YEAR VLOG CHALLENGE DAY 3 | “It ain't all sunshine and rainbows”

Alright, day 3 of the vlog underway. Man, I'm not gonna lie, this thing is harder than I expected, harder than I anticipated. You know what's really interesting too about vlogging is I think vlogging has changed a lot. Been doing a lot of research on how I can make this vlog better and already I've got a lot of thoughts on things I'm doing wrong. But that's kind of the whole point of this vlog. It's the whole point of what I'm doing in general. I'm doing this, I'm pushing myself. To get uncomfortable, right? Because when you're uncomfortable, that's when learning, that's when growth happens. And that's really the main driver behind this whole channel and what I want to do here and forcing myself to create content because the more you do it, the better that you get. And actually there's a really good book by Malcolm Gladwell, famous author, called Outliers. He talks about the 10,000-hour rule. To become a master at something, it takes 10,000 hours. So if you go back and look at some of the YouTubers that I admire, that I look up to, that now have, you know, a significant following, that are creating tons of impact, that are growing and building their businesses. I mean, these guys have been at it for 10, 15 years in some instances, creating content, creating videos. And that level of dedication, these guys have put their 10,000 hours in. So in a way, this is me working to get my 10,000 hours in. And I know I'm gonna, you know, have some dogs here in the beginning. I know that these videos are probably gonna suck, most of them, but that's okay. The point is that I'm getting uncomfortable. The point is that I'm forcing myself to be in a position where I can learn and I can continue to improve little by little over time. So that's something that I need to do. The other thing is I probably need to prepare a little bit more. Um, you know, rather than just turning on the camera and just talking, I should probably have some points and a little bit of a storyline prepared to discuss and talk about as I, you know, tell a story and I tell that story throughout my day and I teach and provide value through that story, that's probably what people are actually going to want to watch. So that's something that I need to work on. Um, but yeah, I mean, it's a beautiful day here, a little bit chilly, 30 degrees. Um, I'm really looking forward to the summer. I'm not a big skier, that's a problem. I mean, most, most of my, my buddies are pretty big skiers and so they love the wintertime and there's not really anything for me to do here for like 3 to 4 months. So it's, it's kind of brutal, but it is what it is. Um, Looks like we got a bunch of traffic this morning, so maybe we'll have a little bit longer chat than usual. So today's a busy day. I've got a lot of, a lot of consults, a lot of people that I'm talking to. Obviously, it's day 3 of the Business Accelerator event that we do here in our office. And, you know, we're gonna probably have 17 consults today. Now, I try to do these in 20-minute you know, bookings with a 10-minute slot. So really I've got 30 minutes, but it's gonna be kind of brutal because when you take 17, no, appointments, divide that by— it's— what is that, divided by 2? I mean, that's like 8 and a half hours back to back to back to back worth of consults. So it's gonna be a little bit of a busy day, but it's okay. I also have to squeeze in a haircut. I try to get my hair cut every 2 to 3 weeks. Um, believe it or not, I actually used to have really long hair, but when I got short hair, like Having hair grow out and touch my ears, it like drives me nuts, gives me the ick. I'm not a fan. So I got to try to keep it high and tight. Got to try to keep that fade on lock. So yeah, I got to squeeze a haircut in today. So between the haircut, between all of the consults that I'm going to be doing, it's going to be loaded. It's going to be a freaking busy day. And it's always kind of a relief to have the Business Accelerator done. Um, you know, the Monday through Wednesday, it is pretty robust, but hopefully Thursday and Friday kind of slows down. My calendar opens up a little bit more. I have more time to creatively, you know, think and to just create some better content for you guys, which I'm looking forward to doing. So yeah, gonna be a good day today. Um, I was gonna say something. Oh yeah, so giving you guys updates about where we're at currently in, in our agency Syndicate Marketing. We just hired The last 2 weeks, 2 new employees. We have a new graphic designer, which now we've got 3 total designers. Um, and then we just hired a project manager. And this project manager component I'm really stoked on. Um, and it's something my business partner and I, we've been talking about for a long time of doing. We haven't quite pulled the trigger on it. Now we have a full, complete, dedicated project manager. We've had our media buyers kind of acting and running point on a lot of the projects that we're doing. And it's just been really hard for them to feel like they're doing like high, high quality work when they're just constantly trying to communicate and manage the project. So this is going to be a big step for us in the right direction to help us get our organization better. Also for us to just help our team level up. Now we can have our media buyers be dedicated badass media buyers that are just focused on