Channeling the Muse in Business and in Life with John Fancher: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Latinx in Power. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to channel the muse in business and in life. To drop these valuable items, I brought to John Fancher and to EO Fire Studios. John is an author, copywriter, marketing consultant, and part-time pastor. He is Perry Marshall's left-hand man and co-author of the book, Memos from the Head Office. In today's foundation, we'll be talking about how to be successful.

0:36You have to stop thinking about problems deliberately. Fire Nation, declutter and eliminate the destructions that you carry around every day and make time to start listening to the muse and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to John and our sponsors. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolfe and Nathan Lands, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented.

1:11The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts. John, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? Something that most people disagree with. I think from my experience, one of the things I've learned is to be successful, you have to deliberately not think about problems. And I think we may get into that a little bit in the podcast. But what I mean by that is I've discovered that, you know, with my process, I need to, my brain works in different ways.

2:07And I need to, it'll trick me, and it'll get in my way, unless I learn how to use my brain and know that my brain works in different ways at different times. so I do a lot of writing for clients so the first thing I have I first thing I do is I I use my rational mind to like cram in all the facts and do the research and take notes and do that kind of thing with my brain and then I need to deliberately not think about the project until right before it's time for me to write the project, if that makes sense. It does make sense. And Fire Nation, I think that's why we're calling this specific episode, Channeling the Muse in business and in life.

2:56Because when it comes time, you do need to channel that muse, but otherwise get that thing out of your mind. Now, share with us, John, your definition of the muse and how learning to hear from the muse can help us make better business decisions. I'm pretty agnostic about what I call the muse. Some people call it the higher power. Some people call it God. Some people call it the muse. Some people call it the universe. You know, Perry Marshall and I just wrote a book called Memos from the Head Office, and we deliberately tried to make it what Perry calls a demilitarized zone as far as that stuff goes.

3:39So we tried to write the book so that it would appeal to people of any persuasion as far as their belief system or lack thereof goes. So we wrote it so that people could come to it whether they were Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, agnostic, what have you. So when it comes to like defining what that is, you know, I have I have my own definition for that. But we we're agnostic about it as far as the book goes and as far as talking about this subject goes. So it's whatever you want to call it is fine with us. And, yeah, I think that as far as making better business decisions goes, channeling the muse is so, you know, I think the main thing is I don't know if it's as much about making better decisions, but it is a lot about getting better ideas, I would say.

4:46And of course, if you have better ideas, I think you make better decisions. So Fire Nation, I really hope you're understanding how channeling the muse can really be powerful and sparking ideas. Sparking ideas can lead to better business opportunities. And then these better business opportunities when you're utilizing the muse can lead to better success because you're focused at the right stuff at the right time. Now, John, you have stories and we love stories. So share some stories from entrepreneurs who have learned how to hear the muse. Okay, so I'll read a story from the book. We did an interview with Gary Kloppenstein, and Gary is a money manager.

5:24He manages lots and lots and lots of money for people. And this was his story. I'm a professional currency trader. A few years ago, I tried writing an algorithm, a mathematical model to define currency risk. The nuances in emerging market currencies make risk management tricky. I was hoping my algorithm would provide a more elegant means of controlling that risk at a lower cost than anything else available at the time. I knew I was getting close to nailing it, but there was still one crucial piece missing. Anyone who does intense analytical work often hits that point. You work for hours, days, weeks, and you reach a point where you're just stuck.

6:00The gears in your brain run out of grease. The learning grinds to a halt. You just know you're not going to get the answer by thinking harder. Forcing your brain to work just leads to stress, fatigue, and depression. I've learned to recognize that feeling. And that's when I know that the final pieces of the puzzle are going to come from elsewhere. So I had a feeling the head office was going to supply the missing piece. It wasn't going to be me. I just didn't know when or how heaven was going to provide it. While trying to hammer this out, I caught up with a friend for coffee. We talked about a lot of things.

6:32Algorithms and currencies never came up. But right in the middle of our conversation, I saw something. I can't say it was a hallucination. I don't know if I actually saw it with my eyes or it was just so vivid in my mind that it seemed like I was seeing it with my eyes. But I saw a formula, a bunch of Greek letters and numbers. I must have looked pretty strange when it happened because my friend cocked his head to the side and said, Gary, what's going on? I said, hey, I just got a download. I saw a formula in my mind. I think it's the missing piece to something I've been working on. It's the piece I've been waiting for.

7:05He said, do you need to write it down? I said, nope, I got it all in front of me in my mind. When I got home, I did write it down. It was a formula used in other areas of math, but had never been applied to the area I was working on. I popped it into my formula and everything worked perfectly. My completed algorithm defined risk in emerging market currencies. It was a breakthrough in our industry. I now license this algorithm to companies outside the US to help them manage currency risk. It's helped several companies make a great deal of money, likely tens of millions of dollars, as well as protected them from losing a great deal of money.

7:40So it was a very practical memo from the head office. And it came while I was having coffee with a friend. It wasn't thinking about formulas. Wow. I mean, Fire Nation, when you hear how people are actually utilizing and channelizing and focusing on the muse, I hope you can understand the specific ways that you can use to apply this to your life. Because once you learn how to channel the muse in both business and life, these are the type of results you could be seeing. And we have a lot more of these type of gems coming up, Fire Nation, as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors. Being a small business owner comes with a lot of challenges, especially now.

