TES 066 - Building Community and Connection

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. Hey everyone, Mel Abraham here, the author of the number one best selling book the Entrepreneur Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy. And welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur Solution show. And in this episode, I get the extreme pleasure to get a chance to chat with someone that I've known for a while, but I have gotten a chance to meet her for the first time at least digitally on this show. And, and she's gracious enough to come on the show at a time where she's packing, getting ready to get out of the country, they're moving and all that. And so I feel blessed. And so Kate Erickson, which many of you may know Kate Erickson, she's a creator, an engager and implementer over at EO Fire, John Lee Dumas Podcast and an amazing, amazing show that's actually got me involved in webinars and podcasts. And it's a seven day a week podcast interview style show that I can't imagine. I mean, I do weekly shows and I can't imagine doing seven days a week what it's like. But the number of entrepreneurs and successful entrepreneurs that they have inspired and helped and Kate has been involved with is astronomical. And Kate herself is the host of her show, Kate's Take it's the EO Fire audio blog. And she's the author of the Fire A beginner's guide to growing your online business. She's truly passionate about helping entrepreneurs create freedom in their business, which is really key to us. I talk about building freedom in their business and life and developing systems and processes that help you scale your business and grow. So welcome to the show, Kate.

Thank you so much, Mel. What an amazing intro. Really appreciate it and I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Yeah. One of the things that you talk about, at least I've seen, is one year, I'm going to go right into it. You've been involved with EO on Fire for a long time and how, I mean, how did that come about? I mean, did you expect to be here? I mean, what was the journey like?

I did. This is the last place I expected to be, to be completely honest with you. Growing up, I was very corporate minded. Both my parents were corporate jobs. I didn't really know what the whole entrepreneurship thing was about even. You know, you like, hear of these icons in the entrepreneurial industry who have like made it and they've created these empires and all this stuff. But like, it was so untouchable that I never really put myself in that place. I was always like, well, I'm going to go to college, I'm going to get a corporate job, I'm going to climb the corporate ladder and then hopefully I'll make good money and have a family and we'll be good to go. But, you know, things change luckily, because that's not the life that I wanted to live, even though I didn't realize that because I thought that was the only path. So it wasn't until maybe about five years ago that I finally had like this moment. I was working at a corporate job and I lost out on a promotion that I thought was in the bag. And it really hit me. It really made me realize that there are no guarantees. And this thing that we call job security is really a bunch of you know what. And you know, it kind of like scared me into figuring out what else was possible because I knew that that couldn't be it. I knew that couldn't be it for me. I was 25 years old and I was like miserable in my day to day and I'm like, if I have to spend the next 50 years of my life like this, what's the point? You know? So, yeah, that's kind of how I, I found my way to thinking like, okay, maybe there's another way for me to do this. And I took my first leap into entrepreneurship in late 2011. So I mean, to your point, I've, I've been with EOFire for almost three years now, which is incredible to think and it's been such an amazing journey. But you know, I' stumbled and been through many roadblocks to get here for sure.

It's interesting you say that because so my, my wife's actually in a corporate job, been with a company for almost 20 years, the same company, which you find very often, but they're, believe it or not, right now going through a reorganization and again.

She'S in the midst of that. So even after 20 years, the concept, this is a conversation that I have a lot with entrepreneurs is that those that want to be entreprene, scared to take that step because they really believe that that job market is security. And I disagree. And they talk about entrepreneurs are risk takers. And I disagree with that too. We actually look at things, analyze things, and reduce the risk that we're going to take. But take back control, take back that security, because it's in our hands.

Yeah, it's so true. So, funny story, the job that I was at when I lost that promotion, I was actually working in human resources and my. With reorganizations and layoffs. So I thought, like, this is kind of weird that I have job security based on having other people lose their jobs who have been at this company for 20, 30 years. That job and the job that I had after that, if I would have stayed in the positions I was in at those companies, I would have been laid off from both of them by now. I've literally heard from the departments that I was working in that my position was eliminated in both my previous jobs. So if I wasn't an entrepreneur, I would have been hanging dry like the other people that I worked with. It's crazy.

