios and you stay on top of them and you stay on top of it soon enough, like doing a six week cash flow projection, you know, where you know, how much cash you've got in your operating account and your expenses and your projected cash, you can head off any cash crunches and do something about it before it happens.
Paden Squires: Yeah, [00:27:00] well, you at least got a runway, you know, to solve it, right? Because you can see it coming. so on the flip side, James, what is one big old mistake you made that the rest of us could, learn from
James Brown: I think the biggest mistake is, goes back to a little bit about what we were just talking about, but a lot of business owners will make decisions based on emotion, right?
James Brown: And, and so I'll give you an example of one for me. Um, I had this associate, this associate attorney, And he was behind in his work. I had a system set up where I could put calendars up side by side and they color coded when they were finishing the signed work. And I noticed this guy was three, three days, four days behind all the time.
James Brown: Everybody else was on the same day. And so I went in and I asked him, I'm like, what's going on? Cause he had only been there about six months. And I'm like, what's going on? Why are you behind? And he's like, oh, well I'm on the phone constantly. Yeah. I'm on the phone constantly and I can't get [00:28:00] to the work.
James Brown: So naive me. walks out of the office, goes to my office manager, my wife at the time, and I said, let's put an ad out for another associate. And she looked at me and said, why? And I said, because he's behind in his work and he can't keep up. And she said, did he tell you why? I said, yeah, because he's on the phone.
James Brown: So let's just get the new person in there. And she said, did you look at the phone records? And I just sat there silent. And I'm like, no. And she goes, don't you think you should. And so I pulled the phone records and the day before his incoming and outgoing calls was three minutes and 42 seconds. And then I pulled it the next day and it was like four minutes and 12 seconds.
James Brown: And I'm like, so I walked back in there and I said, tell me what's really going on. And I put the report in front of them. And here's what he told me. And I'm not [00:29:00] kidding. He said, I don't know how to navigate windows. And I'm like, you don't, what do you mean? He goes, I don't know how to get to your server. I don't know how to open these programs.
James Brown: I'm like, how did you get through law school? And he said, my girlfriend did it for me. So I was about literally to make a hiring decision for another 80, 000 a year position based on emotion because he was telling me I'm overworked instead of looking at the data. So I would say that was one of my biggest mistakes and that taught me always look at the data.
James Brown: Make decisions based on your data and not just gut feeling and that's what a lot of business owners will do and that's how they get in trouble.
Paden Squires: Yeah, it's such a battle, right? we're all emotional human beings, right? We all get sucked into those traps and it's so hard [00:30:00] to, um, always keep yourself on that outside, you know, and trying to make these non emotional decisions.
Paden Squires: Yeah.
James Brown: You know, and I, I've got a, a business right now who, when they, when they came to me, they were a 12 million a year business. And I asked them, you know, what are, what's your conversion rate? You know, and they said it's, it's 5%. And I'm like, 5 percent of what? Is it your lead to appointment rate? Your show up rate?
James Brown: Is it your sales rate? And they didn't know. And I'm like, well, how can you tell what's broken if you don't know, if you're not measuring those separately? Well, we ended up finding out that their sales rate was 5%. Um, and they wanted to talk to me about more marketing. I said, I'm not going to talk to you about marketing.
James Brown: Fix the sales first. Like, let's increase your, our goal is to increase your sales by 5%. That's it. Get it to 10%. And, um, [00:31:00] the last three months, in fact, I just had a call with them yesterday. They're at 14 percent now and they're on pace for 22 million this year, just by increasing it by 7%. Yeah. And just focusing on it, right?
James Brown: Yeah. And by doing that, now you lower your cost of acquisition. You increase your ROI. And you're not spending as much money on marketing, you know? So it's, it's just managing that data like that. And knowing where to work on the business is key. Yeah,
Paden Squires: but you got to get organized. You got to get
James Brown: organized to even begin to do any of that stuff.
James Brown: Well, correct. Most business owners don't even have that data.
Paden Squires: like I said, as a CPA of 10 plus years, very few people have great data. Um, very few people. So one more question for you, James, what is one piece of advice you would give your younger self? So that, that guy starting up the, [00:32:00] uh, law firm from the beginning.
Paden Squires: What would you tell him right now?
James Brown: I would say right now don't, don't shoot from the hip. Right. When we all start, we're like really excited, you know, and it's like, Oh my God, I got my own business. Yay. And we're all kind of, you know, if you hang your shingle out, people will come, um, to some extent it will, but you're going to run out of family and friends.
James Brown: So you have to figure out how to market your business. And I don't think I really understood that. and so the one thing I would tell myself now is really study what other people are doing as far as even outside your, practice area, your niche. and take the time to understand why people do things and then that will help you in shaping the business.