that and that alone. We're not going to be worrying about, you know, them managing the projects at all. So super stoked on it. Regarding the designer, the designer piece is going to be awesome. We have, you know, one of our, our first designer that we hired, we're actually promoting her to kind of oversee the other two designers, but we're also going to be able to put her now fully dedicated to our e-commerce company Sweet Rolls Golf. And I'm really excited about that because we've got a lot of things that we want to do right now with that brand. We actually just revamped the website. So we just had our dev team complete a whole new website build. It looks really slick. We've already seen a 2% conversion rate increase since, you know, since we've made these changes. So we were hovering at like 1.5% to 2% before. Over the last week, we've actually been hovering at 3.5% to 4%. So it's been amazing because what we've been able to do is starting to scale our ad spend a a little bit more. It's also helping that we're coming into the summer months. It's warming up around the country. So, you know, a lot of places guys are getting back out on the golf course. We make golf putter grips and golf accessories, golf hats, towels, ball markers, et cetera. So it's like exciting. We got a lot of big plans there. We also need to do a rebrand for Sweet Rolls. We just have never really loved our logo. We've never really loved our branding. And it's something that we've wanted to do for a really long time. So that's something that we're looking forward to doing too. So it's gonna be great to have this designer full-time dedicated to just Sweet Rules Golf and overseeing the other two designers. It's gonna be really, really awesome. Okay, this person's going like 20 miles an hour on the on-ramp. Let's go, people. This car is fast. Oh my gosh. So that's really cool. Speaking of the car, let's talk about kind of what plans I've got to mod this thing. So I want to kind of keep it OEM plus. I don't want to go crazy. I know, um, you know, a lot of guys that have M3 comps are going to do a lot of different modifications and things to this. I mean, and it's easy with the— with this engine, the S58, to simple dyno tune and probably, you know, running a little bit more, um, higher octane fuel, you can probably push 600 to 650 horse to the wheels pretty easily. That's how powerful and how well built these engines are. Um, but I don't necessarily want to do that out of the gates. As I've mentioned in a couple days before, I'm kind of just getting into motorsport. I'm brand new to this. I don't want to freaking kill myself. So I'm going to try to keep it, you know, where it's currently at. Um, I'm probably going to add a cold air intake. I'm going to, um, add in what's called the Active Autoworks mid-pipe edition, which is going to be freaking sick because that mid-pipe is going to make the car sound so much better. These cars kind of sound a little a little bit neutered, um, OEM. And I don't know, it's just, it's a, it's a straight-6, right? Twin turbo straight-6. So it's not like a super big engine, doesn't sound super throaty and, and, and like beefy, but the engines are incredibly powerful. And like, dude, these things are incredible from performance perspective. So I think adding that mid-pipe is going to be really helpful. It's going to make it just sound so much better. And then I've also got a KW suspension kit coming, which I'm stoked on as well, because that kit's It's gonna kind of give it a little bit more of an aggressive stance. It's gonna help when I take this thing to the track eventually. We're going to, you know, maybe get some spacers there, have the wheels come out a little bit closer to the fenders. So it's just gonna, it's just gonna look a little bit better, provide a little bit more of an aggressive look. And then I also want to add what's called the GT grille to the front of the car. Essentially, it's like just a carbon fiber grille that I can add because I think the stock one looks a little lame. So those are kind of like the 4 mods that I'm thinking of doing right now. I think once I hit, you know, 50,000-60,000 miles on this car, I'll probably do, uh, you know, a dyno tune and maybe like stage 1, stage 2, and see how much horsepower this thing can get. But until then, we're just going to kind of keep it OEM plus. If anything happens to the car, it's covered under factory warranty. You don't want to void the warranty, that's for sure, especially with BMWs. I know they're probably going to be a bunch of you guys guys in the comments, if you're gonna actually— if anyone actually watches this video, they're like, yo, BMW sucks, right? They're, they're, you know, not efficient cars. I actually agree with you, they have sucked in the past, but you know, this engine is special. This engine, the B58, S58 engine, are, are different. They're built different. So anyways, that's kind of what is, is coming up on the, uh, on the car front, and we'll definitely be doing some videos and some vlogs documenting that and, you know, the whole transformation They're gonna be sick. Oh man, leaving the office. Been a long day. Wow, been a long couple of days. Today was one of those days where as a business owner you kind of just ask yourself, man, what am I doing? And I'm gonna be straight with you guys. I mean, being a business owner, running and operating your own deal, it's super fun and I