Empowering Entrepreneurs: Joseph Varghese on Transformative Peer Accountability

Welcome to Founders Future, a podcast powered by Closers IO, where we dive into the journeys of innovative entrepreneurs and explore the road ahead for them and their companies. I'm your host, Michelle Said, and in each episode we uncover the stories behind impactful ventures, the challenges faced along the way, and the strategies actually driving their future growth. Today we're thrilled to have Joseph Vargas, the founder and CEO of Success Circles, joining us. Joseph brings over 20 years of coaching expertise leading peer to peer accountability communities and he's facilitated 4,000 over 4,000 momentum pairings and has helped clients achieve over 4,000 goals. From scaling Success Circle since 2007, he's empowering high performance leaders to win in life and work. We'll explore his founding story, how Success Circles drives momentum, and his vision for scaling this transformative platform. So let's dive in. Joseph welcome to Founders Future.

Michelle, it's great to be here. I'm happy to be here.

Yes, absolutely. Let's kick things off for the listeners. Take us back to the beginning. What specific problem within leadership or productivity, perhaps around delegation or accountability, inspired you to actually launch Success Circles?

Absolutely. So I launched Success Circles as an idea in 2005. Around that time, right before my dad passed away, I moved from my former home where I was surrounded by a lot of my college friends and peers to an isolated area of Queens, NY to be near family. And what it saw for me and many others who got on board early on is connection. The ability to engage other like minded people on the same playing field as ourselves. Other business owners, one on one in a way where you can be intimate, open, sharing the highs, the lows, the lessons, finding ways where we can innovate and make the day better than before. And that's part of what we saw for way back. And over the years we've gone a little further. The idea of the Kaizen Factor. I'm sure many people in your audience have heard the Kaizen Factor, but the idea of being 1% better than before. Tony Robbins calls it constant, never ending improvement. How do we tap into the idea of making being one person better today than the day before? How I look at it, taking five steps forward, making one or two steps back each day, pitfalls, breakdowns. How do we do that in a unique way where we're having fun and enjoying the journey? So over the years we've impacted thousands of entrepreneurs, business owners, now physicians across our community, physician owners, helping them become better at what they do, better business owners, out of an idea of 1% progress, being a little better each day, making each other better, making you better. And in the process of making you better, making the day better, we've become better in the process.

Love that. Now I want to dive into the deliverables and really how you structure what you do for your clientele today. So let's get into the nuts and bolts for the listeners and then even potential clients that may be tuning in. Walk us through the offerings. How does success circles generate revenue today? And also how do you structure what you do for your clients? Again, like the deliverables.

