Todd Herman: What Makes A Professional Entrepreneur?

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to capitalism dot com. I am so proud to bring you this interview with Todd Herman. I came into this interview selfishly with one very important question that has been burning on my heart and my mind, because it's where I'm at as an entrepreneur. It's defining the next chapter and what I want to be great at. Todd is a coach to some of the most successful and most famous athletes in the world, and he also has some clients that are very successful entrepreneurs. But his genius is understanding what drives true greatness, what drives great performances, and how great, amazing outcomes are achieved. He works with entrepreneurs and athletes and high performers at getting them to shift into drive, to get out of interested and into committed. We talk about that a little bit in this episode. And recently, one of my peers had some amazing results working with Todd, and Todd shared about it publicly about how that person became a professional even before they had the results. And so it was burning on my mind. What does a professional entrepreneur do? What does a professional entrepreneur show up to do every day? And how do you even define that? This was a transformational interview with me, and I want you to pay attention to the very last question that I asked Todd. It's when he talks about drawing the lines on the field, that's going to be on my mind for the next several days. And I was left with that as my homework after this conversation with Todd Herman. I hope you enjoy this half as much as I enjoyed recording this.

Todd Herman, welcome back to the podcast. It's been a few years, and do you know, I'm still one of my most downloaded podcasts ever.

Well, that's fantastic to hear, but it's always fun bumping brain uglies with you. Yeah, we just have some good. We have good chats.

Well, today I'm coming in hot because I have a question I've been dying to ask you.

Yeah.

And it stemmed from a Facebook post that you made about a client that you coach that qualified for the PGA Tour.

Yeah.

And you posted your response to this person reaching out. They said, coach, I qualified. And you said back to this person.

I quote every day. Things weren't going in the right direction, you still showed up and did the work. Chalk that up to a lot of reps helping people like you. That's when you became a pro.

You became a pro when you stepped up and you did the hard work.

Yeah.

This jarred a question in me because, Todd, last year, I watched Tom Brady win his 94th Super bowl with a different team, and I thought to Myself, I want to be a pro at something.

So Todd, my question is this. How do you become a pro as an entrepreneur? When you are faced with payrolls and chaos and new ideas and content and teams and personalities and all the things that go into making up the life of an entrepreneur, what is a professional entrepreneur?

When your mindset, your self conversation gets to the point of saying, is that all you've got? What I mean by that is, you know, I've gone through tough times in my life and.

You know you've gone through tough times and people that are listening have gone through tough times. And I have heard from many people about their morning routines, about how they wake up and they drink a glass of alkalized water and they brush their teeth and they say their meditations and then they go and do. I don't care about any of that stuff. I'll still do those things. But that's not what's important to me. The moment I wake up and recognize that I'm going to be waking up, it's not just like I woke up in the middle of night, but when I'm waking up from my day, I have this mantra that I say to myself which is.

Come and get me, come and get me. And I'm talking to fear because I was someone who battled some pretty shitty demons from my past and stuff that happened to me and things like that and it ruled a lot of my behavior and choices and maybe under indexed in my early 20s even though to the outside world Todd was doing some good things. But I knew I had more in the tank and I was not pursuing some of the things that I really wanted to do. And then I had a switch that got flipped where I wasn't going to be ruled by that anymore. And and so I have this mantra that's just come and get me. Because fear can't. Fear can't hit a moving target. Fear lives in stagnant water, it lives on couches, it lives when you're sitting still and not doing anything. So my point about going back what I said earlier is when.

Stuff starts rolling down the hill on top of me, I just sit there and go, isn't that all you got? I want to have my mind space, my decision making space, the IQ that I do have or the EQ that I do have available for me to respond to those things and not get caught up in them saying things like why is this happening to me? I don't want to answer that question, it's a bad question. But what I do want to send a message to myself with, is that all you got? Because I got more in the tank. No, no, no. So you don't think I've got. Yeah, it's going to suck to try and meet payroll maybe this week or this month or something. I'll find a way. It frees up my resources to think more creatively. And so the reason I'm saying that is to. Because the entrepreneur's real superpower is your. Is your creative superpower. It's your capacity to come up with new ways of solving something, right? And most of us can. You know, even I did early on. I'm like, oh, if I only had the money, then I could have gone and done it. The. I mean, how many statistics do you need to look at that overfunded companies typically fail, Right?