Yeah, it's so crazy. But I think that that's the challenge. We got caught in this industrial age mentality of this is how we do things. And you go and serve for 40, 50, 60 years and at some point you'll get this good retirement, but they never told you what good was. And. And I think that there is another way. And both you and John have done a tremendous amount to helping people find their way and find that path. Whether it's making 60,000 a year or 600,000 a year doesn't matter. The fact is that you're helping people find their own way, control their own destiny. And I think that that's kudos to you. I mean, it's a blessing to be able to blaze that trail for. Folks.

Thank you so much. That's what gets me so fired up about what we do. Like hearing these messages from people that we've changed their mindset or that we've given them a little bit of an extra push so that they, that they have that same moment that I had when you realize, like, this doesn't have to be this way. I get to control what my future looks like. And if I make a change today, I can make it look different than it does right now. And that was really tough for me to grasp. And there was nobody teaching me that. Like, I didn't learn that in school. There certainly Wasn't anybody at the company I was at telling me that or encouraging me to leave to go do my own thing. So it's a blessing to be able to help spread that message and to help other people realize that, hey, if you want to make this happen and you have the motivation and the dedication to do this, then the sky's the limit. It's up to you.

Yeah, you get a chance to design it your way.

In your bio you talk about being a creator and engager. And I know that on every.

Chance that I've had to communicate with you. And a lot of it is digital means or online. You are the engager, you are constantly in conversation. And I think that one of the things that we struggle with today is we confuse contacts with connection. And what we're starved for is connection, not contacts. And likes don't mean anything. But you have a knack, a way to make each and every person you connect with, even digitally, to feel heard, to feel special, to do that. And.

Can you kind of talk to that process? Because engaging through digital means is not easy. That process to raise the engagement is huge in our business.

Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you. It's something that so many people just think numbers, numbers, numbers. If I can have this many contacts or this many email subscribers or this many website visitors, that I'm gonna make it to that point and everything's just gonna start happening. But none of those numbers mean anything if you don't have an engaged, loyal audience, somebody who actually cares about what it is that you're saying. And, and I don't know if I could really point to a time in my life where I realized that the two way conversation is like the most important thing. You know, it has a. I'd imagine it comes from like, I feel good when I feel important, you know, it makes me feel good when I'm having a conversation with somebody and I actually feel like they're listening to me. And they don't respond with just like a laugh or a yes or a no, but like they genuinely care about what I'm talking about. And if I feel great when that happens, then I can assume that that would make other people feel great too. Right. And there a few years ago I took this kind of assessment, I guess you could call it, it's Sally Hogshead's how to Fascinate. And I know you're familiar with it too, Mel. For anyone who's listening, who's not familiar with it, it's really, really interesting stuff. It's how the world sees you is what Sally's put together. And in that assessment, my communication and engagement was something that ranked really high in how I affect other people. And when I kind of caught that in the assessment, it wasn't something necessarily that I didn't know about myself before. I had had people tell me that before, but it wasn't something that I was using to my advantage as much as I knew I could. And it's those kinds of things, like your biggest strengths that you need to be playing all out on, because there are a ton of weaknesses I have. Luckily, John Lee makes up for those and we're able to move forward together in a really powerful way. But you know, something that I realized when I first came on board at Eofire is that we needed to have an element to build our community and continue making our community grow. That made them feel, feel genuinely like we cared about their journey. That this wasn't just me and John talking at people, that this wasn't just John getting on the mic and having a one on one conversation with his interviewee. No, this is a conversation for all of us to be a part of. This is your community. We do this for Fire Nation, our community. And the way to get people involved and engaged, for lack of a better word, is to give them that engagement. One of the very first things I did when I came on board at Eofire was check the box saying that every time somebody subscribed to our email list, I wanted to get notified of that. And every single time someone subscribed to our email list, I would send them a personal message from my Gmail account. Not from mailchimp or aweber or like some automated sequence. I would send them an email, I'd welcome them to Fire Nation and I'd ask them what they were struggling with or where they were at in their business right now. And that type of one on one connection, you don't get that anywhere else. And a lot of people who are struggling to realize that, you know, the 9 to 5 doesn't have to be your way, it can be your way and that's totally fine if it is. There are a ton of people that thrive in that environment and that's awesome. But if you don't want that to be the way a lot of those people are missing encouragement and support and if we can provide that to them through an engaged conversation and help them get on a track where they understand that it just takes one step forward every single day to make this happen, then I'm really Grateful to be that person.

