[ENTREPRENEURSHIP] Ep. 432 Overcoming Adversity and Building Limitless Success with Stephen Scoggins

Hello, friend, and welcome to the U turn podcast.

This is the absolute place for you if you are ready to create a business, a career, a personal brand, or just a life that you are so proud of. And every single week, I'll be bringing you PhDs, subject matter experts, psychology practitioners, business leaders, all onto the show to elevate your success in your work and also your life so that you can leave a legacy. You can can amplify your authority and you can really skyrocket the amount of opportunities that you are creating for yourself in your career, whether you're in corporate.

Or you're a business owner.

My name is Ashley Stahl. I'm an international bestselling author of the book U Turn get unstuck, discover your direction and design your dream career. And most Importantly, I'm the CEO of Wise Whisper Agency. I'm a top 100 TEDx speaker on the Internet. And it inspired me to start Wise Whisper because my company now has a completely done for you process to get your signature talk written and booked on stage. In fact, we've written more than 100 TEDx talks and we've placed more than 100 clients on stage as speakers for TEDx events. And now I'm on a mission to help every change maker that I know impact millions and share their story. So right now I'm excited to bring you right into this week's episode.

All right, U turn friends. You know, I bring you friends and people that really move me that I just find through everyday life. And Steven Scoggins is absolutely one of those people. He's. He was homeless at one point and he is such a heartfelt industry leader. And I think one thing a lot of you may not know about me is that my sister was homeless when she was an addict before she passed away. And so I have a very soft spot for someone who has gone through that and an extra level of inspiration for somebody who's gotten out of that. And I think that Stephen is someone who has a no excuses play like a champion mindset. He's an eight figure serial entrepreneur, multiple companies. He's dedicated himself to serving the person that he used to be. And he has a signature interactive experience. It's called live event. It's a live event called transform you live. He guides other people through their limitations and on their liberation. He's also the author, I'm sorry, he's also an author and the host of a syndicated top rated hit podcast called Stuck to unstoppable. He was nice enough to have me and he speaks to world class thought leaders on what it takes to break free and really create unstoppable possibility. So I want to talk to him today about how you can really build and scale an actual eight or nine figure business. I personally am looking at my company, Wise Whisper Agency, where have TED talks coming up the wazoo. We have over a hundred of them a year that we're booking and writing for people. But I even don't see the path for my company to be a huge company. Right. Like, and I think a lot of us have our own limits on what we see. And so my goal today is whether you have a business or not, I want you to think bigger. I want you to know what's more available for you. And I. I'm planning on exiting my company at some point. How do we do that? How do we monetize our brand? So these are things we're going to talk about today. Stephen, thank you so much for being here with me.

Are you serious? This is like a dream come true, like getting my buddy. This is awesome.

I know, I know. Life is good. That's the thing I think about. I'm like, life is so good. We just got to. Podcasters get it the best. Like, we just get to talk to our friends and help people the best we can. Like, come on now.

Yeah, yeah. It's super cool. You know, you and I got the media on top of a rooftop.

Yeah.

York probably about two or two or two and a half years ago, I think it was. And Chris and Jen and invited us both out to kind of be at a social and we got to hang out, you know, tell me about your sister. And we got to kind of brainstorm a little bit. And then lo and behold, just we got to reconnect in Arizona recently, which I just thought was kick butt. So that was awesome.

Yeah. It was really fun to see you. I feel like every time I see you, you've popped out of my computer now or my iPhone.

I'm like, so now. So now we're stalking now. Yeah. Just so you know, I haven't done that intentionally, by the way. So I'm just. I'm going to thank the Internet gurus of God, so to speak, so for that.

So I think that's the thing, is there's like an alchemy in our little circle of who we cross path with.

Yeah.

How we can help. Okay. I want to take everyone into who Steven was before he was this like eight figure guy that can like make businesses happen.

Yeah.

Because I feel like sometimes we are so low that we think we are who we are is where we are.

Sure.

And we're not.

Yeah.

I was in debt for four years. I started to genuinely believe I don't deserve success. I'm not capable of it. I can't keep success. I grew up in a really unstable house around success. Now I have a lot of success financially, spiritually, emotionally. And I have to look at myself in the mirror now, Steven, and say, you deserve this. You can have this. You're allowed to make money like this. It's really hard for me to receive it. I want to give it to people. I want to give it to my team. I want to like, overpay people because I feel guilty that I'm doing so well.

Yeah.

The amount of, of leaps in your mindset for you to go from where you are to where you are. So can you just tell us a little bit about that?

