Rob Stratham talks about pivoting his business from live tastings to virtual events after family losses, and credits his success to a clear roadmap, professional guidance, and carefully chosen relationships. He recommends curating your top 5-10 contacts and removing toxic ones.
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People who have been through that and they've actually got a roadmap to say, here are the steps that I've taken to overcome adversity. Here are the networks that I've plugged myself into. Here's the proximity, influence, impact on me. You're onto a bigger and brighter future.
Just how exactly do you create success in your life? In fact, how can you even do it with some happy hours? Well, we're joined today with Rob Stratham. We're excited to have an amazing conversation about success, how you can increase your level of success and creating a roadmap. So, Rob, thanks for joining us today. Excited to have this conversation. Tell us a little bit more about how you've been learning the tricks and the tips on how to create more success in your life and helping shed that with other people, other entrepreneurs in the world.
Well, a lot of it for me started with my own personal journey of, you know, triumphing over adversity. I'd lost a few family members over past, past few years, and at the time, it was just outside of the pandemic, that was end of July into the pandemic. I don't know about you guys, but things kind of got dark. And I'm sitting on this business that's supposed to be celebratory. You know, it's into drinks, the Drunken Grapes, its name, and, you know, hosting at that time, live wine and beer tastings. It didn't quite expand into what I wanted to do, and I always dreamed of being able to do some virtual stuff. Moving along, business expanded into that, and then I wanted to bridge into a podcast. I always talked about, how can I get into a podcast and how could I bridge this into something interesting that will have Main street watch it, not just wine and beer professionals and aficionados. So I thought, why not have extraordinary drinks with extraordinary people? I got into topics on real estate, business, finance. And then it realized and dawned on me that as I journeyed through this, I always asked the question what adversity they had to overcome. We all have to overcome massive adversity. So I said, well, this is just a pinnacle, core element of success. Now, if everybody knows they have to overcome some great adversity in life, yet very few do it, you gotta ask yourself why a roadmap is very, very important. Something that all these entrepreneurs and visionaries and successful professionals have in their toolkit is they have a vision or a roadmap of where to go and how to get there and how to be successful.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, it's firstly, Rob, thank you for your vulnerability and for sharing that people who have been through that and they've actually got a roadmap to say, here are the steps that I've taken to overcome adversity. Here are the networks that I've plugged myself into. Here's the proximity influence, impact on me. You're on to a bigger and brighter future. My first step is to go and be with a professional to get the good guidance and counsel that I need to help get me on the right path. And then the next step in that roadmap could be be very acutely aware of proximity influence. Third step in the roadmap is surround yourself with people who will never tolerate loathing, whining, complaining, excuses, explanation. One thing that I share all the time in any conversation like this, and any of my teammates will attest to this. If you want to be a good coach or a good leader, you got to love your players no matter who you're dealing with. If you're dealing with a top producer, that top producer has done something that requires some coaching, you got to get on that right away. You're not going to go and coddle the person. You don't have to. You want. What do you want to hear? Everything's going to be okay. Like, is all going to be all right? Or do you want me to tell you what you need to hear and the level of respect, mutual respect that gets built as a result of that. Because all progress begins with telling the truth. And so in a relationship, that should be one of the frameworks in your roadmap. We got to embrace the fact that all progress begins with telling the truth.
Things that really tie into this success here, it is all based on the people around us. And you mentioned proximity influence a number of times, Jay. And really what we're honing in on here has to do with who you surround yourself with and the way in which they either lift you or they pull you down. So just think about this. If you're as you're watching, as you're listening in, who are the people that are lifting you or consistently over time, have lifted you more than have dragged you down, and you can start to self select who you want to spend more time with. And sometimes it's easy to go and be in the pull everyone down category, because the thing that keeps us similar is the griping and the strife and the negativity that we all, you know, it's kind of like one upping one another on who had the worst day. You know, kind of a thing. But as soon as you exit that and then all of a sudden you're over in the environment when everyone's lifting up. What was the best thing about that? What was the best thing about it? Here's how. Oh, this happened to me. This happened. This was positive. This was good. You get caught up in that infectious behavior. And so again, a key takeaway here for thinking about how you can create the most success. What's a roadmap to creating it? All you got to do is look to the top five to 10 people you spend the most time with. Whether that's virtually in the format that we're doing this right now, or it's in person and it. And probably there's a bit more of an impact, there's a little bit more of an energetic that happens in the in person realm. But after doing this virtual thing, now we. I've been operating a virtual business basically for the last decade, and we've been operating it through and through prior to Covid and then doubling down in a Covid timeframe. We've been able to build extremely, unbelievably positive relationships. I can get that energetic. I use hand movements to help me.
Hey, that's cool. That's cool.
With people on our team and our clients all across the country, because we're bonded around something unique and we're lifting and raising people up so you can create this environment or as best as possible, even in a virtual world. Yeah, maybe there's 10% or 15% that you're not getting because you're not in the room, but that just means you got to give an extra 10 or 15% in a virtual world so that you can buffer that differential is kind of how I would look at it. If.
If there's one question that I would encourage to really exemplify what Richard was just describing. If you are thinking about who's in your proximity, ask yourself, here's another step in the roadmap. Ask yourself, is this individual contributing to or contaminating the bigger future that I want to create?
Absolutely.
And if the word is contaminating, get out. Like, whatever you need to do. Call in a tactical nuclear strike. Vaporize the person. Like, whatever it is, Bye, bye. And once a year in the spring, just set a Google Calendar reminder to pop up and say, in the theme of spring cleaning, check your network. Do a little cleaning in the network too.
Yeah. And it's funny because, you know, you don't really have to clean a lot of it. You just have to clean up the toxic elements. Most people I find are just generally there and they're not, they're not going to take you out or they're not going to bring you up. And that's fine. They have their roles. But the key people have to be more a net contributor of bringing up than taking you down. We all have our bad moments. Yeah. You know, that's just being human. But you need to really be able to drive positive change for positive people.
Yeah.
And the anchors you got to cut, like I recently had to cut one because it just a friend of mine for over a decade just got toxic. In fact, I think I unfriended them finally today. But it's just I, you know, and, but they were unfriended for months. They were told if somebody on your success or happiness, that is a surefire way to throw them in the garbage bin of life. As I like to say, just take them and you know what? Smile about it on the way out. Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you've really enjoyed this conversation, make sure to tune in the next episode. If you want to learn how entrepreneurs can leapfrog the banks, click here.
