Why Expertise Alone Doesn’t Build a Business ft. Michael Zipursky

Most people think about marketing as something that you do to somebody. Therefore, it is negative to market to somebody, to promote, to sell. It comes off feeling like you're doing it to them. It's not necessarily for them. And my reframe on that is no, think about marketing as something you actually do for somebody.

Good day and welcome to the Wealthy Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Bob Gauvreau. It is fantastic To have you here with us today. Just as a reminder, this is the place where we dissect the elements that contribute to entrepreneurial success, from mindset and leadership to profits and revenue. I have a guest today. Excited to have him join. Michael Zipursky, CEO and co-founder of Consulting Success. And Michael helps 6, 7-figure consultants turn their expertise into profitable, scalable businesses built around stronger clients Healthier Margins and Real Freedom. I know today we're going to be focusing on Michael's expertise, which is really understanding the consulting business, how to get your message out to your target audience, and understanding, truly understanding, who that target audience is. Michael's got a wealth of knowledge, has been in business for 18 years, and excited to have him join us and share today. You know what, if you're not a consultant though, that's okay. This is going to apply to all business owners. We're just going to specifically pull out some insights from the consulting world into the entrepreneurial space. But without any further ado, let me please welcome Michael Zaporsky, CEO and co-founder of Consulting Success, to the show. Michael, great to have you here with us today. Bob Gauvreau, great to be with you. And so a fellow Canadian on the West Coast, uh, know you're building a really incredible business from everything I've read. Would love for you to share with everyone because I know everyone has a unique story, of how they got to where they are today. Would love to hear yours.

Sure. I mean, I'll tell you, so where we are today, Consulting Success, we're a team of about 21 people. We work with consulting business owners all around the world, helping them to really build great consulting businesses. What that means is not only having a business that is growing, that is profitable, but also a business that gives you the lifestyle that you want and allows you to do work that you really enjoy, work that gives you energy as opposed to taking energy away and help you to make sure that you have the systems in place so that you can, you know, grow and reach the levels of success that are meaningful to, to you. And our clients range from solo consulting business owners to those running multimillion-dollar consulting businesses with, with a small team. So that's, that's where we are today. How I got to this place is my background is building many different businesses, but most of them were consulting or professional services related businesses. My cousin Sam, who's still my business partner today, we started different businesses in on the West Coast, as you mentioned, but I went over to Japan and opened up a branch office for one of our consulting businesses. And so I spent about 6 years there working with very large Japanese organizations like Panasonic and Sumitomo and a whole bunch of others, helping them to communicate and sell more effectively into English-speaking markets. After that, we had a lead generation consultancy working mainly with professional services firms. And one day when Sam and I were at a family barbecue, this was before digital nomads and before people, before Zoom and people worked online, we thought, you know, this is a place that we should really think about in terms of building our next business together because we had kind of gone off and done a couple separate things. We said, let's come back together, but this time let's build a business online because we've always loved being able to travel and see the world. And the idea of being able to do that, you know, while we're working was appealing to us. And so we kind of thought about where do we have the most experience at this point in our careers? And we were probably 3 or 4 businesses, consulting businesses into it at that point. We thought, let's, while we're doing what we're doing, let's start to share our experiences online. Of what worked for us, what mistakes we made. Our goal really was to help people to accelerate their success as consulting business owners. And that took off. I mean, Bob, it went from us just posting kind of free educational content to people saying, this is really valuable information. Do you have a course or a program that I can learn more and really accelerate my success? And we said, we don't have one, but we'll build one. And so we did. And we've had now thousands of people go out and go through that.. And then we had people say, this is really helpful. I'm, you know, I'm landing more clients, I'm growing my income. Is there a way to work more closely with you? And we didn't have a coaching program at that point, but we decided to create one. And so we've now been running Consulting Success for almost 18 years. We have 12 coaches that work with our clients that have been trained and kind of have gone through the Consulting Success growth system and frameworks that we have., and we've really collaborated with, uh, and had the opportunity to, uh, make an impact on thousands of consultants all around the world in many different industries. And that's what we're, we're focused on to this day.

Well, that's pretty cool. So 18 years. So you must have had this started before online was happening really heavily though, right? So, 'cause only because we, we started 18 years ago too, and I'm thinking that was not a thing. Nope.