So to your point, what do I say to those people? How you become a pro is that you become a pro the moment you welcome this stuff. And the moment you chose this, right? You chose this. I say this inside of my mentoring programs. Like, don't bitch and moan about this stuff because you chose it. Now, you might have done this unwillingly. You might have been a reluctant entrepreneur and you didn't realize what you were getting into. But now that you're in it, I mean, there is not a better personal development or leadership program on the planet than being someone who is running a business. Because all of your, you know, inconsistencies, all of your weaknesses get brought immediately to the surface for, you know, the world to bear witness to what it is that you've got kind of thing. So, you know, it's. It's a bit of that, and then it's a bit of deciding to be a pig. That's. The other side is like, I want to be a pig in life. I don't want to be a chicken. You know, there's that famous analogy of at breakfast, the chicken is interested in breakfast. The pig is committed to breakfast, right? The chicken laid the egg, and it can move off and go and peck around in the dirt and find some more seeds, but the pig is on the plate, right? So interesting commitment. I want to be. I'm going to commit to this thing that I've got going on, and it's a massive switch that gets flicked. And that goes back to, again, that post that I had shared, because he did. He did the work. And you know who it is that I'm talking about as well.

But.

And I talk about it all the time about the moment. I mean, I know the exact moment that he made the switch. And it was. We had started working together in July of last year, and it was October. There was a moment in October where he made the switch and I told him, and I can screenshot of the text for him and Because I sent it to him saying, you just made the switch.

Okay. So I believe you.

Yeah.

Logically, I'm so with you. Right. Especially to your second point of are you a pig or are you a chicken?

Yeah.

I have experienced times where the switch flips for me, and there ain't nothing that's going to get in my way.

It's honestly, like, one of the best feelings ever. Like, commitment is, like, genuinely exhilarating.

Yeah.

I also know that there are. I could probably tell you four areas of my life where I am interested and not committed.

Yeah.

What do we.

Right now?

Correct.

Right now. So I love reading biographies. There A lot of people will read a lot of nonfiction books. I actually don't read any books that are in my space because I do the reps every day. I'm a practitioner. Like, I'm coaching people. Why would I go and read someone else's book who is a researcher or a theorist? Right. No. Like, I'm on the field every day. I know what's happening. I'll read research papers. But I love reading biographies because biographies deliver a nuance of someone's life. Right. Like, Tina Fey's biography is a great biography. A. I love reading comedians biographies because they are people who take some of the, you know, largest wounds of life and somehow make some funniness out of it. Right. And so I love reading their stuff in Tina Fey's. But Steve Martin's book is a great book as well. So I love Steve Martin. And Steve had a very methodical approach that he thought of for his life. So he wanted his 20s to be about really mastering the craft of comedy. So he spent a decade doing that. And then he Transitioned in his 30s, he really wanted to master the craft of being an actor. He did that his 40s, he wanted to master the craft of music, specifically playing the banjo, and he did that. And then his 50s, he wanted to master the craft of painting and art. And he's done that. He's got, like, very expensive art. He's a very accomplished artist and stuff. And so I would just say to people, like, this is where it's such hard advice to give people, even for me to swallow. Patience, playing a long game with things. And so I would say that you've done a phenomenal job in the last decade. Of really mastering startup entrepreneurship and marketing and stuff, because you are, you're great at that and you're great at coaching people around that. And so maybe it's looking into the next decades of things and saying, well, where is this other thing that I do have an interest in right now where you can kind of foster that interest in it so that when you're ready, if maybe you're committed to it at some point in time, you can kind of hit the ground running with it.

Can you manufacture commitment?

How do you think about that question? What do you mean by that?

Can you expedite someone getting to the point of commitment, or is that an internal switch that flips.

So you can, you can help people get to it faster? Definitely.

My preferential way of doing it is by challenging people and by actually making me a bit of an enemy in some way. So I'll give you an example. So, you know, living in New York City, I chose New York city because there's 14 professional sports teams. And my sports business, it's such a transient city where people are coming in and leaving. It was such a great spot because I'd meet awesome people every single week. Plus, because of the way that I built my sports business was on the back of referral only and private, really ultra private clientele that someone would text me and say, hey, we're playing against the Brooklyn Nets this week. Do you have any time on Wednesday for lunch or something like that? So there was a hockey player that got connected to me who's in the NHL through another NHL player. And I like to do walk and talks. I don't know if anyone else that's listening does coaching, but you're going to get some of the best conversations when you're walking with someone. Because even now, like you and I are on Zoom right now and we're looking at each other, but that's not really a natural way that we as human beings communicate. But when you're walking side by side, especially males can do this well, because there's nothing confrontational about that. It's almost like we're hardwired anthropologically, that if I face off against you, that there's going to be some sort of puffing of chest stuff, right? So we walk and we talk and just movement alone sort of stimulates a different part of the brain. So we're walking and we're talking and then we sat down on the Hudson river and he was telling me about what he wanted his career to be about. And he was about three years into his career at that time. And.