Well, I think for me, the, the first step in kind of getting to the next level is actually identifying the top three life lies you're living by. And what I mean by that is I also grew up in a very dysfunctional household. I was actually pretty well raised until about the age of 11 because I was raised by my grandmother. I later discovered I, you know, dealt with abandonment issues because my parents were obviously, you know, fighting their own battles and whatnot. Fortunately, they've now since recovered and become amazing grandparents and all kinds of stuff now. But at that specific time, my grandmother was my lifeline. At nine years old, she sits me down and basically asked me to be the man of the house for my, myself and a little brother. And as a nine year old who's got a GI Joe in one hand and transform in the other hand, you have zero clue what man of the house is or helping helping around the house is even. And she proceeded to teach me how to like, literally pull up a chair over to the stove, boil water, make macaroni and cheese and oatmeal. Pretty much anything we could boil or put milk in was kind of my dietary process for myself, my little brother. Because she fiz she physically had to use me as her crutch because she was diagnosed with chemo. She was diagnosed with cancer. This is in the 80s, late 80s. So as you can imagine, chemo was just as damaging as the cancer. And about that time my dad comes back into the picture. About the time my grandmother passes away, I immediately go to live with him. And literally I think I, I think I got there on a Thursday and I think I went to work on A Friday in the construction industry at 11 years old, carrying studs. You know, I got to meet and kind of, I kind of hang out with my grand, my, my grandfather who survived Pearl harbor, my dad's dad. We were all part of the same quote unquote framing crew. And that's what I met with somebody who was my end up becoming my first mentor of all time. Guy named Steve Myrick. And the world doesn't know, really know who he is. I guess the world knows more about who he is now because I talk about him all the time. But that guy literally changed my life. And the reason I say is, go back and change the, you know, top three life lives is I'm going to make a statement. And I guarantee most of the people watching and listening can identify two or three statements that they heard and caught on to and then applied in their well being. So statement number one, my father said once we actually lost his business and we lost the house, went through foreclosure, bankruptcy, all that kind of stuff. I remember him crying one time and telling me, scoggins, don't get ahead, they get by.

Right. And he meant it sincerely. He said it from a place of love because he didn't want me to experience the same pain and, and frustration he was experiencing in that moment. However, what he didn't understand was he was actually placing a limiting belief or limiting life lie in my, literally directly in my, my steps. Now, something inside of me in that moment knew that that wasn't 100% true, but I still live beside that one. Another lifeline that came up was I can't put too much faith in the people because they always leave. There's the abandonment piece, all right. And another one was wealth is evil. I was constantly being told by the people in my inner circle who were not financially successful that wealth was evil. And therefore being poor, so to speak, was a badge of honor and pride. Which is interesting when you think about the people that were saying that were actually getting steady handouts and donations and gifts and stuff from the very wealthy people that they said were evil, which I felt was really interesting. So a lot of times our programming starts at the first seven or eight years of our life. A lot of times what we kind of latch on to or catch on to or experience becomes our, what they call it, nature versus nurture.

Yeah.

You know, and for me, I had to just go back and dig in and figure out, okay, where is this belief coming from Now I would have stayed on that path had it not been for Steve Meyer. Who I mentioned before, who at around 16, 17 years old, pulled me down off the framing crew, put me in his Jeep Grand Cherokee, rode me around the community, and began talking about all kinds of things. But two really important questions come out of his mouth. The first one, he asked, and my audience has heard me say it a bazillion times, because it's pivotal, is what is the difference between a rich man and a poor man? I responded back, well, of course it's money, duh. He's like, absolutely not. It's the way they think. Now, the next question, I think was the most important question because it was the first time I realized I had a choice. And. And this may be the first time that your audience realizes they have a choice. He said, do you want to learn to think like me or do you want to continue thinking like your father? So he teed it up with the part with the power of thought, and then he set it in stone with realizing that you have a choice in the thoughts that you think at any given moment, of any given day, at any given time, we, we either react or we respond. We either learn or we have a sense of self sabotage or guilt or shame or whatever. And those are the types of things that ultimately led me to becoming homeless later on. But essentially, it's about becoming more self aware with radical honesty, without judgment, without condemnation, without shame to understand really where you need to grow. But in order to figure out where you need to grow, you got to understand the life lies to understand where baseline is. So those are a couple of my quick steps that helped me so much.

Okay. One thing that I was, I was just taking notes as you were talking. One of the things that really stuck out. I don't know why, but I feel like people who work in services at a young age. You're not the first person I met who like, worked in construction. Really young and like, really young. Yeah, I'm thinking about becoming a mother, like having kids. And I'm like, is it. I have a lot of thoughts about work, like having your kids work. I mean, obviously 11 is kind of like very young to be doing construction, but like, I'm curious, like, what did you take away from that that you think might be essential for anybody listening who has kids, not that they want to employ them at age 11, but that they want to think about for their future. Because I'm sensing that you got some sense of grit, work ethic really instilled into you. And while it might have been misdirected and overextended, At a young age, it's been implemented into who you are in a way that's really powerful.

Yeah. Well, first of all, I think it's. It's. It's important to understand. I think this is. This is super important for audiences around the world.

There is nothing in your journey that's wasted. Every single step sets you up for the step that you can take, and that's where you get to choose the choice. So if you have a limiting belief, an infrastructure, a bad circle of influence, whatever, at any point in time, you can choose to exit that and choose something greater, which is very uncomfortable, by the way. But I think at the end of the day, I think one of the core things that you're going to see with raising cr. So I've had the pleasure of now raising or raising three. Two grandkids now, believe it or not. And then also recently got engaged literally a few days ago. Yeah. Surprise. And now assisting and raising three more children. And there's. There's a couple. There's actually two really important things I want to share. First of all.

Whatever you want your children to become, you need to be that now.

So if you want to be responsible person who has integrity, who's. Who's self accountable, who's diligent, hard working, who holds the line, creates the standard, sets the expectations, then you need to be following that. Right. Because the old adage where he says, do as I say, not as I do concept as parenting is one of the worst ways you can ever parent. And a lot of us do that because we get in a rush. We're so focused on work and profession and growth and. And we're not paying any attention. So the reason I say that is because even now, in every single case where I've had the privilege of playing a role in helping raise a family, I'm always trying to be the kind of man that I want them, the boys to become, or be the kind of man that I would want my daughter to marry.

Right.