wouldn't have it any other way. In fact, In fact, you know, being my own boss is, and being autonomous, having autonomy is probably one of the most important things for me personally in my life. But sometimes when the going gets rough, you're like, man, what am I actually doing? You know, I feel like I could probably have a lot less headache just working some job, working for somebody else. This was kind of one of those days. And you know, it was one of those days because just things didn't go the way I planned. It seemed like everything kind of fell flat. Had a ton of consults today. Every single one of them felt like I was, you know, forcing a little bit, trying to shove a little bit of a square peg into a round hole. Um, you know, it just, it just didn't, it just didn't go my way today. Didn't go, didn't go our way. And that's okay. You got to recognize not everything can be sunshine and rainbows, to quote Rocky. The world ain't sunshine and rainbows, right? That quote. You know, it's okay. I am pumped though, and it's okay sometimes too to like vent, to have like a moment like this in the drive home where you're like, man, today kind of sucked, but you know, roll with the punches. Some will, some won't, so what? You're going to have days where everything goes your way. We're going to be on cloud nine. And you know, it's gonna be like, man, being in business is the greatest thing ever. And you can't have those days without these days. So I'm grateful for these days. I'm grateful for these moments. I'm grateful for these challenges. This is that valley of despair that Alex Hormozi talks about, where as an entrepreneur, you know, there's this valley of despair where you just have to push. You've got to push to get to the other side. And in that moment, that journey journey is the destination. That journey of learning, that journey of growing, that journey of figuring things out, that journey of improving is actually the very thing that gets you out of that valley of despair, takes you to the next level, and allows you to win at a high level. And I've seen that in my business over and over and over again. Usually before there's a major breakthrough in terms of you know, figuring something out, offering a product or service that, you know, just clicks with your ideal target market, um, or, you know, maybe you just figure something out operationally, there's a period of just like, man, there's this cloud of chaos, and every day we just gotta, you know, take a little bit of that cloud of chaos out, filter it out, and replace close it with, you know, a positive. So that's what I'm going to focus on. Not going to dwell on it for too long. Obviously I'm being real with you guys on the way home because that's what this is about. This is about documenting my journey, documenting my life, trying to be real with you, um, and helping you see behind the scenes of what goes in day in, day out and Syndicate Marketing and Sweet Rolls and the other businesses that we're trying to get going. Yeah, but the goal is I'm gonna get home. I'm gonna, you know, eat dinner. Haven't had anything to eat all day either. That never helps. That always makes a bad day worse, for sure. So I'm gonna get some food in me and then I'm gonna enjoy my night. I'm gonna freaking crush. I'm gonna try to get to bed at a decent hour. I'm gonna wake up. I'm gonna get back on my regimen. I'm gonna get back with my routine. I'm gonna hit it hard tomorrow. And tomorrow is a really, really good day. Got some good things planned. One of the things that happened today that kind of came out of left field is a really good buddy of mine, someone that we've done a lot of work with before marketing-wise, actually made an intro to me right before I left for a campaign director of a guy who's running for state senate. Here in Utah, and I don't really know much about this dude. I need to go do some research, see kind of what's going on, but I've got an appointment scheduled tomorrow afternoon with this potential senator's campaign director, and I think that they're looking at spending about $5 million on media, on ads over the course of trying to raise money, get more sponsorships, and obviously doing a big push for their political campaigns. And a lot, probably the majority of that budget is gonna be allocated on digital. So, you know, Sean knows this guy pretty well, my buddy who, you know, we've done a lot of work with. And, you know, because we've had such a great relationship with him, he actually was asking, hey, you know anyone that does really good that could be a good reference and a good person to talk to about kind of helping us with our marketing spend, he put us in touch. So that could be big. You know, even if they're gonna spend $1 million on social and give us $1 million to deploy, gives us an opportunity to run a political campaign, which pure transparency, obviously I have never done before. And so in the pitch tomorrow, the presentation, I'm gonna fill them out. I'm gonna let them know, obviously I've never done a political campaign, but But it is what it is. I think that we have the best infrastructure. We're perfectly poised to deliver and absolutely crush a campaign like this. And it could be a really great case study, fantastic opportunity. And more than anything, I love new things. I love learning new things because it forces you to adapt. To think in a different way, to get results and perform. And