He said, nothing would make me happier than going back to my small town in Ohio and being able to take the Stanley cup out into the rink that I grew up on and show it to the other kids that are out there just to show what can be done. And I leaned forward onto my knees and I'm like, you're full of shit. You don't want that. And he's like, excuse me? And I said, that's cliche. That's what they all say.

It's like you're reading from a script of every other fricking NHL guy that's going to talk to a reporter. I'm not a reporter. Like, either I'm going to work with you to help you get to a certain performance level so that you can achieve things. Or, or you're not going to work with me that way, but I need truth and honesty, otherwise I can't do anything with you. And he responded with a fuck you. How dare you Tell me about what is my actual vision for what I want for my career. Like, that's what I want. He's like, I thought Zach, like, Zach said, you're like the best he's worked with on this stuff. And I said, that's what I wanted to see. That's what I wanted to see is that I didn't hear that in your waxing philosophical. That's the energy that you need to take because that energy that you've got right now is robbing some other young kid. You're right, in your fucking little small town of Schittsville, Ohio, from not being able to go and do what you do.

Easy on the Ohioans, Todd.

No, but I mean, I'm from Schittsville, Alberta. Right? Like, I mean, I'm from a smaller town than anyone that's listening to this. Like, I mean, 94 people. Pretty hard to beat that, right? So. But I say it as a term of endearment. I love, I love that I'm from the middle of nowhere and went off and did a few things with stuff. But anyway, my point about that is that's, that's an example of manufacturing commitment by just relating to them in a different way, challenging them. You know, there's. There's way too much coddling of people with their dreams and stuff. And I'm going to hit you. Like, I want you to thank me for the closed fist punch to the mouth that I give you because it gets a result. And that's what a lot of the coaching will end up Looking like sometimes, not all the time. It's not like I do that every single time I'm talking to someone, but there are moments where you can. Because I could see it like, the guy had the skill, and I knew he had elements of that commitment, but.

He didn't have it centered within him by any stretch of the imagination. And my job was to center it.

If he had not responded in that way and he had said instead that he had a different dream, you would have nudged him away from the fake dream, the fake commitment, and closer to the real switch.

Is that possibly, Possibly. Or the other alternative there, too, is. He goes.

Oh, yeah, maybe. And then I would have gone back at him with, wait, you're going to give up that easily? I challenge you on something, and that's how quickly you back away from it. Why? Who the hell am I? You just met me. What? Because Zach said I'm kind of good at what I do, that just because I've worked with a bunch of guys that are in your league and I challenge you on it, then you walk away from it. Is that what you do on the ice? Right? Someone checks you harder than you check them, and then you decide not to check them again? Dude, where's your fight, man? Like, that's. So there's. Yeah, I've got different plays that I can play with each one. But, you know, possibly if he said, you know what? You're right. I've never admitted it to myself. I played hockey because it's what my dad wanted me to do or my mom wanted me to do, which is a conversation I've had many times as well. And they go, I want to pursue piano. I loved playing piano as a kid, but I would have been a wussy in my small little town of a kid playing piano. That's 100% a conversation. 100% a conversation that I've had with someone, and they went off and they played piano.

Todd.

I think us entrepreneurs are kind of trained to operate on our own, figure things out on our own, and we're kind of dying for that deep desire, that drive, that thing worth fighting for. It sounds like part of your job, or maybe the majority of your job. And getting someone to be professional is just to help them discover what they individually think is worth fighting for. Is that a fair summary?

So that's part of it, definitely.

What can get you angry and get you fired up.