No, it definitely wasn't a thing. And I mean, when we first started Consulting Success, Sam and I, we had a couple of other businesses that we were also running at that time. So it was 3 businesses at one point. My now wife, back then girlfriend, said to me, you know, like, why do you guys— why are you running 3 businesses at one time? And I was— I said to her, diversification, because I thought that was, you know, the right answer. And she said, well, what would happen if you just focused on one of them more? And I was like, that's a really good question. So long story short, those other two businesses were acquired over the years and we just went full into Consulting Success because we saw the opportunity and we felt most excited and passionate about it. And it was the right move for us to, to do that.

Now, it sounds like your wife is pretty smart because I've got that advice from a few people. In fact, I had Chris Bumstead, who is the former Mr. Olympia, was on the podcast and he was training for his last Mr. Olympia championship, which he did end up winning. But his wife said to him, because he got injured maybe a month before the final event, and she had said, you've got, you know, this whole clothing line, supplement store, you're doing this training stuff, and you're also trying to train to be Mr. Olympia. Like, do you not think that everyone else is just focusing on training? Like, if you want to be the best in the world, do you think you can do 5 things at once? And he said, "Probably not," and pushed everything else to the side and finished. So like right out of the gates, what a great piece of advice for people. And I don't know about you, Michael, but for me, I usually get people who either one, are splitting into multiple businesses, or two, investing in real estate or dabbling in real estate. And I always try and say, keep your eye on the prize. Like your moneymaker really is your business. You're never going to get a better return on investment. Sounds like you went through that experience as well. Is that something you see with business owners?

Yeah, I mean, 100%. There's— while there's risk involved in any business, the greatest return that I think you'll ever be able to see is in your own business. And so for us, our clients are consulting business owners. And so if you think about the value of landing one sizable engagement, right, you're generally talking about 5 figures, 6 figures, and in some cases 7 figures. So when people are thinking about should I invest in growing my business and, you know, learning how to take things to the next level, it's a pretty easy to understand ROI because if you just land, you know, a couple of projects as a result of something that you learn or you're able to increase your profitability, I mean, the impact of that can, can really be pretty meaningful. And I think that's true for, for many businesses. So yeah, I'm a big believer in focusing on growing your business as the fastest way to grow your wealth and then making sure that you're taking a percentage of what you're earning and reinvesting that obviously into your business, but also investing into other types of investments that can serve you that are, you know, call them more, more passive while you continue to focus on what really can create the most wealth and cash flow for you.

I think, too, one of the experiences that you guys bring having that lead gen business that you had in the past, bringing that to the consulting side and helping support your clients, I think is a huge value add that you guys have because you've actually done it versus just talk about it. So question for you, you know, when you think of a consulting business, a lot of times people start it because they're an expert and they've got some type of expertise and specialized knowledge, but it's so much more important than that. Can you talk about how important it is to create a repeatable marketing and communication framework that helps them land big clients. Like, if you're the expert but you don't know how to get clients, then really you're just a smart person who's out on an island. How do you help support consultants, or what's some advice that consultants need to help build that lead gen system?