Awesome. That's such an awesome message. And I love the fact that you reach out and you, you initiate the conversation initially by just saying, hey, what's your challenge? What's your what, what, what's. What are you struggling with and how can we help type of thing. I mean, how often do we not do that? I remember I was just, someone was just interviewing me on their podcast and they said, well, what do you tell the naysayers? Or what do you tell the people that are going to hit the walls about getting their message out there? And I said, you know, I kind of related it to a guy who told, when I was in one, one of my, before I got married, one of the relationships I shouldn't have been in. And he said, how long are you going to allow this woman to take up the space in your life that's meant for someone else? And I said, when I look at this, it's easy to say, I want to serve the masses, I want to have a million entrepreneurs making an impact or something like that. But the reality is that we really just want the one, the one that's teetering on the edge, that needs to hear those words at that time in the way that you get to say it. And who are we to hold it back? And the way you guys at Eel Fire and Kate with you doing some of this, that's what you do and to reach out and engage them right from the very beginning. I can't tell you how many times people say, well, let's just put it automated. And I'll just. They'll subscribe and they'll get this automated sequence and it just, it is sterile. Yeah. Why not have a conversation, a real conversation. I love that you do it from your Gmail account. And you know, I'm sure that some of those things have you, you get your trolls, we all do.

But by and large, it's a greater, you're doing a greater good in the process, I think.

Yeah, I mean, and it goes back to like people wanting contacts, contacts, contacts. Forgetting about the connection part. There are going to be a lot of activities that we have to do in our business that aren't going to be scalable. I think people hear something like, you email every single person who subscribes, or maybe you get on a one on one call with someone from your audience or, you know, somebody who's maybe going to be a client of yours, and people automatically think, well, I can't do that because I can't scale that. Well, not everything's scalable in business contacts, relationships, connections. Those aren't scalable. Contacts are scalable. You could automate all of that and bring people into your email subscriber list. But when people start replying to your automated emails because they're touched by what you're saying and you never reply back, that's not a good feeling. That's not somebody I want to do business with.

It's so true. I mean, I try my darndest to get on and post the comments in the Facebook group and do that. I can't. There's been a couple times where someone will just dial the phone number and I'll answer the phone. And they go, wait, that's. You're answering the phone? I go, yeah, I got hands. I can answer the phone.

Yeah.

So in this process of this growth, because it seems like you started to shift some things.

And what I would say if we were in a corporate environment, culturally, because culture comes from the top, and I think culture supersedes strategy every time. And culture can destroy straight. We can have the best business strategy, the best tactics, the best product. And if our culture sucks, pardon the expression, then we're not going anywhere. And you're creating your own culture.

In what you do, whether it's Kate's take or EO Fire or some of the other.

Events and things that you do during that time. If you look at it, what were the three habits that you think really contributed most to your success?

Wow. The three habits that contributed to my success. I mean, for me personally, I think my attention to detail has been really huge for me and making it a habit to not. It's a very fine balance between, like, just putting something out there and not being a perfectionist, but at the same time being very conscious of what you're putting out there. And I think that my habit of.

Not settling, I guess it's both a blessing and a curse. But, you know, that my attention to detail has definitely helped a lot with. With the growth and. And what we're able to put out there. This. What did you call it? The. The culture.

Yeah.

That we've kind of created for the brand, I think is really, really important. I think that attention to detail is really important for that.

I would also say just kind of like this support. Making it a habit of, you know, being open and very transparent.

Always offering support to people, not asking for things has been definitely really huge. And, gosh, you kind of caught me off guard with this one, Mel. I gotta be honest.

Just showing up.

Yeah.

I mean, you got to show up every day running your own business is crazy, and I love it, and it's the best thing I've ever done, and I'm so glad that John and I are doing this together. But you got to show up every single day.