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8:55Add to all this, re-imagine marketing and content hubs with new ways to create breakthrough content, updated features to generate better leads and support to help up-level your marketing and revenue forecast. And you've got HubSpot's all-on-one customer platform. Get ready for growth without the growing pains. Visit hubspot.com slash spotlight to see all the updates. So John, we're back and we want to learn how to quote unquote, hear better, hear the muse better, have ideas come to us easier, be able to identify opportunities, have business just kind of flow through us in a more natural way. How is this possible?

9:34How can we learn as entrepreneurs to hear better? The first step is to declutter and eliminate some of the noise that comes with modern life, right? And by noise, I mean distractions. So we all carry around in our pocket or our purse, you know, the most distracting device that has ever been created by humans, right? And it's so easy to fill our lives with distractions with a billion apps on our phone. And you look at it, there's all those little red ones and twos that are trying to grab your attention. It's easy to go from email to email, project to project, meeting to meeting, conversation to conversation.

10:19So I think this first step is, you know, to declutter and eliminate things and just make time to start listening. to, you know, whatever you choose to call it. We call it the muse in the book or the higher power. But I think that's step one. And probably the easiest way to do that is to start your day that way. I'm going to wake up and I'm not going to turn on my phone or look at my phone. I'm going to do whatever I can do to listen. And again, we're pretty agnostic about how you listen. You could journal, you could meditate, you could pray. I mean, the caveat about praying is, you know, because I come from a Christian background and I think we Christian prayers, you know, I think we often think that it's talking to God or at God.

11:20And I think we need to do a lot more listening. So, you know, one of the things that Perry and I do is we wake up and we journal and we write out a question and then we just listen. And then we write down the answer without trying, you know, whatever we hear, we just try to write it down as fast as we can without thinking about it. and that's so and the other thing that i would say about that is you probably already have a way or ways that you hear from the muse um you know when you feel the things you when you get ideas or you feel more inspired and that could be anything that could be taking a bike ride that could be that could be reading books that have nothing to do with your business that could be listening to music or going to an art museum or going to a temple or a church but whatever ways that you feel you already hear or get inspiration, lean into those and do more of those.

12:26Fire Nation, I hope you're realizing that there's a lot of different ways to approach this. You need to be listening to what John's saying and then figuring out how is this going to work in my life? How is this going to work in my business? And one thing, John, that you've used a few times as a word is agnostic. And you kind of played around and touched around and danced around a little bit. So let's just dive right in. Is this a religious thing? No. Perry and I both come from a Christian religious tradition. But as I mentioned before, we really wanted this book to be a demilitarized zone, an area where We just lay down our weapons and we don't, you know, we don't try to proselytize or pressure or divert or emphasize one particular belief system over another.

13:17You know, we even tell the story of my friend, Paul Wendell Obis. He, when he was trying to get sober, you know, the secret society known as AA told him he needed a higher power. And Paul is a kind of a conspiracy guy and likes, you know, weird stories and things like that. So he's like, OK, my higher power is going to be Bigfoot. And supposedly Bigfoot worked just fine for Paul. He's now celebrating, I believe it's five years sober. I don't think he still considers Bigfoot as higher power, but that's just a funny story that shows we don't care sort of what you call it. We just believe you should listen to it.

14:01And Fire Nation, that's one thing that you're doing right now is you're listening. You're listening to John. You're listening to myself. You need to listen and you need to say, how does this apply to my life, to my goals, to my aspirations, to the mission, the message, just the overall voice that I want to be projecting into this world. And some of these are going to fit. Some of these are not going to fit. For some people, this is going to unlock magic. For some people, this is going to unlock an empty room. It's just not going to be for everybody. So you just understand as much as I can about everything, apply the things that I can, see how it works, and then I will study those results and move forward from there.

14:39So John, you shared a lot about a lot today. Again, we're talking all about channeling the muse in both business and life. So what is the one takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from everything that we talked about here today? Any way that we can connect with you and Perry and everything you've created and done, and then we'll say goodbye. Yeah, I think it's connection. I think that's it. I think connection is under attack these days. I mean, all the technological advances have made it, I think, harder for us to connect in real ways. And by that, I mean, connect with ourselves and with our friends and family and your higher power as you choose to define it.

15:24So I would say the takeaway is lean into deeper connection in however you define that. How would you like Fire Nation to connect with you, to connect with Perry? And what is your call to action for our listeners to learn more about the topic today? Go to Amazon or Audible or, you know, on the Kindle and get memos from the head office. We have baked into the book lots of online resources and bonuses and assessments and tools and things like that that you can get through the book. So it's not just the book. It's a bunch of other stuff that you get with it that you can go deeper with if you choose to.

16:06Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with JF and JLD today. So keep up the heat. head over to eofire.com type john j-o-h-n in the search bar the show notes page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about here today best show notes in the biz and of course head over to your favorite place to buy books and search for memos from the head office check it out see what's going on there if it vibes with you snag it give it a read because this is perry and john dropping value bombs and john i want to say thank you for sharing your truth your knowledge your value with Fire Nation today.

16:45For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you very much. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by John. And Fire Nation, are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free, freepodcastcourse.com. I will catch you there, Fire Nation, or I'll catch you on the flip side. The Next Wave, your chief AI officer, hosted by Matt Wolf and Nathan Lanz, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

17:20Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier. AI technology is transforming the way we do business and the media landscape is fragmented. The Next Wave strives to be the leading podcast on AI technology and how you can apply it to growing your business. Listen to The Next Wave wherever you get your podcasts.