The Dangers of Self-Deception | Robert Hunt

I don't know why business leaders wouldn't be in groups like this. I'm shocked that people don't see the value in it because they're all going through the same stuff. We all got people problems, cash problems, time problems, tech problems, all the same stuff. It's just different shapes and sizes. But if you are really wanting to be your best, you have to surround yourself with other people who will call you out on your BS and go, dude, this is the third time you've said you're going to spend more time with the family and you keep opening up new product lines. And new divisions, how is that aligned?

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Welcome to another edition of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the internet that you're going to learn how to turn your passion into profit. I'm your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today is author of Nobody Cares, Robert Hunt. Thank you, Robert, for joining me.

Yeah, my pleasure.

So I am intrigued by the title Nobody Cares. Can you elaborate?

It sounds mean, doesn't it? You know, I have these shirts that say Nobody Cares and I have a hat and stuff and people go, yeah, when they see it. And I go, well, you know, what do you think that means? We called it Nobody Cares because the whole concept is about accountability. And we tell our story and we talk about the principles of accountability really based on what I had taught my clients for years about what it looks like to be accountable in Your Life. And my friend Salem Thien and I, we co-authored it together. And the basic point of this book is that, look, nobody cares if you're fat, broke, frustrated in your marriage, unhappy with your faith, don't like your job. Nobody cares unless you care enough to do something about it. And that's the situation that we got into in 2019. We owed $90,000 in debt. We had— the business had been going on for years and years, and it was always just a little bit below what we wanted to spend every year. And so, we didn't actually save money. We actually increased debt. And so, year after year, we'd say, "Man, maybe next year I'll try this different thing." And I've been running peer groups for CEOs and business owners since 2013. And it would have good years and bad years. But no matter how much I made, I always seemed to spend more than I actually earned. And so, we had a house, we had cars, and then we had $90,000 in debt and it was just killing us. And I remember in 2019 talking to my beautiful wife, Kathy, and said, "Look, this isn't the life we signed up for. We're not happy with this." And we looked at our lives and we decided that there were so many things that we didn't like, but we needed to be willing to do something about it. And for the longest time, we would just be unhappy, but we weren't willing to change. And so that year we decided, hey, if it doesn't get measurably better, if God doesn't bless us by dropping a big bag of money in the backyard, then we're going to go ahead and we're going to sell the house and start over. And so through a long series of things in 2019, it just got worse. And finally we decided, okay, we got to do it. So, I went through my journey of owning it and just saying, "I don't want to be miserable anymore. I don't want to be unhappy with my life." And so, selling the house was hard, but life is hard and being a victim is hard. I don't think we identify ourselves as victims. We just complain. We just, "I have a crappy boss. I have a horrible spouse. I have horrible kids. My parents didn't love me." And there's plenty of things to point fingers at. And say that you were screwed in the deal. Okay, I get that. There's been many times we've been victimized in life, but we don't have to be a victim. That is a choice of where you stay. And I didn't want to stay there.

I love that. So let's set the stage. Tell us, you know, pre-2019, how you got from point A to point B. You said you had started in the advertising world.

Yeah, when I graduated college, I grew up in Southern California and I got a degree in advertising at Cal State Fullerton and went to work at an ad agency and I was all excited. Do you remember the show Thirtysomething where the guys worked at the ad agency? And I watched that show and I'm like, that's going to be me. I'm going to be that guy coming up with great campaigns and it's going to be awesome. And then when I got there, I quickly realized that most all of it was about making a minimum billable hours. And that there were times where I thought, hey, this is a really horrible strategy. Like I had a client who did roofing tile and he had a new warehouse. He wants me to run an ad showing the warehouse. I said, well, what are the features of this new warehouse? No one cares you have a new warehouse. What does this do for your market? Why should we do this thing? And he kept going back, just show the warehouse. And I said, I'm not going to do that. That's a bad ad. So by the time I get back to the ad agency, my boss was like, what are you crazy? This guy spends $100,000 a month on us. You're going to tell him you're not going to run an ad for this guy? And he took me off the account and I got toilet valves. I got switched over to toilet valves, which wasn't a lot lower than roof tiles, but nonetheless. So 2 years into it, I realized I don't want to spend all my time trying to kiss up to a customer just so I can make money off of them. There wasn't any creativity. And I think that's like most things in life. We have these visions of what our business is going to be like. It's going to be super creative. We're going to have all this great stuff. And then the bills show up and then the customers are there and they have their own weirdness. And your creativity only works if they buy into it. And I think when you choose the wrong customer because you need a dollar to keep the doors open, you get crushed in your creativity and you're trading off a few bucks for the freedom to be able to be really awesome. Then you build this reputation of a company that does sort of average work. Work, but that's what your company, your customers will pay for. So it's a bit of a trap. And until you get that tipping point where you're so awesome that you can get away with telling the customer, no, we don't do that, it's either my way or you can walk, until you get to that place, you take a lot of crappy jobs.

