The Exit Engine Podcast Episode 36: Meet Bradley Rausch

Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, episode 36. Good morning, John.

Good morning, Joe.

I am, I'm very excited for today because we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna take a little bit of a walk off our normal path today. Okay.

Love it. And I'm gonna learn a lot.

Yeah, exactly. And that's the idea here is to learn. We're all gonna learn something here because again, we, you know, we talk a lot on this podcast about the things that you need to do as a founder to be able to prepare your, your business for exit, to set your exit trajectory, right? And that, as we talk about, happens, can happen anytime. And the earlier you start it, the better off you're gonna be.

Yep.

But one of the things, and you talk about this all the time, is the, is that as how much, How much of the focus of the business is on the owner in terms of what the owner does on a daily basis, right?

Yeah. I mean, and the more the owner is able to remove themselves from the company and the day-to-day— actually, not the company, but the day-to-day operations— the better for everyone involved.

No question about it. So the cool thing is that— so the question is, how do you do that, right? And especially, I think, for people who are so stuck in Like a customer-centric business where they are, you know, so many founders are like the guy who like closes the deal, right? The guy who gets the clients, the guy who, right, who makes the connections, right?

Yeah, exactly. They're doing the day-to-day. They're imperative for the day-to-day business to run. It's imperative for them to stay involved in that business to make sure that it succeeds, or that's what they think.

That's what they think, right? And so today we're going to talk to somebody who's going to tell you to to basically how to not do that anymore.

I love it. I love it.

All right, because again, it's great that you're connected and it's great that you're, you know, obviously everybody's business is a reflection of themselves, right? Whether you want it or not, the business takes on the personality of the owner, okay? And again, an owner who's out there shaking hands and doing stuff is awesome, but when it comes to selling the business, it starts to be a problem because we need other people to be able to do that, not just the owner. Right? And so, but the owner still needs to have a role. And the cool thing is our guest today is a guy named Bradley Roush. Bradley is the founder of Level Up Influence. Okay? And he basically is an expert in helping founder-led companies scale up their customer success. And we'll talk about what that means exactly. But more importantly, it's about how he can teach you how to step out of the day-to-day operations, how to build a more powerful kind of organic brand for the company and for yourself as an owner. Right? Be able to, um, be able to actually, you know, uh, get new business through referrals and viral content and stuff like that where you can apply your great personality right out in the world without necessarily being the person who shakes people's hands, right? Well, Bradley's got a lot of experience optimizing customer success for growth. He's been a CMO, he's a fractional CMO, um, he's got some really, really great stuff. He's gonna help us today learn how to scale this, how to do this.

for founders.

So without further ado, Bradley Roush, thank you so much for being on the ExitEngine podcast. How are you?

Hey, I'm good, guys. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate the intro. I will do my best to live up to that.

Pressure is on, Bradley.

That's right, exactly. Yeah. Hey, listen, so Bradley, you know, right off the bat, right? Tell us a little bit about kind of why this is so important, you know, and tell us what— first of all, let's start with what in your mind is kind of customer success? Right. And then how does it directly relate to the founder in this case, in terms of kind of understanding what that is and how you're gonna manage that, especially when it comes to potentially an exit from your company?

Yeah, absolutely. So when I think of customer success, the biggest shift that comes to mind is multiplication instead of addition. So if you don't have proper SOPs and just essentially a full-fledged department, but also a company that values customer success, you're always going to be adding to your bottom line and top line. You're never going to be multiplying it. Multiplying it, meaning through referrals, through increasing your best client's LTV, through avoiding bringing on the clients that don't increase your LTV, your average LTV, things like that. It's, it's the, I think the best founder-led companies, and I can get into why I say founder-led in a second, but founder, I think the best founder-led companies are the ones that look to, every time they bring on a client. They actually are able to then retain that client for a much longer than average period of time. But also that client will bring them anywhere of an average of 3 to 5 more clients just like them because the program, the coaching, the delivery, the service, the whatever's on the backend is so great, is so high quality, is so above average of whatever the market sees that it does the selling for you. And so some of the best companies that I've worked with, and also unfortunately some of the worst companies that I've worked with, they will have client success departments that in terms of revenue generated and profit generated are far exceeding what a marketing or sales department will actually contribute to the company. And I think that when you've got that, it's this self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a self-fulfilling engine where you can take one client, not only bring that client LTV insanely high, insanely high relative to industry average for whatever industry you might be in, but then also take that person and go out and find and have them find on your behalf 3 to 5 people just like them. So multiplication versus addition.

Right. Absolutely. And so when you say, just to be clear, when you say LTV, you mean lifetime value, right? Okay. So the lifetime value of that customer, right? So it's a matter of how much earning they provide you, obviously, over the entire course of their existence as your client, right? just in a one-off kind of way. And obviously, the value of your company, right, is often very much tied, obviously, to this long-term value of your clients, right?

Oh, absolutely. And, you know, you guys, I mean, you guys obviously experts on this, so you can, you can confirm or deny or give a different perspective. But the, you know, I feel like so many times when people talk about, oh my gosh, yes, the potential of the company or the value of the company or how that's, you looked at or evaluated, sometimes I feel like it's based a little bit too much on kind of a hypothetical, kind of like, oh, well, this is the potential market we could reach. Oh, well, if you keep going with these processes and you have this thing in place and you do this the way we've set it up and continue to do it, we could reach this amount of people. It's like, what's better? Having a hypothetical situation that probably would, may or may not turn out to be true on some level. Like, sure, when you're selling, you gotta make sure you have your due diligence in place and everything's solid. You're not pulling numbers outta your ass, but Is it versus that or having saying, listen, we've got this group of, I don't know, a couple hundred, a couple thousand, even if it's, you know, something SaaS or something big, we've got this group of customers that on average bring us 1.5 new customers every quarter or every time they renew because the service is so great. And not only that, we have this recurring revenue stream that makes up of 30, 40% of our total revenue, plus that same, that sole recurring revenue stream. Right, of referrals and testimonials, etc., that's growing by 50% year over year. Like, what makes a company more value? That hypothetical kind of, this is the market we could reach, or this is the market we will reach?

Let me ask you a question, Bradley. How do you activate that? Or I don't know what the right word is, but what are the ways in which companies activate and unlock, if you will, the value that's sort of inherent in their customer base to get more referrals?

So it comes down to, you know, if, and I wanna cater this to what, you know, to what most frequently listeners will experience with your guys' podcast. Do you guys find that more B2C or more B2B companies will listen and engage with kind of your content?

With us, it's really a pretty evenly split down the middle. Yeah.

Okay, cool. So I can kind of give you 2 different perspectives on that. So I'll start with B2B. So B2B is, Usually it's almost a lockbox. It's almost this thing of, there are so many different, especially like we'll take something like SaaS, right?

Mm-hmm.

All over the place. Usually it's so difficult to find that trust, to find that flow in the market until you get to a point where it's like you've got all these people preaching your name, talking about what you're doing, et cetera. It's so difficult to get to that point. And so It's almost like this lockbox until you unlock it. It's really, really hard to break it. And so I think investing in, again, your client success, making sure that every single person that comes in is extraordinarily served well above the delivery, well above the promised delivery, is just so crucial. Which brings me to the sole piece of advice I would have for the most important piece of advice I would have in a B2B Is there are so many B2B companies out there, a couple that I've worked with specifically, that will, they will get lost in the minutia of why they think their product is so great. And they will get lost in the techie terms and they will get lost in the, oh, well, your business could do this, your business could do that. It's so abstract. They don't get into This is a specific methodology. Here's the support you will have in terms of creating a flow in your company of how you're gonna apply this. Basically, I think what happens in a B2B situation is that people get so caught up in the jargon, they get so caught up in the politics of trying to find the people in the right spot and then trying to cater to— under-promise and over-deliver is the sole thing.

