Connection Over Credentials | Vincent Pugliese

And a DJ walked in one night, and he's a great DJ, but he was struggling. He's like, I don't know what to do about business and blah, blah, blah. He's creative, profitable creative, right? Really good at the creativity, really bad at the profit side, right? We sat down over dinner in between the ceremony reception. I coached him for an hour.

Nice.

And at the end of the salmon risotto and everything, he was like, this was life-changing.

Welcome to another episode of the Welcome to Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. That was a bad pause. My name is Christian Brim, host of the show. Special shout out to our one listener in Lansing, Illinois. I thought Lansing was in Michigan, but I guess they have a sister city in Illinois. Anyway, thank you for listening. Joining me today, Vincent Paglisi of the Unconference. Vincent, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited for this.

Well, I am too. I was intrigued by your Unconference. Um, we, we can start there, or we can— well, let's, let's put a pin in that. Why don't you give us the, the brief CV of— because it seems like you have a, a life before the Unconference. Uh, tell us a brief bit about your journey.

That's one of the hardest questions ever. Like, I It's like a cat with 9 lives. Like, which life are we going to talk about here? Because there's been so many variations. And I'll go real quick. A lot of times entrepreneurs or people building businesses, they think they need all these credentials, they need all these degrees. I was the worst student in my high school, I think. I found that I graduated the day before graduation.

It was that close?

It was that close. Okay. And the scary part, I wasn't even that worried. I look back, I'm like, shouldn't I have been concerned? And I went through a 4-year period of 5 different majors in college, community college, not even a good college, but community college. And I still failed out. I still kept— and it wasn't until I found photography that I was like, this is something that I actually like doing. I didn't want to just take a job. My one moment of high school was when my guidance counselor said, what do you want to do for a living? And I was 16. I said, all I know is I don't want to wear a tie to work every day like that guy. That's fair. Which was her office mate in this office with no windows and that orange light. It looked miserable. And she was like, no, seriously. And I looked at her in the most serious I ever was in high school. Yeah. And I've never been this serious in high school. I said, no, I'm dead serious. And she goes, get out. She kicked me out. So I floundered. And photography was the thing where I was like, oh, I can. And I was a sports fan, always was. I'm like, oh, I could be a sports— I didn't even know that was a job. Nobody told me, like, if you take what you like and put them together, you could do what you want for a living, right? Nobody ever said that. So I looked back at the newspaper and I was like, people get paid for those to take those pictures. That's correct. So for the first time in my life, I tried. And I wound up getting internship after internship and then a job with the National Hockey League and a subsidiary of the NFL. And I wound up being on the field covering, you know, like as close as you can get to your, you know, the people you follow. And I made it, you know, that was part of a 20-year career of photography. We did weddings, we did— I worked for newspapers, journalism, corporate work. But I got to, for the better part of 22 years, travel the country, cover Super Bowls, World Series, all that stuff. Right. Which was really cool. But at the same time, it was like, I'm doing this. I realized in a reflective moment, I'm doing this for me. I was doing this because I loved the feeling of people thinking what I did was cool, to be quite honest. Okay. Meanwhile, the other stuff, you know, I'm now raising a family and we have 3 kids and I'm married. And, and, and I had— and so we did weddings as well. So we had wedding photography that paid the bills. Photography was filled the passion. And we were doing a wedding one night, and this was at the end of our run. We did really well. We built probably one of the biggest, one of the most successful wedding companies in both places we lived, in Indiana and back in Pittsburgh. And a DJ walked in one night, and he's a great DJ, but he was struggling. He's like, I don't know what to do about business and blah, blah, blah. He's creative, profitable creative, right? Really good at the creativity. Really bad at the profit side, right? We sat down over dinner in between the ceremony reception. I coached him for an hour. Nice. And at the end of the salmon risotto and everything, he was like, this was life-changing. So I went home to my wife and we're making good money. And I said, she's in bed. I said, I think I'm done. And she's like, what do you mean you're done? Like, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. And she's like, and my wife is the greatest. She says, well, what would you do? And I was like, that conversation that I had last night, like, tonight, like, if I could have that conversation for a living, I would love work. And that started the journey of coaching, creating courses, then eventually masterminds and memberships and events and all these types. That was the beginning. Writing a couple of books. That was the catalyst of all that, that 12-year window we can dive deep into. And that led to running retreats, small person retreats around our masterminds and our memberships. And then eventually the idea of the Unconference, which was, I am so sick and tired of all these events and all the same structure and all the same format, and somebody needs to do something different and might as well be me.

So you invented the Unconference.

I did, but I didn't because I found out later on that other— there's other Unconferences. I didn't know that. We came up with the name one day. We were like— the joke was I talked to two other entrepreneur friends of mine, like, we should do a conference and we won't call it a conference. And then we started singing LL Cool J, Don't Call It a Comeback.

Don't call it a comeback.

And we literally had the domain Don't Call It a Conference.

Nice.