James Brown: And I think the other thing I would tell myself is You can make that business whatever you want it to be, [00:33:00] whatever it is. I have some businesses that are like, I don't want to grow past 750, 000 a year. I like it just me and my two assistants and that's it. But you still have plenty of room to grow as a business owner, and some people want to grow that mega business and that's okay too, but let's do it the right way, you know. And I think those are the things that I've learned along the 20 plus years of doing this. I wish I would have known at the beginning.
Paden Squires: Yeah. That's all, that's all good stuff.
Paden Squires: it's all stuff I wish I would have focused on and known more in the beginning. Um, but like, like you said earlier, we don't know what we don't know. And, um, the important thing is to always be looking for answers, right? And being curious and keeping an open mind and being humble enough to make changes and stop, stop falling on your sword and taking the badge of I'm the hardest working guy
James Brown: in the room or, or what.
James Brown: And, you know, I would say the other thing that I would have told myself was. Seek out other people who have done [00:34:00] it You know, I joined a mastermind group. In fact, I was in two of them, but it wasn't until like year 10, you know, well now I run mastermind groups. And when you can get a group of like minded individuals in the same room, the power of that is crazy.
James Brown: Yeah,
Paden Squires: a hundred percent agree. I joined a mastermind group, uh, about two years ago right now. My business is. made massive leaps in a lot of different areas. And me personally have made massive leaps. I think those are really one of the same. I mean, you know, making the personal leaps, there's going to make the business leaps, but yeah, same thing where I'm in a mastermind group with, uh, there's the bigger groups, 40 or 50 people.
Paden Squires: We have a smaller group that's like 10 or so, and, uh, some amazing things happen in those, in those meetings. business personally, all kinds of stuff.
James Brown: I agree. And the last thing I will say, Peyton, is that. If you want to reach your financial goals, you have to reach your personal and professional goals first.
James Brown: Don't ignore that, [00:35:00] right? A lot of our shortcomings our inability to make progress as mindset. Oh, yeah, you know, so constantly work on mindset. because always ask yourself, like if you're at 500, 000 a year now, what would the owner of a million dollar business be thinking? How would they make decisions?
James Brown: What would they be doing? If you don't know a million dollar owner, find one, get in a group of million dollar owners. I always, um, was like, if I end up being the smartest people in the room, it's time to change rooms. Yep. You've outgrown it. And so think of, uh, if I want to be a 5 million owner, then what, what decisions do I need to make?
James Brown: Already start thinking of yourself as the 5 million owner, you know, and, Don't accept that. I can't.
Paden Squires: you have to become the person before it ever becomes reality. Right? Like you have to be the person, then you do it. And then you [00:36:00] have it. Like that, that is the order, right?
Paden Squires: Like you can't do something and then you get something and then you become this great 5 million business owner. You got to be a 5 million business owner before you get the 5
James Brown: million business.
Paden Squires: I
James Brown: agree. Um, And here's the thing. Most people will believe their doubts and doubt their beliefs. Yeah, yeah. And that's our human, that's our human wire.
James Brown: And that's what holds people back, right? If you flip that and you start believing your beliefs and doubting your doubts, Rocket and it opens up. Yeah. Rocket ship is right. That's
Paden Squires: great.
James Brown: That's some great stuff.
Paden Squires: James. James, what's a great conversation here, man? what's the best way people can connect with you?
Paden Squires: You know, your, your coaching stuff or what? Yeah. What's the best way people can connect?
James Brown: Yeah. There'll be a link that we built a landing page just for your listeners. Um, so we'll have a link for that to you so you can put that right in here at the bottom. Um, but if they want to [00:37:00] go to businessaccelerator.institute
James Brown: is the best way to find out more about what we're doing. But I'm on a mission to help as many business owners as I possibly can. and that's probably the best way to find out more and see if it's a good fit.
Paden Squires: That's awesome, James. I appreciate you so much. Anything you want to leave the listeners with?
James Brown: I think no matter what situation you're in, start doing something. Now I'm gonna say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it, but I'm gonna say it more, uh, less blunt. Um, even if you're standing in a pile of crap, right? Nobody's coming to save you, right? The first thing is to take a step out of the pile of crap or you're gonna stay in it.
James Brown: So do something and just keep moving forward. Get out of that mode of, The world is stacked against me, right? No, I control my future and go and do it and you can accomplish anything. Yep,
Paden Squires: just start [00:38:00] solving one problem and then solve the next and you just string that together for as long as possible. I agree. Well James, thank you listeners.
Paden Squires: Appreciate you guys checking us out and we'll catch you. Uh next time. Thank you, sir
Paden Squires: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you found it valuable, please rate, review, and share it. That is the best way to help us build this and reach more people as we're trying to accomplish our goal of help create more healthy, wealthy, and wise entrepreneurs. You can follow us on social media by searching for me, @padensquiresor going to www.padensquires.com
Paden Squires: On the website and social media, we're always sharing tips of personal growth, and there we can actually interact. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks guys.