Yeah, I mean, this is probably one of the biggest challenges that people at the early stages have, is that you can, you can be a subject matter expert, you can have deep expertise, you may have done amazing work in a previous, you know, corporate or senior role. But when you actually start your own business, if people don't know what you do and they don't see it in a way that is compelling or in a way that resonates with them, it doesn't matter how good you are, right? Without clients, you don't have a business. And so it's very important for everybody. And I think, you know, for most people, it's understandable. Very few people go to school or go for training in their earlier years or at any point to learn how to actually run a consulting business. They develop their expertise through their career, but they've, they've never actually thought about how do I grow my business? Because their mindset, even if they've been working on growing businesses, it's been growing somebody else's business. And now when you get into consulting, you are the product. And so for some, you know, it's actually quite a few people, it's uncomfortable to promote yourself, right? It feels kind of icky. It doesn't feel uncomfortable. It feels like it's too salesy, right? No one wants to put the spotlight on themselves. But the reality is you are the product. And the reason why the, the initial clients or people will choose to work with you is because they trust that you have the expertise and that you can help them to get the result that they want. But if they don't know what your expertise is, if they don't know what's different about what you're providing or offering compared to everything else available in the marketplace, then you're not going to have the opportunity to, you know, to really serve them. And the way I always kind of counsel our clients on this is to think— most people think about marketing as something that you do to somebody, right? Therefore it is negative to market to somebody, to promote, to sell, right? It comes off feeling like you're doing it to them. It's not necessarily for them. And my reframe on that is, no, think about marketing as something you actually do for somebody, right? In service of. And if you have expertise and if you clearly know that you can help someone, what doesn't matter in the industry, doesn't matter their, their, you know, their level and so forth. But if you believe that you can add value for someone, then it's your responsibility to let them know because otherwise you're actually doing them a disservice, right? You're not, you're not even letting them know that there is a solution to their problem or that there's a better way to get a result or that they can get a result in less time and maybe with less money. And so if they have to wait longer to get that result, it's costing them something. Maybe it's, it's pain, it's stress, it's their career. It's, you know, the stakeholders, the, the communities that they serve, whatever it might be. And so it really comes down to feeling confident and seeing and understanding that what you're doing is not just for you. You don't just market for yourself. You're doing it to add value for others. And when you add value for others, you end up adding, you know, creating value for yourself. So I think, Bob, that's first of all, just the mindset that needs to be there, because otherwise people will tend to hesitate and do everything other than actually work on, on their marketing. So that's kind of number one in terms of the system. There's a few things that need to be present in order for people to have success from a marketing perspective. And this is part of what we call a Consulting Success Growth System. The first one is what we call ideal client clarity, meaning that you need to be very clear on, on who you actually serve and you know, I've had hundreds and hundreds, probably thousands of conversations, if I actually think about it, with successful business owners over the years. And when— what's the pattern that is very clear is that when you are a smaller player and when I mean small, I'm talking about, you know, you have, call it under 30 or 40 employees. So whether you're solo or you have a team of 5, 10, 20, you're still a smaller player in the, you know, in the scheme of things. It almost always will serve you to focus more as opposed to trying to go broad, right? So specialization over generalization. As you grow, you'll find ways to add more capabilities, more markets. But you can do that because you have the infrastructure, you have the team, you have the systems that are established. But earlier on, that focus is your friend. And so ideal client clarity really comes down to identifying who can you serve best. Right? Where do you have the most experience, the most expertise, the most access, right? The who can you deliver the best results for? When you're clear on that, everything else follows. When you're not clear on that, every— you can spend a lot of time in marketing-related activities and not see much from it. So getting clear on, you know, what industry do you serve or what type of buyer, what is their job title, what factors need to be there, what is the mindset of that person, what stage of growth are they in? A lot of different criteria they need to go through. But when you get clear on that, you can then get very clear on what are the problems and the opportunities that would resonate with that person. And so today, the challenge with marketing for most people is that there's more noise in the marketplace than there's ever been before. Right? There's— and that's only going to increase with AI and agents and all that other stuff. It's just too easy for people to really interrupt. And so that means that you need to get kind of cut through all that noise. And the only way to really cut through that is to deliver a message to that person that you ultimately want to work with that they find to be valuable, insightful, and interesting, which means you really need to understand what they care about. And that's why the kind of spray and pray approach and going broad just doesn't work, because your message by default has to be watered down because you're trying to appeal to too many different people saying too many different things, which means that, you know, you're the classic jack of all trades, master of none. And so you tend not to see much of your marketing working. But when you get very clear on who the ideal client is, you understand their problems, you understand what they're thinking about, you understand, you know, what their mandates are and what potential insights or information would give them an edge and they would want to pay attention to. And so then that takes you to the next part of the system, which is what we call magnetic messaging. And this is really about how you position yourself in a way that what you say gets the attention and interest of your ideal clients. And so it doesn't matter when people say, you know, should I be on LinkedIn? Should I be doing Facebook ads? Should I be, you know, doing A, B, C, D, E? Those things are usually not as important as getting clear on your ideal clients and the message you actually put in front of somebody. Because if you're not clear on your ideal clients, you're not going to have a message that resonates. If you don't have a message that's specific, If you're just saying things like, you know, I help small business owners to increase their profits, it's like, well, that's nice, but what does that even mean? And a lot of people are saying that exact same thing. So getting a message that really creates enough distinction, differentiation, and therefore advantage that people find is memorable, but more importantly, that it resonates with them and they want to learn more about it and they can see that it, you know, it's going to have an impact. It's going to be relevant for where they are today and where they want to go. That is what essentially you need to have in place. And when you have that, now the question becomes, well, what's the best way to put that in front of somebody? Where do they spend their time? Are they part of certain associations? Do they go to certain trade shows? Are there speaking opportunities, writing opportunities? Can you interview them? Can you connect with them on LinkedIn? Does advertising make sense or not make sense? These are questions that you want to think through and be very obviously thoughtful about because you can spend and waste a lot of time and a lot of money if you haven't really been there, done that. Yeah, filters. Well, there, I think we all have, right?