Right. So my work ethic is incredibly strong now. I will also tell you that on the. On the flip side of this, that a few years ago, one of my oldest boys, Tyler, came to me, and we were just going through a massive life transition and whatnot. And he just. He said, look, we have dinner with me. He's over at Campbell University at the time, about to graduate, and as we're sitting down at dinner, he says, look, you've been a phenomenal husband. You've been a phenomenal dad. Like, I couldn't have Asked for anything greater. But if there's one thing you can work on.

There'S just one thing you could work on. I'd like you to work on something. I said, well, dude, hit me with it. So first of all, the parent has to be aware, self aware enough to accept where they can improve upon, okay? A lot of parents shut our kids down really quickly because we always think we know best. And you know, your kids are seeing you from a different lens, you know, so it's always worth hearing them out. And here's, here's what he said. He said if you could just work on being more present when you're present.

That one comment has caused me to change entirely how I view family and how I built, how I view building and building out families, if that makes any sense. You're playing my active role. The reason I say it is.

Your children will pick up more of your character qualities and your high value traits if they have a quality relationship with you. Notice the word quality in parentheses. Quality is not quantity. I've had to learn that the hard way, you know, because I used to be at all the football games, I'd be at all the band camps, I beat all the parent functions, I'd be at all, you know, I would be there.

But I would just be in the room thinking that if I was in the room, that that counted as quality time. What I realized is my kids didn't need a bunch of, you know, really nice things. Obviously, after building a few, few businesses, you know, over nine figures and stuff, like, it's none of that is important to them. What's important to them is, does dad love me? Right? Does, does dad see my value? So I would say there's a couple different things I'd say in order for them to catch the best qualities of you. The work ethic, the tenacity, which even if misdirected early on, can be refined and produced later on, okay? But if you do that, step one first and you're just being the kind of person you want them to become, they're going to catch traits from you rather than what you say they're going to be. They're going to illustrate those traits. So be that thing, okay? The second thing is with quality times comes quality impressions, okay? So if you have quality time with your children, they're 10 times more likely to listen to your advice and your counsel and wisdom, especially if you come through the place of empowerment, lens and love, okay? I highly recommend that parents avoid coming at their children from a place of being overly Critical or only looking at flaws. I learned this print. I learned a business principle that I've applied in my entire life from Dave Ramsey a number of years ago.

Because I used to be in business, I would be the guy that could find anything that anybody was doing wrong. Like, I'm really good at finding out what's not working and why we need to fix it. Like super good at it to the.

Extent of a nine figure result.

Exactly. But here's what I learned. You can propel a team and a family quicker if you can focus more on what? On catching someone doing something right than doing something wrong.

Yeah.

So think about it. Think, think about it as an equity bank. All right? So every time I catch somebody doing something right and I give them a high five, congratulate them, think they're awesome. Hey, you rock and roll, man. You, you kick butt, right? So when I do need to have that hard conversation about, hey, you know what? Honestly, this is one of those things that we need improvement on, like quickly. Like this is, you know, and, and we, and we, we put it in the form of always praise, correction, praise, like just inform formulaically, if that makes any sense. But all of these types of things play into how you can handle life, business and family at the same time. Which is why I think they're so important. You want to, you want to have a better leader, great quality time with a great leader. How much time are you spending with your leaders? Right. You're discipling them. It's the same as a family. If you want your, you know, so going back to the family component, if you want your family to produce greater results and become greater human beings on the planet, they need to see you illustrating what it is. They need to know that you care through the quality time aspects. And you need to have an open dialogue of cancel counsel. If you do those, if you do those three things really well, I think you're going to have high value children that do high value work in the world.

You're bringing up a lot of things that really didn't exist in my family. Like you, you're bringing up a question of like, what is intimacy? And you know, if there's anything that I've learned with that, like, some people think intimacy is being in the same room, like bodies in a room. And then some people think it's actually what you're talking about or your presence. It's interest, interesting to see the nuance amongst people. But what you're really also talking about is influence. It's like, yeah, whether intimacy is bodies in a room or conversations or what. It's probably hard to have an influence on someone if they don't look up to you. You. And I think a lot of parents and I don't know anything, so I'm not a parent other than to my 100 pound German Shepherd. But I think that a lot of people think influence is like through guilting, passive aggressive comments, coercion, shame, and usually, I mean the lowest way of convincing of influence.

Yeah, that's called manipulation.

Manipulate. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting too to listen to you because I mean, I grew up with a dad who is a great man. He was always earning money. Money was something he could go do, but he was always spending it faster than he could earn it. And it has been a freaking mental gymnasium for me to stop doing the same thing. It feels like gymnastics, Stephen. Hard like.

And I feel like I live in la. There's always lifestyle creep. Like right now me and my partner, he and I are looking for a new house. We're like, oh, but this one has a pool. Let's just like, come on. And it's like he's an investor. So he's very like, oh, that's the number. The end. Who cares? Your feelings don't matter in this transaction.

The facts don't care about your feelings.

Yeah, it sounds like he's a good partner. He should balance.

He is. He's a great guy. He's a really great guy and he's really good for this, this flaw that I feel like I've watched going back to. Like, did you have kids when you were in a financial position that you felt was really stable? Or did they watch you grow into the person you are? Like, take me back to when you did not have success. What was that thing you did that moved you along? What was the thing or what was the conversation or what happened that shifted your.

