Tad Hargrave Interview 2026

All right. Really glad to be here again with Tad Hargrave. Tad, great to see you. You're in your excellent recording studio. You've got great sound, of course, and great camera, by the way, because you were just mentioning before we started recording, you're using your phone, especially the back part of the phone, as the, as the camera. Anyway, really, really smart, smart idea, folks. A lot of you watching this probably didn't even know that could happen. But notice the sharpness of Tad's video compared to mine. I'm just using a normal webcam. So anyway, Tad and I, we have had several conversations in the past. You can find it on, on this channel. And there's always good stuff. People always praise it as one of the most more helpful things that I upload. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Tad, we can talk about anything that's, that's know, really alive for you right now. But I know one of the things that you bring up and, and just so people, you know, I'm assuming everyone knows who you are. Tad and I have been friends and colleagues since, gosh, something like 16, 15, 16 years. And you know, when I started my business, I, Tad was already, you know, writing and running programs, doing coaching and all that stuff in, in the, helping small business owners and to do marketing from a more ethical point of view. And so I learned a lot from Tad in the early days and, and then he and I have, you know, collaborated on various ways over the years. And I'm really happy to see Tad, where your business has gone because you now have a thriving membership program. You obviously have content that's serving a lot of people. You're. I'll put all your accounts below so people can follow you everywhere. And you also do in person events, which I, I'm. So I, I personally would love to do in person events, but I just don't have the energy that you do to organize them and show up for them. But you, you run, you run like local retreats, you, you do local workshops and, and you have a thriving online business as well. So I really think people can learn a lot from you. Especially going into the age of AI, I think there's going to be more and more interest in in person stuff. So I'm really happy that you have solidified. You have like a solid like two parts of your business in person and online. And I mean, you've done in person events all around the world, right? Not just in Canada. So that's really cool. But I wanted to ask you, I want to start. And you can, you can take this wherever you want. But one of the things I, one of the things you do so well is continuing to bring people back to what is necessary, what is, what is the foundation. Because I would agree with you that a lot of, I call them solopreneurs, we might call them hippie business owners or just small businesses that have, have a big heart. We tend to be, you know, easily distracted by all the strategies that we see out there. And we try, like new trends and things without having the foundation really shored up. And without that foundation, things aren't sustainable for the long term, including financially. So I wanted you to just talk about what you consider to be the foundations. You have a really nice diagram, which I will also try to remember to put the link below. If someone, if I forget, please, someone, someone remind me in the comments. But yeah, I'll let you take this wherever you want to go because you, you do such a great job of teaching the foundation, but you also teach, of course, the strategies that are working today. But I want to at least touch on the foundations because I think it's important for all of us, you know, myself included.

Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, thanks for having me.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I mean, before we got on the call, you were talking about this kind of world uncertainty index and that it's very high. People are feeling more uncertain about the future. So number one, I think that's good for people to, to just know it's not just you. Everybody's feeling it. People are deeply uncertain. The second thing I would say, and I'd, I'd put all my money on this, that's going to get worse. We're not headed towards more stable times anytime soon. We're headed towards, I mean, just to look at the trends, AI ramping up, the elimination of cash is coming. If we still have cash in the world in five years, I'll be shocked. The digitalization of everything, global digital IDs, you know, social credit score systems, all these things are coming. There's the political unrest, there's the increasing divide and tension between the right and the left, fueled by, yes, some real events, but fueled heavily by social media. If we look at it from COVID I mean, the black lives matter, Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, just to name a few, people have very strong feelings on either side. And that vibration, I don't see that diminishing. I see that entrenching and increasing. We're heading into such volatility. I mean, I feel like we're about to jump out of the frying pan into the fire. So that's good to know. Not, you know, it's good to be careful. Not fearful, not full of fear, just full of care. I think one of the things that kills so many entrepreneurs is naivety, just straight up innocence and not wanting to look at the situation clearly so we could talk about the global situation and in our own countries, what's happening. And you know, certainly in the United States, I don't think that's going to stabilize anytime soon. US dollar could collapse. There's that banks failing all around the world right now. So people are scared. One thing to know, I got this from Lynn Twist, who wrote the Soul of Money. People's generosity in terms of donations, financial giving has very little to do with how much money they have. It has everything to do with the direction of their wealth. If they feel like their wealth is on the increase, they're very generous. If they feel it's decreasing, they aren't. And that's true whether they're homeless or a billionaire. But of course, the homeless people are actually the most generous per capita of like the percentage of wealth they give away is higher than the billionaire. So. We got all that going on. And it's important, again, not to be fearful about it, but to be full of care around it, to be mindful of it, to not be. To stick our heads in the sand and say, oh, it's not happening, it's not happening. It's totally happening. And you know, who cares what I think? But empowered by nobody at all, I say this is going to get worse. I say we're in for a very rough five or 10 years. And what that means, all of that uncertainty, grocery prices increasing, getting harder to rent, BlackRock, Vanguard, State street, or buying up so much property. And so as that uncertainty increases, people's, you know, generosity with their money is going to decrease already has decreased. I know you've seen it. Almost all of my colleagues have seen it. This pulling back on how much do I want to spend. Okay, so that's number one. We don't want to be naive about that. But the other thing we don't want to be naive about is our own business and the state of our business. And it's really easy to just because we're desperate, oh God, I can't work on my business anymore. It's fine. It's probably not fine. Your business is probably not fine. And I don't want to be a Debbie Downer about it. And you know, of course this could be aha of course Ted would say this because he's cut something to sell, you know, him and George. And so of course they'd, they'd pitch this line that you got to keep working on your business, but it's whoever you work with, I mean you, there's free stuff, you hire a coach, your big program, whatever it is, or whether you pay for support or not. What I'm saying, and I think Georgia backed me up on this. When I look at most entrepreneurs in the state of their business, it is nowhere near where it needs to be. Yeah, it's like the, the, the story, the three little pigs and the wolf. The first one builds it out of straw and the huffs and puffs and blows the house down and then it sticks a thing and huff and puff blows it down. The third one, it's bricks. I almost never see a house of bricks amongst my clients. It's almost always straw, sometimes sticks. And that's rare that I see it made with sticks. It's almost always straw. And you know, if you're a tree and there's a storm coming, you, you want good roots and most entrepreneurs really don't. You don't have that. And so here's my prediction. I got in for this from a few people anyway when I sent out an email about this, you know, accusing me of fear based marketing. So, you know, people can take this how they want to take this, but I don't think most people in this industry will survive the next few years. I think most will get wiped out. Why? Because they're naive about what's happening in the world, but they're also just naive about their own business and, and the fitness of it. And the storm's going come and they're just going to be uprooted. This happened in Edmonton. During the lockdowns. We lost a lot of the main yoga studios and the best yoga teachers in town. They're now doing drywall construction or video editing. They just got out of the game. It was too tough. I was in Ottawa and there used to be a thriving holistic scene in Ottawa, Canada. And I was talking with a woman who's one of the major hubs and she said that the lockdowns really decimated it. And so I imagine there's some version of that in a lot of places. People just got out of the game. I think what's coming will be that level or more.

I mean, AI is like, is like the COVID lockdowns. I mean I have. I. And if anyone knows you tad, if they really know you, they know you're not doing the fear based marketing. When you said I I replied to that email that you sent. You said that you got some pushback that it was fear but I replied to the email saying this is really clearly written and I 100 agree. You know I replied to your email and I have seen myself I was, I've been telling my, my clients since early 2023 when ChatGPT became more mainstream. I have absolutely seen my business decline at least a third because of AI because people can and I even have current people in my membership program saying oh yeah I, I was using ChatGPT to create a business plan to figure out the marketing thing and I'm like even people in my membership program are are using Chat GPT actively let alone the people who never signed up for anything I've done or or have been following our content and go well gosh what what my Tad Hargrave marketing say about da da da da da. So I, I 100 agree with you. I, I, I do also agree with you about the timeline. I think five to 10 years, yes next five to 10 years is going to be rough and however I also want to add that I do believe and this is definitely a faith based thing. This is because no one can tell what the future is especially 10 years from now. It's everything is moving so fast. But I do hold out faith and have some evidence based on what I all the news I follow and all the research I follow I do hold out. I hope that after 10 years things will be a lot better. There will be more a world of abundance because there's given the AI robotics prices of many things will fall and therefore society is going to be much cheaper to run. Yes, there's going to be fewer jobs and also I think that in the next decade humans will adapt to what the new opportunities are just like we couldn't imagine. You know, go back someone from the 1800s looks at today and go what, what do you do for work? You sit around this thing on the desk and you get paid doing that. Couldn't imagine it. I think 10 years from now we also, it's hard to imagine the kind of opportunities we're going to have. But you're right in the next decade it's going to be rough and those who are setting down the foundations of their business now are going to have a much easier time or less hard of a time. I agree with you.