So the core program we have in success circles is what's called a brain trust. We also call it the momentum Buddy program. What a brain trust is two individuals who are playing at a high level, who can model each other, looking to rise higher and faster. Typically, when it comes to revenue or business or scaling or hiring, delegation, all those things, they model each other. We create a framework. My background I'm an engineer. I have a background in process engineering and computer engineering. It's where I used to be. I designed frameworks for big organizations. Citibank, aig, Pfizer, GE Capital. Many years ago when I got out of that world. Understand the value of Kaizen. Understand the value of frameworks. All framework is a set of repeatable things that are done on a consistent basis that create a predictable result. You bake a cake, you put a bunch of ingredients together. It's a system, it's a framework. The predictable result is it's delicious cake. It's a. It's delicious brownie, it's a great delicious omelette, whatever it is we're looking to cook. Entrepreneurship works the same way too. We hear frameworks like eos, which is Gina Wickman's formula based on the work of my mentor Michael Gerber. It's also based on a few other systems and processes to dance all the strategic coach. We have a framework that ensures that people make progress each day. Where they regress less or they atrophy less, they make more progress. Part of this goes to my own personal story. Back in 1996, my mom had a heart transplant. My mom came to this country back in the late 60s. She struggled as a child with rheumatic fever. She developed this heart condition called cardiomyopathy. Growing up, it was challenging being with two parents who were both sick, dealing with crisis sorts. As a child growing up in Queens, New York, in 1996, as she was getting her transplant, her doctors noticed that I had the same condition she had. They basically told me that it's very possible that in 30 or 40 years, you might need to have a procedure of a sort, given that your heart's functioning now at 31%. My left ventricle was 50% is normal. 50, 52% is normal. So I took it on myself that since that. What, hearing that at that point in my life, working a corporate job wasn't as vital, wasn't as important. I built success doing that. I worked for these major companies for several years. For me, the more important thing was living. My mom's transplant was successful. My dad sadly had a stroke, passed away in 2004. All those factors, knowing that life is short, had me start building frameworks for my own health. I ran my first marathon 2002. I've ran several marathons since then. Making good choices on an ongoing basis. Had me reverse a condition that for most people is degenerative. I no longer have cardiomyopathy. My mom's still alive. She's. She's in the one person club. Every other transplant patient who had a transplant around that time didn't survive. They lived maybe nine, 10 years. And it takes something to make progress this way. It takes something to stay engaged in life. It takes community. It takes being healthy. It takes having a vision. Without a vision, man perishes. So at a young age, 20 some years ago, I had a vision for myself, the future. My wife, my mom had a vision for herself too. She's still alive. And the difference is I just applied some of those same ideas into other areas of life, into business, into entrepreneurship, into relationships. My wife and I have a great relationship. We invest in each other each day. All the, all of that simple ID being a little better each day can be applied into everything we choose to. And that's what I've done for our clients. We pair them up for periods of two weeks. So every two weeks they have a different brain trust partner. They model each other, they have daily huddles. We see the game each day as being a game. The game could be Monday, the game can be Tuesday. Each day as a game, if we see it as a fun game, the moment we wake up, the game begins. The moment we go to sleep, the game ends. It's up to us to give the day, give the game full effort, just as you would playing basketball, soccer, frisbee, a tango dance, whatever that game is for ourselves, that we enjoy playing that game full heartedly. When we see each day as being a game, when the game ends, a new game begins. There's less stress because yesterday's game was I made instead of Making five steps forward. I had four steps forward, or I had this breakdown, this crisis, I still navigated. Here are the lessons around this game that I had. It makes life a lot easier because access to winning the games, showing up the playing field, kicking the ball, throwing the ball, hitting the ball, whatever it is, whatever game we're out to play. Entrepreneurship business is a game. So we built a framework on that idea. The calls we have in our community are called huddles. The huddles we have are one on one, the brain trust or we have group huddles where members connect with cohorts. It's about making progress. Each day, every two weeks, members get a new partner. They get to choose on a big roster, team roster. We have who they want to model, who's a step or two ahead of them. Members choose who their favorite buddies are, the favorite partners are on the roster. We make the publicly available. So people see publicly available who their favorite partners are. They're more apt to play harder, show up, add value. Honoring our core values, make the day better, make each other better. Knowing that the person that they're connecting with might choose them as one of her favorite partners or favorite players, you could say. So it's a fun way of connecting people together to make progress, elevating rising up together, as I hold that old metaphor that when the, when the tides rise, all the boats rise too. So we've tapped into that idea in our community. Playing games, having fun, playing hard. And the eventual outcome for most of my members is to become a successful business owner, successful investor, where they're operating less, being an operator in their business or a technician in their business, focusing on now owning their business, being able to take two, three months off a year because they now successfully own their business, if that makes sense. And if somebody who follows you eos someone's other frameworks, this makes a lot of sense. Because in, in, in those frameworks, the outcome of it is being a business owner. It's taking time off, being more of a visionary. We basically have a framework that allows for that to happen faster than ever before.

Love the fact that, I mean, it's a full circle moment. First of all, you're such a strong individual, going through that at such a young age, seeing a lot of that early experience transform the way you are today. But it is, it's such a, an important topic, especially where founders and leaders, the decision making, the essence of a company and the people in that company starts from the top and then it goes to the bottom and you're really Creating almost like this transformation from what it sounds like for a lot of these people who come through the process and they can't let go. They're having trouble delegating or finding experts to, to lead the way and build companies because that's what a true founder does. Not wearing all the hats necessarily at certain points. So I want to get into now the way in which you acquire some of your clients today. So walk us through how success circles lands contracts. What are some of those channels like? Talk to us a little bit about LinkedIn, some of the webinars, referrals, entrepreneurship summits that you've been doing. What's been the most effective way to get in front of your ICP and audience?

