Pursue the Adventure and the Business with Brad Weimert

Foreign.

Welcome to the latest episode of the Todd Hartley Show. This one is gonna be an adventure. That is, if you are open and interested in going on an adventure and discovering how. How you can better yourself. I mean, what adventure is greater than this magical mystery tour that we're all on called life, Right? It's the show that never ends. And my next guest, Brad Wymer, is.

An adventurer and an entrepreneur.

And, yo, don't those go hand in hand? Like, every entrepreneur I know is, like, down for an adventure. Some months you're climbing that hill and you're about to see the peak, and other months, you're way down deep into Death Valley thinking about God being with me at the top and also in the shadows in the valley. And few people enjoy the adventure more than my buddy Brad.

Brad was also.

If you've been listening to the Todd Hartley show, you know that I've been.

Interviewing a series of my friends that I was with in Cabo, and Brad.

Was there, and Brad and I spent.

A considerable amount of time together in Cabo, and I got to pick his.

Brain so much that I want you in this interview to be looking for what I do in conversations with my friends who are wildly successful. I want to know, what are they doing? How are they getting themselves to the next level? I want to know what new tricks they're trying to pull off or new adventures they're on, what lessons they've discovered. Because you know the saying, if you can learn from somebody, you don't have to make that mistake yourself. If you can learn from them, you can evolve faster. And with Brad, look at how he prepares for adventures and business with a similar mindset. Listen for Brad's blueprint. I want you to lift it up, look through it like it's a transparency, and then lay it down on your life and in your business. If you need more adventure, maybe you aren't pushing yourself hard enough. If your business is stagnant, maybe you aren't looking at your business through the lens of an adventurer that's ready to go out and conquer something new. I've discovered when I was struggling with.

Learning disabilities, that if I was bored.

Or disinterested, I needed to gamify myself. And the more that I gamified myself and the more I made things like Brad like an adventure, the more successful I was in class or in business or in relationships. Look for how he gamifies. And you use that in your life.

You'Ll score really high very quickly.

And before you know it, just like.

Brad, you might Create for yourself a really bitchin mohawk.

But first, here's a word from our sponsors. This podcast is brought to you by the Wirebuzz team. Now, if that name sounds familiar, it's because I've spent the past decade growing Wirebuzz into a digital marketing powerhouse designed to maximize clarity in complex sales processes so we can help accelerate revenue. And we do this in three phases. Phase one, we transform your website to function like your best salesperson and then also incorporate persuasive on demand sales videos. Now, your entire team is aligned on messaging and they're injecting massive clarity into your prospect's head. So your site looks great, but it also has engaging content that helps your team sell on demand. 24. 7 the next phase. Phase 2. We train your sales and marketing teams to sell remotely or in person to expand the impact of your sales team. And the third phase is we develop and run targeted ads to your prospects. Scale those ads to help you achieve more business results. Sign up for the Wirebuzz Company newsletter to learn more about effective and simple ways to improve your company messaging, attract more digital attention, and ultimately make more sales.

In the interest of full disclosure, Brad and I were. This is going to sound much more cushy than it was. Well, actually it was pretty damn cushy. Brad and I were hanging in Cabo and it couldn't the circumstances. True or false. Brad couldn't have been cushier. That's true.

It's fairly accurate.

Yes.

And so everybody in our group, Brad.

And I are in this mastermind group of like 15 rock stars. We all coach, advise and guide each other throughout the year. And then once a year we all get together. And this last time was in Cabo and one of the guys in the mastermind group has a 10 bedroom house over the ocean. And Brad and I made the smart decision to stay in the luxury hotel down the street, which allowed us the ability to get away from 15 alpha males and one alpha female to be able to recharge and show up the next day. So Brad and I would walk back each night and we'd have breakfast together before we'd get around each other. Brad, do me a favor. Tell me about about Easy Pay Direct. And then I want to rewind the clock and I want to extract some of these like Brad conversations that I had with you over the water with coffee, watching the sun come up. Because some of the things that you said to me I think are so damn valuable that people will be able to impact their life and get next friggin Level. How does that sound?

Great. Yeah.

All right, super.