Yeah, you know, I don't share your optimism about where we're going to be in the next 10 years. But we'll see. We'll see. But it's, it's. Yeah. What you're, what you're saying about the AI.

Yeah.

And I'm sure everybody's seen this, and if you haven't, you're going to see more of it. You'll be able to get an AI coach that is trained as a copywriter, trained in the style of these marketing coaches. We took all the best content from the top business experts, and now you can ask questions and get it in the voice of this person. And they'll probably release it themselves. There'll be a Tony Robbins AI. You can get a Tony Robbins already.

It's, it's a hundred. It's a hundred bucks a month. Yeah.

Really?

Yeah, yeah. I think, I think they have, they have different tiers. I think they have like a $21 or. Yeah, so.

So, yeah. So more and more people are going to turn to that. Even, you know, not in business. I've had friends last summer tell me, oh, yeah, I Gotta stop using ChatGPT as my therapist. Which my response is, you absolutely have to stop that. That's going to hurt you. That's not good. This is not life. This is a language learning model that has no somatic awareness, no soul.

I just published an article about that today. Tad. I'll have to send it to you. But, yeah, it's because AI is. Think about what AI is doing. It is going to perfectly agree or get you to stay using the tool. And it's going to, it's going to be. And this, this thing about, oh, I can, I can access it anytime I want 24, 7 becomes a compulsion rather than having the spaciousness between therapy sessions to process.

Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's. People say, oh, but I'm, I'm very mindful to program it to challenge me. Oh, and you know what your blind spots are? You're so hip to your blind spots that you can program them in. But if you already know your blind spots, why do you need the therapy? You know, checkmate your. So it's, this is all happening and it's going to increase. And for all these reasons and more, you know, I think it's, it's going to be a turbulent time. So it's, this is a really important time to set down roots. Whoever you go with, whatever. So I'll share my model for, you know, whatever it's worth. So I call this the seven fundamentals. And to me, the base of it is ethics. This is the Fundament of the whole thing is, you know, a commitment to the truth, not a commitment to the sale, basically. And then above that is you've got to have enough space. And this is one that's been the last couple of years. It's really hit me. And when I was touring across Canada, I would ask people, you know, out of all these seven, which, which one do you think is the one to focus on? I say about a third of the people raise their hand for space, meaning they're realizing they're over giving, they're overburdened, they're overtaxed, they're overworked, they're just overdoing everything and they actually don't have enough space for their business. They wonder, why is my business not succeeding? It's like because you're on 20 volunteer committees, you're, you're giving to everyone and everything else except your business. And there's a certain point where it's like, okay, do you want your business to grow? Then you may need to set that stuff down. Like a lot of the community work and this is as somebody who's big on community work and culture work and has spent a lot of my life doing it, you might need to take a year or two where you're off duty. You're just not doing that at all. You're focusing on taking care of your own home and provision and basics because it's possible you've put in your time and you've earned a break from that. And maybe you just haven't put in the time for your own livelihood and your own, you know, financial security. So it's okay to take a break. I mean, yes, we need all hands on deck at the community level as well, but not everybody at once. It's okay for you to take a break and other people step in because other people have the energy and the time and the bandwidth, the savings, the. Yeah, but we got to have space and most people don't have enough space. And I would say, especially moving into times of uncertainty and turbulence, spaciousness is gold. If you want to invest in anything, it's creating more room in your life. So that can be lowering your expenses. Marie Kondoing your, your home, clearing out your computer, decluttering, unsubscribing from every email list except George and Mines. You know, it's, it's creating that kind of white space in your life, getting out of the half hearted commitments and even some of the full hearted commitments that it's just, you got to set aside for a while. This is huge. And for a lot of people, what they're trying to do is they're trying to focus further up the pyramid. And my case is, if you are overwhelmed, nothing will move the needle more for you than creating space. And I've been hearing this in my membership. You know, some people have really taken that on, and they're amazed at the energy that's coming to them, the clarity, the focus. Because, you know, every. So this ethics is here, but the rest of these six, this is all about effectiveness. These six. And this is strategy, basically. You know, strategy is how we be effective. But there is no strategy without space. And 90% of strategy. And I got this from a woman, Monica, I was working with for a while. 90% of strategy is what you say no to what you don't do. And a lot of us are. We're just trying to do everything. And, you know, that ties to the next one, which is, of course, niche. You know, trying to be everything to everybody is the opposite of niching. We gotta have something we're known for. And in these times, the businesses that don't have a niche are cooked. I mean, they're already getting cooked. Case in point, in case people think I'm just exaggerating to sell stuff. When people join my membership, we. We ask, like, how much money are you making every year? And I would say it's. Maybe I can even unsight. I'm gonna see if I can pull this up, because this is illustrative.