Great question. So we do leverage social media quite, quite a bit. We get a lot of referrals. Members of our community refer. People might even refer their spouses, their children in some cases. And I'm grateful for that because for me, building a brand, the brand on one level, the brand is myself. The idea of being better each day, how I show up in life. The brand is of course the business and our other ventures we have. There's often a lot of cross pollination because we have in person events here in New York City and people my clients come and share with people who they engage with that what we do. We also use LinkedIn. We've got a couple of CRM systems we use. One of them is called Clay Earth. That's one we've been playing with for the past couple of years. So we do a lot of marketing, branding that way. I also lead a few trainings. One this week I'm leading is called time mastery. Time mastery.net we also do a three day AI training we do every three weeks called 3dayai.com. So these are. We found that the webinars, the trainings, specifically having people engaged on a training where they're encouraged, execute soon afterwards gives them access to what we do, our program, even meeting other members of our community. These are all trainings huddles, group huddles we offer to our clients and success circles. So when we have guests come on the call, they get to interact with the members of our community, learn about them, maybe hear their breakthroughs while they're on this group. Shared experience, learning about time management or AI or anything else. We do a number of topics. We do lots of group huddles throughout the course of a month. Planning, visioning, forecasting, time management, maybe budgeting, productivity systems, productivity tools. They get to meet people this way. AI has been A big thing for us because everyone's apt to learn AI. I'm grateful because most people tell me that when they hear me share and speak, they're able to, I'm able to make the complicated more simple, if that makes sense. Basically simplify AI in a way that's usable, actionable right away. And when they hear the value of that success, these trainings, they often will inquire about what else you offer. And the buddy program becomes often the easiest path, the easiest thing to choose.

Yeah, so from what it sounds like, it's very product led marketing that you've implemented here where you're really letting you know a lot of your own subject matter, a lot of that. The value that typically people see later on, once they get indoctrinated, once they go through the process. You're showing that up front and you're focused on building a community where experts can learn from other experts and everyone comes together and you feel like, hey, they're part of something here, which is beautiful, honestly.

Yes.

Now oftentimes what happens is many guests that we've interviewed, they've run very similar ways to acquire clients, like the referrals through hosting large scale webinar events. I'm curious, how have you thought about the scalability of referrals? Like how are you navigating that aspect of it as you start to grow the brand this year?

Yeah, so we are actively finding more ways to reward our affiliates. We even set up an affiliate website for that purpose. We appreciate having clients who understand our machine, how it all works because typically they're able to vouch for how it works and refer friends, clients, family members into what we do. We've attracted a lot of people in the Tony Robbins community because I'm a student of a community myself and I lead communities related to it. That's something that's there. So it's in all these endeavors that we create partnerships that we're able to do unique things for people. Leaders in those organizations, even the Tony Robbins organization as an example, may refer to us, recommend us at times because we offer something very unique and affordable versus what they offer. Hiring a coach. Hiring a coach can be quite expensive. I've worked with a top coach in that organization 20 years ago. So we get a lot of referrals that way and that's a good thing. We just find ways to reward these referrals. For me, it's could be sending a thank you message to people. It could be calling people up directly to thank them, to appreciate them. It could be Sending a gift in the mail, Valentine's Day card, it could be that a gift in the mail, something else physical, sometimes a book, an ebook. Just different things about. So we're finding better ways of being innovative in this sense. For me, sending a personalized video where I'm adding value or even connecting them to somebody that can help them add value to their endeavors could be a useful thing. I'm a connector. And success circles at the heart of it. It's all about connection, connecting people together. The basis for how the business works is just that, connecting people in this peer to peer relationships where they're rising together. In some cases they partner up together. They do, they join, venture together because they have so much connection and value in that relationship where they might see other ways, ways of building a business together. We found members partner up in different cases that way. That's how we do it in many cases. For what they create, they might recommend what we do. We just think we're unique. I haven't heard it being done before. Accountability is a factor of it. It's a brain trust, right? So it's not a mastermind, it's a brain trust. It's two people connecting one on one in a way where they can build a relationship and rise up faster than ever before. And then in two weeks they get a new partner. And I have never heard of anything of this sort before. Especially in a way where there's trust, there's openness, there's. It's a game, right? The game's every two weeks with this person and the game ends and you connect again. And we rise to the quality of expectations of our peer group, the people around us. We basically found a way of hacking that idea and ensuring that people are making progress. There's an application process. When people sign up, they go to a website. Typically applytosuccess.com, one of our application sites, we used to allow anyone to sign up. We stopped doing that because we started getting people who weren't qualified to be part of our process. They weren't. There was less of a commitment to being an owner and that was a bit challenging. And then when we made it an application process, we were able to screen through everyone who signed up or ask a person when they refer to a family member or friend, why is it you're referring this person? And then by them vouching for that person, that adds another level of accountability that they're going to make really be a stand for them as they join our community, our process.