Just to kind of— and then that turned into the Unconference. But then I turned out that the Unconference is actually a thing outside of this. That's why you can't, you know, own it, own the name. But we just created our own flavor, our own version for creative entrepreneurs.

Okay, so tell me about the conference. What— it has to have a structure, but it's not your traditional structure.

Well, I have to joke because you said tell me about the conference and I'm going to say don't call it a conference, right? Because that's right. That's where it's not. So this The idea was this. The idea was I would go to all these events, I would go to Social Media Marketing World, and I would go to all these different entrepreneurial and creative events. And it was all speaker, speaker, speaker, keynote speaker that makes all the money. And then all these other speakers that don't get paid, but they're trying to pitch stuff. But yet at the same time, we're all like, I already knew that. Why did I spend 45 minutes in that class? I hated going to school anyway. I don't want to I'm going to spend thousands of dollars to go to an event where I'm sitting in school all week when there's all these amazing people out around and I don't get to talk to them. Right. Like, who thought of this? So I stopped like any other, I think, conference attendee that's experienced. After about 3 times, you just hung out in the hallways.

Yes.

Yes. And then I'd meet people that didn't go to any sessions. You just sit here. So I went to one event. And I kind of figured it out and I called my wife who was in San Diego and she said, who did you— what sessions? I said, I said, I didn't go to any. I didn't go to any speakers. And she said to me, so you spent $1,500 on a ticket, airfare to San Diego, hotel and all the food, and you didn't go to any sessions? I said, no, everything's in the hallways. We were like creating little group discussions, masterminds. I got asked to be on 3 different podcasts in there. Somebody was inquiring about coaching in the metaverse. Everything happened here. And then I said, what if, you know, very Seinfeld-like, what if this was the conference? Yeah. What if this was it? What if that wasn't even there and this was everything? And when I started explaining it to people and doing market research, I got people that were like, if you do that, I'm in. And then I got people like, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. No, I mean, it makes perfect sense because my conference experience is exactly that. I am not diagnosed, but I know that I have ADD. Sitting for 8 hours a day is awful. I mean, even if the content is exceptional, it's still awful because I'm in and you know, even if it's excellent content, top-shelf content, your brain can only absorb so much. And like, if it's a multi-day conference, you're sitting there by day 2 or 3 and you're like, I can't take any more in. Like, there's nothing left in my brain.

Not everything what you just said, because I'm ADD, whatever it is. I think maybe I should even label it like as the ADHD Entrepreneurial Unconference because we're all the same that go to it. Not just that. First of all, everybody thinks I have a bladder problem because I keep getting up to go to the bathroom and I don't have to go to the bathroom. I just want to get up and see sunshine and talk. And like, so I'll get up during the sessions, right? I'll get out. And the other thing is you're met with constant conflicting advice. The one person you go to is, you better build a YouTube channel and here. Okay, right. And all the notes. And then next was like, forget YouTube, you got to be doing this or forget. And it's like people come out of it and on the plane home and they're, I'm gonna do 7 different things. Like you are better off not even coming to this event. You've gotten more confused than what you were before. And I'd experienced that all the time. And it was like, and I remember coming back from one conference having probably about 35 business cards, 'cause you gotta collect the business cards to know who anybody is. And I remember being like, Shelley, I don't know, I don't remember who that was. Oh, right. So what we did, okay, we'll do everything opposite. We're going to have no speakers, we're going to have no stages, we're going to have no vendors, we're going to have no upsells, we're going to have no swag bags. Nobody likes a swag bag. You just have to do it. Then you have to carry the stupid bag around. I don't get it. So we said, okay, well, what we don't get when we come to conferences isn't a way to really connect with people. So I'm a sports guy and I'm like, oh, you go to a game, you get a program. So what if we create a physical program that has everybody's information in there, their headshot, their info, their link, you know, their, their links to their bio, so you can just have real conversations without worrying about any of that stuff. And when you get back home, just go through the program at any rate you want to reconnect. Because the amount of connections I make at these events and I have no way to really connect after. I think, I think for me they're all done wrong. And I, and, and I'm like, well, I love going, but I go and I don't even go to the event. I just go in the hallway. So we wanted to create that hallway event for people that they didn't have before.

Okay, so I show up at your Unconference. You're not a conference. Don't call it a conference. Um, Is it just, here's the space, here's the people, here's some food when you guys get hungry?

Like, there's food. That's the other cool thing that we're doing this year is, and I'll tell you, is we realized, you know, people don't want the same old stuff. So we're actually making individual bags for each person. There's 100 attendees, and we're asking them what their favorite snacks are, and we're customizing. I've never seen that done before.

Nice.

Like, oh, you like Gold Peak Unsweetened Iced Tea. Okay, well, now there's going to be all the other stuff that comes with the event, but you get your own thing so you can sneak off and have the bar that you like or the gluten-free, whatever. Just a personal touch. But what we do is we do sessions throughout it. You know, there's— I think there's 3 in the— 2 in the morning and 3 in the afternoon. And it's a choose your own adventure.

Okay.