It's. Yeah. True. Truly, truly. And they're great, great traits. And I, you know, I can tell just from the interactions, I'm trying to think it's probably been a little over a year or more than a year, because I've been doing the podcast for well over a year now. So it's probably been a year and a half since I've been involved with some of the things that you guys are doing. And it is consistent, just. And you created. It's one. I belong to a lot of communities because you get invited all the time or you join these things, but this is truly a community, a community that's really supportive. And everything that I think really shifts things because it's a safe place. You created a safe haven for people to go and say, hey, I had this problem. It didn't work. What do I do? And there's a ton of support. And that comes from, again, from the top. And I think it's from you and John Lee setting the stage and making that safe space for that to happen.

Yeah, that support is really like. We realized very early on that in this world of where our avatar is at, where our audience members are at, they just need support. They need support and they need resources. And there are so many go getters out there. They're ready to do whatever it takes to make this happen. They just need support because maybe they don't have that from their husband or their wife or their family members. And I totally get that. When I first told my parents that I was going to quit my job and start running a podcast with John, they're like, what?

I got the same thing. My mom's still trying to figure out what I do.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that my parents weren't supportive by any means. They definitely were. But I can't even imagine if you constantly had. You know, Pat Flynn always talks about this amazing analogy. The crabs in the bucket. You know, if you're that crab trying to climb out, there's always going to be a bunch of other crabs pulling you back down. And if we can be the person outside the bucket picking crabs out and helping them up, like, let's do this. I love it.

Well, and I know our time is running short, so. But you are that and that's why it was, for me, such a gift when you said, yeah, we'll make some time, we'll get on the show and everything. Because I think that your message, the way you approach everything is so important. There's so many lessons for our audience to realize and to glom onto, to look at and say, if you want to examine how to do this in a digital world, to create a culture that is meaningful, that's supportive, that's a community, then examine what you guys are doing, because you're doing it right.

And you're doing it in a way that people are finding success, they're finding their lives, they're finding the energy in their dreams again, and they're finding, more importantly, the connection and the support that I think is allowing them to drive it, the confidence to. To know that when that parent or that spouse says, I don't get what you're trying to do, that you have a place to go, to keep on going until they understand it and everything. And so I think that in this space, truly a blessing you are. And so.

I'll ask you one last question, is just if you were looking at the audience, which is typically my audience, is people that want to be thought leaders, experts and entrepreneurs, and you had to give them one piece of advice, maybe that piece of advice that if you were looking back on yourself and had a chance to whisper in your ear 15 years ago or 10 years ago, what would that piece of advice be?

You know, I've struggled with so many.

Mindset and fear issues, and I know that we all do. You've got to push through it. You have to trust your gut, and you have to realize that no matter what happens, it's not going to be the end of the world. Like, no matter how scary that next step is, that's good if it's scary, because that means it's worth taking that step. So that. That was. I wish I would have realized that 10 years ago would have been a really amazing to. But hey, here I am now, and I'm really grateful for that. So push through that fear. Don't let it hold you back.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautifully done. Thank you, Kate, for taking the time, in the midst of all the craziness that you're in to chat with me and everything. This was really cool.

Yeah, Mel, I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

So.

We will stay in touch, I promise. Yes, to you guys. If there's anything that any of my community or anyone can. Can do for you guys, please reach out to us.

Thank you so much. It was really great connecting, and I really, really hope that we'll get to see you at Podcast Movement.

That'll be great. All right, say hi to John Lee. We'll talk soon.

All right. Bye, Mel.

See ya. Hey there. And so that was Kate. And just like any other show, if you would share this with someone, I mean, she's had some good, great messages, some great impact, and some great tidbits of information that I think really can shift the kinds of things that we do. So go ahead and make sure that you subscribe. Share this with a friend, and if you have questions, comments, or anything that I can support you with or any of our team can support you, post them. Let us take that step with you. Let us be on the journey together. And I look forward to seeing you again soon. Until we get a chance to see each other again. May your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant. See you soon. Cheers.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe so you get access to all of Mel's business and success tips. And if you like this episode, share it with a friend. If you have a specific business or success question, you can ask it@Double www.askmelnow.com. remember, it's all about being bold, dreaming big, and living life your way because the world needs you. Until the next episode, may your vision be grand, your journey epic, and your legacy significant.

Foreign.

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