So this is really a two part question. So the easy answer is, is I became highly accountable for my choices. Okay? So being, when you're, when you become highly accountable, have extreme accountability for your choices. You no longer place blame on other people, you no longer place blame on the, your environment, your experience or whatever. The second thing that I did is I had to realize that I needed to become as teachable as they came. Because as a person who has a, you know, as a person of faith, I believe that God puts people in your path to help take you to whatever level you're supposed to go to. But you still have the choice of receiving that wisdom and grace and Mercy from them in the form of, you know, content being taught. That's one of the things I love about personal development and this thought leadership industry. That's why I like ideas. An idea can change a life, like super fast. Right. I think as it relates to kind of like the. The overall strategy and how kind of what the kids have seen. So I've had the pleasure of raising three families, one of which I was not involved in a personal relationship with, another of which in a prior marriage and now with. And now with Chassis and her boys. When I helped raise the family early on, that wasn't. I wasn't. I was not in a personal relationship with this young lady. I was just. She happened to be a roommate and happy, you know, I was trying to help her by letting her have a. You kind of have a place in my place, so to speak, that I didn't have hardly any kind of real financial stability.

But I was already trying to live by principles that I felt like would actually ultimately deliver some level of promise. I also would make money and have been gifted at making money, but then I would also blow money really quickly. That's actually how. That's part of how I ended up homeless. I had a lot of success in 1997 through the course of the year of 1997, and by the end of 1998, I had spent it all, attracted the wrong kind of person in my life who helped me spend more than. More than I was spending in hopes of trying to prove my worth. Right. So you're operating. You're already operating on your back foot. So at the end of the day, I think when it comes down to how the family plays into business and how it plays into kind of your behavior patterns, you have to decide very clearly what you want. You need to know that what you want has to have a will have a sacrifice attached to it. So in this case, it may be, hey, I'm normally an impulse buyer. I normally like to spend great. Now I'm going to start using that as a charity. So when I make 10 times the amount of money it cost me to get this thing, now it becomes a gift that I reward myself with for putting in the effort. You also have to understand that wealth principle 101 does not focus on spending. Wealth principle 101 focuses on compounding. So for example, my goal is to put a dollar at play and get three to five in return. Once I get three to five in return, I may take one or two and then go buy the thing that, you know, was fun, right? So I'm using that as a leverage point so to make sure my compounding is always exceeding my level of spending. And I did that. I do that in business, I do that in life. And at the end of the day, it actually helps us accelerate, you know, financial wealth, financial health. And you'll be surprised that when you're with your financial lifestyle is healthy and your relationship, money with money is healthy, the relationships around you are often as healthy, right? So you start to attract in the right kind of people to give you wisdom, insights. You. You start to track in the, the partner. That's the pull. You know, it's kind of like the opposite. It kind of be the, a bit of the gas pedal and the brake kind of thing, you know, So I, again, I think it comes down to just like using your mind for leverage points, you know, are, how are you going to compound? You know, how are you going to compound your time, your talent and your resources? You know, you and I have to be very selective now with what shows we go on to make sure we're getting the most valuable for our time. And it's not saying that another show is not worth being on. It's just saying that, hey, I have one hour or two hours or three hours a week, and I can commit to, to being on a show or being on a podcast or whatever, or creating content with someone else, you know, and this person has the largest lift. That's a, that's a version of compounding your time, you know, versus compounding your money. Okay, I got a hundred thousand dollars in. That was a windfall. Maybe you got a, you got a great tax rebate or something like that, or 10,000, whatever that number is. Okay. Rather than me going and taking that money and spending it, what can I do to put that money to work for me and help me make more of it? How can I turn that 10 into a hundred or that 100 into a million? And then, then you go buy some toys, right? And we get, we put far too much emphasis on toys and aspirations. A part of success is proving that we're successful. And really, first you have to prove you' successful to is yourself at the end of the day. So what is that? You know, and I think us thinking through that is a huge part of managing money and relationships really well. Is what are, what is the return? What is the return on time and what's the return on money?

Yeah. Okay, so going back, you were saying you were really successful and then you became homeless. I feel like that's a lot of people's worst nightmare. Like, like losing everything. And that's like something that I think a lot of coaches would probably pin as an irrational fear. Like, people would be like, well, don't you have family? Don't you have this? Would ever really be homeless? Like if maybe a coach is doing that trick they do where it's like the. What's the worst thing that can happen? Is your fear founded?

Yeah.

I think a lot of people would trace, they would say like, being homeless is the worst thing that could happen. And so I think it's interesting that you lived through that. What was something that happened. I know you made a decision on a tactical level for you to go from like, I'm on the street to like, I have a roof over my head, I have money coming in. What were some things you do to hit the pavement and make a difference?

I think so. Step number one is I found someone's problem that they were willing to pay me to solve and that in that given time, it was construction. Step number two is once I found a problem I could solve, I committed to doing the work, I committed to paying the price. And step number three is I realized it was a long game, not a short game, and it wasn't to come fast and easy.

Yeah.

Where a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners go off track is they expect it fast and easy. I have yet to meet a single entrepreneur who doesn't think they should be further along than they already are.

Yeah.