Mm-hmm.

that I focus on when I come in and I have help, either B2B or B2C, but there's a slightly different version of this in B2C that I'll get to in a second. Underpromising and overdelivering. And what I mean by that in the B2B context is instead of getting lost in the jargon, instead of getting lost in the wording and the flashy websites and the pages and all the things, is simply put, focusing on an outcome that you can deliver. and making sure that you are overdelivering on that outcome, but also ensuring that that outcome comes as soon as possible after the sale, after the indoctrination of somebody into a program. I don't know if you guys have heard of the phrases of time to value and time to result.

Sure.

So those are the 2 kind of key metrics in a client success department. So time to value means the amount of time that a prospect, or a customer rather, has to wait before they receive value of any kind From a service or product. Time to result means the amount of time that a customer has to wait until they receive the full result that they were promised as a result of purchasing a product, purchasing a service. So with time to value, you wanna try and get that anywhere between 48 to 72 hours after the sale.

Mm-hmm.

Because what happens then is that that person will stay with you, statistically will stay with you It's like, it's like 5 to 8 times longer if that time to value comes within 48 to 72 hours. Because it's like, you think about it again, this is what I mean with the minutia of B2B. It's like you get so lost in the, oh yes, we're gonna onboard you next week and we have this fully fledged program with all these features and here's all the things that you get. It's like, no, just stop. Just literally do something for them that you promised them you would do that will get you so much further than all of the tech, all of the add-ons, all of the SaaS, all of the everything. The bells and whistles. Just make the connection, right? So that's all on the B2B side. As far as the B2C side, and this one's much quicker with all that context now, is with the B2C side, I think if it's, let's say, like a high-ticket service or a high-ticket product or something, when I think B2C, I'm usually thinking like coaching or consulting, right?

Right.

Usually there are people on the other side of a sales conversation that will have tried and be looking for something for so long. Like if you think of something like a weight loss coaching program, right? The likelihood that somebody who's enrolling into a weight loss coaching program has already tried 17.5 different things to lose weight is extraordinarily high.

Right.

What's gonna happen when you come in with the time to value? What's gonna happen when you come in and within 48 hours they're already completely understanding why, let's say for instance, why all the other programs didn't work.

You tell them about the science, you tell 'em about exactly what they need to do.

You deliver a plan. into them, they start executing on the plan and they feel good about it. Like, what's going to happen when you, again, under-promise, you lay out the results you're going to get them, you take the most important result out of those series of results that you promise you're going to get them, and you deliver it to them within 48 to 72 hours?

Right.

That person will stay with you again, statistically.

That's glue, right? At that point, right? You've just, you've just literally locked them in because they've seen that value so quickly and now they feel like, oh my God, I finally found the thing that's gonna work for me or whatever, even if it ends up not working in the long term, which with weight loss is obviously there's so many factors, right? But you're right. The point is that you're saying that in order to basically, the customer success begins, whether it's B2B or B2C, really begins, right, within that first like 48 hours, right?

Yeah.

Like most important time to be able to give them some value. One of the things that John and I have worked on too is actually trying to deliver that value even ahead of the sale.

Yes.

Do you find that, you find that something that obviously is, you know, still plays along with that methodology?

Oh my gosh, 100%. And this is actually where, so when I work with clients, it's not only on a, usually not only on a client success side, but also on a marketing and branding side as well, because I think I have my experience over the last 5 years, I kind of have this unique mix of both client success and marketing. And so bringing that, merging those 2 together has been really, really Fascinating and just exciting. So the way that, just the very quick synopsis, how it works is essentially you build out the referral engine, you build out the testimonials, you build out the backend that fuels all of your frontend content. Your content is no longer you talking about how great the product and service is. It's talking, it's your customer talking about how great the product and service is. That is your, that becomes your content, right? And then that content brings higher quality people into the sales process. Your sales process does not need to be as pushy. It doesn't need to be as direct. It doesn't need to be as traditionally salesy. It can be a conversation. It can be a feel-good moment. It can be, hey, I've seen 25 and a half different YouTube videos or different Instagram reels or whatever talking about from other people talking about how amazing this is. I'm already sold. I'm ready to go. I've already gotten value. Now I just want more. And then they come in so much easier. The sale becomes easier. That person is already excited. excited, indoctrinated into what you're doing, you get the testimonial that much faster, and then the cycle repeats itself.

Well, it's like the third-party endorsement, right? It's so powerful. And when you can get— it's like when someone's checking references, right? When someone's checking references, at that point, they're pretty much already sold unless something goes catastrophically wrong. So you're so right about if you can put that third-party endorsement up front and make that part of your content, I can see how that can be very powerful for generating additional business.

Yeah, absolutely. 100%.

So if you look at basically— talk to us a little bit about like the role of the owner in particular, right? Or the founder, because like we said in the beginning, so often, right, the founder is the person— look, it happens with us. I mean, you know, John and I are out there, maybe me a little bit more than John, you know, just because of time and our kind of roles in the company. But, you know, we spend a lot of time being the face. Right? Being out there. We do this podcast, obviously. Our faces are literally all over the place. The recommendation we've had from other consultants and stuff on our own business is to be that right now. The problem is that I can already anticipate, right, what happens later. Like, I can't be the guy who's the face and the guy who's delivering the program and stuff like that, right?

Yep. So, and you actually bring up a really interesting point, which is You know, the consultant telling you that you need to be the you need to be the face right now because there is you know companies can scale. There's just tons of companies that nobody knows about where nobody knows who they are. They've never they've never seen the found you know they've never seen the founder. They don't even get to know who the founder is until like they're in it or maybe they do a bunch of extensive research like all these companies you know everybody everybody thinks you know it's 2025 oh well if they don't have a social media presence if they don't have a big thing on LinkedIn if they don't have a big thing on Instagram or YouTube whatever da da da then you know they're not. they're not real, they don't exist, or they're not as valuable or something like that. That's all a complete fallacy because obviously there are so many companies building in incognito. So I wanna first, before I go into what I'm about to go into, totally validate that.

Mm-hmm.

But to your point, and then also in my experience, exclusively all of the founders that I work with have a desire to both be public-facing in their own company. but also public-facing within the context of their own brand, and then work to eventually not necessarily separate the two, but kind of have this blissful coexistence between the two so that they could separate if at any point in time they'd like to. So I'm gonna speak obviously more to that side of the equation.

Yeah.

So for those individuals, yes, you are absolutely right. It becomes a really, really interesting conversation when you're like, okay, shit, not only can this company— not only can I not do everything in this company, But I think this company is too dependent on me, or the success of the clients is too dependent on me, or the success of the marketing, the branding is too dependent on me because I'm becoming the face. 100%. So a couple things there. Number one, when you get to that point, I think the easiest thing to start to do is throughout your sales process, throughout your nurturing process on the front end, but also kind of in that first onboarding process as clients come in, really look to edify the rest of your team. So it's taking your authority that you've built on the front end with marketing, but also on the back end with clients and testimonials and things. It's taking your authority and using it to edify everybody else. So what this could look like is, I don't know, Jo, let's say you're the founder and you are gonna create an onboarding package, an onboarding video for somebody to come in. The first video that they're gonna watch introduces a little bit, you introduce a little bit to them, sorry, you introduce a little bit of the company to them. Telling them about what the next, you know, X amount of time is going to be. Thirty days, ninety days, whatever. Give them a little bit of a roadmap, and then you go into. And I'm really really excited to introduce you to John here. John is absolutely incredible. He's had thirty years of experience doing XYZ. He's going to be able to help you do da da da. To be honest with you, he might be able to help you do it a little bit better than I will because he's got more experience over here. This is exactly what you're going to be getting from him. He's going to be reaching out within the next twenty four hours, booking a call with you that like so you give your authority. Right. That the prospect trusts you with to John to say, hey, gotcha. This is why you need to trust him. Right. And you can maybe even throw in again a little bit of like a self-deprecating thing in there of like, and he's actually better at it than I am or something, something like that to kind of have a little humor with it.

But all true.