So tell me about Easy Pay Direct and then I'm going to rewind you.

So Easy Pay Direct, at its core helps people optimize the way that they accept payments online. So we specifically work with largely e commerce companies, but companies that do more than a million dollars a year in revenue. Our target market is usually 20 to 50 million, but we work with lots of people that are sub 1 million and over that mark. We basically want to make sure that A, you can always accept payments online, which is a huge challenge, and B, you're getting the most money possible when you're accepting, meaning that your decline rates are not a control, your rates are not a control, and that you have a single point of contact that's helping you navigate that whole process online. That's kind of the nutshell.

All right, and what year did you start Easy Pay Direct?

Started Easy Pay Direct in 2012. Okay.

And was there like a light bulb moment, an impetus, a spark that made you realize, oh my God, I have no choice. I've got to roll the dice and open up this business.

Yeah. You know, I grew up in sales and I grew up in I'm going to close you right now or it's never going to happen kind of sales. And it was one call close and literally I'm never going to talk to you again if it doesn't happen. And I moved into this B2B relationship selling situation, which often isn't a one call close often. And once you close, you really want the relationship over time. So you're selling a service. I got into sales and payments and through a progression of events. Like, I started by selling to liquor stores and restaurants and knocking on doors because that's all I knew how to do over time. It was, I think, 06 07. I had a number of friends that were starting companies and so I started working with them to do the credit card processing for them. What I didn't know at the time was that there's this tremendous risk inside of payments and accepting payments online. And so a lot of them had had their merchant accounts closed and or couldn't get approved to accept merchant accounts. And the company that I was selling for at the time was not particularly friendly to that specific genre. So, like, I had a friend that started realestateinvestor.com for example, that sold information to teach people how to invest in real estate, which is an area that I spend a lot of time in. Over a few years of doing that, I started to figure out what the problem was in that space and why they were having those challenges and how to help mitigate those challenges. And so I hit a point where I was like, okay, nobody is adequately serving the market for this. Somebody should do it. Now, the, you know, combination of arrogance and ignorance around thinking that I was the one that should solve me, the sales guy should solve the problem, is something different and special. But it ended up working out eventually.

That's part of the. That's part of the.

The charm of it, though. And this is where I think your personal life and your desire for extreme fitness challenges also comes into being an entrepreneur and identifying a challenge and going after it. So let's leapfrog into this, like, fitness part of your life. By the way, you guys should know that I've hung out with Brad before. The Mohawk has reached full peak in the day. And as a former investigative reporter, as we're having breakfast, I'm like, dude, I need to know, like, underneath your hat is that thing still primed? So, like, Brad, there's this whole endurance fitness athlete part of you. Tell me a little bit about that, because I think that they come in together with your entrepreneurial passion.

Yeah, man. Well, I think, first and foremost, I don't believe that balance is the right approach to life for a lot of people, and I'm one of them. I don't have an on or off switch. I don't have a desire to put something that I'm passionate about aside to, quote, unquote, recharge. I have a desire to figure out how to do the things that I'm passionate about in life together, in alignment. And I think that the endurance activities that I get into in the extreme sports that I get into, that I want to do are very much in parallel with the rest of my life. So I've done a. I like to do sort of unusual, extreme stuff. There are, you know, there's kind of, I think, the standard course of triathlons and, you know, ironman races. And I think that those are awesome, but they're not as interesting to me as something that's slightly more unique. So the last one that I did was I ran. It's called Rim to Rim to Rim. And I ran from one side of the Grand Canyon down and up to the other, and then down and back to the beginning in the same day, which is when I was thinking about it. Somebody sent me a link, and it said, this is not your average ultramarathon. And the article opens with, this is going to be painful. Terrible. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yes. Yeah. And I had that moment. But the thing is, the reason that I got excited about that, I think pins to everything else, which was. It scared me, Right? So when you read the external narrative that this is nuts, and it's not just an ultra marathon, it's like an extreme version of an ultramarathon, the thing inside that scares me is what makes me drop everything else and drive towards it and have focus on this one activity and outcome. And I think that that's true, whether it's the endurance stuff or business or whatever else. Yeah.