Some of it is skill, though, as well. Like, we don't need to go. That's the problem, I think, with a lot of the self help, personal development or the armchair people that are out there, Ryan, where people default into going, you know what? It's part of your belief system now. Think about this. We are hardwired now based on the spiritual traditions and self help now and the pervasiveness of it, that when you hear that something is a belief, like if I said to you, ryan, this is a belief thing, unconsciously you are wired to know that that's a hard thing to unravel your beliefs. Overcoming a belief. Right. And so I actually try to stay away from it as much as possible because I mean, I like to participate. What if it's actually not as difficult as that? What if it's. You just need a skill? I think for some entrepreneurs it's. They need to develop the discipline and the skill of fighting through the hard days. Continue to show up even on the days where you don't want to do it. Because again, there's this other pervasiveness that's out there. It's like, hey, the great thing about entrepreneurship is if you don't feel like doing something today, you don't have to go do it. And you get to choose your life. And I might.

You could work in your underwear from home.

Best of luck. You're going to be an extraordinarily average entrepreneur and you're going to get average results and you're going to stay in a real purgatory of uncertainty and just mediocre results. So some of it is actually just the discipline of like sticking in it in a day where you didn't want to write something or you didn't want to come to a decision on a team member that you had just hired three weeks ago, that you had said to someone else is going to be an amazing find that you just had. But then you realize that once they got inside the business, which has happened to all of us, is not what they were cracked up to be. And what are you going to do with that decision? Are you going to let it linger or are you going to actually bite the bullet? Make the call, remove that individual from the team. Because any, any longer and they could sour the entire bunch of people. So some of its skill of just sticking, you know, through the tough days, and those are your best days anyway, I don't know about you, but those are, those have been my best days. Like most satisfying days are the days where you just kept, you just stayed in the fight that day. But you know, I would say to your point, yeah, some people need to know what they're fighting for like, and. Or what's.

What.

What gets you angry? What gets you angry? I found my anger very early on. I knew exactly why I was doing what I was doing.

I appreciate that you're using anger as a healthy emotion.

100%.

I.

I don't find myself driven by anger. Right. Either. I just don't have that as a. I mean, I've been angry, obviously. Like, there are things that get me angry. I don't feel driven by anger. Sure. Is there another equally compelling emotion or driving emotion?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, you can be just as. You can be just as compelled by the love of something than just anger. Right. Or the hope of something else as well. Like bringing hope to something is a very powerful one as well. I mean, we could go on and on with any one of a number of one. It's just, again, we're all individuals and we can all be finding something that really.

Triggers us. Yeah. Like anger. If we only use it all the time is going to. Or if it uses us really, it's. I'm talking about me using it as a tool. Right. But if it's using me, then yeah, it's exhausting.

So this, this is why I asked because you kind of started. You answered my question by saying the minute you say, is that all you got? Which by nature is a little bit of an angry answer.

It's confrontational, a hundred percent.

And.

I jive with that in the short term. I question if I would be driven by that for the long term of, Is that all you got? Bring more at me. Let's battle. I just don't know if that will fire me up. And there's. And so in my mind, if that was the only answer and that was what it took to be a pro, maybe I'm not a pro at this. It's kind of the mental banter going on in my brain. So what would you say to say.

But again, we progressed in that. In that banter of going to. Being committed to it. Right. Like really being committed to the uncertainty that it brings. Being committed to the fact that this. It's not predictable, you know. You know, your Monday doesn't look the same as your next Monday. You can engineer it with your calendar all you want, but typically the dump truck of problems and issues that, you know, gets dumped on you each week is different in nature, so. But it's the, it's the commitment to doing it. Then. I just, I just, I just like the frame in my own mind because of the demons I had to Battle.

Is saying, yeah, I really like it in the short term. I just, I've never asked that question long term. But when you say the commitment is the commitment to the results, to the process or to something else.

So it's, it's a dance between the two. It's a commitment to like I even talk about inside of our nine out of your program when we talk about like the hierarchy of how a goal is actually achieved. You know, the, the best of the best are very good at staying very committed, like a pit bull on a bone to what it is that they want to go and get. But you better be flexible and adaptable to how you go and get it. If you're very committed to it has to be done this way. I have to have a 75 minute webinar sequence. Da, da, da. And that's because that's what like you're going to break on that. And so the process should be flexible and adaptable and that's where the creativity of the entrepreneur comes in. It's like there's so many ways that we can be doing it. So the way to get there, be flexible with it. But if you say that you want it, that's why I'm very slow to commit to a goal, very slow to commit to it. Because in my head this is what you would. Why I was resonating with what you had said earlier about like the moment I make the decision, like I look at it as a opponent you've lost like once the goal is set and I'm committed to it in my, like you've, it's laughable to me because it's inevitable like you're going to lose. You're just not going to stay on the treadmill as long as I will to go and get that for as like years it'll take me then and I'll, I'll be there still showing up chopping wood, carrying water.