By the rest of your team throughout the process. So that's kind of an internal fix, right?

Yep.

As far as the external company-facing thing, so let's assume it's a company or a brand that is very closely tied with the founder's personal brand, right? I know tons of founders somewhere between the— so most of the founders I work with, I usually don't start working with people till they're past $1 million a year. So most of them that I work with are between $1 and $5 million a year. But my largest client right now is doing like $15 or $16 million. So let's say somebody doing $15 million a year, they are the face of their company. They are ever— 80% of what they bring in is because of their own personal brand, their content online, their content on social media, et cetera, their YouTube content, whatever it is. The biggest thing there, I think that there's 2 ways you could go about this. A, you could do what we just talked about with edifying the rest of your team and in that sense, helping them build up kind of their own personal brand, looking at the 3 or 4 key people throughout your team that are lifers that are gonna be with you for the long term and saying, cool, how can I help you to build up your personal brand to also reflect the company?

Right.

And then diversify the attention. Dave Ramsey is an excellent example of this. Dave Ramsey is gonna be retiring from his business. pretty soon. Don't know exactly when yet. But he really— I was listening to him on a podcast a while ago and he realized about 5 years ago that the entire company, literally 75% of the company's revenue was because of his personal brand and his voice and his authority.

Right.

He was like, uh-oh, I can't retire if that's the case. So he found, I think one of them is his daughter and then there's 3 other people in the company that he has invested a shitload of time and effort and energy into. building up their own personal brands, edifying them to then also reflect, you know, the company and the company's values. And so now he's in a much better position to kind of pass on the mantle to those 4 individuals. So perfect example of that. That's absolutely 100% one way to go. The— I'm not going to say, I'm not going to say my more favorite way to go, or that's my least favorite way to go, but I think a different way to go that could be interesting for that I usually will recommend first before that way is almost looking at it from, almost looking at it from a perspective of instead of trying to look at it and separate yourself from the company, it's become kind of a public-facing advisor to the company. It's taking your personal brand and taking your content and including more things like, hey, this is what I'm doing. This is a day in the life of somebody who runs a company. This is my dog. Here's my dog. This is this is what my family does on a day-to-day basis. This is you know I'm traveling here. Da da da. A start to differentiate your your content between just stuff for your product or service versus personal stuff. Once you get enough of that personal stuff in there, then you can really start to see is the revenue of the company dipping? Usually it won't. Again, especially if you have those nice referrals coming in on the back end. But is the revenue of the company dipping? Is is the is the efficacy of the company dipping? Usually it won't be. And then so then you kind of continue to diversify your content, diversify yourself out. And eventually what that will create is if you kind of think of it in like, I don't know, I'm thinking of like the cell membrane kind of thing where it's like the cell divides into, cell divides into 2 things. It'll slowly but surely divide into these 2 kind of separate things where you're giving, you're allowing the company's brand to kind of grow on its own without a person behind it, which is the problem with the first example is there's still people behind it. And then what happens to those people? Leave. You're allowing the company to kind of grow by itself while also growing your own kind of presence. You can still jump over and make content for the company, but you're allowing kind of both of those to naturally grow on its own. Maybe the company professional pages has a lot more content from the individuals who are getting the most value. Maybe you do have client testimonials on there. Maybe you do have your employees coming on and making content, et cetera. But It's much— it's a much longer— it's a much longer game. But I think allowing the company to build its own brand in that way and just kind of doing a slow kind of transition and kind of cell division, if you will, I think is a much more sustainable way to go because, again, there's no people behind it and people are volatile.

Right. That's, that's actually the most volatile piece of the whole thing. Right. The biggest— some of the times the biggest risk in companies is obviously is the people. And by the way, that starts with the founder in a lot of ways. You know, as well, when you work, Bradley, when you are out there in a kind of programmatic way, right, working with these founders, what's your kind of approach to it? I mean, some of these guys you work with, you know, maybe they haven't even— they might be generating $1 million worth of revenue, but maybe they're not even like doing any of this yet, right? What's your kind of like, you know, overall approach? to getting people kind of into this, into the space where they ought to be?

Yeah. So I will say most of the— I'm trying to think over the last couple of— most every— all the clients I've worked with over the last handful of years, except for one, is standing out in my head. But most of them are actually completely opposite of what we have, what we just talked about, actually, where they don't have a personal brand, they don't have anything going on online. They've made it to $1 million, $3 million, $5 million. without any sort of public-facing presence. Just, they've done it just based off of ads or just based off of paid media, just based off of a podcast that they went on that went super viral and they now make a quarter of a million dollars per quarter just based on that. Things like that. And they're like, hey, I think it would be really cool to make a personal brand or to have a personal brand or to become kind of a thought leader, I like to say, within their industry based on their insights and based on their knowledge of running the company. Not only just to be, to be kind of edified themselves, but also to create a really substantial revenue stream. And so the biggest things that I will come in and help them do, there's a couple things. So the biggest things I will come in and help them do is number one, again, we have to take those moments of client success, those moments where the client wins, we have to turn that into front-end content. How you go about doing that is one of my favorite phrases I say all the time is documentation instead of creation. The biggest problem that founders will have when they want to go and start a personal brand is that they don't have time to sit down and make content, which is totally fair. Who has time? They're running a multimillion dollar company. Great. So what you do with that is you take all of those moments where you solve the problem within your team, you solve the problem for a customer, you made a big decision in the business, you made a scary decision in the business, you had a really tough conversation with an employee, with a coworker, with something. You take all of these teachable, coachable moments and you simply make content out of it. And that can be as easy as the system that I will help founders to come in and create. And this is a lot of legwork on myself and my team, but I say this all the time, it's not rocket science. Genuinely, I'm good at what I do, but this is not something that it's secret hidden behind a thing. It's like nobody else can do it. You know, right. It just takes a lot of work. So this is exactly what I would do is take all those moments. We sit down and we list them out. It can be something as easy— I have some founders that like to do it once a month. They'll sit down and look back through their calendar, look at all the conversations they had, look at all the meetings they had, look at all the advice they gave, look at all the learning lessons that they had themselves, write it all down. We come together for 3, 4 hours. We get on a, you know, like Riverside or Zoom or something, get on Riverside, record it all. And then my team goes to work and we'll take it and we'll cut it all up and make amazing content out of it. Other— I have other people that they're like, that's too overwhelming. They sit down for 5 minutes at the end of their day every day and just review their day in their head and type out 3 notes on their phone. This is something I did today. This is something I learned. This is a hard conversation I had. They send it to me and then we get to work making content out of it. So there's so many different ways you can go about it. But at the end of the day, it's just getting yourself into a cadence of—

It's a mindset, right? I mean, first and foremost, and that's what we tell people all the time, too, about all this stuff is that, you know, John, another one of John's favorite favorite sayings is, you know, what got you here won't get you there. Yes.

Right.

And the fact that, you know, when you are, when you are a business owner, there are so many things that you have to do in the moment, so many things you have to do in your journey along the way to get to a place, you know, to get to a level. And, but, you know, what we know to be true is that you haven't thought one iota really about what the business has to be in order to sell it. Because again, it may not be rocket science, But you just don't know what you don't know. Right? And so when, when Bradley, when Bradley, when you walk into a place or whatever, it's a similar situation. It's like, you know, it's, it's, it's understand that, A, you might be— what you're up against potentially, I would imagine, is people who are afraid of them themselves in a way. Right? That's probably gotta be one of the biggest issues that you encounter in terms of starting. Right?

Well, that's kind of related to a, a sort of question I had, Bradley, if I can, is, is How do people come to you? Like, right, to Jo's point, I bet people come to you, or do people come to you when they've sort of exhausted their personal network of business and they're looking for new business? Or is it more on the, do they acknowledge that they need to have a personal brand? Or how do people like approach you and what is the problem that they come to you with that they want you to help them solve?