Period. I don't care who you are and what stage you are, you could be a ten figure earner and you're still thinking, I'm not far enough along. What. And that is the desire to impress. Right. If you can remove the desire to impress and which allows you to own things, but things not own you, then essentially what you're doing is you're opening the door for proper development long term. So from homelessness to the larger company that was 20. It's a 25 year journey before I exited the big business. This, I just exited last year. Okay. For example, 25 years. That was three. And that was after three years of trying to exit. I learned. But see, on the surface you would think, man, I just took way too long, Took three and a half years to finally exit this company. You know, you're, you're grateful that you do well in the exit or whatever, but you don't realize the three years that you're learning about exiting plays into your pocket when you actually go to exit. I was actually talking to my investment banker that you and I chatted about briefly when in Arizona yesterday, matter of fact. And I was like, I was sharing gratitude was like, dude, you taught me so much. I literally could go into most circumstances and situations and have a. And have a very confident conversation around money that are businesses. I'm looking to buy businesses. I'm looking to put equity into businesses that I may want to sell one day. Like, I understand the legal, I understand what people want, I understand what the expectations are. I understand what the pitfalls are. I understand the, the types of tricks and stuff like that that a lot of times your private equity people play with metrics and numbers and earnouts and all this kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Like, you can either be grateful for the journey and just see it as that. Right. And learn the lesson and apply it later, or you can be stuck in a mindset because I would not have gone from homelessness to where ultimately I am now had I just considered the same pattern. You have to understand you're operating on a pattern.

Right. When you understand you're operating on a pattern, then you can choose what goes in the pattern.

Yeah.

And you don't have to Change every. All 25 steps in the pattern all at one time.

Yeah.

You knock out one or two, going back to the spirit of compounding and leverage, which two concepts, which two patterns that if you disrupt them today are going to give you the greatest lift tomorrow. And you use that as a principle and you just keep knocking down what I refer to as dominoes. Like, you knock down this domino, they knocked out them. The more dominoes. It's funny, it takes, it seems like it takes like a year to knock down the first domino.

Yeah.

It takes a half year to knock down the second domino.

Yeah.

A quarter of your. Knock down a third domino.

Yeah.

I mean, by the time, by the time you, you create enough momentum, you're. You're knocking down dominoes left and right. And opportunities are presenting themselves to your left and right. You know, you, you also need to be praying, I think be prayerful and mindful and meditate or whatever your, whatever your practice is on helping to discern what is a wise decision and what is not. Right. So I've agreed with myself. This is a, this is a self standard that I won't spend more than $10,000 without sleeping on it for two days.

Where I used to, especially when I handle smaller amounts of money, I'm like, oh, I got 500 extra bucks. You know what I really want that TV. Know what? I really want to go on this vacation you know what? I really want to go impress this girl. You know what? I really. You see what I'm saying? Like, it's, it's a different mindset.

Yeah.

Like just commit to yourself to sit on your decisions for a hot minute.

Yeah.

And really be mindful. What are the weigh, the pros and cons? The bigger decision, the more you need to sit in it.

Okay, so I have more tactical questions. Maybe this is personal, but hopefully there's something in this for everyone. So I have a woman, I have a friend. I, I feel like I should connect you to her next time you're in la. She's a beast. She had a huge exit and she's just so generous and like so helpful and so humble. She's a big women's networking group and she's been really helpful for me. And she said something to me that I don't want to say. It negatively affected me because I, I appreciate her advice, but she said, ashley, you don't have a company that's ever going to be a hundred million dollar company. And I don't think she said that from a standpoint of like trying to make me less optimistic. I think she was saying like your agency and what you're offering doesn't have the scale. And it's not like I wake up every day and my purpose is telling me it better be a hundred million dollar company. But obviously if I'm building something, I'm pouring myself into it. I might as well make it the best it can be. And so I'm looking at what we doing. We it's 30k to write and book your TEDx talk with us. The price is going to go up because of our marketing, because I'm literally have worked.

Because you guys can get it done.

We get it done. And that's a whole nother thing that I could talk to you about in this episode. But I'm planning to exit because creatively I know that my creative brain only enjoys being on the same thing for so many years until my creativity needs something else. Like maybe I want to write a movie script or something. Which by the way, like pretty much all of my screenwriter, all of my writers for the TED talks have written movies and sold shows and they've written New York Times bestselling books. So it's so funny.

You're surrounded by new mentors.

Yeah, they're all my little mentors. And I literally look up to my whole team so much. We have our creative director, we pulled her from Apple. She was helping Steve Jobs with His decks and writing speeches for executives. I have the best team I've ever seen. The sky's the limit on what they could do with content.

But these TED Talks are a huge operation, right? Like getting it written, getting it A plus, being sure that we are excellent. And you know, I don't want to be sloppy, right? So we're doing a good job at that. We're humming along with that. We've got 10 to 15 of those a month coming in. I don't really know. There's so many different things I could do with my vision, right? I could offer publicity packages, right? Because any business coach is going to say, okay, well you need recurring revenue. It's like a one and done TED Talk thing. Like you need to make your business sustainable. You need recurring revenue. And I just really hesitate because I'm like, I don't want to just be another agency that's like throwing packages at people even if we're good at them. Like, this TED Talk thing is so unique and special and it's completely done for you. People show up in four Zoom calls. A speech takes 80 hours to write. Sometimes booking takes 200 hours. We're literally having them show up four times and doing the whole thing. So I like the ethos of like high roi, low on your side. I hate, you know that feeling, Stephen, when you hire somebody and you have to do a bunch of stuff for them, it's like the worst feeling.

They change every five seconds.