I love it. I love it. It is like a feeling you get on the inside where you start to feel the excitement and the passion. Is it almost like you're opening for a new chapter in your adventurous life story and you're like, oh, my God, I can't miss this story. That's a no, by the way. I just saw it on Brad's face. That was a total no.

That's a no. But it's a. I think what it is is, you know, years ago, I had. I was invited to go ride a bicycle from Los Angeles to Boston. And it was a similar moment where I was like, oh, that. My initial thought was, I know how to ride a bike. I can do this. Which, again, is this combination of arrogance and ignorance. But as I leaned into it, I thought it was scary, and I had to step up in order to do it. Fast forward several years, I realized that there are these huge gaps in time between me pursuing this adventure and pursuing business. And what I was lacking was the alignment between those things. And I didn't want to have to be on or off with it. I wanted to make sure that both were happening together in my life. So I make a point of pushing these things into my life whenever I can. So it wasn't a question of I have to do it. This is another opportunity to experience something unique with people that are also unique and drive those relationships deeper. And that's at the core of doing most of these adventures, is relationships to close the loop.

Did you actually ride a bike across the country?

I did. Indeed you did.

Didn't anybody tell you? Because it started in Boston. Didn't anybody tell you? Paul Revere didn't go that far. You didn't have to go to that.

Well, it ended in Boston, and oddly, it ended with the World Series in Boston, which was like this epic, ridiculous event for the city of Boston. So it was a hell of a time to finish there.

Yeah, that's really cool. And not that I'm ever going to do this, and it's not one of the chapters in my life, but how long does it take to ride across the country and how did you get that much time off from work?

Well, this was in the beginning when I just started selling credit card processing services. So I had a little residual that paid my bills, residual income, and I was doing some real estate investing and I actually did real estate investing. I closed on properties while I was on the road with a mobile notary, which is super cool. Um, but it took. We had 33 riding days, which were. We averaged about 110 miles a day, but we also had 33 speaking days. So we were stopping and speaking to middle schools and talking to kids about decision making and how the choices you make when you're younger impact you when you're older.

Beautiful.

Yeah, Love that. Yeah. Really, really insightful experience for me in a lot of ways today it feels.

Like a Netflix documentary. Yes, it really does. And if I knew you back then, I would have hoard you out and I would have recorded that thing and we would have done quite well. Now listen, when we were in Cabo together, you mentioned that there's something like extraordinary about extreme physical activity. Something like when you're at the far end of. Yet these physical capabilities, you discover really who you are and what you're made of. Now, Brad, do you feel the same way about your entrepreneurial activities? Like when you're at that far edge, like on the tips of your skis in your business and you're a little destabilized, is that where you discover who you really are as a business leader?

I think that that's who you discover who you are in life, period. But I think beyond that with business, it's. It tends to be not as clear in business when you're at that point. And for me, I find it more in volume in business. So the more I do something, the further I go, the more revenue we generate. That's when I realized that, oh, I'm actually living in a different world all of a sudden. And I don't have the same frame today that I did five years ago. And all of a sudden I look at it and I'm like, oh, wait, I've heard about this, right? I've heard about this being a thing. But it wasn't until right now in this moment that I was capable of really grasping how to make the decisions differently because it felt real.

Revenue for.

Easy Pay Direct has climbed naturally over the years, but Are there these inflection moments, acceleration moments inside of the Easy Pay direct experience for you where you realized, oh my gosh, if I want to go up another level and achieve my goals so I can be more, serve more, do more. What is like the first acceleration moment where you were like, this is I. This might make a big difference if I tried this.

So I don't know about the first because it seems like forever ago. And there was this, you know, there was gradual growth over time and it was good growth. But we hit a Plateau in maybe 2015, and for a couple years it was the same and I was enjoying life, right? Life was great. But I got to a point in, I think 2018 where I looked at it and I just felt mediocre. And I have a. One of my favorite quotes is I would rather die of thirst than drink from the cup of mediocrity. Right. And one of the things that pushed me through that this is. I don't think that this is a. I think this served me in that moment. One of the things that pushed me through that is I was trying to get management in the company to take action and grow and develop. And what I needed to do in the moment was take over and do some of the shit myself. Now that's terrible advice, depending on what stage in the business you're in. But in that particular moment, in that particular part of the business, I needed to go back and hone operations and roll up my sleeves and do some of the operational structuring myself. And that was the cornerstone for moving to accelerating significantly from 18, 19, 20, etc.