So for instance, one might be on, you know, there's a well-known author, very successful author talking about You know, people that want to write a book or somebody that wants to do, you know, there's everything from all the things that we talk about. You get to choose your own adventure. If you're on a video track, there's conversations around it. If you really like, hey, I want to— even in terms of investing, a lot of the people in our space and our community, they take their creative entrepreneurial life and then they start building the freedom out, which is investing. A lot of our people go towards the real estate investing side of the world, which I never was in before, but are now. So there's a segment of people that Wanna talk about that? We create the table talks around what people wanna discuss, as you would do in the hallways. You'd be in the hallways and be like, you know, are you creating a podcast? Are you doing this? And we basically give the space for you to choose. If there's things that you don't like, don't go there. Don't have that conversation. Or you have carte blanche to just sit in the hallway or go down to the restaurant and you meet your 3 best new friends and you want a 3.5-hour conversation. That I've cut out of conferences for, feel free to do that. You're not missing out on a keynote or a FOMO moment of like, oh, we got to get back in here. It's about connections and relationships. So you basically get to choose the path you want to take.

So are the conversations, you know, these sessions, are they facilitated in any way?

Yeah, we have a facilitator for each one and kind of a secondary person to kind of oversee it. And for instance, one of the things that I do is asynchronous coaching. I started— remember that conversation with that guy? I'd love to. I'd love to do that for a living. The reason why I backed away from coaching for a while was I don't like being scheduled. That's why I loved the memberships and the masterminds was a couple of hours a week. But coaching, the more you build your coaching business, the more you're scheduled unless you build out coaches underneath you, which I never wanted to do. Just like we never wanted to build out photographers underneath us. I love doing the work, but I don't like having my schedule taken up. And then over time it was like, I'm coaching people through Messenger or text. And then we created that option. And now that's a, that's a nice income stream for us in asynchronous coaching. A lot of people are really interested in doing that. So we're going to have 1 or 2 sessions on that. We just, we customize the conversations around the people. We see who's coming, we see who wants to lead something, we see what people are interested in. And then we're getting into it now because the event's in about a month. The last month we start really putting the pieces together of what the conversations are going to start out as. And there's nothing cookie cutter about it. If, if the audience shifts in a certain way, we have the ability to create it towards that. So it's very fluid and we get the, you know, we get the opportunity, opportunity to create that.

I love that. That's brilliant. So I'm going to assume that this is a for-profit enterprise. It is.

Okay.

And, and right. And, and have you found it to be profitable in its second year?

Yeah, yeah, it was profitable in its first year. It— okay, dare I say it was profitable on the first day that we put it up for sale last year.

Okay.

Because if you think of it this way, we eliminated— not only did we eliminate some of the stuff that I didn't like, we eliminated the majority of the expenses. Of a conference.

We don't pay speakers.

I don't pay speakers. I don't pay for lighting. I don't pay for a stage. I don't pay for the audio. I don't pay for— we pay for the food and we pay for really good food because I want you to be fed and happy. Because that's the other thing. I'm not going to give you the Chick-fil-A box lunch that's been sitting there for 2 hours, right? We're going to have good food. But we can do that and we can splurge on things like customized bags or printing the programs or things like that because We're not paying $50,000 for a keynote speaker that half the people might not know anyway.

Right. And I'm assuming you've hired some kind of logistic support for day-of event and— No. Or you're doing that all yourself?

No, it's my wife and I and we're very grassroots. We've always been. It's like, if I can dream of something, I can create it and it's my baby. So we've had people come in like, we can help you with this. I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, but I think something that comes with ADHD is a certain obsessiveness, right?

Yes.

Good or bad. I've been fortunate that my obsessions have come this way and not cocaine.

Yes. Yes.

Right. Which it can go in that direction.

I mean, you always have that choice.

I always had a choice. But my obsession, like, I think about these things way more than people can understand to the point where it's too much, right? That's my problem is like, calm down, you know, just enjoy and enjoy it. But the benefit of that is I'm going to come up with things that even the people we've hired in the past wouldn't come up with.

So this is a standalone thing. It's not— you didn't create it to drive coaching business or some other—

the exact opposite. Okay, the exact opposite. And here's why. Well, first of all, it does create that, because when you do something like this, people are naturally attracted. Some people are naturally attracted. I gotta work with you more. I need help on this. Great. What I didn't want to do, again, Unconference, was where's the big pitch? Where's the— okay, good. We're waiting for it. Here's it. Okay, now, but you got to sign up by the end of the day today. All the stuff that I went to, I'm like, I'm not mad about it, but I'm just so tired of the structure. What if we created something where there wasn't an upsell except for possibly come back next year if you want, right? Right. But even that, there's nothing guaranteed. It's 100 people and we vet everybody. It's an application event. The way I like to joke is I don't want my brother-in-law coming to this event.

You don't like your brother-in-law?

Well, we'll keep moving on the conversation, but like, I, I don't want my brother-in-law— because if I made it where anybody could buy a ticket, well then anybody could buy a ticket.

Yeah. So how do you curate? What do you, what do you look for?