I was just about to say that it is almost like this positive feedback loop where because of the vertical you are in, which is mainly accountability, everyone's uplifting each other to towards building that success, not regressing as you said. So it seems very much more organic as like a method of marketing per se. Right. As you start to grow your community. Not very. The top of mind awareness is there but it doesn't seem as transactional as you come in. And it's oh yeah, there is like an end process here. Now I want to learn about the approach to sales. What are some of the strategies that you have been using to have a lot of these conversations with prospects that are looking to get into brain trust and be a part of what you're building? And are you doing this on your own right now or do you have a team as well that's involved in some of the conversations?

So three virtual assistants who work for me.

Okay.

That's a big part of it. That's the model we have right now. And we message people using LinkedIn, messenger, using text messaging, using Go High Level using Facebook messenger, WhatsApp sometimes. And that's how we engage. And then it's tracking those people down in our CRM system, which is imperfect. We've used a few CRM systems in the past. We're playing with a few now that we're tying together. Go High Level with Clay Earth to seeing what works, particularly tracking the touch points. As we know in sales it takes 7 to 14 touches to tip to create a sale. But it's also ensuring that the touch points we have are allow for connection and depth where after the conversation there's inspiration to further what's there. If it's a referral, then those are warm leads, Very much warmer leads. If it's somebody who's cold, it takes a bit to warm them up. Potentially even having them show up on a training, a group huddle of sorts. That's how we warm them up. Never quite easy. We're always refining the process and how we do. Fortunately, I've got a good following. There's a lot of respect for what I've done. We've got a consistent five star review across what we've been doing. The application process makes it easier because we're qualifying people before they sign up so they know that it's not easy to join our process. But once they're in they often do well and they're able to make progress happen for themselves and sometimes partner up. We're able to grow their business further. That's our process, as I mentioned, social media, text, engaging, leading them to a group huddle, a group training, maybe a one on one conversation with me. And the ones that are referral based tend to convert better than otherwise.

When did you start to realize that shift where you noticed that a referrals tend to be working more well than maybe cold outreach? What are some of the ways you're starting to navigate through refining that the outreach process on the outbound side, what have you been working on at least and it's more for the listeners, some of them are. They're also going through those same challenges if you can shed some insight.

