The Support System You’re Missing to Scale Your Business FASTER

This podcast is sponsored by Granola. Granola is an AI-powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet. You can try it totally free for 3 months. Just head to granola.ai/earn. Shopify, try the e-commerce platform I trust for Glossy. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/happy. Indeed, need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on Earn Your Happy. Rella. Go to getrella.com and start your 14-day free trial. Use code EARN for 10% off your first 3 months and see why social media teams are ditching the tool. Chaos. You have to let people know what season you're in so they can help you. Don't assume that your best friends or your family should just know. You've literally spent your whole life being somebody else that they are very convinced that that is your role in the world. So you have to clearly communicate over and over and over if you need if you need more attention from your friends or family, because they're not going to be able to read your mind. And we're back with another episode of He Said, She Said.

All right, before we get going, because we're going to talk about the coolest thing ever, I'm going to tell you a story about this guy who's riding his bike across country that we met in our neighborhood the other day and what it has to do with like when you are out front riding, a.k.a. running your business in a really big way. Before we tell that story, we gotta let you guys know we've decided to strategically let another group, another cohort of 10 people into our MCM, our Mentor Collective Mastermind, which is the mastermind for people that have a business between $25,000 and $500,000 per year in revenue. Now, this is literally the most supportive mastermind on the internet with weekly live calls where we're answering your questions about your business. On-demand coaching. We hired all the coaches on your behalf. We pay the salaries, not you. And you get to ask them one-on-one in their coaches' rooms as many questions about your business as you need to. There's an AI coach, there is a tech coach, there is a social media coach, a podcast coach, a sales coach, a marketing coach, a legal coach, an HR and people co— you name it. No matter what question would come up for you, You get to go ask them your question about your business and get that support on our dollar, on our dime. Now, the reason why we only let 10 people in at a time is we always make sure we scale it very carefully with the number of coaches that we have trained in because our coach-to-client ratio is the most important thing in there. It's what makes it so special. So if you wanna ask Lori and I questions about your business, and if you want support 24/7 from coaches that you no longer have to pay for, but get access to, this is your chance. You've got to go put yourself on the waiting list.

If you're feeling stuck at a certain income level, if you're feeling like you are constantly on the launch wagon, like on the launch wheel of death, and you can't seem to just get past a certain income level, and if you have been building your business alone and it feels like every single big decision is falling on you but you don't know what decision to make, if you feel like you've been making mistake after mistake, it's probably because you do not have the answers readily available for you and accessible, and you don't have the right people around you to remind you this is actually what the journey looks like. So if you're somebody who's been like, you, you have your programs, you have your brick and mortar, you have your business, but you just feel like you have been stagnant this year, and maybe you've been listening to all of the shitty news and advice out there about the world being tough or stuck or hard, or this is a crazy time in the economy, you need to get people around you who are winning. And let me just tell you, in this group, people are winning. We are winning. And, and Chris and I are some of the best in the industry at facilitating rooms like this to help you on your next level breakthrough.