First of all, I have to be able to have a 45-minute conversation with you and enjoy it.

Okay, fair enough.

That's really the basic thing. Um, I've had people that were really excited about it get back to me and then they go, okay, well So will my ideal client be there? An immediate elimination from consideration with that, right? Right. Because it means you're coming here to look for sales. Right. Now, people will get clients from coming to this because if you're just a generous, helpful person and you— and people gravitate towards you and you just help people out and they go, I need more of that. Stuff happens. A lot of business came from the last event, but it didn't come from slipping a business card under the table like, you should join my program. It didn't come from— it came from being a great person. So, and what we added to it last year, which I thought was pretty funny, was, um, we're gonna ask people who you enjoyed being around and who you didn't enjoy being around.

Oh, so you get rated by your peers?

Oh yeah.

Okay.

If somebody— and we had this, that somebody didn't get re-invited where, okay, they knew the whole no pitching thing, but they didn't seem to worry about it at all. And they were doing that to multiple people, not invited.

Again, so there's an explicit no solicitation policy.

Yeah, like, I don't want to scare people away in terms of like people, because if some people hear that, they won't even discuss what they do. They won't even just— that's not that. We— it's what, what was that senator the one time was like, I don't— I can't define pornography, but I know what it is when I see it.

Yes.

Same thing. I'm not— I want you to talk about what you're doing. I want you to be helpful. You people know what we're talking about. People know the difference between having a conversation and being excited about what you do and trying to help people out and this and that, and even discussing what you do, and I'm coming here to— I'm coming here to sell. We know the difference.

So, so do you find that you attract more creatives, like what I would say were in traditional creative industries or not?

Yes. Yeah. Not 100% because we do have people like— we have some people like in the finance world that it's not as much of a creative venture, but they love connection. They love meeting people. They love helping people. But yeah, there's a significant amount of authors and podcasters and writers, you know, and there's a significant amount of that, people creating. Different types. Yeah, I would say it absolutely leans towards that, but it's not nearly 100% because at the same time, a lot of those people are not great with business.

Yeah, it's kind of like, I, you know, I don't talk about our company very much on this podcast. Like, probably should talk more about it, but our core group works exclusively with creative professionals. And I was having a conversation with, uh, one of them, and he's a, he's a videographer. And we were talking just about community in general, um, and I think he was in the Boston area, but he, he said, you know, the problem is when creatives get together, at least his peers, it was more of a show and tell, uh, and, and, and more around like the technical aspects of the business. Yep. And he's like, I want to be around other people that are working on the business side of their business and like connecting with those peers.

Yep.

Uh, but he's like, I can't find anybody, like it doesn't exist.

It's a hard blend. It's a very hard blend.

It is.

It is. For us as photographers, the beginning of our— my wife and I, so we were both at newspapers together, both started a business. We've always worked together, which has been really cool. When I decided to start a business, as opposed to just work for the newspaper because my son was about to be born and I was getting paid $32,000 a year, even though I was International Sports Photographer of the Year, eye-opening thing of like, I got a 3% raise. Yeah. When I just won the biggest award. I'm never really going to elevate past this year. So now I got to start a business because I know I could make as much in a day with weddings as we did in a month at the newspaper. But I was too good for weddings, quote unquote, because those creatives are too good for that stuff.. And people say you're sellout. And I'm like, well, I got to sell out of diapers in my house. I got to buy stuff. And so at that moment, I went to the— I was broke. I went to the library and I— Seth Godin books and Robert Kiyosaki books. I got to learn about business. So that was the moment that the peanut butter and chocolate of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of my life started coming together, where I was like, I need both of these. To do it. And so many of our peers did not want to go in that direction. So we blend that really well, the business side of it with the creative side. Because if you go to business side of it, it's the most boring conversation in the world for me, the numbers game.

Yeah, no, for me. And, and, and that's what, you know, when I wrote my book Profit First for Creatives and I was interviewing, you know, clients and non-clients, but, you know, creative professionals for the book, It was that you described what, you know, the subtitle of my book is Redefining the Money Creativity Paradigm, because that is exactly what you're describing, that a lot of creatives feel like they're in a, you know, either-or situation of I can do what I love and starve, or I can sell out and do what I don't want to do, but it sucks my soul. And I'm like, there is an option C. You can have both. And, you know, I think every entrepreneur at some level is creative, right? Like, that's what entrepreneurs do.

Yeah, you got to create something.

Exactly. And the uber-successful businesses are the ones that can marry the two of the, the business, you know, the processes, those, those kind of things with the creativity. You have to have both to reach a certain level of success. You can ride one or the other for a certain time, but, you know, it depends on the business and it depends on the industry and the, the current, you know, technology environment. Like, you know, right now there's a ton of money to be made, but it may not be something that you really care about. Like, which you have to find that mix of, of those things. Usually they're not in the same person, right? Like, usually someone is not really good at both aspects.

That's why there's that balance. That's so hard.