Yeah, I'm like, why did I hire this? Like, this is like a nightmare. So what a. What a big like list of to dos. So we like to take things off people's plate. And so I'm really struggling with my vision of like, what else do I want to offer that feels good. Like, we could offer PR packages. Like, we're about to have about three to 500 clients that have done TedX. And most of them leave saying, this is like the best writing I've ever seen. And we book them, right? Like, we pretty much, we don't guarantee it, but we kind of do. Like it's, we do a certain amount of pitches that pretty much like, it's a shock if you don't get booked. And we have 100% success so far. So it's like I'm struggling to figure out, like, I don't know, like, how to really have that vision that builds something out. So how would you help somebody that maybe they have a dog walking company or whatever. Like, I've got my TED Talk offer and it's like how do we really think bigger so that we can mirror the success that you've had? Because I don't think it almost feels like not everything is scalable or something like that.

So I would, I would disagree with, with that in a couple different ways. So first of all, your friend had very well intentioned advice.

Yeah.

Based on the current business model as it sits, most likely, and the current environment in which businesses are being bought and sold. Okay. So first thing you have to answer and this, we're gonna workshop this for fun one. Workshop this workshop.

Yeah.

All right. The first thing that a someone acquiring a business wants is what, what do you think they want? What's the number one thing they want exactly?

Revenue.

They want an ATM machine.

Yeah.

Okay. So once we understand they want an ATM machine, we have to determine what types of things create the ATM machine. So one of the first things that creates an ATM machine is operational excellence top to bottom. Actually having a pro, a business that is process mapped, that in the event of someone's demise that the business doesn't fall, you know, there's, there's a proven, proven path to recreate revenue on a regular basis. Okay. You're right in that they also want a reoccurring revenue model. They, they will not trade money for one and done because one and done a lot of times is directly tied to the entrepreneur, the founder or maybe the management team that created it. And a lot of times in an exit, the business owner might have, normally in a normal circumstance, probably has a minimum of two years, are still tied to the business before they fit to fully kind of be awake. They're in a creative capacity, a consultant. A consultancy, but they're typically tied to the business in some way, shape or form. Okay. So one and done model does not allow for that to, for them to retain clientele, retain profit, retain revenue, so on and so forth. So this is where I think a little thought and a little planning and actually turning on your creative juices could be.

Yeah.

How could you actually innovate the space? Okay. How could you, how could you do something that's never been done before that you could charge a reoccurring revenue model maybe with a 12 or 18 month agreement per client? What's a follow up sequence to the clients that are doing your TEDxS? What is something that they could sign up for that would benefit them, that's in your niche, in your genre, that they would do for 12 or 18 months for, you know, 10 grand a year or whatever it is? Right.

So this leads Me to another question, and this is my own insecurity that I think other people think about is like, there's a lot of business models where if I'm the founder, I'm the CEO and I have a team, you're relying on other people to get things done. So you're promising something to customers that is contingent on somebody else. I think PR is the epitome of that. Entrepreneurs pay a PR firm 10k a month, whatever, but that PR firm can't promise that they're going to book.

And most of them underperform, under hired a bunch.

Right, right, exactly. So that's the thing that I also struggle with as an agency is like, I love that we write and book the TEDx talk. And we already have some of that.

Yeah.

Writing of it is a deliverable. We can give it to you. We can promise it. I can do it if somebody bails. Right?

Yeah.

The booking, that is me relying on six people to be grinding. And it's a numbers game. Right. Like, it's not like we have a deal with God and he's going to promise us the TED Talk. Right. So we're hustling those TED Talks and it's a, it's a numbers game. Right. Like we have relationships of people that give us, you know, give us grace and pick us for TEDx speakers. But a lot of it is just a numbers game. We are spending 100, 200, 300 hours submitting tailored applications for you and doing whatever other juju have. But I, I'm. And my contract, it doesn't say we guarantee a TED Talk. It says we will do up to 200 submissions or whatever it is. And our slowest has been like 150 or something like that. Like, but it's, it's, it feels threatening. I think in the world of business where even if I do recurring revenue, it's like one thing that comes up for me is a speaking agency, like pitching people to be speakers. All these TEDx clients want to be a speaker, but that's like a PR firm. We're just pitching them, pitching them, pitching them to be a.

See, most speaker bureaus don't actually pick up the phone. They only handle inbound. But even being an agency that actually picks up the phone is willing to cold call. That's major. I'd sign up for that yesterday.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and get paid speeches for people.

I want to ask you to just. I don't mean to interrupt your train of thought, but something that's jumping out at me.

Please, all Right.

So you're, you're getting, you're getting high quality leads month in and month out. We taught that a little bit before we hopped on air. And I won't share your business, but we, you're getting, you're getting substantial leads coming in. Okay. Of those leads, a certain percentage of them are moving forward and actually partnering with you guys for them to hire the TED Talk. Okay. There's also a certain portion that's probably not moving forward, most likely because of a price point, because of, you know, thirty thousand dollar investment. So it's not, it's not an inexpensive investment. It's a worthwhile investment because I know your organization. But at the same time it's not, it's not going to be for everybody right off hand.

Right.

However, people are coming to you because they know you're the best in the business at getting this done. Okay. So what if Ashley took time to go out and create a resource that is reoccurring in digital of itself that they have access to over the course of a year along with some masterminding some other stuff once a month you could create a bit of a bundle offer that becomes a bit of a downsell at the time of your team selling this other thing that becomes a reoccurring revenue model. And you can put, once it's actually super profitable, then you take that, you dump it in, actually make it more mainstream. And now you have a reoccurring revenue model and then you license that back to the company that buys you. You see what I'm saying? So now you have a reoccurring revenue model based on a niche you're already in, focused on clients who want to work with you, but maybe can, can't afford to work with you at that level. And you can teach them the highlights and the high points in order for them to learn how to do some of it on their own. We always know that done for you is always better than do it with somebody. Right? So it's like we show you, we do it with you and then we do it for you. We do it for you is always better. It's always more expensive and it's always better. But we still have the other two slots. Like what is a we teach you model? Okay. And what kind of, what kind of financial monthly reoccurring revenue model could go there?