There's a book I read recently called the Sales— not the Sales Manifesto, it's essentially a book by a creative in the ad marketing space and, and he, he talks about the idea that you have to pitch what you're doing. And his comparison is that world, the ad agency marketing world, approaches it 180 degrees wrong. Like if you went into a doctor's office and you said, well, I've got these symptoms and I think I need surgery, and the doctor said, sure, great, let's go on in and do it, he'd be, you know, practice malpractice, right?

Malpractice. Yeah, that's right.

Right. And yet we as, uh, creatives don't value our insight or intuition or, you know, like, that's a bad ad. You shouldn't do that. Right. And that trade-off is something I, I talk about in my book, um, that there's this false paradigm among creative entrepreneurs that you have to do what you don't want to do to be able to make money, right? Versus I can do what I want and starve to death, right? And that, that's actually a false, false paradigm, right? And that in that if you can channel and refocus your creativity in a profitable way, you actually have an advantage over other businesses.

Sure. And let's look at it this way. If I really want to be a glassblower, and I'm only going to make $100 a month and I'm going to— I want this more than anything else in the world. Not— I don't know how much glassblowers really make, but let's say that's my passion and the money is not going to be there. I just have to set up a life where I can afford to live on what I make. But what happens is we create a world where you have to make a certain amount of money or you're screwed. And then it puts the pressure on us to take things and projects and do things in a way just to keep our doors open. But if you really, really, really, really wanna live out your passion, don't let money get in the way. And this is where accountability comes in. Accountability is freedom. When you own it, when you say, look, I want this more than anything else, I'm going to live financially in a way that I can make whatever money I make and still survive. And if I can continue this long enough and I'm so good, eventually they'll come to me and beg me for business and I can raise my prices. But there's that long learning curve and that's that buildup rate. The first 3 or 4 years of my business, I barely made any money at all. My background after I left the ad agency, as I went into marketing leadership and I was a marketing guy for different companies over the years, but I was all about strategy. If you're not gonna have strategy, don't hire me. Don't talk to me. I don't wanna do your, your brochure and your website and your trade show booth. I want to take everything the company's about and align it around a marketing strategy, which includes advertising, which includes customer service and user experience, all those things. It's all marketing. So you just have to own it. What people want to do is they want to live the life they want to live and then expect the world to somehow deliver the results. And it doesn't work that way. So we're miserable, frustrated, and then we end up taking clients we don't want because we need to make a buck to survive. Don't do that. Own your journey. If you want to do this way, own it.

I love that. And I love this idea of accountability because as entrepreneurs, I think for myself, and I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, if they're honest with themselves, start their business because they want that freedom. They want the ability to call the shots. But in a real sense, entrepreneurs don't have anybody built in to be accountable to. They don't have a boss. The only accountability is, in reality, is are you surviving or not? Are you successful or not? Because If you aren't successful, the accountability is, well, I've got to do something different to be able to pay the bills. But then you get into a situation where— and I see this a lot— where people have— entrepreneurs have successful businesses, right? But they don't have successful lives. You know, their marriages fail. They don't have a relationship with their kids that they want. They're not healthy, you know, like all kinds of things, right? And so that's the same problem is they don't have anybody to hold them accountable. And in reality, I mean, let's be honest, you know, that's the situation of all adults, right? You really don't. You're an adult. You don't have anybody that's going to come and tell you to put down that bag of chips or, you know, go for a walk, right? You have to, as I think it— I don't remember if it was Jocko Willink or Mark Divine that wrote Extreme Ownership or Extreme Leadership.

Jocko.

Jocko. Yeah. And I remember when I read his book, I was like, man, that's good. Everything, everything is your responsibility. Have you read that book?