All right. So I, because this is an internal waitlist opportunity only, meaning we're not going to do anything external on social media or any of that BS where you get to join. This is for the internal waitlist only. So right now, hit pause. And go to LoriHarder.com/mentor and put yourself on a waitlist. It'll literally take you 10 seconds right now. Hit pause and go to LoriHarder.com/mentor. Put yourself on a waitlist and you could be one of the 10 people that we let in in this next cohort coming up. All right. So we had the coolest thing happen here today. We live in like the best neighborhood and we get to know everybody. Matter of fact, the reason we love living here in Newport Beach is everyone's outside, especially in this particular little part of Newport Beach called Corona del Mar. Everyone's outside. And when you walk the dogs, you get to know everybody. And there's so many people that I would like call friends, but they're really just walk by and say hi every single night with the dogs and talk for 2 minutes friends. But it's the best thing ever. And there's so, you know, it's, I'm just gonna be real with you. It's a very expensive place to live. And so there's a lot of really cool people doing cool things in this neighborhood that you get to know. So our dogs are playing in the park the other night. And a guy walks up that we had not met yet and he had a dog and the dogs are chasing each other around. And so we're chatting it up and he says, yeah, I'm about to embark on one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life. And I was, oh, what's that? And now keep in mind, he's like lower 60s, but in really great shape. Mm-hmm. And he said, well, I'm gonna do a cross-country bike ride by myself. And he said, well, it's not really by myself. This is the best part. My wife is gonna drive the support van. And follow me all the way across the country, but I'm gonna ride my bike across the country. It's something he's wanted to do in order to raise money for a cause that he cared about. And I was like, that is so dope. It reminded me of when I read 30 books in 30 days and attached it to the Pencils of Promise cause saying, hey, we're gonna match every dollar that's donated in order to hold me accountable. Well, that was the same thing with him. He always wanted to ride his bike across country, but it's a really big undertaking. And so he needed to attach a cause to it in order to really drive him to be able to commit to doing it. So committing to the cross-country bike ride, what does that look like? I mean, that's number one, probably scary. Number two, yeah, you gotta be able to create all that time to be able to do it. Number three, you gotta train for it. And this guy looked like he's in great shape, like he's been training for it. I forget how long he said he is gonna ride every day, but it's really crazy. But then number four, you have to set up the infrastructure aka your support van. And so right after Easter is when he left on his cross-country bike ride. And for a few days sitting in the parking lot about a block away here, we saw his support van. It was this really cool motorhome and it's all wrapped up in a giant wrap talking about his cross-country bike ride. And his wife was gonna drive the support van. And it reminded Lori and I so much metaphorically of what we do. Because when you're both entrepreneurs and when you're both big dreamers and when you both have big things to accomplish in life, Sometimes one of you has to be doing the cross-country bike ride and one of you has to drive the support van. And sometimes these are long stints, right? Sometimes you're pedaling for a year and somebody else is driving the support van for the year. Sometimes you're pedaling that week and somebody else is driving the support van that week. Sometimes it can be a day, like sometimes you're the one pedaling for the day and then I'm the one driving the support van for the day. And this reminds me of. 2008, 2009, when up until that point, for the first handful of years in our marriage, I was really the primary breadwinner. I was out front pedaling.

Totally.

And man, I was pedaling hard. I was burnt out. Imagine being 29, 30 years old and already being totally burnt out. But I was one of the fastest rising executives at the world's biggest bank, and the burnout was from working so hard and moving up the ranks and doing whatever it took. Well, the recession hit. And after spending a year of flying around, laying everybody else off, it became my turn. And they came to me and they said, hey, Chris, you can have a demotion of a demotion of a demotion of a demotion and ride this thing out in a little branch in Jersey, or you can have your severance package. And I was so tired and burnt out. I said, gimme the severance package. We need to start over. Now, what I really meant that they didn't understand is that Lori and I needed to literally start over financially and even probably like Choosing our next chapter in life, how we want to show up. And me being gone working all the time really took a toll on our marriage, et cetera. And so I got off the cross-country bike ride in that moment by taking the Serpent's Package. Yet a cross-country bike ride still had to occur. Someone had to pay the bills. So Lori said, give me the bike, metaphorically speaking. I'm going to start my fitness career. And that is literally the time that Lori embarked on her quote unquote cross-country bike ride by becoming this big fitness star that launched our personal brands. And I was so just depressed and burnt out and didn't know what I wanted to do next, lost my identity, that I said, you know what, fuck it, babe, I'll drive the support van until further notice. And it worked. And that was just one of many times in our life where sometimes she was driving the support van and I was pedaling cross-country, big ambitious goals. And other times I was driving the support van and she was driving cross-country.

So we kind of went through all of our 20 years of marriage exactly like this, back and forth, back and forth. And this also happened after I went on this big fitness run, which then started a career, um, not only in fitness and magazines and covers, but I had a brick-and-mortar gym for a while. And then from the brick-and-mortar gym, I realized that I was trading time for money, and I literally could not make any more money than I was making because I was maxed out on hours. So that's when we started our online membership. We had one of the largest online fitness memberships of the time. There was probably— I could count it on one hand how many people I knew of back then. And we were making about $150,000 a month on that fitness membership. And I had it for, I believe it was 9 years. And at the end— was it 9 years?

No, it wasn't that long. It's probably more like 5. Yeah.

I don't know, I'm terrible with timelines.

Uh, Lori and timelines, you guys, is a riot.

It's bad. Uh, anyway, we had it for 5 years.

It felt like 9 years.