And, and I, I, I go back to my, my favorite, you know, paradigm is Walt and Roy Disney. You know, I mean, Walt being the creative, Roy being the business guy, right?

Yep. And Walt would never have done what he did without Roy, but nobody hears about Roy. Right.

But there's no way Roy would have done it without Walt either.

Like, no. Well, he hated some of the ideas. Yeah.

Hated them. My favorite story is when they were building Disney World and Walt comes in to Roy and he says, you know, I want the monorail to go through the hotel. And, and Roy's like, you're out of your mind. We've already got plans, you know, that you're talking about millions of dollars more. Like, that, that's not gonna work. And Walt said, I don't care, make it happen, and walked out. And, and of course, the monorail runs through the hotel, right? Um, and, and that, that there, there is a tension there. There's a friction, like, because, you know, having creative ideas aren't always economical, right?

Often they're not at all. Right. It doesn't make sense to do because of the cost. And I equate it a lot of times to the creatives in your space that are musicians. It's like I play guitar, but not well, but I know that the guitar needs to be tuned. It's very much like tuning a guitar to me. When I tune the guitar and I strum C chord, it sounds amazing.. But when I keep playing about 40 minutes later without tuning it, it's clunky. It's not— same thing here. You might think you have it. Oh, this is perfect. Here's how I'm going to do it. Here's how I'm going to make money with it. I get to do what I love. It's good. But then all of a sudden something comes in and somebody's not willing to pay that amount, or they want you to do something a little differently that you want to do. It's a constant retuning of the guitar.

I like that analogy. That's a good analogy.

And if you were at the Unconference, I would ask you to lead on the topic that you just mentioned, that blend, because so many people, even though, like tuning it, they think they've got it, but then they don't. They're making enough money, but then their kid wants to go to college. They don't want to go get a job, but they need to create another income stream. Right. So now it's out of tune. I got to start working on it again.

Yeah. And to me, that's the repurposing of the creative energy. Like, it may not be that you're playing music or that you're doing photography, like, whatever it was that was, quote, your passion, end quote, but it's still the same creative energy that you bring and you just apply it differently.

Totally. But that, that is really hard for people that aren't in the space because you and I know you've probably spent so much time going through this and wasted hours of just sitting and thinking and planning and it didn't work out. And the people that just move really slowly and then a year later say, I'm still thinking about it, they're never going to— in my opinion, they're not— those ones are never going to make it. You've got to be able to ram your head into the wall, get a bruise, ram through it again, try, then go, wait a second, there's a door over there. You just figured that out. The ones that go slowly. And I think it's two things. It's a lot of things, but the ones that go slowly and the ones that just don't have the belief in themselves. Hardly ever do it. Like, the one thing that I have, the one thing that I have that is irrational is just that belief. It's almost, it's on a borderline of arrogance, but in a very naive way. Like, I just believe, I just believe whatever I'm going to do is going to happen. Yeah. And I'm, and I'm too afraid. I'm too afraid of public embarrassment to not make it happen.

Hey creatives, Delaina Ealy here. I have a question for you. If you could pay yourself more, why aren't you doing it? For real. S corp is an option for you, the creative entrepreneur, to move your business to the next level, to pay yourself more, and to cut your tax savings down. Yeah, less money to the IRS. We want that, right? So why haven't you done it yet? What's going on? The reality is you probably have 50,000 questions in your brain. You don't know which way is up and down, and you're still too busy to do all those things plus also create, right? Well, the good thing for you is that Core Group is actually the place to be to get that S corp election rolling. Yeah, we have an assessment. Let's see if you qualify. Come chat with me. Core Group, turning passion into profit.

Well, that seems like a beautiful segue into what I was curious about. Like, you did coaching and I assume still do, but like when you're working with creatives, what are some of the most common problems you find that they're dealing with?

Those things right there to start. It is just the My goodness, did you get it done?

Well, execution.

Yeah. Cat got sick, holidays, Valentine's Day, wife's not thrilled about what I'm doing. I don't know if I'll make it work. I tried two other times and it's failed. It's all mental. But then I will talk to people that are almost— they're creatives, but they're a little bit more of a machine. Meaning it's getting done. If I told you it's going to get done, it's going to— they just want to be able to have somebody that they can come back to, tweak things. And that's why the asynchronous coaching is amazing because almost everybody I work with is in that space now. I am not a therapist. That's what I've learned after 11 years of coaching. I'm not going to be your therapist. I'm not going to sit here and try to go through all that stuff. We will get stuff done. If you are willing to do the work and you believe in yourself to do it. The amount of people that quit, honestly, and they will never say it this way, they just don't believe that they can do it.

Well, you bring the word therapist up as opposed to coaching. And I think, you know, in the coaching that I do and the coaching that I receive, the difference between coaching and therapy is coaching is outcome-based. It's, you know, it's not regressive of like going back and figuring out why you are this way. It's really more of an understanding that, okay, you have this, say, self-limiting belief that is keeping you from doing it. What are you going to do about it? Not, not like analyzing psychotherapy why, why you are this way.