So getting testimonials is vital. So we did a three day AI training last week and where I first fail, failed last week. A lot of value delivering the training for me it's capturing the breakthroughs people have toward the end of it in a way where we can reuse that or leverage that to engage our customers. So today before this call, I met with a customer, a client of mine, former client, who was on that training and we recorded the mini testimonial that was useful. We also do a podcast called rulesforsuccess.com we own both variations of that, rules number four and rules the word for success dot com. So as we interview the different people we have in our podcast, sometimes we create partnerships with them. We're able to show them what we're doing for our business model as far as the brain trust goes. And create win wins with our audience by highlighting who they are, what they're doing and then creating a win win at the end. And sometimes we'll do mini podcasts. So we have another brand called momentumtips.com so we'll take that 40 minute podcast will break it down and have many tips that we're able to allow leverage and share on social media. It builds social proof, it adds value to them, it gets them in front of our audience in a way where people might invest into their training. Last week as example, we interviewed a physician couple who are successful eight figure business owners in the physicians market. Physicians. They basically cater to physicians and physician owners. It's a win win because we're launching a community called Momentum. Not momentum, momentum. Momentum.com It's a brain trust community for physician business owners. So we found a way to actively find other people who serve that community and we're finding ways to partner with those people as a means to serve their people in a way where we can win to win together. In many cases, a lot of these organizations, people we interview may not necessarily have a system for coaching. Their framework might involve training people to hit certain numbers, invest in real estate or hit some other outcome. What we do with accountability creates this other stickability into their process because now these clients are now engaged in their, in their system and their training even more because they're connected with somebody else who's also engaged in their training. By staying having a daily huddle where they're focusing on their why they're focusing on their outcome, their game as it relates to that, they're more inclined to stay on board in that training because they're on a call daily with that person who's also in that training. We've done this over the years with different people for different things they're working on. So it's a way of serving clients who are involved with other. Except someone has a community and we're able to keep them immersed in the culture of the community on a daily basis by connecting with some of them and somebody who's a step or two ahead of them in that. As example, this positions community of real estate business owners positions community of real estate investors. Connect them together in a way where they can be present to the opportunity of being real estate grandmasters. Owners investors with the vision of going part time, which is part of their framework. By offering success circles to these people, it creates a win win where they'll likely stay immersed in that training structure while also progressing through our framework of 1% progress per day. And I know I answered a whole bunch of things there, but we do partnerships at the heart of what we do and sometimes that comes from interviews we do like we're doing here right now on this podcast or through testimonials we have from customers who attend one of our trainings or our group huddles.

Yeah, so I love that because there's like the, it goes back to that accountability factor is like you're here, you're seeing other people being successful naturally. It, it, it's like this natural realization that hey, I am here now. Like I need to also get to that level the way my peers are right here in this group now. The growth has been monumental. From what it sounds like, you really tapped into a lot of different acquisition strategies and then also very product led marketing, as I like to put it, really showing them the trainings, getting them involved in the community. If there was like a bottleneck that stands out, what would it be? Is it scaling? Maybe the client delivery side of brain, increasing some of the brand awareness? I know you're doing Podcasts right now and then, you know, a few other things. What are you most focused on solving to keep the momentum going this year?

Good question. I believe it's bringing more variety into the mix. So ensuring that people are able to connect with somebody who is a step or two really has somebody they can model. So basically growing our community that way. We're also embracing AI for automation. So think about eharmony or match.com the idea of pairing people together based on needs, looking at personality types, looking at end goals and being able to make suggestions. I'm happily married, been married for 12 years and I am happy that I'm happy. I never got onto any of those platforms like dating platforms. I was in eharmony once for a few months and I say that because when it comes to matching people together, it takes something for us, it's process to sit down. We actually look at people's needs, their wants, we look at data. Now we're looking at leveraging AI to make that process better than before. And it's taken us a while to get there. And part of scaling is ensuring that function is there, doing its job better than we can do it. And I believe that's going to happen soon with what we're investing in, the platform we're building and so forth. That's been a little bit of a bottleneck because sometimes we as a pair of people we'll make our best judgment based on data, but sometimes as we're growing bigger and larger, it gets a little challenging. So we're looking to use AI more to help with that process, if that makes sense. That's one thing. And I think also having other group webinars trainings that our members lead would be a good thing. That's about it. That's about it. I lead a lot of these trainings. We do these group huddles. We do, we have about five different huddles, trainings workshops we do each week where people can join, invite guests and those in those situations, those people can be potential clients. Sometimes tracking those people can be a little challenging because we have a few different systems including go high level. So tracking those touch points can be a little challenging because what is a touch point? Touchpoint is a text message, it's a reach out, it's a WhatsApp message, it's to message on Telegram, could be a Facebook. Like those are all different touch points that are there. It's tracking all those things together in one system that's cohesive, where you know what was, how it happened at what point sometimes the CRM systems don't allow for that as as well as they could. Whether it's HubSpot or Salesforce, they don't all allow for those touch points to be captured as effectively as they could. And that's one of the challenges we have tracking those touch points.