Every day I'm thinking about Tom Brady and how Tom Brady is not the fastest quarterback. And if you told, if you had the belief that you had to be the fastest quarterback to be the greatest, Tom would have been a terrible quarterback. But he is the best ever, despite having, you know, being a six round draft pick. Yeah, that's, that's what I think of when you say you have to be flexible in how you accomplish the goal, but he is just committed to being the greatest. Is that what you mean?

I don't even know that you could, you have to be being committed to an idea deal because that's not for everybody either.

Okay, Right.

Because they're the one thing that we can't like. The struggle is guaranteed. The success is never guaranteed.

And so then, you know, let's just make sure that the struggle is worth it. Right. The version of you that comes out the other side of that struggle is it was. It was worth it to go through that struggle. You know, even though I might not have gotten the brass ring or something like that, but because there was.

I think I just got it. I'm sorry for interrupting, but I think I just got it where it is. In some cases, we wait for it to be easy rather than accepting that whatever we do, it is going to be hard.

That's right.

And so it is a matter of choosing or waiting for ourselves to be willing to choose the thing that is worth struggling for. And that is true in marriage, that is true in business, it is true in health. Which of these goals are worth it for you to struggle for? And I think, you know, when a relationship is over, when one person is not willing to struggle for the commitment.

That's right.

There's no amount of love or hope that can overcome someone's unwillingness to go through the hard stuff.

Yeah.

And there is no entrepreneur that just has it on easy street all the time. Which is why the idea of passion is thrown around way too loosely. But passion can be a proxy for being committed to something.

Did I just get it?

Yeah. Yeah.

Sweet.

Yeah, you did. That's exactly. Yeah. Especially that. Especially that initial summation that you were delivering at the beginning is bang on with it.

Any result is going to come with.

Struggle.

Any positive result, anything that requires growth, anything that requires a long term view. Anything that is worth committing to for 10 years is going to have days that you don't want to show up and do it.

And so in your mind, it is about find the switch, as you put it, is about finding where someone's internal compass is willing to tune to, even when their other underlying emotions don't want to do it.

Yeah. And that was.

That's when you're a pro.

That's when that was, you know, going back to the client like almost a year ago. So he actually, you know, to the outside world, turned pro a couple months ago. But really the dominoes were dropped eight months ahead of that. And it was when in the switch that I know typically is when it's happened is when we stop talking so much about outcomes and we start talking about process. Right where he was now talking to me and judging the commitment he had to his process that week and recognizing where he was under indexing and where he could get better. And I'm like, that's exactly what Wayne Gretzky or Jordan or Kobe. What they do is they focus on that stuff, all those controllables that they can put their attention towards.

So this is the most out there example I can think of to make sure that I understand what you're saying. So I trade options on the side. Right. It's like my fun little side hustle. And my coach, we both know Ryan. He often will tell me he is less concerned with what my return is and he is much more concerned with did I do my daily write up of why I entered and exited this trade? Did I set an appropriate stop? Was I consistently thinking about a trade in the exact same way? Which drives me crazy because it means that I'm at fault for everything. Right. I am responsible for the swings that I take. It has nothing to do with seeing something that somebody else can't see. It is like management of my own internal processes. And so it is me being obsessed with that process and letting the results kind of fall where they're going to fall and sometimes getting lucky and sometimes doing all the right things and having a setback.

Yeah.

But I am. I become more and more of a professional trainer the more that I commit to that process rather than committing to the end result.

Yeah, yeah.

Well.

And then the best thing about you writing it out is you get to be an observer of your thoughts now. That's the value of writing something out then too.

So we get into this is something that I coach and I teach people is something called triple loop coaching. So.

Double loop is. Or single loop learning or single loop coaching is me just telling you what to go do. Okay. Double loop is when I. It's like closing the feedback loop. It's me. We talk about what needs to go get done and then you talk about your capacity to do it. And we agree that that's the thing to go and do. And that's what a lot of coaching ends up looking like for most. Triple loop is now pulling both of us out of the coaching experience or the conversational experience and us talking about the thing that just happened between us. So at the end of the call it would be, you know, so how did. How did this week's call go for you? Like, did it work or is there anything that you like or would like to be done differently? Another way of doing it is by me explaining what I just did with you. That's triple loop. That's like pulling yourself out and now speaking down and using what just happened as an object to discuss. And so the good thing about self authorship is you get to move into the meta state of looking at yourself that way and then it helps you get out of ego world. And I mean, I mean, being a guy in New York, I know that the financial world is filled with nothing, but there's a lot of ego that's there. Look at how brilliant I am for making that bet and that call.