And while you're doing that, I just want to say I love the diagram. And this is the diagram. Those who are watching this that I mentioned earlier. So I'm glad you're sharing it, Tad. And I just love that space is such a foundational part of this, because people like people who sell courses and programs. Well, it's kind of like every professor, you know, treats you like theirs is the only class you're taking, and so they load you. They load you with all the stuff, whereas we actually need to encourage. And I'm glad you are just. People say, okay, it's okay to let things go. It's okay to let things go.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I found the thing, so I'll show you. So 136 people filled this out. This is how much money people are making when they join my membership at the beginning. Yeah.

Very, very interesting. Wow.

Yeah. 54% make less than 10 grand a year.

Not surprised at all. Honestly. I see similar numbers in my membership, too. Yeah. Amazing.

So you can see it's. What is it? That's 58, 68%. So 70% of people are making less than 20 grand a year right now.

And, and by the way, they, we have to clarify, is this US dollar or Canadian dollar or something else? Because my sense is that it's probably even higher than, you know, who are in the lower brackets.

Yeah, I think, I think it's us. Yeah, okay, it's us. But even so, I mean, it's just people are not making much, so people are already kind of getting wiped out. Like they're not sustaining themselves. If you're making 10, 20 grand a year, okay, you're either you have a spouse that's supporting you, right, or you, you have savings or you're living in, I don't know, some real cheap place, or you're losing money, you're in debt on credit cards. So the, if you don't have a niche, you're just not going to make it. Because I don't know if everyone's noticed, but there are more and more people doing what you do every year. Like, you know, the certifications keep pumping people out and a modality that used to be obscure, let's say, like ancestral reconnection work or grief ceremonies where you couldn't find anybody. There's some. I could go to Nelson bc, pick up a rock and throw it and I guarantee I'll hit a grief ceremonial. It's like there's so many. Finding psychedelic medicine practitioners used to be difficult. Now they're becoming sort of ubiquitous. So. So if you don't have a niche and you're trying to be everything to everybody, you get it. It's just I'm not going to try to make the case for niching. But if you don't have it, you're hooped. And you know, then there's point of view, which is your take on it. Like your willingness to tell the truth about what you see from where you're standing and that most people don't have that really laid out. And the confused mind says no. If they're confused about your niche, they say no. But if they confused about your point of view, they say no too.

And just a translation in my sort of lingo, I call it framework or signature framework. But yeah, point of view. Signature framework, same idea, yes.