Yeah, really making sure everything is centralized in one place. You're able to capture the entire implementation and essentially client journey. Right. Without having to go through different platforms. Now with everything you've accomplished, really facilitating over 4000 pairings, launching Momentum tips. I'd love to hear about your vision for the near future. What's top of mind for growing success circles over the next six to 12 months.

So we have a goal this quarter of bringing 200 customers. So that's the Rock or the KPI we're measuring toward. That's the big thing. Creating partnerships with other communities. We've got a few partnerships. We're in a workshop. We have somebody who has an outsourcing community that where they deal with Platinum Elite clients where we're offering this for their people. We're doing one for this physicians network as I mentioned. We're looking to do that. So it's the right partnerships I'd say. We're also bringing somebody on board, a new assistant remote worker who's helping us with the reach outs and tracking those communications, those conversations on go high level. So that's also in the works now. I've actually brought this person on last week so it's exciting. I think that's it. And for me it's just having a 5, 10 year plan to work toward have that. But that's been shifting. The landscape of COVID changed and then now there are more entrepreneurs now in the market than ever before. So it's basically tapping into those different communities. We like growth minded entrepreneurs. People are already who understand like personal development, they understand the value of growing. Those tend to be our best clients. I'm also willing to train people on some of those things too because I'm a lot of our members. A lot of potentially members may not be trained those things. So it's up to me to train people on these principles. The Kaizen principle. What does it mean to take 100 responsibility for your life, your business? What does it mean to understand that everything's holistic? So it's not just about revenue. It's also about how we show up in our personal lives and our health. All of that just training people on that. Yeah, that's pretty much it. I consider all my clients as Being athletes on this playing field of life, and it's having them see that distinction. For all athletes. We're playing a sport. Each day is a game, each week's a game, each quarter is a game. How do we play better and faster together?

Now it goes back to kind of what you were saying earlier, which is outside of yourself leading the trainings and a lot of the huddles. Right. You want the right partnerships in place to start to scale this. What are some of the ways now more, a little bit more deeply that you're looking into expanding that and finding like the right icp, essentially the right partnerships to be the subject matter experts, the way, you know, you are already right now within the core business.

So I think the podcast is a good strategy. We're using Riverside as a new platform. A lot of my revenue comes through joint ventures and it has for years. One of my mentors is Jay Abraham. I worked with Jay 15 years ago. So a lot of our revenues comes that way. And even some of our clients in success circles are people I partner up with in other ways. So I think for me, when I hear that question, it's expanding on those partnerships that we have. I mentioned a couple before that we have. Just looking to find more, maybe even looking to work with associations. There are associations of physician business owners or physician associations that exist out there working with those associations, creating partnerships where they see value in promoting our services or recommending our time, mastery.net training or something of that sort as a win win, where they now get compensated, their association gets compensated going forward. So I'm looking at that. That's the next thing, I think, I believe next level up is to tap into those conversations with those organizations versus just the individuals who have communities that we've been working with.

Yeah, strategic partnerships, essentially. And that's going to be one of the ways you're going to get into, start branching the acquisition side of it. Now I want to get a bit hypothetical because I love your passion for momentum and really accountability. If you had a genie in the room and you rub the lamp and now you have all these unlimited resources, what would you implement immediately to accelerate the growth of success circles? 10 today