Yeah.

But once you understand some of those things, then it becomes very clear, right? And you can be very intentional. And so, I mean, I'll just say one other thing, because I know I'm, I'm going on here a little bit longer, but just hopefully this will be helpful for people. One of the most important factors when it comes to marketing, and again, once you have these things that I've just mentioned already in place, because those are requirements. Is consistency, right? Is making sure that you're getting in front of the people that you care about on an ongoing, regular basis and that you don't stop. Most people will try things and they'll say it doesn't work.

All right.

I tried this thing that I heard somebody talk about. I'm using this new technology. I'm doing this and doing that. And how long do you do it for? Well, I did it for the last, you know, month or 2 months. And what do you do? Follow up? No, I didn't do any follow up. I sent a couple of emails. It's like that's not going to cut it, right? You need to be persistent and you need to be consistent. And over time, if you're doing those things in the right way and you have all the elements of the system in place, that's when you start to generate, you know, significant lead flow and opportunities that can create a multimillion dollar per year consulting business for sure.

Right. It's, it's not just marketing, but it is sales too. Right. And I think you just talked about that part. You know, you I would say so many businesses, not even just consultants, but, you know, so many different industries. And I think of the trades for sure, where the person who's going to grow the most is the one who answers the phone or returns the message. And it's crazy because, you know, people spend so much time and energy on marketing, but they're not following up with the leads that are actually being generated. And so those that do will, will definitely win. You know, it's funny, I think back to 18 years ago when I got started in my consulting professional services business. I think, man, I just networked. I shook hands, I went to all the events and it was such an easy way to grow. But at some point that, that stops being a productive way. One, you get to know everybody in those circles. It's— you can always find new circles, but it takes a while for those to happen. I know you didn't necessarily speak to the vehicle, sort of suggesting that it's less important than the message, which I would agree. But curious to know where you're seeing the greatest success, what vehicle people are using in the consulting space that's getting the highest return, assuming the client is understood, the messaging is key, you're delivering value. Where are we seeing the greatest results?

Yeah, I mean, so there's, there's several on this. So speaking still works great. Writing can, can work great. Building and nurturing relationships done consistently and done well. Very, very powerful. Interviewing your ideal clients also can work, can work very well. Those— and the reason I'm not saying that like it's just one, Bob, is because the reality is, you know, I look across hundreds of clients and we have many that are doing amazingly well and they're doing it through speaking at trade associations. We have others that are running multimillion-dollar consulting businesses, and most of that comes from interviewing their, their ideal clients. So it's not just one that works. And I think this is, this is the important part and something that we really focus on when you're building a business. There's no one way to do it. What's important is getting clear on what does success look like for you? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Therefore, you know, where's the opportunity? And then building the strategy and plan around that. So we, we don't, you know, market, market and talk about our, the, what we call the Clarity Coaching Program. We don't say, hey, like, this is about how to learn how to run a webinar and a funnel and ads because that's the best way. No, we don't do that, right? If somebody wants help to implement something like that, if it makes sense, we can certainly guide them because we have across our team experience that we can, you know, collectively help you in many different ways. What we want to focus on, first of all, is what does success look like for you and what are your strengths? And if somebody has a real interest in speaking and then we look at all the other factors that are relevant for their business, and if we can see clear opportunities to build a strategy around that, then that's what we're going to help them to do. And we have experts to support in that area. But we don't want to say there's one size that fits everybody because the reality is a lot of things can work. But just because something can work doesn't mean that it's the right thing for you. Just the same way as to say there's a lot of, you know, you can take on lots of different types of business and lots of different types of clients, but just because you can doesn't mean that you should. So getting clear on what is the end result that you want to create or what's the destination look like, then we can reverse engineer that and figure out almost like building some filters and criteria to help people make better decisions so that they're not wasting their time or energy and going down the wrong path for too long and going, well, you know, I have all these clients or I've done all this work, but it's not actually serving me. It's much better and more effective to get clear on that first and then build a strategy around it.