Okay. I love it, dude. I've noticed, and I'm wondering if your entrepreneurial experience is similar, that many of my acceleration moments inside of my agency were actually when I looked in areas that I didn't normally look like I started to look at. Give you an example, we had a late payment problem for years and then it got to a point where I was floating 400 grand out of my personal account in order to fund billion dollar companies that were doing a 90 day payment instead of paying on delivery. And eventually my wife and I started getting destabilized, right? Because it was only so much money that out of my account I can float. So I started looking around on how I could change the payment terms. This was an area that I didn't normally look, but once I started turning over the rocks, I realized there was an optimization opportunity. Have you experienced something like that?

No, I haven't. You know what? I've experienced more than anything routinely is. I think that this is probably a matter of perspective, but what I've realized more than anything is it's my own shit. It all rolls back to me. And so when I see what I have seen is situations where I thought somebody was performing and owning their role, and they weren't, right? And then I go back and look at myself and say, okay, well, how did I end up hiring that person? How have I been managing that person? Why did I believe that this was the case and it's not? So. Yeah, it was. It's not. I don't think it's been so much a matter of uncovering, you know, having some epiphany, but it has been a major consideration is where's my focus going, right? How am I putting energy into the business? Is it too fragmented? Am I just keeping plates spinning? Or can I actually move something forward significantly? And my mantra this year and last has been focus.

When your focus goes off of the business, does the business stop its acceleration?

Oh, yeah. So, I mean, I'm at the phase of business where the business will run whether I'm here or not. Everybody will be taken care of. Everything's fine. We'll have moderate growth, but we're not going to accelerate. And to me, what I think are the next steps are key leaders that can help push that forward.

Right. No, I get that I might be in the same exact phase where I can step away and start doing things like the Toddcast or go out and go on a speaking tour, but if I want to get next level, I've got to have people that are there that are also focused on keeping everybody's eyes on accelerating to the next level. Right?

Yeah. And.

And so how do you find that kind of person?

Hell if I know, man. Well, I think that that's the. That is the question. Right. And it's not just finding them. It's, you know, it's. You know, I break. I break hiring down into three categories. It's sourcing, it's screening, and then it's onboarding, Selling and onboarding them into the. Into the company. And the sourcing process has changed rather radically in the last couple of years because I think a lot of reasons. Right. But as we went through Covid, we've seen across the board, hiring is much more difficult and the boundaries are off.

Like you're in Austin. But do you care if whoever you hire is in Austin?

Depends on the role. And I used to care a lot more than I do now. But out of necessity, there's Some things where it's like, okay, yeah, I'd like you to be in house, but if you can perform the role externally. Okay, yeah. So boundaries are off. I think there are a bunch of other things. But as a result, you know, posting a job on the traditional job boards that might have worked three years ago don't seem to be. They are not yielding the same number of applicants that they were three years ago.

Right.

So figuring out other paths to do that is highly relevant. And then the screening process is a whole nother thing. Right. And how dialed you are into, what responsibilities you have, what character traits underlie that, what values underlie that, how you adequately assess those things. Yeah. I just had a long conversation with a good friend of mine, Cameron Herold, who runs the COO alliance, and we were traveling in Patagonia, and we stopped and actually recorded an episode of Beyond a Million, which is the podcast that I started a few months ago. And the whole thing ended up being about hiring. And he's an operations guy, and so hiring is something he's world class at, but for him, it came down to the screening or the sourcing process, finding the good candidates. I drilled into this for a while because I was like, where are you finding people now? And he said, ultimately, he said, the offer needs to be stronger. You won't have a problem sourcing people if the offer is strong enough. And it reminds me of years ago, a friend, Ryan Dice, got up and he gave a talk, and he said, people say that they have a traffic problem. They can't get enough people, which is the same thing as sourcing. It's just clients versus employees. He said, you don't have a traffic problem. You can just go to the traffic store and buy traffic, which is Facebook or Google. He said, you have an offer problem. What you're selling is not a strong enough offer to attract the traffic to buy it. The same thing is true of hiring. Yeah.