Yeah. There was a lot of similar feelings in that. As a solopreneur, we get away with murder.. And the only time we know when we're not doing what we're supposed to do is when the results are bad. And we don't look at— we're often not looking at leading indicators to what should be lagging results. And so if I know I'm supposed to make 6 phone calls a day and I don't make them because I decide, I think I'll write a blog, I think I'll post this on social media, I'll create this new thing, and we feel happy about it. And for a while everything seems— we feel good until it's not good. And then you panic and stress and you work nights and weekends. Sacrificing your time with your family, not having proper time to rest, carrying this huge stress inside of us because we were not responsible to good behaviors that we know generate the results we want. If I eat ice cream every night and don't work out, I will gain weight. If I don't eat ice cream and I work out, I probably will lose weight. So we know what's going to result— get the results you want. But the accountability comes from you. Nobody can hold you accountable. I can talk about things with other people, but they don't make me do anything. And so if you're going to want something, you got to put a lifestyle and a process in play that allows you to get the things done because it's only you that's going to control that.

Yeah, I love that subtitle of your book, Nobody Cares Until You Do. And it was something I was discussing with my business coach a few weeks ago, and it was in the context of my marriage. And I realized something, that as much as you want to give somebody something, unless they're willing to give it to themselves, you can't do anything about it, right? So like, if Robert, I think you're the greatest guy in the world, the greatest coach, and I am trying to give you self-esteem, right? It doesn't matter what I say or how sincerely I believe it. If you don't have self-esteem for yourself, I can't give it to you.

And coaches, they do this a lot of times. We are trying to help them, but we can't want it more than them. I'm an executive coach, and when I meet with my clients, if they're not doing the things we talk about, I'll stop coaching them because my reputation is built on the success of the people that I spend time with. And if I meet with you every month or every other week and you're not doing the things that we agreed upon, then I'm clearly not the right coach for you. A coach doesn't make you do anything. Anything. A coach asks you, what do you want to do? Okay, what would it look like to do it? Okay, what might get in the way? Okay, when are you going to start? And then I just am there because, you know, the peer pressure of, hey, he's going to ask me, I don't want to look stupid, so I'll get it done. Peer pressure is great. It's beautiful. It's what motivated us since we were kids in school. But if you don't do it, then I'm not the coach for you and you need to find someone else who will motivate you, help you, free you up, whatever it is. But I want someone who will act on what they say they're going to do. And we too often as leaders give ourselves the easy way out to say we know we should do something and not do it and then just go, well, maybe next time. That's not accountability.

No. And I think you said nobody can— the coach can't want it more than you do. And I think back about before I hired a business coach, right? My only coaching experience was in sports in high school. Right. And that image of what a coach was, which was to basically browbeat you to do what you're supposed to do, right? Yell, scream, cuss, and sometimes encourage, but it really kind of had this negative connotation in my mind. And what I thought about was, and the reason why I hired a coach was, I think the real value of a coach is that they are able to draw out of you what's already there, right? They can't, they can't really put something there that's not there. They help you discover and pull it out yourself. 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.

Or to get past the head trash. I mean, Michael Jordan is an amazing player, Tiger Woods, amazing players. All these guys, they got coaches. But what is a coach possibly going to tell Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods? You know, hey, throw it up this way or swing that way. You know, but he can say, it looks like you're off your rhythm. What's going on? Good coaches just ask you questions. They don't tell you what to do because you know the answer. Sometimes, though, the head trash just makes us lie to ourselves, and we need to have someone who will know us well enough to go, "You told me that when you do this, I'm supposed to ask you this. I'm asking you this. What's the deal?" And then you could lie to them. That's the whole point about, you know, nobody can hold anyone accountable because if you ask me something, I could lie to you. And if you go to these business settings where they have networking events and everyone's in the same room, they're talking about their business like BNI or some of these networking things. People want to look good. They don't want to say, man, I'm almost out of cash. I mean, I'm just really stressed and I don't know if I'm going to make it because then who's going to give you a lead because they think you're going to go broke, right? So everybody lies to each other. So there's really no accountability into that. In our peer groups, we all know each other's junk and we don't work for each other, so we can tell it honestly about the challenges. But if you're willing to be really radically transparent and open, you can get the help you want to be your best. I don't know why business leaders wouldn't be in groups like this. I'm shocked that people don't see the value in it because they're all going through the same stuff. We all got people problems, cash problems, time problems, tech problems, all the same stuff. It's just different shapes and sizes. But if you are really wanting to be your best, you have to surround yourself with other people who will call you out on your BS and go, dude, this is the third time you've said you're going to spend more time with the family and you keep opening up new product lines. And new divisions, how is that aligned?