Yeah, Todd, part of my mental banter when I read your post was this discussion within myself of like, what am I actually a professional at or want to be? Am I a professional podcaster? Am I a professional entrepreneur? Am I professional writer? Like, wanting to really define it into some sort of hard art. And when you told that story about the hockey player who wanted to bring the Stanley cup back to Ohio, that was much more about a vision. There was a result attached to it, but it was much more about the purpose of showing a group of kids what's possible. Probably because that's what he wanted done for him his entire life.

Sure.

And so it is more when you describe it as a commitment to a vision and then showing up as the professional who is doing the process to get there to create that vision. Much more than it is about being the best. In the hockey example, the best skater or the best shooter or the best defender.

Is when you are working with someone one on one, is it about defining what you are a professional at or is it about discovering and uncovering the vision that is driving them?

Well, I don't need to define the, I don't need to define the professional side of things. We don't really do. I don't really do that.

Because.

Like me, I wanted. I mean, if there's one thing that if I'm going to be put there's, if there's a.

Phrase on the, on the tombstone is that, you know, here lies a good coach.

That's when I got done playing sport. My brother and I had a conversation because we both got done playing college football and my brother's far more of a natural leader than I am. I had to work at mine. His was just, it was very innate with Ryan, that's his name as well. And he said now we need to go and we need to share our passion for football and sport with other kids. Now we know to go and give back very much a part of our family and we, you know, is that idea of giving back. But when I'm working with, if I was working with you. I'm not, no, I'm not sure I need to define with you that you need to be a professional at it. Because I'm just going to observe the behavior and you're going to tell me what your vision is and then I want what I care about more in the pursuit of stuff is identifying what are the values that you really care about. Because the values that you care about become the main filters for how you actually lead and live every single day. Right. And then when you're not really pushing hard to reach that vision or you're not trying to adhere to those values, then I would question, then we get to the professional thing is like, are you just, like are we just going through the motions here, Ryan? You know, because you see other people that are doing this. Like I want to question you on that. Like is this what you really want? Because if you really wanted this then you would be going after, you'd be going after it. You know, it's the one thing that, that's why I did a post maybe a year and a bit ago, it was, yes, July of last year where I talked about how you can't coach motivation. Like I don't touch it. I don't coach your desire.

I don't touch that. Because out of the eight pillars that we grade people on in the world of, you know, mental toughness, inner game work, the final assessment set of questions is around your motivation. But it's really there as a red herring if you, if you grade anything less than. If you don't give me a four out of the. It's a scale of one to four. If you don't give me a four there, then it's a, it's an automatic disqualifier because that's not. Desire is a you thing, not a me thing.

I can work with you on concentration skills, relaxation ability, anxiety and stress management, you know, and all through the other ones. But I'm not going to work with you on desire you because again I only have so much time in my day and I want people who like they want to eat, they want it like they, they have to go do this thing and it pains them and it pains them that they're not being successful at it or pains them that they're under indexing or they're not getting the opportunities. That's the stuff. I like that, I like that angst. I want to be there. And that's why I don't read a lot of the self help books because those people haven't been in the angst. They haven't been in there working with someone through that process when they're so disruptively angry at themselves and throwing self loathing stuff. And you got to coach someone through that like that, that's the juice and the meat for me. And when you're not close to that, I mean, yeah, then all of those books are going to be just, you know, it's popsicle and bubblegum and cotton candy stuff.

I'm nodding aggressively because I realize the subtext of my own question to you, which if I set out a goal to be the best podcaster.

And I'm now comparing where my podcast ranks to other people, which I have done and been guilty of, I have now mistaken. I've almost created. Like I made my podcast the idol that I am. I have used it as a distraction from the real underlying desire, which is to be in alignment with the values that I may be unconscious to. And so I'm projecting them onto being a good podcaster or a good writer or a good marketer for goodness sake, and using those almost as distractions rather than being committed to the values and then expressing them through the different outlets that may present themselves to me and may change decade to decade.