Isn't that interesting? Most people don't look at those two elements and realize that they're actually governed by the same universal forces. Pretty cool.

No question about it. I mean, you are. You are finding employees. If you're. If you're scaling, if you're growing, you're finding employees, screening employees, hiring employees through the same mechanisms, the same principles that you're finding customers.

Yep. So fascinating to me. You know, I just authorized the hiring of about five or six employees leading up to the rest of this year in key positions. And I know this topic is going to come up, and I also know that I'M removed from a lot of the hiring process as the CEO, it's not part of my purview anymore. And I actually found that there were other people on the team that were significantly better in the hiring process. And I just get to be in that last interview, which is probably where I deserve to be. Hey, in, in your company, what are the areas that you found that you could advance your business to the next level if you weren't in those areas?

Can you say that another way?

Yeah. Are there areas inside your business that yes, you may supervise, but a portion of your time is no longer there because it's not your wheelhouse?

Yeah, I mean, customer service, client onboarding, customer service. And I think I have this internal voice that's like, well, you argue that that and you should be doing that, but ultimately that's one that I've effectively allowed others to run with. Yeah, for sure. And the other that I, that I have to allow others to run with is outbound sales. So actually the, the sales process, the sales operations, et cetera. Now where I will continue to remain and live is, is large deal acquisition and strategic partnerships. And that's something I'm great at. But sales management, I am not good at. I am not an idea. I'm not a world class manager.

Right. Well, I get it.

I get it, bro.

So part of where I'm going is self awareness and knowing your strengths and your weaknesses has helped you accelerate your business to the next level. You agree with that, right? So you could hire people that were better than you, more skilled, that could take you guys to the next level. What's the, what was the realization process like for you? Like, you didn't just wake up one day and realize that that's not your strength or where your best use of time is. Right. How did you get to be aware enough to. I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs walk around with the belief that they can run the whole company and do everything, but a mature entrepreneur recognizes that their best use is in certain key specific areas. What happened with you?

I think there are two things that come to mind. One is the general notion of are you better off getting your mediocre skills to functional or getting your functional skills to excellent. And where do you want to. How can you have the highest impact? And I think certainly there are some areas where it behooves you to just not be mediocre. You should at least be functional as a CEO. But if you really want to invest your time investing it in the things you're already good at and Then become world class at. I think there's big impact there. But in order to do that, you need to have a supporting staff, right? And you have to have other people that are capable of doing very well in the other areas. A couple years ago, I had a. I've got an executive coach and I'm like his charity case. I mean, he works with ex Presidents and Fortune 50 CEOs and. But we have kind of a similar approach and mindset, so I think he just likes working with me. But. But he asked me, he said, what. What makes you feel successful? And I said, well, getting shit done makes me feel successful. Yeah. And he said, okay. He said, what if. He said, just walk with me here. But what if just getting shit done is failure? And what if you get shit done but you don't teach somebody to do it, consequently getting it off your plate? You have failed yourself because you didn't create any leverage. What if success was only getting things done if you taught somebody else in the process? And that shift in frame is so valuable to me because when I sit and I think about, you know, I ask myself the question, what should I do? The answer can't be, what can I get done? It has to be, who can I teach? What system can I put in place?

All right, Brad, I'd like to scoot you a little bit more in frame. I know you had a shift in frame, but you went off frame. There you go. Yeah, that's better. We'll cut right here so you don't have to worry about that. I'm going to do a little clap spot for my editor. And sometimes a little adjustment makes us realize that the role we had when we started our company is not the role that we have now. As the company is maturing. And as you started the company, one of the skills was that you could do a lot of things. Like, I'm a Swiss army knife and I could do any role within the company. But as we started to mature, I had to go back to my specialty tools. You had something very similar.