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And we need people who will speak truth in our lives because they love us.

Yes. I think I have 3 adult children and it's, you know, going through that journey of you're responsible for their lives to they're responsible for their own lives, but still being their parent. Right. And it's fascinating to me how many times my adult children have come back to me and they said, you know, so-and-so said this to me and it really resonated with me. And then I realized you'd been saying that all along. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did.

Right.

Yeah.

We have more credibility sometimes. Right.

Um, but I think that if you have someone that cares about you and is invested in you, right, that can tell you your blind spots, the things that you are not able or willing to see in your own life, and you're willing to hear it, I think that's very, very powerful. Because if you think about it, like, you're— nobody cares. And like, to me, that, that's like the world does not care, right? You have a very few people in your life that really care about you. And are you going to listen to them? Are you going to listen to the rest of the world that really doesn't care whether you're successful or not?

Well, and that phrase really is for you to say to you. The fact is, there are an awful lot of people who do care about you. But the reality is they can't care about you more than you care about you. And when you look at it, the phrase "nobody cares" really is supposed to be used for us when we're about to say some blame, excuse, say I can't, or wait and hope. When Kathy and I had our problem, we blamed the economy. We blamed the franchise we worked with. We blamed our customers. We blamed God. We made excuses for why things weren't going and why we couldn't do this or that. Or we said, well, we can't sell our house. Where are we going to go? How's it going to work? And we're going to do all our stuff. And I mean, we had a huge house and had a movie theater upstairs and gigantic furniture, and it was beautiful neighborhood. And we We had to sell all that for pennies on the dollar. And when we moved in here, it was just a month before COVID shut down the world. And we— well, it was the month it shut it down. And we didn't have anything. We couldn't even buy replacement furniture because we sold all the furniture. We made about $1,000, $2,000 in cash just getting rid of everything. We couldn't even go out and buy a couch because nobody was open. And we sat on folding chairs for a month and put our TV on a little folding table and watched TV for a while. You say you can't do something. That's not true. The real issue— I won't do something. I won't get rid of that client because they're mean and awful and horrible and they never pay on time and they're just a nightmare to work with. I can't accept to stand on my ground for the quality that I want to deliver because I won't make enough billable. We have these things that we lie to ourselves, but the reality is, is that we won't do it. We're not willing to really own the journey. We'd rather complain about it.

Yeah, and not to shamelessly plug my book, but I will. I think that's Profit First. I don't know if you're familiar with it. Mike Michalowicz's book is a tool to help you be accountable, right? But it doesn't work unless you've changed your mindset and your intent around money, right? You know, I hear so many people say, well, I can't— this one kills me. They say, well, I'm not making enough money yet. I can't implement Profit First. I'm like, no, you've got it 100% backwards. You're not going to make more money until you start doing things differently.

Right? Yeah. Right. And again, we, we like to believe what's comfortable for us and we tell ourselves our own story. But if you had to tell that same story to other people who really know what was going on, You'd be humiliated because we don't. And so we don't tell. But if really people knew what— that's your plan? Are you crazy? Well, we don't tell people because we know they're going to pick it apart. And the sad part about that is then we're stuck with that lie. We talk about in the book, you need to stand— you need to be open with yourself and honest with yourself, like you're standing in front of a 360 mirror naked, man. There's nothing to hide at that moment. You know, I wear black shirts because it doesn't show my love handles as much. Okay.

It's very slimming. It's very slimming, Robert.

Yeah. When you stand naked in front of a mirror, there's nothing to hide, baby. And that's the kind of honesty that we need to have when we look at our lives. Hey, what is your marriage really like? I mean, what is your business really like? You've been in business for 7 years and you're still just trying to pay your bills. Maybe you're doing something wrong. Maybe you need to own it. Why don't you take someone in, show them your P&L, show them your business plan, show them the strategy, show them the work you do and say, what do you think I'm doing wrong? But that's vulnerability. And people don't want that because someone will say, you suck at this. Well, don't you want to know before you go bankrupt that you suck at something? Because then you can get help, you can learn, you can invite someone in to be a part of it. You could avoid that part. There's things to do. But the longer you hold on to your own self-deception and lies, the more it's a prison for you.