Maybe it felt like 9 to me. And I got to a place where I now energetically felt so burnt out just doing a ton of different things. And sometimes when you are going into your next version of you, and this truly is what happened, it's like I felt this new version of myself coming in. I needed to pivot and do something else, and it felt very much time to step away from the fitness industry for me after being in it for so long. I really wanted a new identity around personal development, writing books, events, and teaching entrepreneurs how to make money that I just felt like I needed to take a break. And that's when I went to Chris and I was like, this— I know that you literally hate this idea and you're probably going to be kicking and screaming the whole time, but I had— like, I can't do it anymore. I need to I need to step away from the fitness membership.

Shut it down.

Shut it down. And I need a year to figure out what the hell I'm doing next.

Yep. In other words, she was tired of pedaling out front and was like, hey, I need to chill. I need to get in the support van. And, you know, we still got to replace this income. So what are we going to do? And because we've always operated this way, I said, all right, no problem. I mean, not that nicely. First of all, it was a whole bunch of like, What are you thinking?

I was like, we're not doing that.

We're not doing that. Are you outta your mind? It's the easiest 150 grand on the, uh, per month, you guys, per month on the planet. Like, why would you do this? It's your life, blah, blah, blah. But sometimes when you're over something, you're over something. And so we had this agreement in our marriage that when someone's serious, you'll always try their idea on for size. And we've always stuck by that. And so I said, all right, this is the craziest, dumbest thing on the planet, but we'll do it. And I will find a way to get back out front so that you can just ride the support band for a while. And that's when we created our second mastermind. This is probably 2019. I think I could be wrong by a year here. And that was Fast Foundations because we always had the main mastermind for businesses over $500,000, but we didn't have anything for people with a business that wasn't over $500,000. And so that's when we started Fast Foundations way back, like 2018, 2019. That the reason why that was started was one, we saw an opportunity in the marketplace that we weren't serving, but two, we needed to replace $150,000 a month. And so I said, all right, no problem. I got this. I will get on the bike, I will get out front and start riding, and you can ride the support van. And the blessing was we had this really awesome mastermind that we built, ran for many years, and then sold. And it, it is really the precursor to MCM that we have now. You know, we've kind of took the ideas of Fast Foundations and stuck it with steroids and that became MCM that we have right now. All the improvements to fit today's needs, not back then. But nonetheless, we have always operated this way where one person's out front and the other person is riding the support van. Now fast forward, I start Frello, Lori is full speed in Glossy, Light Pink turned into Glossy. And for the first time ever, we've had a few years where we're both doing the cross-country bike ride.

Mm-hmm.

So who the hell's gonna ride the support van? And we had to figure that out cuz you always need a support van, guys. You can't do an ambitious cross-country ride, whatever your metaphor cross-country ride is, without having a support van. So what does that look like for us now? The support van is now manned by an army of characters. Still sometimes for a day or a week, I'll drive the support van still sometimes for a day or a week, Lori will drive the support band. But now it's asking our team members to step up more than ever, and they have to drive the support band, giving them more responsibility than they ever had before, giving them more freedom than they ever had before, saying, hey, here's the deliverables, figure it out because we need to. I'm over here doing this. Lori's over there doing that. You guys gotta figure out the deliverables and giving them that freedom and accountability to figure that out. That's their version of, all right, no problem. We got this. Other things that we've married, like in my adult life, my stroke caused me to have to go to therapy a year and a half ago, and I stuck with it because I was like, wait a minute, this is great. Somebody I get to process through everything with that doesn't have to be my spouse or a friend or something like that. So that became, became somebody driving the support band, quote unquote. Friends. I lean on friends to drive the support band. We have very structured guy dinners, entrepreneurial guy dinners that we'll go to, and they're driving the support band.