Yeah, no question about it. I mean, I think I still have it, right? It's still a. Yeah, definitely. You know, I have derived. But this is why it goes back to you as the individual getting better, as a human. Because I have derived my own sense of self worth and satisfaction and happiness from getting things done, from being an executor, from being the guy that does it. And I have, in fact, I have historically had some sense of. Embarrassment around having somebody else do something for me. And that paradigm needs to change before you're going to functionally be able to delegate tasks that, yes, you could do, and maybe you could do them better, too. But you can't grow that way. You can't expand at the rate that certainly an entrepreneur needs to if you're going to scale your company. You just can't get as much done in life if you don't let go of the reins and have somebody else do it.

Yep. Today marks the fifth anniversary of our controller at my agency, Wirebuzz. Her working with us, and she changed our entire company.

Just by.

I don't mean the entire company, but she changed our revenue and she changed our profitability. And since she joined us, we increased our profitability seven times. And that's like, I could do that in my head. You know, the ego kicks in, but maybe because I was doing so much, I didn't do it. And by hiring somebody who could, I was able to free myself up and allow somebody to focus on that area where they could get us to the next level. And I mean, that's part of, like, the acceleration in a business that needs to take place. Hey, if you're not getting acceleration inside of your business, if you're not getting growth, if you're not generating new clients, if you're. Then the. The confidence starts to wane. Right. How does Brad get his mojo back? When you start to feel like, oh, wow, we're getting stagnant and I'm about.

To drink from the cup of mediocrity, Enter endurance athletics. So that's how it's done. And, you know, it doesn't have to be endurance. I think that any physical activity is my source of stability. So if you. Yeah. If you buy into. There are a thousand frameworks for this, but Tony Robbins framework is that there are a handful of core human values that you are pursuing and that you need in life. And people have different weights on them. Right. What's important to them is different. For me, variety is a huge driver. For me, I want variety in my life, but we all need stability in our lives, too. Stability, or lack of variety, said another way, is really important specifically to a lot of employees. And they get that stability through their job very often. Sometimes people get it through a relationship. My stability comes from exercise. I know that I can go do this thing physically and get this result 99 out of 100 times. Right. And sometimes it feels a little different or whatever, but I know I can go do that. And so if I want it. Yep.

Something interesting. It's like you go to a restaurant for a replicatable experience. That's why people order virtually the same thing every time they go. Like Friday night in the Hartley House, it's pizza. And we eat clean the whole rest of the week, But Friday we get a little crazy, right? And of course, that pizza always comes after a happy hour, which is more than just one hour. So I've always noticed that this whole, like, I show up at a place, I have something replicatable, I leave with the desired outcome. People go to church, they show up, they have a replicatable outcome, they leave feeling more connected to God. And when I go and exercise, I also have a replicatable experience and I exercise probably like you for the feeling that I get when I'm done and how it impacts the rest of the day. What time of day do you work out? You exercise. And how does that affect your. Your ability to get next level?

Yeah, well, for me, it's not the. It's not actually the outcome, it's the process. So the. The experience of exercising for me is where the stability is. I know in that moment what I'm doing, that this is what I'm supposed to be doing with my time. And I know that ultimately it is going to, whether short term or long term, produce the result I want. And it's first thing in the morning. 90, 95% of the time, it's first thing in the morning. I wake up, I usually do coffee, I read, write, do some mission critical stuff, sometimes look at goals, and then I either hit the gym or go for a run.

Why the morning?

To ensure that it gets done. And if. If your priorities in life, if health is lower than a different priority in life, then I would suggest that you do something else first thing in the morning. Yeah, but there's one driver for that, and it is to make sure that before anything else happens, I know that this thing's getting done. I know that I did it. I'm not leaving it up to, you know, subjective, emotional Brad later to see if he can fit it in. No, no, it's first thing.

You don't negotiate with yourself. You get up. The first act, like, of the heart, which pumps its oxygen depleted blood into the lungs and then feeds itself. First you exercise, first you feed yourself. The rest of the day kind of falls into place.

Mm.

What's this Brad swagger like? You know, the Brad that just worked out compared to the Brad that didn't. You know what I'm talking about? There's like a Brad swagger that's at another level when you Just crushed your workout.