Yeah. And I think you said something that's really important. Focus on their strengths, right? A lot of people want to— or some people in certain spaces, people say, well, you have to do video. Well, if you're not good on video or you don't want to do it like you talked about, helping consultants find something that's fulfilling that they enjoy doing. Sometimes video or speaking could be an absolute nightmare for people. So focus on writing. If writing is your, your special skill, well, you know, spend time there, really refine that and understand how writing copy can help support your growth and your mission. But yeah, I'm with you. You know, it's, I do a lot of speaking as well. And it's interesting, like I would do less of it, but it, it's certainly, you know, I would feel best bang for my buck is getting in front of an audience. You know, you are perceived as an expert, but, you know, putting on a virtual event that can be recorded and rerun is, you know, way less work. So, so, you know, there's, there's parts of this you have to really focus on what your strategy is, how much time you have and what you really want to do, because at the end of the day, it's how do we create a system for you, right?

Yeah. One thing we do with our kind of or encourage our clients to think through as part of the process is, you know, imagine like a Venn diagram, right? So you have one, one circle, which is your strength, your expertise. Then you have, you know, the other side of where does the market actually kind of live and how can you easily reach them? And you want those to overlap. So as you think about all the different things that you could be doing, you want to make sure that it aligns with both of those because you can choose one channel to focus on. But if it's not going to help you to reach your ideal clients as efficiently and effectively as possible, then you're not going to get optimal results. And likewise, right, if you only focus on where the market is, but you don't enjoy the medium or the channel that you're going to use to, you know, to get in front of them, then you're probably going to do everything even kind of subconsciously not to do that work that is necessary and necessary and do it consistently. And therefore you're not going to get results either. So you want to find that, that overlap between those two that kind of creates that the perfect storm and therefore makes that whole process much easier, smoother. You do it more often, do it more often, creates the results that you want. Right? And kind of the rest takes care of itself.

Makes sense. So I'm going to, I'm going to shift directions a little bit and I'm going to ask you a few questions that probably don't necessarily involve an elaborate plan, but more so like just looking for your take on them. First one is what's your— what's the biggest mistake that you see consultants make when they're trying to scale?

There's more than one, which is why I'm pausing and thinking. Yeah, there's a lot of—