Yeah, yeah. And again, where does that, where does that sort of aligns internally with you? That's where that, like you're head nodding your head. Even the, even the, you know, if you take a look at the physiological response of a head nod, a head nod is going up and down. Right. And so it's, it's like trying to find an alignment between, like, like. Yeah, that's why when we're going and we're doing this, there's no alignment. That's there. Our head's going back and forth. That's so cool. Yeah. So, yeah, that's all like body language stuff that I learned from a very.

I can watch nothing past you. Nothing.

I don't want to think that you think that.

Todd, as an entrepreneur, we're pulled in a lot of different directions. We are or at least tempted to.

How do you, when you're working with an entrepreneur, how do you coach them differently than when you are coaching an athlete or when you're coaching a musician?

So there are way more controllables in sport than there are in entrepreneurship. Every single Olympian or professional athlete I've ever worked with that. Then of course they transition into whatever their next phase of their career might be. That move into entrepreneurship will all say they will gladly take a beating on Sunday if they were a Football player then. Football was so much easier than entrepreneurship.

I did not expect you to say this.

Okay, so this gets into. Now this gets into the question then of how I explain it then. So think about this. An athlete, you've got so many things decided for you. The width of the court, the length of the court, where the net goes, if you're a tennis player, right? Where the out of bounds is, where the serve needs to go. Everything's boxes, it's grids. Yeah, football's a grid. Even the racetrack, there's a grid. You gotta stay between your lane if you're doing a hundred meter dash, all that. So lines are given to you, decisions are made for you. So the challenge of entrepreneurship is you're handed a pen and a pencil and there's a blank canvas in front of you and most people just go to it and they don't stop and draw the lines. And so that's what I try to do with people immediately. No, let's design your field and then we're going to put you, the player on that field and I'm going to design a field with you. Which is typically your business model then. Right? Because that's kind of, that's where. And you've seen this Ryan. How many people have seen the way that Ryan does it. And you talk about how you built things with paid media and there was a certain set of skills or reps that you did that got you to the point of being able to be good at paid media. Because paid media is hard work. Takes a lot of skills to make that work. Demand generation skills. And they've never had any experience there. And then they try to do it and then they wash out or they spend a bunch of money and then they say, well, I can't do it. It's like, no, it's not that you can't do it. It's that sequencing matters. Right? It's putting things in the right place at the right time. You should have gone and done this channel, this channel and this channel first, which would have built up a bunch of skill sets for then you to go and do PA media, whether or not that's even the thing you need to go and do. Anyway, so me, I've won in my business through partnerships and licensing and alliances. Why? I'm a massive extrovert. I love talking to people. If I do stuff like this all day long, then that's great. And I've got. And I ended up managing to build up a really great Rolodex, to use a term. That most people nowadays would not even know what a Rolodex means. But that ages me, I guess. So, you know, And I have used paid media, spent millions dollars on paid media. But my secret sauce is strategic partnerships and alliances and licensing, which no one can see from the outside. They don't all of a sudden. Like last week when I announced that.

I have a shoe deal with Brooks Running Right? So Alter Ego Shoes out in Europe this fall, coming in America next year. And that's an example of partnerships and alliances and licensing stuff. So my point is, is I want to help you design a field that you're naturally going to win at first. Most people are playing on fields that they're going to lose on and. Or the discipline then of me saying to them, okay, we're going to design this field, and they go, yeah, but I want to go do this. I'm like, no, that's phase two. That's the. That's the second and third field. This isn't the only field we're going to be on. We're going to work on this field, and then we're going to have that field and that field and that field. So it's. That it's being able to draw borders. That's.

I cannot tell you the excitement I feel at the answer of that question, because that becomes a creative process where you design your life in business, and then you decide to be a professional at the game that you've consciously decided to play versus how I viewed it up into this conversation, which is like, I'm entering a game. No one really knows what the rules are, but we're all trying to win. But the truth is, you are going to win at a game much differently than I am, but we're still going to be capitalists and entrepreneurs.

And that's why I can sit back and I can appreciate the game that you ran, or I can look at someone else's field and say, I don't like that game. Grant Cardone's a good example. I said no to his podcast because I won't be affiliated with that name, right? So he wants to play his game, and he wants to play his games his way, and I don't appreciate that. I don't appreciate people being treated like, you know, that we can have a fire sale after a hurricane that just lacks a lot of character and integrity. And so people can take me to task on that and, you know, say, how dare you? And like, great, you're a Grant Cardone fan. That's fine. He's got A quasi bigger platform. But I think I've got quasi bigger values. So that's me. I'm not afraid to call it as I see it. Again, I play with way bigger egos than Grant Cardone in the pro sports world or elsewhere.