You know, I'm actually currently. I'm actually currently struggling with that. Because there are. Particularly when you get into endurance land, it's very common to actually, the entire game is pushing past your baseline incrementally so that you don't kill yourself, and you just increase where the baseline is. Right? You just move the baseline up. But the challenge with that is every time. Not every time, but often when you move past your baseline, it's uncomfortable and it drains you. And in the short run, it doesn't feel productive. In the short run, it feels like you stretched and you're hurting yourself a little bit and you're exhausted. Right. But over time, if you stretch a little bit. A little bit. A little bit, eventually your baseline moves and you can go out and do something bigger and it doesn't even phase you. So when I think about getting energized from working out, there are often times when I don't get energized by doing it. So I can't actually relate to that point. In this moment, I feel more the ladder of like I'm pushing.

I love this, though, because when you started talking, I heard in my head the acceleration moment. Because life really begins at the end of your comfort zone. Yo, entrepreneurs, I'm talking specifically to you when you're uncomfortable. Like Brad talking about why he started Easy Pay Direct and how he had to learn new skills in order to execute and he discovered he could serve people. There's so many similarities to what Brad was just talking about with endurance activities. Getting uncomfortable, but getting to the point where you can do more and you've trained yourself to go further. So something tells me, Brad, that you live in what is called can I constant and never ending improvement. And that's where you spend most of your time physically and also as an entrepreneur. Do you buy that?

Yeah, I think that. I think that you're one of our core values. Two of our core values in the company are persistence and growth. And I don't care to try to teach people these values. I care to find people that have those values because those are the values that underlie problem solving and improvement. And I think whether it's business or personal life or exercise or whatever, yeah, you have to be working on getting better. Life moves fast and faster than ever. Right. And the only hope you have of maintaining happiness is progress. I'm the same way.

I totally agree. Brad, tell me about the podcast that you've got going and what unique value you provide to people with it.

Well beyond a million is the podcast and you can find it on all the podcast places. But we are specifically interviewing multimillion or 8, 9, 10 figure entrepreneurs around the core elements of business. So sales, marketing, operations, technology, and taxation or wealth building. And we're looking for actionable insights tactically and strategically from people that have actually done it. So, you know, when you're starting a business and you're launching it, there's a different playbook and different procedures that are going to help you go from 0 to a million or 1 to 10 million or 10 to 100 million or whatever. And we want to interview people to help entrepreneurs out there that are past that point. Right. You've reached stability and you're looking for the next level.

I love it, dude. I just love that, like, hungry spirit inside of you. I love how it's consistent. I hope people pay attention. That's consistent from his business life and his personal life and its next level growth. Brad, where can people go besides Easy Pay Direct to learn more about you?

I'm on all the socials. You can find Brad Weimert all over the place, but bradweimert.com, w e I M e r T is I think, the source of things. And, you know, I'm sadly present on Instagram and wherever we can be these days. I think that along the lines of the podcast, I want to be putting out stuff that helps people grow their businesses. And so we have to put it all over the place. So if you have other suggestions, let me know, but that's where you can find me.

Right on. And what is your next extreme activity or endurance activity that you've got planned? Because we might find you there also.

Man, that's a great question. It's up in the air right now. I haven't pinned one down.

Do you have any finalists?

Well, there are a series of extreme marathons and ultramarathons, but short answer is no. I could give you a list of ridiculous shit that might happen, might not, but I don't want to put my foot in my mouth right now. This is how it happens, Todd. I say something like this publicly and then I get stuck and I'm like.

Oh, shit, now I've got to do it, right? You're not going to swim the English Channel or anything like that? You're not going to go and swim the Everglades and try to fight off any crocodiles or something?

Swimming is the worst. And that doesn't mean I won't do it. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen next. I really like the idea to say.

Extreme in the title of the activity before you'd be interested.

No, no. And in fact, I would prefer to do off the wall stuff. Right. I'd prefer to. I had a friend who. I have a friend who wants to go run train tracks, which, by the way, running train tracks is. It's a rather terrible experience because there's no way to zone out. You're very focused on the ties and just landing on the ties. But train. Train tracks go through some pretty bizarre, crazy areas that aren't exposed to the rest of soc. So I don't know, maybe. Maybe I'll run train tracks.