Rella is something I wish I had way sooner. If you've ever felt like your social media is pure chaos, like I have, like 47 tabs open, Slack messages everywhere, and you're constantly asking, where's that post again? When is it supposed to go out? You know exactly what I mean, because social media isn't just posting. It is planning, it's feedback, it's approvals, it's revisions and constant coordination with multiple people. And that's exactly why Rella exists. Rella is a project management platform built specifically for social media teams. It's where you plan content, collaborate with clients, get approvals, and actually get work done all in one place. And one of my favorite parts is clients can approve content via public links, no login required, which means no more, can you send that in an email chaos. 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Starting something new isn't just hard, it can be terrifying. I remember right before I launched my first business and even this podcast thinking, is this really the right decision? What if this totally bombs and nobody listens? What if no one buys anything? And the doubt got super loud, but choosing to do it anyway was one of the best decisions of my life. And having the right tools underneath you helps that jump feel feel a whole lot safer. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US. From brands just getting started to household names, and it's what I trust with Glossier. With hundreds of ready-to-use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. It's packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography, which saves you so much time. You can tackle everything in one place, inventory, payments, analytics, and more. No juggling platforms, no tech overwhelm. And if you're wondering, what if I get stuck? Shopify's award-winning 24/7 customer support is always there to help. Plus, that iconic purple Shop Pay button gives you the best converting checkout on the planet, helping boost conversions and turn more carts into real sales. It's time to turn those what-ifs into. With Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/happy. Go to shopify.com/happy. That's shopify.com/happy. If you've ever run a business, you know the workplace chaos is real. I'm talking deadlines slipping, someone's out sick, your tech decides to break mid-launch, and suddenly you're doing 3 people's jobs. Like, I'm totally cool, I'm fine, don't worry about me. And in those moments when you realize you don't need another person, You need the right person. This is a job for sponsored jobs. And if I had to hire for my team right now, I wouldn't just post a job and hope that the right unicorn magically finds it. I'd want someone who understands our pace, can handle the chaos, and has the exact skills we need, whether that's editing, ops, social, or customer experience. That's why I'd use Indeed sponsored jobs because it boosts your job posts in search results so you can reach quality candidates. Who actually match what you're looking for, like specific skills, certifications, or even location. And with sponsored jobs, you only pay for results. People are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed according to Indeed data worldwide, which is wild. And also exactly the point. When you need the right hire, sponsored jobs is The solution: spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. I definitely am in a season of leaning hard on my friends, being really, really honest and vulnerable where I am. I'm like, I am just not on my— like, I just don't feel 100. I don't feel fully like myself in a lot of areas. And so, like, actually allowing myself to show up really, really vulnerably. And honestly, it sucks. Like, I feel weak. I feel like, oh, I hate that I'm not this super powerhouse in this group that they all know they can rely on, which, by the way, they still can. But what's been really helpful is they are super attuned and checking in and doing all the things. And that's been so powerful for me to be like, whoa, I really have people who have my back. And there's something about just having those— knowing that you have those people in your life that actually helps you get through things so much better. And I mean, Chris, you and I have never said the things to our family that we have said recently, where it's like we typically like to show up as kind of the— I don't even know how to say it— like, strong, strong, carry the load, we got you guys no matter what. And we've had to say things like, hey, like, we really need you to have us during the season. Like, we, you know, for some of the holidays where we would normally plan a bunch of stuff, like, guys, we need this to be easy. Like, What are we going to do? You're going to come to us, take the wheel, because we just— our bandwidth is, is so low for the things that we normally have the bandwidth on. You have to let people know what season you're in so they can help you. And I believe, you know, for you and I, I, Chris, I feel like, you know, we've been in this season for a little while now and I feel like we're coming out the other side. But there's no way that we would have done it without telling and asking for the support. You don't get— guys, don't assume that your best friends or your family should just know. You have created an identity around being the strong one. They shouldn't just know. You've literally spent your whole life being somebody else that they are very convinced that that is your role in the world. So you have to clearly communicate over and over and over if you need help, if you need more attention from your friends or family, because they're not going to be able to read your mind.

So what's the point? You are always either the person doing the cross-country ride or the person driving the support van. And you have to know which one you are. You cannot do the cross-country ride forever, and it's not rewarding to sit back and just drive the support van forever. You must know which role you're in and you must own that role. And that is the key to a good partnership, a good marriage, or a good partnership, or a good Being a good friend or being a good business partner, knowing which role you're in, honoring it, and then letting the other person thrive in theirs. Guys, if that struck a chord, one of the best ways that you can have someone quote unquote drive your support van is mentors. Lori and I would love to drive your support van. We would love for our coaches that we've hired to drive your support van. Go see if you can fight your way into that next cohort of 10 people that are gonna get into MCM. Put yourself on a waitlist, loriharder.com. Mentor.

We're so grateful for you guys, and we will talk to you next week. Bye, everyone.