it would be that system, that eharmony system for our process. So it's having that be automatic. That's the one thing that's there. I say that's been a little bit, bit of a bottleneck. It's the tech behind what we're doing. We, we right now we've glued a few things together to make it Work. That's probably the one thing. If I had a gene in a bottle that would help quite a bit. For me it's stepping away from being an operator in my business to ensuring that all the pieces that have me tied down to being that be built in a way where things are automatic so I can focus now on creating partnerships and more. That's probably the one thing that stands out. There are a few things but that's one thing. If a genie in a bottle, that one element that would make things happen. Maybe even hiring. We talked about EOS before hiring a implementation expert. That's their job. This outsourcing, building. While I focus on being a better business owner. Granted too. I mentioned before this is the whole basis for our community success circle. So it'll happen eventually. Most of our members are actively seeking being business owners taking time off, three, three months off their business. Our framework is that I'm a guinea pig for my framework. I've had over the past 20 years I've had 170 different momentum buddies in our program as partners myself. So I've gotten better. So I know that as time progresses that outcome will get hit that it'll happen. Things will be even more automatic than they are. Things will scale faster than they are now. Things are scaling, but even faster than before.

Love that. Yeah, no great realization. I know we have some listeners tuning in. They are also entrepreneurs and they're also finding ways to step away and really just have the right experts in place both on the delivery side but also on the front end. Glad to see you're thinking about it in that light. Now one last question as we're in the lightning round. How do you see the coaching industry evolving in the coming years? You mentioned AI being one. One tactic, one tool you guys are using. But how do you see success circles positioning itself for that type of future?

Interesting question and it's fascinating because I talk my AI quite a bit in my AI training Day one is leveraging AI as an advisor. It's fascinating how multimodal AI is allowing true conversations back and forth. It's very fascinating. At the same time it's one sided. So it's basically the AI is coaching me or the individual. And it's very one sided. I believe there is value in having two people being a stand for each other, embracing the humanity of each other. And that's what our process is. It's peer coaching the model. So I, I know that there is room for this especially there's a need for this because there's we're living in a world where with AI here and it affecting everything and it's disrupting almost everything out there, that people will need more engagement, support in person, virtual connection in a way that really helps them to be become better people. So I, I always see that coaching is very fascinating because there are a lot of organizations out there offering coaching. Our model is different because it's peer based, peer to peer based. It's kind of like Vistage and a few other organizations that do things similar. It's peer to peer based. You're modeling somebody who's separate two ahead of you. With AI, you may not get that human connection at that level, even though it might sound somewhat human, but you're not getting that per se. I think it's a combination. When people join success circles, not only do they get a peer coach momentum buddy, they also get an AI coach. So we offer that as part of our services as a bonus. They also get that other element of strategizing the week, plan the week, getting questions like engaging, talking to an AI coach. They get that on top of their buddy that they get every two weeks. So it's hand in hand. Right. And I don't. It's fascinating like where's the world going right in the future? Like we're bookkeeping and people truck driving, all these things being disrupted and it's like planning strategically, like just how do we innovate in a way and leverage AI so we can grow together using AI on our sides. On our side, yeah.

It's interesting that you mentioned that because I had a guest on the other day and we were talking a lot about that human touch, as you mentioned, being very lost now with AI. And there's always something new every single day with generative AI. And to maintain that empathy and that integrity, a lot of.

Yeah, empathy and human connection are very vital. Like really being able to connect deeply with people and it's just very vital. And I don't know if that can be replaced with AI. Probably not. least not in the near future. Maybe five, 10 years out.

It's possible, yeah, absolutely. I wouldn't be surprised though. We're already like two years in and we're already seeing so much of that kind of come together, honestly. On that note, that wraps up another inspiring episode of Founders Future. Joseph, thank you so much for sharing your remarkable journey and insights with us today. From 20 years in coaching to founding success circles in New York. I love your passion for helping a lot of high performance leaders really achieve their goals through peer accountability. And remarkably over 4400 goals you've achieved. And you're looking to scale some of your pairings. I mean to our listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe to Founders Future. Wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, you would like to get in touch with Joseph and work with him. We'll link his LinkedIn profile below in the summary and you can find some more resources and insights at Closers IO, where we're dedicated to helping businesses accelerate their growth through trained appointment setters and world class sales systems. Until then, keep climbing and we'll see you all on the next one.