But that's again, now you're all of us and enjoying your game because you chose the game, you drew the borders. What goes onto your borders, your values, the types of people that you want to play with on that field, who you want to bring into as clients and customers that would probably like coming into and sharing your stadium with you for a little bit.

So. Yeah, but to your point, it's a great question though, Ryan, because that was posed to me several years ago because I had started work, I didn't. I only started working really entrepreneurs in around 2010ish really. It was always sport and the corporate world, you know, doing leadership stuff. And you know, a few entrepreneurs would roll through, but not as one on one clients. You know, I'd interact with them just through workshops or trainings and stuff like that. And someone said like, how would you work with an entrepreneur differently? And I was, I sat with it and I was like, how what? And then I just again stayed coaching people and working with people and talking to people and then I was like, aha. Here's where their challenges, they're not drawn borders. This, the athlete has an easier game.

I'm so glad you said this, Todd, because I can't tell you like where I'm at in my life right now. Like I am learning to be a leader. I've been a. I've been a hustler and a grinder for a long time and now I have a team and a mission and it's just different.

Right.

And there are days that I wake up and I think, what is my ax that I need to sharpen and shut and cut down a tree? I sometimes am not sure what game I'm playing because my role is shifting so much and I'm no longer in the hustle as much as I am leading. And what I'm understanding, as you were saying it, is that means that it's time for me to draw some new lines.

That's exactly it.

It's time for me to create a new field.

Yes.

And I've kind of mastered the old field and I could keep playing in that field, but I made the decision consciously or unconsciously to move into something that I desire more now. And so the step for me is to say, okay, what is the game? Not even Winning. But what does the game look like right now? What are the values that I bring to this game that I want to maximize? And setting those guardrails so that I am not distracted by that opportunity that looks good on paper, but is not in alignment with who I've consciously decided to be in this era of my career.

Yeah. And to say it in a different way as well is say, how can I engineer a game where the natural byproduct is the thing that I most want as an outcome? So right now, and you just said it like your game, being around, being a better leader, being a stronger leader, being a more persuasive or empathic, whatever it is. So let's design the game so that that thing is the natural outcome for it, because that is probably one of your next fields that I would say is there, and I hope it is, because, you know, like, I've been able to know you for many years now, and there's this amazing maturation process that you've always pursued. And I mean, just the version of Ryan in 2015-2021 is, you know, there's so many great things that are still a part of you, but then there's so many massive things that have changed. Like, your intellectual quotient is. Is, I think, just dramatically different in the types of conversations that you have. Thanks. I think. And then I think your. Your ability to be very centered around who. Even though I know that you can. I feel like sometimes you think you struggle with this, but I don't think you actually do. I think you're just way harder on yourself than you need to be around. You know, who am I? What am I? And I'm like, I think, you know, I think you know all that. And. And you're just. That this is where the. We get. Habitually we flex the muscle of hustle and grind so much that we think that we're still hustling and grinding on finding who that person is. And I'm like, no, no, you've already ground that person. It. It's already. There's a. There's a statue that's there. You can actually step back and look at it now.

But we've habit. But we get into the habit of, like, everything's got to be at a certain tempo, level of angst or whatever.

Right? Yes, Right.

You know what I mean?

The hustle muscle is very well built.

Yeah, exactly. Which is a great muscle to have. And most people don't have it, even though they say they do, but they really don't.

And when that muscle is applied to the thing that aligns with the values that are carving out the new game.

That'S the switch, big time. That's what makes it so easy.

Then I got it. I'm not gonna lie. I would confess. I wasn't sure if I was gonna get the full answer. And I think I got it.

I think you did.

This was a transformational interview for me.

Cool.

Thank you.

I'm hanging up the phone.

I don't want to say anything. I don't want to say anything more to screw it all up. No, man, I mean, that's great.

Todd, where do people give you money?

ToddHerman Me is my home base on the interwebs and all the different things that we've got going on, link off from there. So social media stuff. And yeah, if you enjoyed this, by the way, if you enjoyed this chat or if you had a big takeaway from it or something, you didn't like, even tag us on Twitter and Instagram or anywhere else, because I love to get the feedback.

Todd, it's good to see you, my friend. Thank you.

You're a champ, buddy. Always good.

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