Right?

You know, what is the, what is the will will partner with you model? Maybe, maybe, you know, see what I'm saying? There's, there's other ways to take the, the current niche you're in and go deeper with that niche in the form of a. You know, most, most folks in this category.

Will have a digital resource vault mall. So they'll have 35, 12, 35, 45 training videos with a workbook that is actual teaching the poke. The folks that do it really well will do that component. But then they also do a once, a once a once to a three times a month mastermind scenario. So one of our mutual friends, Rory Vaden, his. His program was built like this a long time ago. So there was a. There was a way to get access because it was. His price point is similar to yours for some of the services that he offers. Okay. However, he also understands that the, the basically what's called attrition. He understands that not everybody's going to be afford everything and by actually having different price points and different levels, you're especially in a digital mall kind of concept, you're able to do something. So he had a, he had a price point for them to just get access to the online school for the content that. That is chaining. That's teaching components of his signature stuff that they would do for you. Okay. He then has a component where then you could actually have. Yes. We actually have a strategist work with you alongside of you to do this with you. That had a price point and then he had the full fledged we do it for you. Okay. In the digital concept he actually incorporated a. Another tier at the time which allows you to have access to the digital program, have access to a monthly hot seat which allows you to be taught one on one while other people watch along with a formal mastermind call. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

Think about the different signature packages that you could go deep with that are worthwhile for people spending money on on a consistent basis. I would say spending, investing money on. These are people who since who are sincere.

Yeah.

About getting their butt on a TedX stage.

Yeah.

And getting them cooking. Right. And then so you got that. So that's quote unquote phase one, which is really a downsell of your phase two and phase three is. Okay, now we've, now we've helped you get this speaking thing under. Under wraps, under control. Now we'll build a speaker agency around actually helping you get on other stages. But you still have to do the work.

Yeah.

And there's typically in a speaking bureaus and I've talked to a bunch of them. Right. So you're sharing anywhere from 10 to 20% of top line. So whatever the speaker fee is like, my speaker fee is 25 grand. So I would give away 2500 bucks every time someone booked me. All right. For, you know, for, for an actual event. Okay. On top of that, a lot of times, if they bring in endorsement deals or affiliate deals or stuff like that, there's a percentage giving there. I've got a client right now who's, who's getting ready to do go after a Guinness broker world record attempt. Okay. We're actively talking to sponsors, right? Well, and typically in the sponsorship world, if I was to go out and had a PR firm, they're going to get a piece of the sponsorship for doing, for doing the outreach. Right. A lot of times that will then lead into an endorsement deal. Like you, you take a. This is a crazy example. That's. It's not off the table, but it's, it's a, it's a, it's a rare one. You take Michael Jordan and Nike. Okay? Michael Jordan and Nike. Mom. Mom developed that deal. It was still one of the best deals on the planet as far as an endorsement deal. Okay. Mom and Michael still get paid every day like clockwork on a reoccurring revenue model based on endorsement for Michael to continue to share, promote, and just be the face of the Air Jordan. You see what I'm saying? So how many of your clients, and this is where you get to decide as a business owner how deep you want to go with a client. Right? So I go deep with clients I think can really get the job done. They're committed, they work hard. They're not. They're not, they're not afraid of the hard work. They got good hearts or, you know, I want to serve people who actually want to serve the world. So that's where I focus at. So you identify these five or ten different people that are part of people that have already experienced you and working with you and know you deliver, that you can believe in, that you can go and, and basically work on their behalf. So basically, your agency goes from a keynote agency or a key or a TED Talk agency to a full fledged branding agency.

Right. And it gives you a different elevation status. That action might be kind of fun, honestly, if you think about it. So you're looking to cut your teeth on three to five years because from the time that you decide you want to exit, you need to plan on three to five years before you can exit.

Yeah, exactly. I'm like, still working on my vision, but I think like, all these little issues are things that probably float around in people's heads of like, how do I really build something big? Do I even want to have something big? Maybe I want a lifestyle business. I'm like, no, I really want to build this agency out. I really want it to be the most elite speechwriting that there is in the whole world. But I also need other offers to make this an appealing company for me to get acquired, for me to exit. I've already had a couple PR firms reach out because TEDx is an enigma for them and it's such a beast. And so they're like, hey, we might be interested in acquiring you. And I'm like, give me a couple of years, you know, like I'm still building this baby out. But just your question, unless they want.

To give you a 15 multiple, man.

I know. Yeah, we can talk. Yeah, yeah, I would love that. I would love a crazy multiple. And there's so much I don't know. I just hired a CFO so that, that we can get my books right and stuff. But what is the one thing everybody listening? If you, if you wanted to share one message about them really getting out there and thinking bigger in the way that I'm trying to and they're trying to for themselves, what would be your biggest thing you would want them to consider before we go?

The only limitation that you have in front of you is what you put on yourself. I mean it's really that, that, that plain and simple. If, if you want something bigger and greater and more.