Yeah, I, you know, I get asked periodically the question, what would you go back and tell your younger self? And it has been for many years that the answer is Beware the power of self-deception, right? The ability of your mind to tell you what you want to hear as opposed to what's real. And I think entrepreneurs are, I think, more susceptible to this. My theory is that because entrepreneurs can see things that other people can't, they see the possible, they see the vision, right? It also allows us to ignore reality. And I know that was the case for myself for a long time, right? I could tell myself and make excuses as to why I wasn't achieving the profitability that I should have. And I knew what it should have been because I compared it to my peers. It wasn't that I wasn't making money, right? It was that I, I was making excuses for not making the money I I should. And there was a lot there, right? There was a lot of things to unpack as to why I wasn't. But at the end of the day, it was me. And I could not blame my spouse, my brother who was my business partner at the time. I couldn't blame my clients or my employees. It was me.

And when we own it, the beauty of accountability is this: when you own it, you gain the power to change it. When you don't own it, you're a victim and everything's against you. If everything keeps coming at you as someone else's thing and you don't own it, you're helpless and you're hopeless. But when you take it and you say, this is mine, this is my responsibility, this is my thing, then now I can do something about it. If my boss is a jerk, I'm stuck because he's always going to be a jerk. But if I own the place to work and I decide I don't want to work for a jerk, I'm going to go to another job. Well, then you say, I can't. No, you mean I won't. You won't do that because it's comfortable to be there because you know the devil that you know versus the devil you don't know. What if I don't make as much money? Okay, then you make less money. Why don't you adjust? I am shocked at how little money I need to live by when I have no money. When you have no money, you realize, you know, I can get by pretty good with no money because you have no money. And all of a sudden you realize I can get by. But when you have Gee, we had a country club that was $480 a month to belong to. I don't have the money for $480 a month for a country club, so I don't get to be in a country club. I go to the YMCA kind of a place down the road for $70 a month for the whole family. So you can do all kinds of things if you really want to own it because you're chasing the life and the dream that you really want.

Yeah, I love that. So many entrepreneurs get stuck on this hamster wheel And in a lot of ways, they're not different than, you know, salaried employees in that they don't ever define financial freedom or their financial goal. Like, you know, if I make X or if I have Y, then I have achieved success, right? And so it ends up into this cycle of I make more, I spend more, I make more, I spend more, and, and there's no intentionality around their finances, and it's, um, kind of a recipe for disaster.

Yeah. So the coolest thing you could do for yourself is to write down what— in writing— how much is enough money to earn. Now, don't say $10 million a year because, you know, you're, you're being unrealistic because you don't want to live that life. I mean, there are ways to make $10 million a year, you know, illegal drug trade, You know, there's lots of ways, you know, arms into different countries. But let's say you want to make $200,000 a year, then say, okay, I'm going to write down $200,000 a year and then make a budget of what that would look like if you had $200,000 a year. And you might come back and say, well, I probably could live off $150,000. Okay.

All right.

Then the budget's adjusted. Now it's there. Now you work towards that and you chase it and you get it. And when you get to $150,000, you stop. And you say, okay, now everything I make over $150,000, I'm going to put into this fund and I'm going to give it away. One of the coolest things that we ever got to do once we got out of debt was we started a giving fund because there's always a time we meet someone and they're like, you know, I got this, this mission trip I'm going on, or my car broke down. And you hear something like, you don't have any money. I just always felt sad that I couldn't help people because I had wasted my money. So now we take and we put money in every time we earn money. We tithe out of it and then we take a portion and we put in the giving fund and there's always money in the giving fund. So when Kathy was at the auto dealership getting our oil changed and some lady was crying and she said, what's wrong? She said, well, my car's broken. They want $600 for this. And Kathy's like, we'll pay for it. And we just got to pay for this lady's car. It was so cool. And the joy of giving money away has now replaced the joy of having the money. So if you set some really cool goal, I'm going to make this much money and everything else goes into this bucket where I can give it away. That's a rich life. There's a lot of joy in that. And then you've already known I reached the number. Maybe I'll take extra days of vacation this year. Maybe I'll slow down a little bit. Maybe I won't take one more client. Maybe I'll get rid of that bad client that although I make good billable, I've replaced it with all these other people and now I have enough money of good clients. I'm firing that guy. What a joy that'll be.

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. Yes, and I, I think what, what you're talking about is what psychologists call agency, right? So you have the power to affect things outside of your body as opposed to, this victim mentality, right? And we, um, in our business, we internally use the drama triangle. Have you— are you familiar with the drama triangle?

I don't think so.