you can share a few. You can share a few. What are the—

yeah, okay. Let me give you, I think, a couple that are quite prevalent. And so the first is pricing, right? So using an under-optimized or a pricing strategy or model that is not optimized really just means that you're going to try and do more of something that doesn't already work or right, or that doesn't work. And I think that's actually probably one of the most important components of understanding how to really scale and grow a business. Is that you can't just try and do— or I should say generally you shouldn't just try and do more of what you're already doing if what you're doing isn't optimized. So before, like with our clients, when they're thinking about how do I go from where I am right now to get to that next level, the first thing that we do, we don't say, hey, let's just think about growth. We just say, okay, let's, let's look together. We actually do a full-on like assessment, audit, diagnostic to get really clear on what's working, what isn't working. So that we can then figure out what are the things that should be scaled and what are the things that should not be scaled. Because if you have something that is, again, not optimized or even optimized, if you have something that is not working for you, if it's inefficient, if it's— if there's waste, then trying to scale that, it just means you're creating a bigger problem. So that's number one. And pricing is a really common one where people will have offers, services, right, engagements that are not very profitable for them or they're trying to work with a certain type of client that again is not that great for them, but they're trying to do more of that. Well, that's not going to serve you. So that's, that's number one. And then the other one is reliance on the founder, right? So trying to grow when still too much is attached to you. And there's many different ways to grow a business. We have some clients who want to remain solo. And so their goal is not necessarily to scale in the, in the general kind of understanding of scaling means more people, more revenue. Right, their goal is they want to scale their income. They want, right, to, to grow their impact. They want to grow their enjoyment in the business, but their focus will be a little bit different. Whereas somebody who's looking to scale in the more, again, you know, standard understanding of more team, right, greater revenue, doing that without first really understanding what you as the founder, what your role is and what you're— what you need to stop doing. And generally to scale for a founder means you need to do less, not do more. But that's not just an easy thing to necessarily do if you're not clear on how to go about doing that. Right. So that involves delegation, that involves leadership, that involves looking at what is really reliant on you in the business, understanding where are your true strengths and superpowers, and then how can you get more focused and spend more time on those and less time on, on everything else. So mapping all that out and one way to that encourage people to kind of consider is to think about where do you want to be in 12 months, 24 months, 36 months? And based on the business at those levels, right, what does it look like and what do you need to actually do to generate that? So let's just do a simple example. Let's say that right now you're at $1 million per year and you want to get to $3 million in the next 2 years. Well, what is your business going to look like at $3 million, right? How many clients are you going to have? What kind of projects? What's the profitability? What kind of team or systems do you need in place to be able to deliver great value to your clients at that level? You can reverse engineer what the business needs to look like and think about very intentionally what is the role that you will play within that and what other roles do you need or not need it, right? And kind of really challenge that and not just say, I'm going to throw a bunch of people because that's another mistake that people make is they think scaling just means hiring a bunch of people. But if you haven't really thought out what hiring you really need and what's going to be most strategic, you'll end up just wasting a lot of, a lot of money. But that exercise we always find is very helpful for people to get a clear picture of what really needs to happen to get them to where they want to go to.

When I think of— and so much in social media right now, it's like the passive investment income stream lifestyle business that people talk about. Right. And ultimately, the sale of freedom and lifestyle is so big in the space, specifically in consulting and coaching. Question for you: when people are starting and they're focusing on growing, should they be focusing on building that freedom system, or should they be focusing on revenue growth, or a combination of both?

Yeah, I think the reality is when you're earlier stage, you're going to need to put in a little bit more, you know, kind of hustle, hard work, more time on the business to, to get it going.

Right.

And that's just the, the general kind of dynamics of, of building momentum. Right. It's like you have a big boulder when you first are trying to push it. It's going to take a lot more energy and a lot more effort. But once it starts to move a little bit, things get, get easier, right? You create more, more flexibility, more optionality. Right, as you're creating more, more success. I don't really think there's a way around that unless you are in a position where you're starting your business and you have, you know, a lot of cash flow or a lot of reserve funds. And so you don't feel the pressure. But for a lot of people, when they start a consulting business, they definitely feel some level of pressure. But ideally, you know, they have 6 or 12 months where they, they don't have to worry about bringing you new revenue in. That being said, though, Bob, I think what's really important— I mean, you talked about this kind of especially in the age of social media and what we're in right now, where this idea of passive income and passive this, right, people creating more freedom. What I always challenge people with is the idea of why, why make that the destination? So instead of like really define what does success look like for you? And if success is, well, I want to go— I want to be able to exercise in the morning. I want to be able to take my kids to school. I want to stop working at this time of day, or I want to make sure that I'm whatever, fill in the blank, right? Whatever is meaningful for you. Instead of making that the destination, figure out how do you make that your average day, right? So what needs to happen? And I've done this with many clients who in their minds they had to put it off, but instead start by getting clear on like, what does success actually look like? And then how can you make that happen today? And build your business around this. So this is actually a concept that I talk about called the Lifestyle and Business Triangle. And the reason this kind of came to me is many years ago I was in Japan and one of my friends there is a CEO of— he runs a few different businesses and extremely successful, travels a lot. And I said to him, why, why do you work so hard? And he works so hard, they actually had to go to the hospital once because he essentially overworked himself. And I said, like, I think you're in a financial position where you don't need to be working this hard. Like, why are you doing this? I'm doing it for my family, for my children, my children. And I love this guy. Like, he's just— he was a real mentor to me, but I didn't buy that answer. I was like, no, that doesn't make sense to me, right? If you're saying that you're doing it for your kids and because you like— do you think your kids care about how much money you have? Do you think they care about you being present? And that to me opened up my eyes to there's this thing where people are. If you think about a triangle, they are at the top. The apex of the triangle is where most people put their business, especially early on. You kind of tend to prioritize everything business, business, business that drives your decisions. But what that means is that underneath your business is your lifestyle. And so now the weight of your business, right, impacts your lifestyle and makes you have to essentially adjust to the whims of the business or the direction of the business. So everything that you have to sacrifice becomes your personal side. Right? Relationships, your health, wellness, all that. And so I encourage people to invert that, right? Put your lifestyle at the apex of the triangle. Get really clear about what does success look like for you. And then the beautiful thing about business, right, as you know, is you get to design the business in the way that you want. So when you know what the lifestyle is and you've set that, now you can make the decisions about when do you work, when do you not work, when you start work, what kind of clients do you say yes to, what kind of clients do you say no to? Do you work in, you know, one-off models or you have fewer clients at a higher kind of more premium price points, or do you have a more productized model? And maybe some of that is that more clients, higher volume, lower dollar value, like what makes sense for you? You can't really make those decisions thoughtfully and intentionally and strategically if you haven't defined what lifestyle works like. And my argument would be that if you don't do that, then you'll end up thinking about success as something that happens to you in the future, where instead you can actually live a successful life right now if you're clear on what success looks like and make that, you know, the priority.