So am I kind of a wimp because I did a four mile hike this morning. I mean, in your world, is that like weak. That weak sauce?

Yeah, you're terrible. No. You know what's funny is that I really, really. One of the things that I don't like about pushing the envelope from an endurance perspective and doing crazy stuff is that people seem to feel uncomfortable wanting to do things with me and they feel like they're not. I'm not going to enjoy it or like, oh, no, I'm just doing four miles. And the irony there to me is a. I really enjoy that. I'm doing it for relationships. So one of those things is relationships myself to be able to push the envelope. But the other is just being able to connect with the person that I'm with through a unique experience and then the other. And so I miss that if people don't latch on and are uncomfortable proposing the idea of doing something together. But the other is that I fundamentally believe that it's easier for me to go from if my baseline of running is 20 miles and I want to go to 25 or it's 30 miles and I want to go to 50. I think it's easier for me to do that than it is for somebody to go from one mile to four miles because I have a ton of data points supporting the fact that I can do this. And when people are going from zero to one, they have to build their own data points. They don't have the references internally saying that they can do it. I have phenomenal respect and admiration for the process of getting off the couch and doing your first mile. But that's.

I totally agree. But that is also an analysis of limiting beliefs.

Definitely.

Right. Because your limiting belief meter is off and you have a belief meter and you know that you can execute is most of the difference between the 4 mile and the 20 mile up here.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's, it's almost all up there. So.

And for those that are listening in audio, I just pointed to my, my head just so you know.

So when I, I did two endurance events in 20, 21, and both of them I got to the same point. But the, the last one, rim to rim to rim, it's a 45 mile run with 10,000ft of elevation gain, which is a lot of gain in this period. In 13 miles in, I rolled my ankle on the trail, sprained my ankle and broke a bone in my left foot. Just 13 miles into a 45 mile run. Without question, the, the thing that kept me going was my mind. Right, right. My body was in pain and my foot hurts. It is. But what became clear to me was that I've done enough of these now. The phrase that popped in my head was, oh, I am the dog that can run himself to death in the heat. I am. Now I'm crystal clear on the fact that my body can be hurt to the point of devastation, but I can tell myself that I can keep going no matter what. And that's all mind. And I really believe that anybody has, that anybody has the physical capability of doing really extraordinary things. The barrier is how you think about it.

You know, there were moments in Cabo with our friends at this mastermind group where we all had a bunch of drinks and nobody planned on driving. And people were already starting to say, well, Brad could at least run to the store 15 miles away and come back and he'll be back really soon. And we'll all be thrilled that Brad did that. And it was like, you know, whenever there's somebody who's got that mindset and there are other alpha males in the group, they're going to figure out how they can get that other person to go to the liquor store for them. And Brad, it's a real treat to get to spend time with you. I'm so grateful that you and I both did not stay in the big house and instead we got to spend some quality one on one time. You're an inspiration. And for those that are looking for more information, well, bradweimert.com you can also go to easypaydirect.com and Brad, thank you so much for sharing your accelerations moments with me on the Toddcast.

Love it. Appreciate it, man.

Yo, that was a powerful episode. And from what we just learned, it should be obvious how you can now implement these lessons in your life to get to the next level. Now, before you bounce, I just have three quick thoughts. First, thank you for taking me on.

Your incredible life journey.

Second, if you receive some value from me and you want to pay it forward, it would mean the world to me. If you left an honest rating and review at Apple, Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, I'd be incredibly grateful. And lastly, if you share this episode, whether it be a screenshot or a photo from where you're listening, anything via Instagram stories or LinkedIn, Facebook or any of the social media sites, just tag me and the guest. I'll repost your content and I'll reply back in the comments because I love mixing it up. In fact, I'd love to share your shout outs in my feed too. Not only are these shout outs really good for you and for me, but they also help us book more amazing guests because they'll be able to see the reach that you're helping to cultivate. This is a way for you to help contribute to the show. So thank you again for listening and I look forward to earning a regular spot inside that ear of yours. Let's grow.