Okay, so the drama triangle was actually, I think, invented in Broadway, uh, by somebody that was in the theater business back in the '60s. And he— it's a triangle where you have a person that identifies as a victim And of course, there's the persecutor. That's the second person. They're the, they're the one persecuting the victim. But then there's this third person that comes into the dynamic that is basically the savior or dysfunctionally the enabler. Right. And so what, what happens is the victim says, this is happening to me and sees the persecutor as this is the person that is my nemesis and is causing all my trouble. And then they go to this savior or enabler. And what does the enabler do? He just, or she just confirms what you think, right? And flip side of that drama triangle. So we try to avoid drama triangles at all costs in our organization. The flip side of that is this empowerment dynamic where instead of a victim, you have agency to make a change and that persecutor becomes a challenger, right? And so It starts with you. That person may still be a difficult person that is demanding, etc., but looking at it as, okay, it's a challenge. They're calling me to do better. They're calling me to be better. And the— you look for relationships rather than to confirm your victimhood, to coach you to rise to the challenge, right?

Yeah, I like that. Look, at the end of the day, we've all got all kinds of troubles, but most of my troubles I caused. And when you really look at it, I didn't— as a child, I had a very abusive father. He was a scary person and he beat all of us. And that was a bad time in my life. And then we were really poor. I didn't know it at the time, but as I got older, I realized we were really poor. And so there were some hardships. And but at the end of the day, I can't control him, but I can control how I dealt with him. What's that saying? You know, life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you respond to it. And so I had nothing to do with my dad until he got super sick and I was in my 30s and his girlfriend called up and said he's dying. And I got to go and take care of my dad for about a year before he passed away. And I remember taking him to doctor appointments, helping him do an enema, all these things that were really weird. But I got to tell him I love him and I got to forgive him and I got to give him lots of hugs. He could never tell me he loved me. Just wasn't his thing. And then he died. But I have peace because I'm not this bitter, hurt, scared child anymore. I owned it. And he wasn't the father that I wanted him to be, but I was the son that I wanted to be. And I own what I can control. And it was cool. Now, my other family members who haven't gone through that journey with my dad, they still have hurts that come up a lot because they never closed that book. But for me, there was healing because I owned it. And that's why we wrote the book. You know, we know life is hard, but you own it. You gain the power to make it different.

Yeah. And as a child, yes, you're a victim. You don't have any control, right? I mean, that's, that's true. As a child, you don't have control over what happens to you. And there unfortunately are a lot of us that go through life that carry that baggage, that hurt, that pain from our childhood. And but you're right, at some point you become an adult that's responsible for yourself and you have to choose how you're going to respond to that. And, you know, as adults, I don't think there are any— well, maybe there, there may be occasion where adults are victims, but most of the time it's never a true victim situation, right? What— and for me, what my challenge was with my marriage was to be able to say, okay, how am I contributing to this situation? What am I doing that is affecting this or causing this? Instead of saying, how can I fix my wife? Right? Because at the end of the day, you can't fix or change anybody. All you can do is fix yourself.

Yeah. And that same thing goes for your business. So you're a creative person. You've got your own agency, you're doing your own work, and this is where you're at. Take stock of where you are. This is why in the book we ask people to take a satisfaction assessment. It's real simple. Two little wheels. You fill in the pie charts and say, how satisfied are you in these areas of your business and your personal life? And that way you at least know where you're at. Okay. I'm not really happy with my marriage. I'm not really happy with my health. My finances are okay, but I don't think I've lost. I don't have time with friends anymore. You score it, right? And now you know where you're at. Now, what are you going to do about it? And you're right, you can't control your wife or your husband, but you can say, let's go to counseling. That's scary. That's hard stuff. Kathy and I, after all these years of stress, we weren't nice to each other. So, we had to go to counseling for a while to get a place where I could say awkward things to her and help me work through some of my head trash. But there was a third person there to do that. And so, whatever thing you're not happy with, you as an owner of your business, you own it. You own it. You are the final decision of that company. You can blame customers, you can blame the economy, whatever. But at the end of the day, if you really want something, you're going to have to own it. Because when you own it, you can do something about it and you can make it a great company and you can get help and you can reach out to other people and be honest about your challenges. There's a lot of people who will help you if they knew you needed help.