People want to know, how do you do what you do? Like, why should I work with you? What's the process going to be like? What are the ideas it's founded on? We got to have an answer to that. And then, yeah, there's the business model which is the structure of the business. And here's the question I was asking across country. And this is a question, whenever I'd ask it, my day long workshop, it probably got one of the biggest visceral reactions of anything I did or asked. And I'd see, when I asked, I'd see people go like this ago. Yeah. Here's the question, do you want a business or do you want a hobby? And that's the, that's the fundamental question, I think, of business model. What do you want? Both work. It's great. I do close up my magic. It's a hobby, it's not a business. And I'm happy with that. T.S. eliot, the famous poet, worked as a banker. Poetry was his hobby, it wasn't his career. There's lots of examples of fantastic work in the world from hobbies. Great. But if you say it's a business and treat it like a hobby, that doesn't work at all. And so we've got it anyways. We got to get at the structure of our business. We got to think through the offers. You know, the point of niche is that when you articulate it, when you say your niche, particularly around, like, who you work with, your ideal client looks at and they say, oh my God, that's me. Wow. They get it. Yeah. With point of view, they hear the point of view of the framework and they say, that makes so much sense. Wow, that could work. And with the business model, when you put out an offer, if it's a good offer, the response is, shut up and take my money. Stop talking. You know, which we've all had, we've all found offers that was like, oh my God, that's just exactly what I need. And how can I say no to this? You know, not in. We're being coerced. It's just. Well, you solved a problem. I have, like, I've got an app on my phone that's called Mileiq because my bookkeeper is like, you got to track your mileage for taxes and here's a log book. Or you could stab me in the eyes, you know, and I did it for a week and then of course, I lost track. And this app just tracks your mileage as you drive. And then you can download it as a CSV and send it to your bookkeeper. And it's precise. And, you know, I'm thrilled to pay like 70, $80 a year for that. I'm thrilled. I'm happy to. That's a. Shut up and take my money. Stop talking. Actually, I just Got another app. I found it where it's. You know how you, you keep seeing all these recipes on like Instagram's, like, oh my God, I have to try that. But where do you keep track of it? It's an app where you can just upload it. What is it called? Resume, I think something like that. But you just upload it to. And then it gives you. Here's all the ingredients and you can organize it by type of thing, like dinner, dessert, drinks, whatever. Oh my God. And so I will be paying $5 a month or whatever for that and be thrilled. So. But a lot of people, I think they don't put enough work into the offers and they just think, well, I've got this kind of mediocre generic thing and I'll put it out into the marketplace aimed at nobody with no particular point of view, you know, like. And then nobody responds. So we've. Most of the marketing happens. Like the business model is kind of the meeting point between the inner work you've done and the marketplace. This is where it starts to, you know, you open the door to share it. Then there's hubs building relationships with key people in your scene. That boy, that when an age of AI that is going to get more and more important, people are going to be tired of AI recommendations and maybe not getting it quite right or making things up, just making up a recommendation that doesn't work. And I think people will be turning more and more to their friends of who do you recommend? Who have you worked with? That's gonna pay off big. And there will be certain people, and we probably all know them in our scene, like certain people who are, have such integrity, who are so thoughtful, well read, knowledgeable in their field, that their endorsement means a lot. So if you can get the endorsement of these people, that's huge. And then they're sharing, you know, that's the tactical level of how. What.

That's the, that's the tip of the pyramid. Yeah, yeah.

But it's the smallest thing and then the pitch is like the tip of that pyramid. It's almost nothing. So people are focusing on how do I pitch better, what's the tactic I'm going to use. But what I'm saying is, but before you get here to sharing, we gotta set the foundation of all these things. And I would say that the, the crazier times get, the more uncertain people are, the more those foundations matter. There's probably times when the market's favorable and you know, various industries go through this, like internal family Systems, they got famous for a while. I don't know who endorsed them. Oprah, Joe, Joe Winfrey, Joe Rogan. But they, anyway, somehow they got on the map and literally if you had your name in the directory, you were full. Yeah, so that happens too. And it's great. And if it does, wonderful. But it's, you know, hope is not a great strategy. So the, the case fundamentally that I want to make is handle whoever you go with, whether you go with anyone or not. Handle fundamentals. This is my take on what they are, those seven. I mean there's, there's other things besides, but those are the seven I focus on. But if you, if you do, if you get those roots deep, you have a chance of surviving the troubles that are coming. You got a chance, it's a fighting chance, no guarantees. And if you don't have those roots in, in place, you don't, you have zero chance. So, you know, if this is your livelihood, if you want this to be your business and you want it to last, whoever you go with, and whether you go with anyone, that's, that's the case I'm making is, is handle that stuff. This is, and I would say there's also, I think of course, opportunities in all of this. You know, in all of the troubles, there's. The more the danger, the more the opportunity. So there are some positive possibilities, but I don't think for people who don't have the foundations in place, it's like if we could also imagine that like a ladder and those opportunities are the fruit and you can't reach it from the ground. You got to climb up the ladder to be able to reach that fruit that's available because it is there for these times.