Yeah, so it's almost solely on the latter. of those 2 things you mentioned. So it's identifying that they would like to grow an additional revenue stream through a personal brand, yet have no time, no resources to set aside to be able to make that happen on a scalable basis. To answer your question about the problem, there's 2 kind of buckets, and it's an either— it's an and/or situation. Bucket number one is they'll be like, hey, listen, I've set aside the time, I've set aside the resources, I have tried to build my own personal brand. I've tried to make content for the last 6 months, but it's not getting the attention I think it could get. It's not generating the revenue I think it could generate. It's not being as sustainable and as scalable as I thought it was gonna be. That's usually a slightly, we'll start off with kind of a mindset thing of like, hey, listen, you didn't build your company in 6 months. Stop trying to think you're gonna build a personal brand in 6 months. That's usually a little more of a mindset kick in the butt. And then we'll get into a lot of the tactics of how they can do it better. On the flip side, bucket number 2 is they have no time, no resources, no nothing to set aside. They're like, I don't even— I can't even fathom what that would look like to set aside. I think I need the, you know, I need the lights and the camera and the equipment and the time and the— and I need to sit down in the pretty shirt. And, you know, my women clients are like, oh my God, I need to have my hair blown out and the makeup on and this and that to make all the content. And it's like, no, you don't need any of that.

Yeah.

Here's how to do it in a very sustainable, scalable, basis, right? And I'm happy to get into exactly tactically step by step what I talk people through there. But the biggest thing that in both of those instances is the sustainable and the scalable piece. The way that I will kind of introduce people to this whole idea of building out a personal brand and the mindset behind that is choose a cadence that you could stick with for the rest of your life. And I know that that's a really big ask of like for the rest of your life. And I'm not like, I genuinely mean that. It's like, You get sick, your kid gets sick, you, you, you have something tragic happen to you, you, you, the, the business does whatever, the, the, you know, this, this thing takes up all your time, whatever things you can imagine have happened in your life, what is the cadence at which you still could create content? That's where you have to start. And for some people, I have clients where they're like, that's once a month.

Right.

Like, I literally don't think I could make, could commit to make for the rest of my life. I don't think I could commit to making more than one Instagram Reel per month. And like, great, then we start there. We make one absolutely fricking fire kick-ass Instagram Reel a month.

But every month without fail.

Every month without fail. Exactly. And then once you see that that can actually be done, and again, this is where my team and I will come in and help. Once you see that that can be done on a slightly more sustainable basis than you might imagine, let's jump it up to 2. Let's jump it up to 2 a month. Let's jump it up to 5 a month. And then we slowly get to that point. You know, where it's, it's, it's growing, but that's the biggest reason I think whether you fall into either of those buckets that I mentioned, that's the biggest reason why they don't get started. The problem that they have is because they try and do it, whether it's whether, whether they do it because they have a bad, you know, I don't wanna say bad or incorrect, but a faulty mindset behind it, or they do it, or they, they do it, or rather don't do it because they don't feel like they have the time. They don't have an operational way to do it. Neither of those is sustainable. For the long term.

I can so— I so identify with what you're saying about this. And I think, you know, John and I, when, when, when John and I were talking about, you know, ExitEngine and Exio and all the stuff, you know, a couple years ago and, and starting to get to it, the first thing we said was, you know what, we're going to start this podcast and we're going to show up. And as long as we show up and commit to it every week to do this this way, if this is the only thing that actually comes out of it, it will have been worth it. Right? Because we're not here to monetize them. You know, our job is— our main— our day job isn't this, right? Our day job is helping people, you know, you know, figure out how to increase their value and saleability of their companies, right? And to be able to get them to a place where they can sell them and exit their company and all that stuff. And so we have a lot of knowledge about that stuff. And so we just figured that, hey, you know, the best way to do this is to show— start, to your point, is to start sharing the value of the knowledge of this stuff with everyone, absolutely without charging them one iota or even knowing who they are, right? Because the more, the more companies we can educate, the more people we can, we can tell founders, we can help kind of understand this process, the more likely we're going to be to be able to not necessarily get them as clients directly through here, but we're going to be helping people do, you know, and achieve our own personal mission. Which was to be able to help 1,000 different mid-market founders exit their companies on their own terms by 2030. And so if that's our mission, a stated mission that we've said out loud and written down, then this just becomes one of the ways in which we do that. And we just decided to commit to it. And here we are. This will be episode 36. We had 12 in the can before we even launched the company. You know, but the idea was for me personally was the hardest thing to do was to get over myself.

Did you know that 95% of podcasts don't make it past episode 11?

I did not.

That's wild.

That's wild. Well, that makes me feel really good.

Congratulations.

Now we did 12 before we started the company.

We had 12 before we even started.

There we go. There we go.

That's awesome. But that's the hardest part, right? Sometimes it's about getting over yourself.

Oh, absolutely. And I know we're getting super in the weeds, which again, I'm happy to with content creation and things, but I do think that this is really important. I have, sometimes I'll have just friends of mine or things like that that I'll speak with, but also this very much applies to founders, but they'll be like, what do I actually make content on? What do I actually even talk about?

Yeah.

I don't even think anything that I'm doing is interesting. I get that a lot from founders. And what I tell them is this, and this goes exactly to your point, Jo, about the mission and what you're most excited about. Usually business people will think, oh, I need to make content that's gonna resonate with my audience. That's the only thing that they think about. Yes, that's correct. But the caveat to that is that I have to ask you the question, is that sustainable? Can you do that for the rest of your life? And usually the answer is, well, no, because the way that I'm thinking about it or the way that I'm envisioning it isn't exactly something that I'm insanely, insanely passionate about. I'm doing this because I have to, not because I want to. And I'm like, okay, great. Then let's take a step back. We'll still make content that will resonate with your audience. Don't worry. But here's how we're gonna go about it. First, it has to be an— it has to be a you thing, whether you from a personal or you from a professional company value type thing. You have to choose the direction with your content, with your personal brand, that will allow you to stay consistent with it and sustainable with it for the long term. Because if you don't do this for the long term, don't even start in the first place. Honestly, if you cannot commit to doing this for years at a stretch, and if you don't set it up in a way where you could think about doing it years in a stretch, there's going to be a point at which you fall off the wagon and it's going to be really hard to get back on. So don't even— I know that's rough, but don't even bother.

Is that like around the theme of being genuine, right? Like, you know, all of a sudden I'm not going to start posting stuff about fishing if I haven't been fishing in 15 years, or if I'm bringing my personal stuff into it. You want to bring your real life and what you're really doing as opposed to thinking about something you think will resonate with your audience.

Exactly. Yes, it 100% goes to being genuine. But also there is a bit of— not a bit, there's quite a lot of strategy that goes behind this as well in terms of actually creating a monetizable revenue source here. And the way that that happens is Again, ask yourself, what is the question I like to pose is what is the type of content, whether the topic or the style, the modality of content? Is it video? Is it text? What are you talking about? What are you, what are you, how much value are you giving, et cetera? Find that unique center for yourself of what kind of content you could create for the rest of your life that you don't actually care how well it performs. What is the thing you could talk about forever that if it never got a single like, On, on social media, if it never got a single view on YouTube, if you never got a single click on your website, you wouldn't care because you're like, I just love talking about this anyways. I'll be honest with you guys, for me, it's actually, it's actually mental health. I run this business, I have clients, it's amazing, I'm so grateful, and I genuinely do love it. But I'm also very fortunate to say I have another passion, actually slightly bigger passion if I'm being honest, which is mental health and anxiety and mindset coaching and life coaching. And that's what I've built my personal brand. I've got about 26,000 followers on Instagram. That's what I've built my personal brand on Instagram for there. I don't care how much likes that gets because I freaking just light out every time I make content about that. So that's what I ask founders to start with. Then here's where the strategy part kicks in. I help them explore in different ways, or sorry, I help them explore the different ways that they can serve their audience in that context. So if you take— let's use me as an example for mental health. Um, if let's say hypothetically I wanted to, you know, I long-term I want to be, I want to be doing some speaking and some coaching, but let's say hypothetically I wanted to find a way to integrate and build my business based off of the content that I'm most passionate about creating.