Yeah, and as entrepreneurs, we tend to silo ourselves. Uh, we, we tend to not share what's going on, you know, with your spouse. That's— that, that makes a lot of sense because most of the time they're not an entrepreneur, right? And so like, they don't understand, uh, the, the issues that you're dealing with. And you can't talk to your friends usually because they're not business owners, and You definitely don't want to talk to your employees about it. So who do you talk to, right? I think one of the most powerful experiences I've had as an entrepreneur is being in Entrepreneurs' Organization and the Forum experience of being in this small group of peers that, like you said, we all go through the same challenges. And once you start getting them out of your head and speak them, it's like they're not so scary, right? And it doesn't feel so alone because it's like, well, you know, you realize everybody else is having similar issues.

And you deceive yourself quite a bit when you're solo. You know, you've got this own plan. You think it sounds so great. But at the end of the day, if someone— if you had to lay it out in front of a bunch of people, go, here's my plan, here's what I'm doing, they'd be like, What? You're doing what? That's ridiculous. But in our own mind, you know, we have this unconscious bias that we roll with and we think it's a great plan. This will be great. And then you tell some other successful leaders who've walked through the journey and who have understood how— what it takes to do something. And they look at you and they go, no, that is absolutely ridiculous. Well, that's when you really have to— that's when you really are getting awareness of what truth is. But when you want to deceive yourself, don't tell people about it. You can own it until it crashes and then you have to pick up the pieces from there.

I remember being in college and I had this great idea, or so I thought. And I went to my marketing professor, actually, and I described my idea, my business plan to him. And he just kind of looked at me and he said, I don't really think that's what you want to do. And he explained why. and I left kind of discouraged, right? And then right out of college, I, I had another idea, and I went to a couple of mentors that I had at the time, older gentlemen, and I, I excitedly described what I was doing and what I, what I wanted to do. And they both, who had experience in the industry, right, that they were in the space that I was contemplating, They just looked at me and very kindly said, I don't think that would be a good idea. And thankfully, I took their advice. But you have to be willing to set your ego aside, right? And say, I'm going to get— I'm going to ask and receive honest feedback, and I'm going to act on it, as opposed to—

Before you do it.

Exactly, exactly. As opposed to, I'm going to go get this person to buy into what I'm selling, right?

I remember being really proud of some of the efforts I would do as I was growing this business. And I would think I'd look at like the number of likes on a Facebook post or the number of impressions on a LinkedIn post. And I would pat myself on the back. Look at this. I'm getting all this exposure. And then my clients would say, how many sales calls did you make? Like, my clients are always trying to help me not be a knucklehead. How many sales calls you make? Oh, I didn't make any sales calls this week. You're supposed to make sales calls. Make some sales calls. You know, and they would challenge me, but I felt really proud of this other effort I was doing. And this is why we tell other people what we're doing, because we delude ourselves into thinking this is such a great idea, and then when it blows up, we're miserable and happy, and my business isn't going good. Well, dude, if you just told someone before before you did it, that this is your plan, they would have helped you see that you're missing it and you would have saved yourself a lot of pain. But we don't want to do that because we're not really confident that we're doing the right thing and we don't want anyone's input.

Well, yes, and I'll add to that. We do what's comfortable, right? One of the best books I've read recently is, and I don't remember the author, but it's called The Big Leap and written by a Stanford psychologist who's written several books, but my business coach recommended that one. It talks about the, the psychology, the, the brain, the brain and the way it's wired. We're wired for comfort, right? And so, and, and we're wired for predictability. And so when we go to our natural course of action, we do the things that we know what the results are going to be, right? And as entrepreneurs That's maybe the right place to be, but we eventually have to go beyond the things that we know, right? We have to take that big— or hope, right? We go— we have to take that big leap to do something that we don't really know what's going to happen, right?

Well, the reality is there's far more things that are out of control than there are in control and we are deceived and we think we have things under control. So you're doing something. Think this is this, this will work. I'm going to do this because I know this is going to work. You don't know that. The simplest example is COVID. I guarantee you every plan that was hatched at the end of 2019 that was going to roll out in 2020 didn't work because everything flipped upside down. And that's a huge example. But we could even take economic adjustments and all of a sudden the economy— interest rates are super high, so no one's buying a house, therefore no one's doing this. I mean, the ripple effect of things, you don't control any of that. So the best plans in the world are going to be attacked by all kinds of variables. You have to be able to, though, go in the direction of where you think makes the most sense. Again, getting good input from people as you go along. And then have short bursts of effort, assessment, adjustment, and short burst again. And it's— and when some people are so stubborn, they'll come up with an idea and they're going to stick with it no matter what. And after a year or two or more and it still sucks, they go, well, I think I just— we're just right around the corner. You're not. You're on the wrong block. You don't even have a car. And I think that we need to surround ourselves with people who will help us to be really objective So we can make these kind of tweaks along the way and not get stuck on something and hold on to it emotionally.