More inspiring for yourself, the secret is getting out of your own way. Right? So I'll give you an example. If you want to build an eight figure business, all you have to do is go learn what eight figure business builders do. Right. And take the good stuff and trash the rest. Because not all eight figure owner, eight, nine figure earners and even ten figure earners are great, great humans.

Yeah, right.

So you, you want to, you want to learn from the best, but also learn from the best that have a value alignment with yourself. Right. And understand it's a long game, not a short game. So you can't get frustrated if the money doesn't happen really fast or you don't have to like climb some stairs or a mountain to kind of get there. You know, I don't know anybody that, that earned that went from $0 to 8, 9 and 10 figures without putting a lot of sweat equity in.

Yeah. Amen.

You know, so much of the return is based on you doing the work today and you actually getting paid three to five years from now.

Yeah, that's How I feel. I'm like, sometimes I'm like, am I an overnight success? Because all my things started working and a lot of clients started coming in and I'm like, well, I gave my first ted talk in 2013 and I worked my ass off on that thing. And then that proved me a little bit. Then I give my second one and I really died over that one. Like, that was like 49, misery. 51. Amazing, you know?

Yeah.

Best thing I ever did slash, worst thing I ever did. Right? Like, it was just so much commitment on my side and I bled for that thing. And then it's like I started writing all these TEDx talks for another few years. And then I met this booker and she booked with a hundred percent success. And then we put it together. Then I got the team, then I got the ads. It's like, well, this has been in the making for 15 years, but it feels like the past three, like 10 months, it's become this rocket business.

Let me share one more thing with you, if it's okay, before, before we go. I think this is important because this will, I think this will help you.

Yeah, please.

In this particular thing. So you understand there's, there's five phases in building a business, okay. There's the startup phase, there's the testing phase, there's the investing phase, the scaling phase, and then the operate and or sell phase. Okay? So you started the business on building out your own TED talks and then getting your booker and stuff like that. You should begin testing the mechanism as far as like, hey, we now got clients coming in, we're now getting, we got proven track record for success, okay? Your next step is actually going from testing to investing. Okay? You're going to invest your time, your talent, your resources on building your operational machine, building a reoccurring offer that goes alongside of your two margin makers. Okay? Then you're going to focus on operational excellence. Then you're ready to really scale it. Once you have three years of scale under your business now, you can start having the dialogues and the discussions to actually sell or operate the business and you may change your mind. When I started my first company, I never intended to sell it it. That was not my intent. I didn't desire to, to begin to even look at that option until I realized me traveling and speaking and doing thought leadership and doing all this other stuff, which I was actually a lot more energized for, was very difficult while also simultaneously trying to run a very high eight figure business and then six other businesses that I own. Because I'm an entrepreneur at heart, and I can't stand myself not being busy.

Such a beast. Okay.

You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, that's. We. We did test our thing out, right? Like, there was probably four years. I was referring ted. I would. TED talks were so powerful for me. I. Many millions of dollars in consulting that I started telling every career coaching client when I was a career coach, you got to do one of these, like, write the script, use your time with. And I'll refer you to booker. When I saw the booker book, pretty much 100% of those people, 39 out of 40. The one she couldn't book had a very thick Italian accent. She couldn't book her because the curator said we can't understand her English. But her speech looks great.

Tedx Italy.

Yeah, that was like a 4. Exactly as I told him. Like, you got to do TEDx Italy. So we turned it into. That's when I knew to turn it into a business. So it was like proving the model, and then it. What was the second piece you said, like, testing. What was the second?

Investing. So testing. So you start up. Yeah, we've invested, investing, scaling, operate, slash, sell. Those are the five phases.

So we. We tested the offer, and we are working on our operational excellence right now. Obviously, the first year I was in business, I had 40 clients. I could kind of manage that myself over 12 months. But now with 10 coming in a month, we're automating. We're creating dashboards, we're creating workflows, we're creating team. And then it's like, from there, we're really scaling up our ads, and we're kind of doing it at the same time, which is kind of scary. I'm like, all right. The automation.

That's where the CFO comes into play, by the way. The CFO's job is to help us get there and also pump the brakes when we need to.

I know I need a police officer with this, somebody policing me, because I'm like, I have an idea. This is the dashboard we need.

That makes you an entrepreneur. We have an idea about every 10 seconds. I've had, like, 16 on here.

I am like, somebody say me for myself every 20 minutes. Oh, my gosh, we need this dashboard. Okay, Ashley. But it costs 25k. It's okay. We have to have it. We have to have it. No, you don't. So thank you so much, Steven. Where can everybody find you and everybody who isn't watching this? Visually, I'm, like, eating my lunch and talking to Steven. That's that kind of startup.

Because we're close, right?

Yeah. It's just friends. I haven't, I haven't had a break all day and I'm just happy to be talking to you. But where can everybody find you?

Oh gosh, stevenscoggins.com is probably the easiest place you can. Also, I'm most personally active on Instagram. I'm. My team obviously operates all the other channels. I do get access to my DMs and stuff like that. My team is also back there all the way. So if you're just going to call me to sell me something, please don't, you know. So. But those are the two, the two easiest ways. And other than that, I just like hanging out with amazing people like you.

So thank you so much for being here and for opening up. I hope all my sharing for everybody listening was relevant for you too in some way. And until next time, thank you. U Turn friends Take it easy.

Thanks for tuning in to the U Turn podcast. I hope you learned so much in this episode and you're putting it into action today. We would love to hear from you. Slide into my DMS at Ashley Stahl or leave a written review if you're inspired. It would mean so much to us. Be sure to subscribe to the show.

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