Yeah, I love that. And the ladder you're building with the pyramid, once you have the foundation, it's actually easier to get fruits from other trees if you wanted to. But it's like that foundation is. Yeah, it's just beautiful diagram. I really like it. I want to, I want to mention, you mentioned the biz model. I mean, and it's not, you know, you mentioned a couple examples of the apps, but like membership programs, courses, you know, coaching packages, healing packages, I mean those are all when they are created as an aligned, an offer that's aligned with the audience. People say, shut up. Take my money. This is so good. I mean, just quick examples, you know, my membership program, you know, I, I launch it. The, the one that, my main one that's year long, you know, I launch it every, every time I launch It, I'm like, oh my gosh, I wonder if people are going to sign up. And every single time I like oversold it two months before it starts, like for the past, like five years, whatever. And this happened again this past year for, for this coming year, for, for this year. And I'm like, that's an example of where it's so aligned. And same thing with yours, right? Your, your marketing for Hippie's membership is, is thriving and people are like, of course I'm going to renew. Of course I'm going to renew. Of course I'm renew. And so yeah, I just think that, you know, it's, it's not necessarily the low price things that do well. It's. People are paying all kinds of thousands of dollars, you know, for various events and services that they go, my God, that was such a great, that was just so worth it. I'm going to tell everybody. So I know you need to get going, but I want to make sure people know about. I will put the links below for people who want to follow you. But, but you have a new level of your membership program that, that was really interesting. I don't know if I even heard about it before today, so I want you to mention it because I think a lot of people haven't heard about it.

Yeah, it's not quite ready yet, but if you go to marketing for hippies.com membership over the coming weeks and if you're on my email list, believe me, you'll hear about it. But the, it's a $7 a month tier and it includes three courses. One. You know, I sort of assume people have already done the starter kit on my website.

Which is free.

Yeah, which is free. But then there's the marketing for Hippies101 which is the footage of my old day long workshop that I used to tour, which I'm still thrilled with.

Yeah, because you did it a bunch and you've, you practiced it and got so much feedback and kept iterating on it.

Yeah, yeah, it got rave reviews. If I, if I had a second day of my workshop on my tour, that's probably the stuff I talk about. But anyways that's there as a, as a self paced course. There's an inner work course where I share some of my thoughts around the inner blocks that people have. And then the last one is the, called the Breathing Room which used to be my meantime program. So that was a program people paid $300 for and we're just including that. And that talks a lot about how do you create space? But also there's. I think it's 36 or so of the best fast cash tactics that I've gotten from colleagues over the years. Things you can apply. Literally today, you can be making money that's just sitting on the table, and most people never think to do them. So my goal in all of that is that, you know, you make $2,000 quickly, so you could afford the full version of the membership, but that's $7 a month, and that's coming out in the next few weeks.

Awesome. And if I'll put the link below to where people can sign up for your starter kit, at least starting with that and then of course, following you on Instagram or everywhere on. On all the socials. And sign up for Tad's newsletter. He has a great newsletter. Tad, I love your newsletter because you. You add a lot of personal touch to it. And you're also very generous in recommending other people. Other people, other resources. And so it's like a. Well, you are. You are modeling the hub idea. Like, you are the hub where you're always recommending. Hey, this is really good. That's really good. So I think your newsletter is one of the best. It's one of the. It's one of the few that I've stayed subscribed to over the years. So.

Yeah, thank you. I'm. I'm commenting on Russell Brunson's launch in tomorrow's.

Oh, my goodness. Okay. I can't wait. That's awesome.

I'll be curious about your thoughts. Yeah, I should run. But, George, real good to see you, man. Great.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for doing this. For sure. And folks, comment below if you have any. What's one thing that stood out to you and maybe something you're going to take away from this and really try to use it, so thank you.