Sure.

This thing we're talking about. So in that situation, because I've actually thought about this, in that situation what I would do is I would be making mindset, anxiety, mental health-focused content for entrepreneurs. And I would bring that back to the founders that I work with. I would find a way to serve my audience that will benefit my business, benefit my top and bottom line by making the content that I love to create. It's a self-fulfilling thing because then I never get bored of the content. I never get overloaded with it. It's always something I look forward to and it adds to the top and bottom lines of my business.

Yeah. And it's genuine, right? It's what Bradley cares about. So And that comes across as you can, as like, you know, I'm sure you know far better than me is when someone's talking about a topic about which they're passionate, it comes across that it's, that it, that there's a genuine article and you can tell.

Yes. Yeah.

And of course, like you said, it's the motivation, right? It's the, I can get up every morning and talk about this stuff, whether I'm, and you're not doing it. It can only be genuine because you don't care about the outcome.

Right.

And that is the big factor. And by the way, I think that also is what stops a lot of people from doing this, right? Which is that I really don't know what that topic is. But also, I think, you know, you must come across this, which is that I don't like looking at myself. I don't like the way I sound, whatever. What advice do you have for people?

You sound good.

Come on.

I have gotten— this is what I mean about getting over myself. It, you know, in my personal case is I've done some voiceover work. I've said some things in my past that, you know, whatever I was— there was a time in my life where I wanted to be in TV and things like that or whatever. But so I was— but I think that one of the issues that stopped me from doing that stuff, frankly, is the fact that when I listened back to it or watched it back, I was not pleased with what I saw. And whatever, that was my, my own trauma response, right?

Right.

But I mean, what, what advice do you have for people that are in that situation? It's so hard for them to make contact, not because of the content, but because of the Their own hangups.

Yeah. So, and this is actually ironically where I do actually love talking about the mindset and the mental health piece of it because it does boil into this so well. But this is, this is what I say to that is I say we have a way of believing our own bullshit. So I want you to go out and try and find 3 people in your life that agree with you, that you sound horrible, that you look horrible, that you, that you, you're, you look really awkward, that you don't know what you're doing with your hands, that you, that your hair was off that day. Like, whatever bullshit you're telling yourself, go find 3 people that believe it, but that also agree with that. If you can find 3 people, fine, we'll talk about ways that you can mitigate that in the future. But if you can't find 3 people, you need to shut that shit down.

That is, that's really, really brilliant. Really? I think that's, that's something I just, I just know we have clients all the time and we're, you know, that we're, we're telling them, you know, content. We've got, we've got clients who have to pitch investors a lot. Right. And, and that ability to be able to stand up in front of people and be able to not only believe in what you're selling, but, but to believe in yourself and your ability to sell it, you know, in that format is like, right, so key. So many people wither when they're in a, you know, in that situation. So that's, but that's brilliant advice, right?

John, because, I mean, no, it's, it's, uh, it's great because it helps people overcome whatever internal thing that they think that the problem is. It's, it's like confirmation bias, right? You're trying to confirm a problem that doesn't exist, so you just will never get there.

Exactly, 100%.

And, and it's social proof that you're not— that you look fine and that you are doing well, right? This is the, the inverse way of getting it. And so instead of going and asking, you know, everyone, well, everyone's going to tell me I look fine because they're my friends or whatever. And you're like, yeah, because it's true.

Yeah, no, 100%. And that's why, like, and, and that's why really it's, you know, whenever you— because I have actually had people who go out and will take me up on that, and they're like, I tried to find— I found one, but I didn't find 3. And I'm like, okay, well then there we go. Um, when you go out and you do that, what's interesting sometimes is that— is that I don't know if this makes it easier or harder, but what's interesting is that you'll go out, you ask somebody, hey, what did you think of this piece as a content creator? What do you think of this thing where I'm talking to my client and this video pops up, whatever? And you're like, I don't know, I was having a really bad hair day that day. What? Oh, my hair looks— and they're like, no, I think your hair looks great, but this other thing over here, this could use some work. And you're like, oh shit, I hadn't even thought about that. So it's like, it's almost this like can of worms that it's like, oh, you really want to open? So again, at the end of, at the end of the day though, we have such a way of coming up with— and because it's a defense mechanism, right? We have such a way of coming up with bullshit for ourselves that we that we more often than not believe. And it's just getting out of your own, getting out of your own way and kind of observing the process instead of being in the process. I think it's just huge. That's a way that I like to encourage people to kind of get out of their own way is looking at what other people say.

And along those lines, like the other sort of misconceptions or issues that people have with like personal branding. So what are you typically working on? Are there a top 3 or top 4 that you're Typically that you typically find in the clients with whom you work?

You mean top 3 or 4 kind of issues or like concerns when it comes to building a personal brand?

Yeah, like, like exactly. Like if there are, are there things that consistently come up with regard to problems with like, I don't, I think I need to do this, but I'm, you know, almost like another roadblock, like you were saying with Jo.

Yeah. So I'm kind of rapid fire through them. There's a couple for sure. The documentation over creation is a big one. They— a lot of people will try and sit down and again set aside, oh, I need to book off 3 hours this afternoon to film content, and I need the lights, and I need the equipment, and I need a cameraman, and I need this. No, you literally need your phone, maybe a piece of paper or your computer to read off of, a cup of coffee, and you're good to go. Like, take down the— like, this is, you know, this is not the Oprah Winfrey Show. You're not— you don't have a million followers. Calm down. So document your content, don't create it. Take what you're already doing and make content out of it. Don't try and set aside the time to do it. And I can't take credit for that. That's a Gary Vee concept, so I can't take credit for that one. But document, don't create. I also think the time horizon mindset is a really big one. There is, and this is true for so many different areas. I used to actually do a little bit of fitness coaching and I would talk about this all the time of Your time horizon of give yourself X amount of time. Like it can be a week, it can be a month, it can be a year, but give yourself an amount of time that you don't let yourself believe any of that again. That bullshit you're telling yourself, you don't let yourself believe that, or you don't veer off the path that you've set for yourself until that time is up. Because there's going to be so many of these little things that come up every day that tell us, oh well, this this is wrong, or that I'm doing this wrong, or this this isn't right, or da da da. Same thing with same thing with founders and with with. with strategy in general for content creation. The feedback loop for content creation and for a personal brand is so, honestly, it's mean. I mean, I've been a content creator in some way, shape, or form for the last 7 or 8 years, and I really can say with complete honesty, only in the last 12 months have I really been able to start removing myself from that feedback loop of sitting there making a piece of content and taking what happens with it personally. Like, it takes a long freaking time. So allowing yourself to— I'm not gonna say get out of that because again, it's very, very difficult, but basically giving yourself permission to suck, I think, is what the kind of time horizon comes back to, right? It's because it's saying, I'm gonna commit to this strategy for 3 months, whether it's posting once a month, posting once a week, doing this many client testimonials, doing this, asking for this many referrals, whatever it is, I'm committing to this for X amount of time. I'm gonna allow myself to suck through that process. And then I get to make a decision at the end of that time, whether I continue doing this or not. But don't give yourself the daily permission to change up what you're doing, because then you're always gonna be changing what you're doing.

Right.

Which leads me to the third thing, which is with specifically with content. Something that I have to, a mindset shift I have to work with a lot of founders on is you are never, you were never ever allowed to fall in love with your content because if you fall in love with it, you take what happens with it personally. And again, the content, being a content creator is, it is mean. It is so hard because if you love what you've done, if you spend hours putting together a piece of content and you're like, oh my God, I can't wait to do this. This is gonna be so amazing. This is gonna, it's gonna perform so well. well, it's gonna do so good. And then it tanks, which, sorry, 99% of the time it's going to, especially at the beginning. It's not because you suck, it's just because it's the beginning. Or maybe it is because you suck, I don't know. But the point is it will tank, and then you're gonna take that insanely personally. And then what are you gonna do? You're never gonna go make content again because you're afraid of feeling that way again.