Absolutely. Last question for you. I love to end this way. What's— if you had to put yourself back 18 years ago when you started your business, what's one lesson that you've learned along the way that you wish you knew when you started? I'm sure there's a few. If you're like me, there's a few.

Yeah, it's a really great question. It's a big and kind of broad question. And there's nothing that comes to mind right away. And I'll tell you why. I think the only way that in my case, so the quote unquote mistakes that I made, right, or the things that maybe I wish I would have known differently and I can call upon, like as I'm saying this, I'm thinking of a few things that I did looking back. I was like, that was, that was so dumb, right? Why did I even do that? But the reality is that if I didn't do those things, I wouldn't have learned what I learn now, right? And for me, and I think for, for, yeah, one thing that's been really powerful is I've always been a big investor into myself in terms of working with coaches and mentors and different programs. And I think that doesn't matter what level your business is at. Like, I did this when the, you know, when we were making almost $0 a month and $10,000 a month and $100,000 a month. And I mean, the numbers don't matter, right? As you keep growing, there's always more that you can learn. And there's always people that have, have the experience so that you can fast-track that, right, and accelerate your growth and success. So for me, that's a big one. But yeah, I mean, I can give you like, there's, there's times where when I was younger and I maybe didn't see the full context and I, I said things to people I talked to where I probably should have just been quiet a little bit longer and, and asked more questions instead of being so excited to share what I, what I knew. But there's, yeah, there's no beyond that. Nothing comes to mind, I guess.

I think it's just more understanding that like I'm pulled out of what I feel was a really good insight was, you know, if you put yourself back, failure's okay.

For me it's, it's lessons learned, right? And that's probably one of the lessons that I would share right now that if I was to go back, I would try and tell myself, which is when I made mistakes or when I had situations where that were that felt in that moment devastating or very acute, painful, stomach churning, turning, you know, all of that, that in the early days for me, if I would have known that it's all like, this is part of it, right? What kind of hurts you at one point makes you, makes you stronger. And as you start to see that play out, even the things that in the early days would have been really challenging to deal with and kind of work through now become— they're not that big of a deal, right? And that's, I think, what makes entrepreneurs who are in the game of entrepreneurship longer, stronger. It's that experience and recognizing that as long as you continue working at things, you know, you will figure it out and there's not much that can actually stop you.

Absolutely. Michael, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for joining today and sharing your insights with us. Really glad we got to connect and to share some of your expertise with our audience.

Thanks for having me, Bob.

Guys, this is the Wealthy Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Bob Gauvreau. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, follow, leave us a Google or a review on Apple. We would love that. It truly helps us reach more entrepreneurs. If you're a founder with a story of resilience, growth, and lessons learned along the way, fill out the guest form in the show notes. Also feel free to leave any questions you have. Leave the comments. We will respond to you. We'll make sure that you get connected with Michael. We will have his contact info in the comments as well. But first and foremost, thanks for joining us today. Give us that follow. I look forward to seeing you next time. Uh, this is Wealthy Entrepreneur Podcast. Have a great day.