My favorite coach in the whole world is Bob Newhart from A 5-Minute Clip, if you've ever seen it. Have you ever seen that the clip about Stop It?

I don't know that I have.

Okay, I'm going to send it to you after we're done. It's one of my— he's a therapist in some skit. It wasn't Saturday Night Live, it was something like that. And essentially his whole therapy was $5 a session. He doesn't make change and it's 5 minutes. That's it. And the premise of everything was stop it. I don't know if I can— I don't believe— there's so much to coaching that is not allowing people to believe their own BS.

And I think 100%.

And I think some people, like therapy or like some medicine, they want you to keep having the problems because you will keep paying them 100% those problems. Where it's like, I want results. I want results. And I don't really— I'm at a point in my life where I really don't want to work with people that want to, want to coach that they can kind of be, you know, kind of let's just tiptoe around. I like we're going to figure out what is your goal for the year? What is your goal? What are we doing? What are we working on? And I'm going to help you get there. And I am— I don't want to say I don't have a bedside manner, but I have a lot less than I think others do. And so I work with people that appreciate that, and I will also offend people that don't like it. And I've come to not only accept that, but embrace that. In my brand.

Yes, I, yes, because I, you're exactly right, that are you there to stay there, or like, are you there in therapy, are you there in coaching to stay there, or are you there to do something differently, right? And that comes to, you know, the pricing thing that It's, it's the dynamic. Like, I've, I've had entrepreneurial friends that, you know, I have tried to coach in a non-paid relationship, uh, out of the goodness of my heart. Like, I, I see you, Vincent, you're, you're struggling. I, I feel like I can help you gain clarity on this and move past it. Are you, are you willing to do that? But until they pay money, they don't take it seriously. It changes the whole dynamic. And the more they pay, the more they pay, the more focused and intentional they are. Because if I'm gonna write you a check for $1,000 or $10,000 or $100,000, right? It is the level of commitment and intentionality that I'm bringing to the table. If it's free, what does that cost me? It doesn't cost me anything.

So, yeah, I've given away tons of free stuff and I've received a lot of free stuff, right? I'm going to give you my course, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Generally, I don't appreciate it. I'm just being honest. Yeah. Nor do they. Because if you've given me a course that I really didn't go out of my way to buy, or I wasn't really interested in buying, or you're giving me advice that I didn't really want, or I didn't go out of my way to get. Okay. I also— I mean, the flip side of it, in all honesty, is I've been in and not as much had people, but I've been in mastermind groups where people paid big money and didn't show up. And that stunned me. They, even though they paid, they still— because what I learned was it was they wanted to tell themselves they were trying. They didn't want to do the work. They wanted to tell their wife, I'm investing in it. I'm doing it. Just not— I was stunned by it multiple times. I don't think always because somebody pays, they do the work. So I think there's a dynamic to that. Yeah. But, but for that, but there's always an example of that. But I think by and large, yeah, the majority is what you're saying.

But I would argue that they just haven't paid enough. And, and, and, and, you know, in the sense that like, if you're serious about it, you have to pay enough to know that you're absolutely going to do it. Like it's enough money that if you don't, like, it's kind of like, well, I joined the gym and it's only $100 a month or whatever.

So like, you feel it, right? And I think you're especially right in the creative space because you can get into different spaces, right? You can get into big money spaces that might not like find these worlds and their boss is paying for it. And it's a lot of money. Yeah. It doesn't matter. No, they're, they're checking off the box. But in the creative space generally, You're not finding as many people that are crushing it financially to be able to take the hit on that big amount of money without doing the work. No.

And it is kind of a paradox there, right? Yeah. I had never participated in my almost 30 years of entrepreneurship in a mastermind until last year. And I had considered this specific mastermind for a few years, and I finally decided that I was going to do it. And it was, it was $40 grand for the year. It wasn't cheap. Um, and halfway through it, I, I pulled the facilitator aside and I said, look, I, I, I'm not getting what I thought I was going to get out of this, right? And had a very interesting conversation with him. What happened was I didn't get what I thought I needed. I got what I really needed, and it was because I had spent the money knowing that I would feel like an ass if I had spent that much money and then— and didn't get something for it, right?

So you found it.

It forced me to do it because I was like, I'm, I'm, I'm not going to go back to my CFO and say, well, that was the thing, is there was a money-back guarantee on this. And so my CFO's like, well, are you going to keep paying or you can get your money back? And I'm like, that's a great question. So I went and had this conversation, and through that conversation I realized, well, What I thought I needed is not really what I need. This is what I really need. And he walked me through that and I'm like, you're exactly right. That's exactly what I need. I don't need what I thought I needed.

That's fantastic. That's a wonderful story. It really is. Because a lot of times you go into it and people be like, well, I'm not getting, so I'm going to bail. But to be able to reframe it and for you to believe what they said, right? It wasn't just some pitch of like, no, stay in because this is what you need. Like you're, you're hearing it. And then, then, and whenever, even as a coach, what he did or she did, and what we do is when you can take someone and let them see something that they had not seen before, a 10-degree shift of their head and show something that they go, oh my goodness, I didn't even know that was an option. Their trust in you elevates because now they would never have seen that without you. That to me, I think, is a part of being a really good coach. Yes.