Right.

You are never allowed to fall in love with your content. You can like your content, but if I see you, you know, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm really excited to post this thing today, I'm like, no, then we're not posting it. We're not posting it until you can actually detach yourself from what happens, because then I have to deal with you when you're all bent out of shape about how it's working, and then you're gonna be really disheartened and dismotivated, and then we're gonna have to start this whole process over again.

Yeah.

So there's that one. I think another one back on the client success piece that I forgot to mention at the beginning is with the, Actually, with the largest, largest client that I've ever worked with, one of the things, this was actually at the very beginning of my career, so looking back, there's a lot of things, knowing now, I could have and would've done differently, but a big issue that they ran into that I think a lot of, especially B2B companies with a really extensive sales department run into, is that the sales and the client success departments are completely out of sync.

Right.

In my opinion, and there are Many people who will have differing opinions, and I've only been doing this for X many years. And so grain of salt. In my opinion, what I love to see is when a sales department and client success department are very, very, very intertwined. Like, I'm talking like weekly meetings where the sales team— you actually hire the sales team based on their interest in the client winning, right? The sales team comes in and meets with the client success department and Billy over in sales passes off the client to Sally over in client success, and Billy comes up to Sally during that meeting and goes, "Hey, yeah, you know we just enrolled John the other day. Oh my gosh, how's he doing? He told me on the call that he was really worried about. Da da da da da. Were you able to get that taken care of for him?" Sally says, "Oh yeah, no, we got that taken care of on the first call. He's doing really, really good. He said you were had a great conversation with you." It's intermeshed with what that will allow them. The big the big key difference with that is back to what I was saying under promising and over delivering. When you do that properly and when those teams are intermeshed and when you hire really good, high-quality salespeople who actually give a damn about the client, is they don't under— they don't overpromise, which is where the client success falls short. Because if you overpromise, the client success can never deliver on it. Deliver on it, you will never get referrals, you will never get testimonials, and you will continue to have to add to your bottom and top lines. If you flip it, if you underpromise on the sales and then overdeliver on the client success, That's where you get testimonials. That's where you get referrals. That's where you can build this multiplication engine. So I think that integration of sales and client success is also a really big shift that I've twice now, I've had the pleasure of being able to kind of facilitate with 2 different clients.

I mean, that totally tracks, John, with what we had a guest, our guest Maria Meadows, a few episodes, a couple of episodes ago that were, that was basically saying the same thing. She's a sales expert and what she's saying is, You know, basically, these client success people used to be called account executives. You know, that was kind of like the term that was used, right? And now I think customer success is becoming more of a more prevalent thing, especially in businesses that require that kind of handholding through a process. So client-driven as opposed to customer-driven, right? But in general, you're saying the same thing, is that you find all these times that all this is different silos, and that they, and that one of the keys to success from a sales standpoint, in terms of accelerating your growth is to, is to doing exactly what you said, which is to make sure that the, that the, that the initial salespeople are in line with what the account executive or the customer success people see on the ground and that they reinform each other.

Right. Yeah. And the time to value, right? You mentioned earlier, Bradley, the time to value and the, I forget the other one. What was the other one?

Time to result.

Excuse me. Yeah. So like, to your point about that, that example you just said is, hey, did this problem that came up in the sales process and the reason they signed up for the product, did that get resolved? And how quickly did that get resolved, right? That 48 hours is the key timeframe. So I can see the way that those 2 things mesh are so important to demonstrate the value to the customer.

Absolutely.

And the feedback that you're getting to inform the next sale, right? Because That's the stuff. Wow. You can use this next time. This is something that came up in the discussion that happened, you know, after the sale was really made. But this is something that's gonna, like you said, whether it's content or, or, or, or, you know, or feedback of any kind, it's obviously valuable. The, the other thing that I think that we should touch on here is that the client success, this, all the stuff that Bradley's talking about right now, okay, has a specific bearing on your, the, on your ability to sell, sell the company, right? So your sellability. But also in terms of really the value of your company overall, right, Bradley? Because, you know, you're talking about the customer, the way that you're doing, the way that you manage the customer success is really the way that you're managing essentially your customer base, right? And when you're managing to success, you're growing a more valuable company in general, right? So the question is really, when it comes to, when it comes to the value of the company? How is customer success a differentiator, you know, in terms of the value of the company and that kind of thing? How is it, how has customer success become, you know, the way that you set yourself apart?

I think it's really unfortunate how many companies will, especially, I mean, I I think especially in a B2B setting, I think it's really unfortunate how many companies have to make up for a lack of customer success initiatives with resources plowed into marketing and into sales. You know, if you think about, we touched on this earlier, but it's like the hypothetical situation of, you know, You have one company who's always being forced to add to the bottom and top lines versus a company that has a really strong recurring revenue stream to which they would still have if the entire sales and marketing department flew out the window because they have the referrals and the testimonials, et cetera. So when you think about the, to your point of the sellability and the scalability, et cetera, it's like, You have this self-performing function in the company where the client is so pleased, the lifetime value of that client is far beyond what an industry standard would be. And then from there, you're able to take that person, incentivize referrals, incentivize testimonials, get those other individuals in the door through a very simple sales process that does not need to be pushing and shoving now because they're already super excited. because of the person who, you know, on the back end, and then they get in and then again, it's just a self-fulfilling wheel. Again, I just, I think it's really, I don't know a better word for it than it's just sad and really just disheartening. Like, I mean, I can't tell you how many, you know, I'm sure we've all been there, you know, services or products or suites of stuff that we've signed up for where it's like, okay, on the back end, this is nothing like what was promised. If anything, I think it's a liability.

Right.

I mean, it's really like when you don't have a strong referral base in place, when you don't have customers that are happy, it's almost like you're constantly trying to hide a big secret. It's like you're running from the secret, afraid it's gonna get out. So you pump out more marketing, you pump out more more stuff on the front end to make up for what's happening on the back end. But what people don't realize is that every— I don't know any stats around this, so I'm kind of pulling this out of air, but if I had to guess, depending on the resources you have available and depending on the size of your ideal client and what the deal value is, et cetera, I mean, I would feel confident in saying if you have a dollar, you put that dollar into client success versus you put the dollar into front-end marketing. I think with the right systems, with the right, with the right support for the customer, with the right incentives for referrals and testimonials, I think that dollar is worth at least 5 to 10 times more on the back end than it is on the front end. And I'm biased, so grain of salt.

I think you're right, because if you think about it, it's so much easier to retain an existing customer than to get a new one, right? So, so to your, to your point is, I mean, I guess the way I think of it is client success is in service of of lowering that churn rate for like for SaaS companies or increasing the customer retention rate depending on how you look at it.

Exactly. Exactly. The, I know I've brought this up a couple of times, but the LTV I think is where this really shines through though, is because to your point, John, it's so much easier to retain a current client than it is to get a new one. And I think not only that, but it's like, you know, I just, I think about this situation in which you, you know, let's say you hire a team and you have initiatives that are, that really support the customer, not only understanding how to use a product or service, but also ensuring their success with it, ensuring, you know, these are people usually that are able to give discretionary effort to clients to make sure that they will actually follow through with the process and kind of Resell them into the process along all those, along all those pieces. So this is why I say actually client success people have to have a sales backbone and salespeople have to have a client success backbone. Like, I think everybody gets it completely off. So everybody says, say, oh, salespeople need to be rough and rugged and they need to be able to push and close and hard sell and everything. Client success people need to be little snowflakes and butterflies and helping the client and super amenable and all this stuff.

No, it's Reverse.

Salespeople need to have a fricking heart and make sure that they get the right people in the product and in the suite, in the company, because if they don't, the company's value suffers because that person is just gonna churn and that's all wasted effort anyways. If the client success people don't have a sales backbone and aren't able to kick people in the ass every once in a while, the client's gonna churn, the client isn't gonna get what they want out of it, and nobody wins. So I think those things need to be switched.