Yeah. And where that showed up for me, I, because I was the only one that was even marginally capable, have been in charge for the last 8 years of the marketing and sales for my company. And I have a team of 2. I have a marketing director and I have a salesperson.. And it became very apparent to me last year, as a matter of fact, because last year we had the worst sales year we've ever had and at the same time spent more money than we ever had. And last fall, you know, about a year from now, a year ago, I had this tremendous anxiety about myself, right? And what it was, was that I had just kept grinding and trying to make it work. And the reality was I needed to let go of it. But my personality is, is, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs tend to fall into this camp too, is they have this persistence about them and that's what allows them them to succeed as entrepreneurs, right? You know, they're, they're able to keep going when it's difficult. But, and, you know, as my business coach asked me a year ago, how is that serving you right now? Like, that character trait that I viewed as a positive was now a negative.

Well, if you write it down though, if you write it down and you really are clear about it, then you can adjust and decide not to do it when it's not happening. But we don't want to have our goals in writing We don't want to have metrics that we follow. We just kind of roll with it. And if we said, okay, for 3 months we're going to spend this much money, if we don't get this, we're going to do something else. You know, in marketing we do A/B testing because we're trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work, right? And then we evaluate and choose, okay, this is better. Let's put a picture of a puppy there, not a picture of a kid. And let's, let's change the copy this way and let's use a different color. And we're tweaking it so we can get results. But as a business owner, if you don't tell anyone your numbers and you don't put them in writing and and have someone else you can share them to where they can challenge you when you're continuing to go month after month after month, you'll continue down that road just out of sheer pride, and it could be your downfall. That's why we have to have something in writing to look at and go, I gave myself this many months, it's not working, I'm going to cut bait. I remember having clients— well, mostly marketing companies— but clients who would say, well, we're spending all this money on brand You don't spend money on brand. You spend money on lead generation and you build your brand while you're doing it. If you're paying someone right now to build your brand, you are wasting your money. You can pay them to do lead generation. And in order to do proper lead generation, you need to have a clear brand of what you want it to look like. You don't decide your brand. The world decides your brand, but you can go and add pieces of it in the effort of leading, of getting leads and getting orders. And while you're doing that, you'll be building your brand. But we like to pat ourselves on the back saying, this is a great exercise. We had 4,000 likes and we had 200 people commenting. Our brand's going through the roof. It's not. Your money's going through the roof.

Our web traffic is off the chain, right? And yeah. And no, I think one of the most powerful things we did in our business was we implemented the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS. And it's all, you know, one of the key tenets in that operating system is accountability. Right? So it is about having goals and having metrics and accountability among the team to achieve those things. And it— once you define those things, you absolutely can have accountability and have success. Well, Robert, I have really enjoyed this conversation. Where can we get your book? Nobody Cares?

You can go to nobodycaresbook.com, and if you go there, you can take the satisfaction assessment for free, even if you don't buy the book. I'd love people to at least go there and take the satisfaction assessment. We don't collect your data. We just want it there to be a service to you and then really decide where you— where your life is and where you want it to be. If you want to buy the book there, that'd be great. We're also available on Amazon and Target and Barnes Noble and all that stuff. But for your show, I've created a domain called nobodycarespod.com. And if the people who listen to your show will go there and fill out the contact form, I will mail the first 2 people a copy of my book Nobody Cares at no cost to them. They have to use the creative— the word— the code word creative when they fill out the form so we know it came from your show. And then I'm happy to mail out a couple copies of the book. I want them to read it and change their lives, and I'm happy to do that.

Robert, I appreciate that very much. So you all go to, uh, nobodycarespod.com, is that correct? And, uh, use the, the, uh, the, the code CREATIVE, and we'll have all of that in the show notes for you. Robert, thank you very much for your time. If you've liked this episode, uh, follow us on the podcast, leave a review. We'd love to to, uh, get your feedback. Until later, ta-ta for now.

And that's a wrap for today's episode of The Profitable Creative. Until next time, you money lovers. And don't forget, Profit First for Creatives is live via Amazon, link below.