there's nothing like having a client with a campaign that needs results, that puts you in a position and forces you to perform, that helps you level up. And honestly, that single-handedly is probably the thing that we've done the best at Syndicate Marketing is we put ourselves in uncomfortable uncomfortable situations where we have to perform and we have to figure it out. And we really believe that there's no one that does what we do better. There's no one that does what we do at a higher level. And part of that is we will find the solution. We will get to the bottom of it. We'll, we'll figure it out. And when I started my agency, um, being forced to be uncomfortable, to to start running new campaigns, learn about different campaigns, learn about new creative, force yourself to become a student and, um, sharpen the saw is, is one of the ways that you can level up in your processes in your agency. So if you're watching this and you have an agency, that's definitely one of the things that I think you should adopt as just kind of a core tenet or a core principle of how you operate. You should always to be leveling up, trying to land clients, trying to land projects that are going to push you because doing so is going to make you significantly better. And over a 5, 6-year slope, like what we've done, it's gonna put you in a completely different position than other agencies that just stay with the status quo. So that's number one. And if you don't have an agency and you're like, hey, I just wanna be a be a better business owner, be a better entrepreneur, learn how to be a better marketer. You're watching this video, same thing goes for you. How can you find different marketing campaigns, different angles? How can you learn about your business in a different way? How can you take completely other businesses, other industries that might be completely unrelated from what you do and learn from them, copy what they're doing, apply good marketing that you see in the marketplace to your business. And as a result, try to get different results in your business. Because ultimately there's that quote by, I think it's Albert Einstein, that says, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." I mean, that's crazy. That's literally crazy. If you keep doing the same thing over and over and over over again and just hope that there's gonna be a different outcome, you're really just leaving it up to chance and really it's never gonna happen. So whether you have an agency, whether you have a business that you're trying to run your own ads to generate more leads, more customers, more revenue, more sales, you gotta think outside the box. You gotta get uncomfortable. You have to think differently. And personally, I think this campaign with this potential senator could be a great opportunity to do that, which is why I'm excited about it. So that's really cool. Some other things I didn't quite do today that I wanted to do. Did not exercise. That's something I need to do better at. It's, you know, I have these things called floor and ceiling goals. Where, you know, obviously the ceiling, a.k.a. the ideal outcome that could take place in a day would be going to the gym, working out for 60 minutes, coming home, drinking the protein shake. Like that's like the ideal. Doesn't happen every time. But, you know, the floor goal, so you don't do anything, because sometimes people do like, hey, I'm all or nothing. I'm either going to do the big goal, get it all done, smash it all out. And if I don't do that, I don't do anything at all. I don't really believe in that either. I believe that you should have a range. And so, you know, obviously the ceiling is to go to the gym for 60 minutes. Doesn't happen every day, clearly, uh, like today. But the floor goal could be, hey, I'm gonna do 100 push-ups and 250 air squats, or go on a walk for 30 minutes. So I still got time in the day to do that, but that's one of the things that hasn't happened today. So So I do need to go home and I do need to get my push-ups in. I do need to get my air squats in. And I'm not really looking forward to that, but I got to try to do that. Another thing, kind of breaking down the day where we were at. Oh, we're onboarding a couple of new employees. That's been fun. My business partner has mainly been overseeing that. He's mainly over the fulfillment and managing our team. That's primarily been his responsibility. But it's been really cool seeing these new people come on board. Like I talked about yesterday, I'm really excited about this project manager who's going to help us level up our services and our systems and processes. And I'm already seeing that that's happening in a big way. So really stoked on that. So yeah, overall, a little bit of a bummer day, but it happens and I'm freaking stoked for tomorrow. Tomorrow we got another vlog coming in hot. Uh, hopefully it's more than just drive in and drive home like today. This was kind of once again ceiling goal for, for the vlog and the content is filming a lot, getting a lot of content going. Um, tomorrow I think is going to be, uh, a lot better instead of just filming on the way to the office and the way home. So that being said, peeps, keep crushing. Never give up on your dreams. Life is beautiful. Life is amazing. And honestly, the days that kind of suck and the days that are a grind are kind of what it's all about. So with that, T. Smith out. See you guys tomorrow.