Good. Yeah. Is there anything else that you want that we should have covered, like the question that we should have asked about personal branding or client success that you sort of— that we haven't asked, or anything you want to impart to us that we should be talking about or we should ask about that we haven't talked about so far?

The biggest one that I always find conversation coming back to is the sustainability piece, which I think we covered really well, is making sure that you're doing something both in a company and also just in a personal branding way, in a company branding way, doing it sustainable. Because it's like, I know it's really difficult to talk about years and years ahead or things like that, but it's like, with something as, I think, important as your company's public-facing kind of values and image, I think spending that time and spending those resources on something that won't last and something that isn't efficient enough to weather any kind of storm, I think it's not a waste, but I think there could be so many better ways to do it. And so that's why I always come back to the sustainability question of, like, how could you do this so that it not only is limited in terms of resources, it stifles from the business, but it's something that you feel excited about doing that, regardless of the result, you could do forever? every day for the rest of your life. And I think that really opens up a lot of really inspiring and very heartfelt and very vision-oriented conversations for a lot of founders.

Well, it's like exercise, right? To your point, it's like if you're going to do something, you need to do it consistently over a period of time if you really want— if you expect the results.

Exactly.

And it's all about the— and half the battle is showing up to the gym, right? 90% of the battle is showing up to the gym, right? Once you're there, you'll probably lift something. But the, but it's getting out of your, you know, getting off the couch, you know, putting on the clothes, getting in the car, driving to the thing, especially in the middle of winter, whatever, you know, that's the, that's the, you know, that's, that's what it is. Like that with all this stuff. And, and speaking of that, what, we only have a few minutes left here, but what I, what I, I do want to talk a little bit, Bradley, about your, your, about your work, um, in the mental health space.

Sure.

And, and in particular, you know, not to get, you know, obviously not to get too personal about it, but I do There is something to be said about the ability to take your own story, right, as a founder, and be able to turn that story good, bad, whatever. And sometimes maybe the bad stories or good stories can turn into good, good stories, right? But how much of that do you think is— 2 questions really. One is, um, what have you found in terms of, you know, the, the mental health of of founders, right, as they go through the daily, you know, kind of machinations of being a founder and whatever. And obviously, these, you know, so any kind of insight that you can give in terms of, you know, the way that people are constantly walking around responding to their own trauma from childhood or whatever and how that affects their leadership and stuff. And then the other point is just, is how That— how do we turn those stories potentially into content? You know, that seems to be something that is a kind of common thing that we're hearing about too. I started this business because I had this bad issue kind of thing.

Yeah. So I'm gonna borrow from Alex and Leila Hormozi here, and I think Alex gets it from somewhere else. So wherever I'm stealing this from that Alex took it from, I apologize. But Alex has this saying that entrepreneurs— I'm gonna butcher it— entrepreneurs will always have 2 traits in common. It's an ego complex and an inferiority complex simultaneously. They think they're better, smarter, faster than everybody else, but they're insanely insecure about it.

So that is so true. I can't even tell. I mean, that is one of the truest things I've ever Yeah.

Yeah. So I think with that, all content is at the end of the day, it's just storytelling.

Yeah.

If you understand basic copywriting and the idea of the hero's journey and you're an entrepreneur with constant, which let's be honest, what entrepreneur doesn't have constant mood swings, constant inferiority stuff, constant insecurities about if they're worth it, if they can do it. But then also those moments where they're like, why did I ever think I couldn't? F yeah, I got this, let's go! Like, you've got the mix of what it takes to be a freaking phenomenal inspiration to others because you've got— you have the— I think— I don't want to mock here, but I genuinely think you have the privilege of being able to relate to both sides of the point where you have the highest highs, but you have the lowest lows.

Yep.

And so taking, being vulnerable enough and accepting that role to a point where you can take that and share that with others, I think is a gift that I will never, ever, ever take for granted for myself as an entrepreneur. And so getting vulnerable with it and showing up and being Being, being open about that is insanely difficult. But, um, this is another thing from Leila— from— this is one from Leila Hormozi, actually. Um, you're gonna be hated no matter what. If you try and be the version— if you try and be a version of yourself that you think other people will like, you will be hated. You will be mocked. If you be yourself, you will also be hated. So why just not be yourself? Like, come on. Like, just— Just easier.

Yeah, exactly.

It's easier, right? Yeah. I mean, you're going to be disliked no matter what you do. There's going to be somebody out there, some group of people out there who thinks you're absolute trash, who will never like you. And regardless of what you do externally, the only thing that will make you feel better internally is being authentic and being true to yourself. Like, and I know that that sounds really woo-woo, but at the end of the day, like, that's actually what this is, right? Yeah.

What about the, the, again, from a It's a great, great point about founders in terms of their up and down. I mean, we— I think we can totally relate to that. I mean, that's— I think I drive John crazy with my mood swings. But, but the idea is that, you know, I'm so happy about this one thing, and the next day it's like, this sucks, this is the worst thing that ever happened.

Yes.

Um, but basically, but, but again, what— there's so much of the company, like these companies, whatever, are the founders. And, and not just the founders' good stuff, Yes. Right. What advice do you have for founders and the whole thing in terms of their own mental health and their ability to be able to do, you know, because burnout's a real thing, you know, all the things that kind of come, kind of the ups and downs that can come with owning a business and running it, running an operation, no matter what the size, obviously are real. What advice do you have for people on that front?

So a big thing for founders, this goes back to what we're talking about with content, but it rings true here. In my mind, the most important thing for entrepreneurs is sustainability. I just, I think about that constantly. It's like, what, how can I do this in a way that will ensure that I am more excited to do it tomorrow? Even if that means I have to eat shit today so I can do something better tomorrow. Like, how can I look at this from a 1% better way? Because when I have become burned out, when I have become overwhelmed in the past, it's because I either did way too much of something or not enough of something.

Right.

So I think about, like, I'm a very visual person. So in my mind, I think about just this kind of baseline of existence or performance that ideally will slowly creep up, tick up in terms of personal excellence, in terms of company success, in terms of personal development, growth, like just everything, life in general. And so You know, there's going to be those moments where you think, where you feel that maybe you're like, oh my gosh, this feels so much better than I thought it was going to feel, and you're way up above what you kind of feel the baseline is. There's also those moments where you're like, oh my gosh, this is shit, I'm horrible, this is awful, like I did the worst, where you're below. So the piece of advice that I would give with that context is don't try and avoid the highs and lows, work on your ability to return to baseline as soon as possible. So you've got— and I take a little bit of this from, from Leila, from Leila Hermosi. She has another version of this that I've kind of adapted. You know, the highs, those are, those are, those are easy. Like, those are just like, you know, you're great. Awesome. But obviously we're talking about, you know, the lows and the hard moments. So the highs are, the highs are easy. It's, it's, you're there and, you know, feelings are fleeting. Whether it's a good feeling, a bad feeling, you can't do anything about it. They're going to be gone. They're going to go away. So enjoy the high while you got it. Enough said. For the lows though, don't ask them to go away. Ask for your ability to tolerate them to become greater, right? And that— what that means is, again, returning, returning to baseline. You will always have moments where, where you feel like it wasn't enough what you did, or you feel like it was too much what you did, or you made an incorrect move, or you You, you know, you could have become a— you could have been a better person in that moment, or the person you were in that moment isn't the person you want to be. Like, all of these things that rush through you that are very emotional and very volatile— don't ask for the feeling to get easier, but ask for your ability to move through them to become greater and to accept them. And I just— I visualize that as just a return to baseline. Right. So instead of trying to change the amount of times that you move, you flow down below the baseline, work on the ability to return as soon as possible, because I think that will give you greater perspective in terms of not only what to do in the future, but it gets you out of that emotionally driven state.