And I think most of the time, in my experience, it's not something they explicitly didn't know beforehand. True. It's not— I mean, you know, at that level of coaching, it's not— I'm not teaching you how to swing a golf club. I'm Tiger Woods' swing coach, and I'm telling him, Tiger, get out of your own head. Like, you're overthinking this. You're— whatever it is. I'm helping him reveal what he already knows. He's just not engaging or living, right? And I think that's when, you know, Yeah, in coaching, I can absolutely transfer knowledge to you. Yeah, but to your point, if it's not, if it's just advice and not, you don't own it. So I tell you, Vincent, you need to go do YouTube ads or you need to do a podcast or whatever. And that's the solution to your problem. You're like, well, okay, you try it, it doesn't work, who's to blame? I'm to blame because I gave you that advice. But if instead I tell you my experience of, well, I tried a podcast and I tried a YouTube and this is what happened and this is what I would have done differently and this is what I learned. Yeah. Then it shifts back to you and you have to make— because the decision at the end of the day has always been yours. Totally. You have to solve the problem.

But also being a really good listener, being a good listener, asking great questions. I have one client that she came to me and and she was either going to hire me or this other guy. And the other guy was talking about, we're going to help you scale this thing. And but, but, but, but, but. And I said to her, like, from what I know from you, that's not a direction that I would recommend. And I wouldn't even coach you towards because what you want to do is build a business that's freedom-based so you could be home with your kids and you could have time with your kids. You could have— and that was the 10-degree shift where she said everybody's told her scale, scale, scale. That's the word, right? The last 3 to 5 years. What she wanted was freedom and optimization. And the reason why it worked so well is because now her, her whole life is in alignment because it's about what she really wanted. But if I was just giving advice on what I did or what she should do, it wasn't about that. What do you want? And so few people even ask me what they really want. And she thought she needed this because somebody, you know, credit to them, was selling them on it. But she didn't want to scale and a team. She didn't want all the headaches with that. She wanted freedom. And there's a whole different conversation.

It reminds me of one of the conversations I had. My business coach, who I did not want— he came non-consensually, but I did retain him.

That's a whole other story.

Yes, a whole other story. He was an Orthodox rabbi before he became a coach, which that's That's also another interesting conversation. We were having this conversation and he asked me a question and I'm like— like there's this very long pause because I'm really thinking about the question, right?

Yeah.

And then I had this epiphany. I really don't— I honestly don't remember what the epiphany was or the question. Was. But in that moment, I just had this amazing self-realization. I was like, this, this thing that I knew came back to my head and I'm like, oh yeah, yeah. And then a couple of months later, he said, he admitted, he goes, you remember when you had that epiphany? And I'm like, yeah. He said, I was on mute and it was by accident. He was like, I, I, when you didn't answer I was ready with a follow-up question, but I was muted and therefore you didn't hear what I was saying. Interesting. Right? And that's what I came away from that is like, as a coach, just like you said, that you listen and you create the space. You don't have the answer. They have the answer, but they've got to get there.

You got to get— it's 100%.. And it's not always a formula. Like, sometimes it is, right? But sometimes it can be, right? There's some things that are structural that should be formulaic, but a lot of times it's not. And it's funny from— well, you've probably read The Profitable Coach. It was the— no, The Prosperous Coach. Rich Lindgren. Oh, great, great book. And he talks about if you walk up to a lamppost and you talk to that lamppost for an hour, you're going to come away with some positive stuff that you figured out. Yes. So talking to coaches, are you better than a lamppost? Because the lamppost didn't say anything back, but just talk. So, but if you can be that lamppost, but as a real good human that's caring to help this person, you can really help people get where they want to go. Um, so it's, it's an aspect of my business that I went away from because I I went towards the mastermind membership world of like one-to-many. And it's funny, it's almost like the simplicity of— have you ever seen the movie Rockstar? Of coming back to what you really just like doing, which is I like the connections. And is it as scalable as the other stuff? Absolutely not. But going to the profitable creative, I've built out a life of financial freedom that I can make that shift more towards simplicity and not need all the other stuff. I could do the work that I love doing.

Yes. And to your point, what your advice you gave to the lady is, you have clarity on what you want. You're not building something for someone else. No, you have that question. You said, what do you want? I remember the first time my coach asked me that, and it was not in context of business. It was in context of marriage. He and his wife actually were marriage counselors before he became a coach. Okay. And I'm like, I don't know. I've never thought about that.

Right? Yeah. It's a hard question when you've never thought about it.

It is.

It is.

But it's critical. Like, what do you want?

Yeah. Yep. And it's such a simple question, but the amount of people that don't have an answer for it. If you're not spending time thinking about that, you've got to do that first. You've got— even coming to me with something, you got to have clarity on what you want so that I can even— any of us can help you get there. Now, some of us are like, hey, I'm going to blaze the path on my own. I'm going to figure it out. And I've been there many, many times. I've had coaches, I've had all of it. I've done it with not coaches, but you've got to have a clear vision and I think a drive Like, I think I have somewhat of an abnormal drive with it where it's like, I'm going to figure it out. I'm not waiting for somebody. It's like the high school. I'm not waiting for somebody to figure it out for me. We're going to do it. But you got to know where you're at with it. You got to know what you want and know who can help you.

Well, yeah, because if you don't know what you want, you're going to end up not getting it. And usually that, that looks like a business that you're not satisfied with. And it's the tail that wags the dog. And the more you feed it, the more it causes you trouble.

Well, especially for creatives. Yes. The amount of creatives that are overwhelmed with work, don't know how to say no. Mm-hmm. Don't have boundaries. Mm-hmm. Keep— the more they make, like we said before, the more money they make, the more they have to work. Sometimes they work a lot more and don't make more money. They don't know. They are some of the worst people at optimizing. Yes. Some of the worst because they're creative and they feel like as I have many times, if I'm not doing the work, I shouldn't be making the money.

Oh, that— very quick story recap of one of our former guests. He was one of the OG podcast people. He did— he and his wife did a podcast on Lost. And so every week they would do—

oh, I think I remember that. I wasn't a Lost fan, but I remember the podcast. Yeah.

Eventually, he got into consulting people that started podcasts. One of the things he did was, because this was 15 years ago or more, was equipment. He would help you get your things set up and he would sell you equipment and whatever. Anyway, one of his people called him and said, "I've got this problem. I want to hire you for an hour of your time to fix." this technical problem. And, uh, he scheduled a time for the next week. And, uh, the, the, the guy was like, you know, he could, he could probably call the manufacturer. There's a 1-800 number and they could probably troubleshoot it for free. And he communicated this to the guy and he said, that's great, I still want to meet with you. And And so he shows up to the call 5 minutes early and the guy's already on the call and he starts explaining his problem and immediately he knew what it was and he goes, "Well, you need to do this," and solved his problem in like 2 minutes, right? The meeting was over before it was scheduled to start, right?

Yeah.

And the guy said, "Great, send me a bill." And he's like, "I can't send you a bill. I didn't do anything." He goes, "No, you fixed my problem." "Yeah, but it only took me, you know, 2 minutes." He goes, "I don't care. Send me a bill." And what he realized about himself was exactly what you're talking about is this false belief that you have to work hard to make money, that somehow your effort is and the, and the financial outcome are correlated. And they're not always. Sometimes it is, but oftentimes it's not.

In the creative space, often it more often shouldn't be.

Right. But how many of you, how many of them do you still see out there billing by the hour or the day? Or yeah, it's like, well, why?

So one of the things with our kids is every one of our kids had to build a business and they would make their own money. And they've done that since they were little. And from the very early days of them doing, you know, raking up leaves and cleaning up yards, first things first is like, my advice is do not charge by the hour and do not accept by the hour. But we had people like, I'll give you $15 an hour. Like they come back and like, no, like, like here's my guidance. This is what the job costs. You shouldn't be penalized for being efficient. Being efficient. Yeah. And you should like, just like a government employee, you don't want to, drag something out, right? Right.

You want to make more money. And like this guy, he got his problem solved and he saved an hour of time.

That's exactly— he saved him time because it was— why, why would I need another hour of this if the problem's already solved?

Exactly.

Yeah.

So I'll pay more. Thank you very much.

But that is so against what all creatives were taught in school and probably by their parents.

Yes.

We were all raised in a situation of the opposite.

Work hard and you'll make money. What's that? Work hard and you'll make money.

Yeah. And I'm all for working hard, but efficiency is what people don't— and that's what stops people. Because I started my first coaching and all that was all photographers. That's what I went into because we had done something that they hadn't done. My goodness, the mental hurdles of dealing with those photographers made me want to bang my head against— it's almost like they wanted to struggle. It's almost like they want the struggle.

Vincent, I feel like we could continue talking for another hour. Unfortunately, we can't. How do people find out more about you or the Unconference or Don't Call It a Conference?

Yeah, it's— I'll say it, but I think it's theunconference.live. I think is the site. I'll send it to you if you want, if you want to put in show notes the link for it. Social media is the best way to connect. My email is vincent@totallifefreedom.com. I love getting emails. I really do. I think people don't put that stuff in there. You'd be amazed of what great connections come. Everybody wants to make everything— talk about the opposite of optimization when it comes to connection. I'm not an optimizer. I'm a personal, you know, I love conversations. I love messages back and forth, especially with people that are just good people. So I have zero problem putting that out there. But yeah, those are the Unconference this year is we're coming up on February 2nd through the 4th of 2026, and then we'll be doing it annually plus a couple of niched conferences around, you know, a little more specific topics going forward. So it's really, really exciting to work on.

I love it. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, and I don't know why you wouldn't, shoot us a message and we'll get rid of Vincent. There you go. Until then, ta-ta for now.