Yeah. I think it's great. I mean, look, I think a lot of lessons we get from sports, right? And obviously that ability to be able to, you know, keep the, you know, keep— don't get too high, don't get too low, right? The reality is that trying to keep that— I love the way that you're saying that— return to your baseline as quickly as possible on both sides.

Like, Yes.

The other thing is that we— the other thing that happens is that people think— this is, again, this magical thinking, right? That when they get something good happens, they think it's going to be balanced out with something bad.

Right.

Which is a complete fabrication of our brains.

Right.

Um, but the, your ability to be able to say, let's not get too, all right, you know, this was a great, it's a great day. Celebrate it. Right. Celebrate it. Be grateful for it. And then let's get back to work. Right. It's the same thing. You gotta take the same approach to the downside, right? Yeah. That sucked. That was it. I'm learning. I've got a thing. I'm now 1% better. Let's get back Let's get back on the horse, right?

It's like, I think of a basketball analogy, right? Because basketball's coming up this weekend. It's like, keep shooting, right? You got to keep shooting. You know, if you have a bad day and you don't hit your shots, like, keep shooting. Just get back out there. Don't get too— as Joe said, don't get too high, don't get too low, but you gotta, you gotta get back in the game.

There's a, um, there's a really good mindset thing that I like to think about a lot is, you know, if you have your kind of 3 planes of existence of thoughts, feeling, and action, right? So your thoughts and your feelings, you— well, your feelings you certainly can't control. Your thoughts, that's up for debate. But your actions you absolutely can control.

Sure.

And obviously those are sometimes made more difficult or easier by how you're thinking and feeling. So something I realized, as you know, I'm— again, I make my podcasts and my Instagram content on mental health. I call it Frameworks for Life's Hardest Moments is kind of the theme of those. And so One of the frameworks that I shared several times on those is I'm actually thankful for the messy moments, like the hard moments, the things that feel impossible, because the only way out of those moments is through action. You cannot think your way out of those. You can't feel your way out of them. The only way out is through action. And simultaneously, the only way that I get to the life that I want is also through action. I can't think my way to a life that I want. I can't feel my way to a life that I want. So the hard moments actually perfectly correlate with how efficiently and how quickly you get to the life that you want, because both require action. Yeah, it's just a question of if you're able to and willing to take it.

I've always looked at— it's a great point. I've always looked at those— not always, it took me a long time actually to learn how to do this, which was to look at those, those bad feelings, those, those, those, those moments where you feel, you know, unworthy or failure, whatever, as, as nothing really but reminders to change how you're thinking. Right? So like, whenever I get to those situations, and, you know, look, it's invariable, it happens, right? And it happens on a weekly basis. I mean, we're up and down. It's like, you know, this is the way that life is. Like you said before, you can't make those things go away, right? It's about how you tolerate them, and how you, how you respond to those moments. And I think one of the things that has always helped, has begun to help me a lot, is to be able to say, hey, look, when I feel that bad feeling or I feel that worried feeling or whatever, that's actually just a reminder to myself to stop thinking like that.

Right?

True.

Yeah.

There's this, there's this, there's this, this concept. I think it's from Chris Williamson's podcast, Modern Wisdom. It's one of my favorite shows. And there's this, there's this concept from, from, from his show, which I'll be completely, completely honest with you guys, actually Personally, I'm still kind of trying to understand. I'm still—I understand it on the surface, but it's one of those things where it's like I get it. You know, logically, I can—I can get it. I can connect the dots. But in terms of like how it's impacting me, I'm not quite there yet. So okay, I take a lot from from Layla Hermosi out from the Hermosis, as you can tell. Something Layla says is that your your thoughts and feelings—you get to if you can put a stopgap in between those and your actions. So your feelings, we, we, we, we so often will make our feelings just indicative of our actions, or rather our actions indicative of our feelings.

Right.

And so it's like, if you can put that stopgap in between it to just give yourself a moment to breathe and just kind of become the observer. This is something I talk about a lot on my podcast is instead of, instead of, you know, in those really hard moments, intense moments, don't be the experience. Don't be the one who experiences it. Be the one who observes it. It's the same, same thing. Right? You're still in it, but I almost look at it as this like Casper the Friendly Ghost type of situation where you kind of, you're looking at yourself from the outside and you're saying, from a less emotionally charged standpoint, what would I prefer to do in this moment versus whatever I'm feeling like I want to do or thinking I should want to do? And that personally, that kind of, again, I'm a very visual person, that visualization has helped me a lot in very difficult moments when it comes to just giving myself just a minute to breathe. And even if that means I still do the thing that I was thinking I wanted to do or whatever my feeling is driving me to do, that's OK. But over time, you get that 1% more perspective every single time, and eventually you're able to make the more informed decisions.

Absolutely. That's great stuff. Bradley Roush. Bradley is the founder of Level Up Influence, right? And he's helping founder-led companies scale up customer success, step out of the day-to-day operations, build powerful organic brands through referrals and viral content. There's much more. Bradley, tell everybody where they can find you if they want to look you up.

Yeah, so my LinkedIn, just Bradley Rausch, R-A-U-S-C-H. My— that is very much so focused on business content. I do, you know, kind of share that with, you know, referrals or new clients that come in, things like that. And then my Instagram, same thing, Bradley Rausch, is all focused on mental health, anxiety content. I— my ideal is within the next 2 to 3 years or so, kind of playing the long game, I would like to do a bit of speaking. So I'm just kind of building up my, you know, repertoire now, if you will. And then my podcast is called Redefining Growth, just crossed episode 31 to 30, I think. So really put a lot of, a lot of time and effort into those.

So great, great stuff, Bradley. Thank you so much. Good luck with the podcast. Obviously, moving forward, you've got— obviously, we know that you've got this This content is so important to be out there for people to know about this, not, you know, on the customer success side and on the mental health side, which John and I obviously are huge proponents of as well. So Bradley, thank you so much. John, you know, this was, this was one of my favorite episodes so far. I mean, first of all, you know, honestly, it's just the, the, this kind of content is the stuff that you're not going to find anywhere else.

No way. Yeah, and I mentioned I was hoping to learn a lot. I learned an incredible amount from Bradley and all just not tips and tricks, but just the way to think differently and the way to think about your personal brand and how it can help your company was just, it's going to be invaluable to the listeners.

Yeah, absolutely. Especially as you set your exit trajectory, you know, thinking about the ways in which you can, you know, you can stay involved, right? And be that kind of help through the customer success person by being the kind of the spokesperson out there, Without necessarily getting wrapped up, you know, and then figuring out ways to be able to not be so wrapped up in the day-to-day is something that's going to help you tremendously, you know, as you exit as well. And of course, all founders need a little bit of mental health, you know, help as well, because it can, as we know, it can be, it can be a daunting, daunting thing for sure. So anyways, great, great episode today. Again, thanks to Bradley Rausch. You'll find him on LinkedIn at Bradley Rausch. It's R-A-U-S-C-H. Instagram @BradleyRausch as well. And to definitely check out his podcast as well. I'm sure there are links to everything he's got, but I really appreciate Bradley being here. Where you can find us right here, this is the Exit Engine Podcast you've been listening to, in case you somehow joined it in the middle, which I don't think is possible to do anymore. This is not radio. But in any case, the ability— you can find us at— ask any question you'd like to ask us about your exit trajectory at any time at You can go to info@myexitengine.com. Check us out at myexitengine.com. You can check us out, our podcast here is at podcast.myexitengine.com. And of course, we've got a community that we are starting to build right now of founders just like you who are looking to figure out ways that they can help themselves get to set their exit trajectory. And that will be, you can find that and go to community.myexitengine.com. myexitengine.com, where we will start to— and that will be available coming up in May. So, we're starting to build a list right now. So, if you want to be on that list and figure out how to be a part of ExitEngine community, send us, drop us a line at info@myexitengine.com as well. Guys, it was great, great talk today. Thank you so much to Bradley. John, thanks to you again, partner, and we will talk to you very soon.