How to Avoid The Pitfalls That Make You Hate Your Business with Eric Bandholz

0:02Who's ready to rock today, 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 Business Made Simple. Today, we'll be breaking down how to avoid the pitfalls that make you hate your business. To draw these value bombs, I brought Eric Banholt into EO Fire Studios. Eric is the founder of Beard Brand, which revolutionized men's grooming with a focus on beard care, challenging corporate stereotypes and fostering a community for bearded gentlemen. And today, Far Nation, we'll talk about being intentional about life, the power in learning when to say no to opportunities, hiring, the keys to hiring real talent, how to form the right partnerships in comparison to others, and so much more.

0:47And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Eric and our sponsors. 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. 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. 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.

1:20Are you looking to start or grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated and most reviewed business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and football great Tim Tebow at thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO Fire. Eric, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What is going on, Fire Nation? Eric Van Holtz here. And yeah, the key to success is learning one important lesson. And that lesson is you are the person who defines what success is.

2:03Once you realize that, you quit chasing the game and build your own life based on what you find valuable. Fire Nation, what a start to what's going to be an amazing interview about avoiding the pitfalls that make you hate your business. I mean, man, I can remember so clearly way back in the day reading Michael Gerber's e-book, Myth Revisited. And it was so eye-opening to me that so many people say, you know what? I love this. I love baking cakes, making muffins, making wood. items in a carpentry shop, anything you fill in the blank. And they start a business around that and they end up hating it for various reasons that he gets into.

2:42And I want to have Eric on the show today to talk us through this because Eric, let's call a spade a spade. Most people walk through life very unintentionally. They just let things happen to them instead of actually grabbing the reins and steering their own ship. So let's talk about being intentional and in charge when it comes specifically to the products we sell. How the heck can we be intentional with this? I think it comes down to understanding what your philosophies in life are. I think you have to invest in your mission, why you exist, what is your purpose on this earth. And then once you understand that, then you can start to build a life and a pathway around that, including with how you operate your business and the things that you bring.

3:31For me at Beardbrand, I'm customer number one. So at the end of the day, I don't want to make a product unless it's going to be something that I enjoy using and something that brings value to my life. And then from there, I hope there are other people out there like me. And Fire Nation, I can tell you by getting on a video real quick with Eric before that he's got the beard to back up what his product actually produces, what it promises, and then what it delivers. So let me tell you how to get excited about something. Be customer number one. I love that mentality. And now you believe, Eric, that there is a power in learning when to say no to new opportunities.

4:13Tell us about this power and how to say no? I fall in both camps. You need to say yes to a lot of things and you need to say no. I think a lot of times people are afraid to say yes because it's something that puts them outside their comfort level. But I think people need to learn to say no when they are being pulled away from their mission in life and they're no longer on their own pathway. So as an entrepreneur, you tend to get a lot of ideas about things that you can do new projects new marketing campaigns new channels new products and these are all exciting uh and myself included i tend to fall into this camp but at the end of the day you have to bring yourself back you have to circle back to like what is going to be the most efficient use of my time and what is going to bring me joy in life and understand that it may be fun to develop this, in my case, like software service or this new kind of YouTube channel or something like that.

5:18But I know that it's not sustainable and it's not going to lead me to the direction that I want to build in my life. Fire Nation, there's a lot to think about here. There's a lot to talk about here. I mean, I'm a big believer that there are chapters in your life. There are chapters in your entrepreneurial journey. in the early chapters of Entrepreneurs on Fire, I said yes to basically everything because everything was an opportunity. Everything was a possibility of helping me get traction, momentum, that unbelievably difficult thing to attain in this world of entrepreneurship. So I had to just say yes, yes, yes because I didn't know what opportunity was going to lead to what, what doors was going to open.

5:58So I had that chapter in my life, a lot of yeses. But then guess what? I got to a point where the traction was there, the momentum was there, another chapter in my life. And I couldn't just keep adding things on my plate without having other things that were probably pretty beneficial dropping off. So at that point, I got more intentional about saying yes to a lot of things, but also starting to say no to some things because I had to really make sure that my plates stayed manageable with everything that I said yes to. And then in the chapter I'm at now, which is maybe at least one or two chapters past that, I essentially default to no for everything because there's only a couple things that I know that really moves the needle for entrepreneurs on fire 12 years in.

6:40And I do those things and I focus on those things and I try to maintain and stay great and maintain a greatness level at those things. So I say no to essentially everything and then yes to a very tiny sliver of opportunities because I do believe in the phrase, saying yes to one thing means you are saying no to everything else you could otherwise have been doing slash saying yes to in that place. So don't think you need to just decide what you're going to do right now and it's like that forever. There could be chapters to your journey. Now, Eric, hiring is not just tough. It is unbelievably difficult.

7:19So let's right now talk about the keys to hiring talent, but not just talents, talent that we love to be around. I'm like you, you're number 12 and it's been quite the journey. One of the things that was most difficult for me is learning how to hire. We had the blessing and the curse of our first hire was a Craigslist candidate who ended up being phenomenal. So we thought we'd just throw a posting out to Craigslist and end up with great people, but that wasn't the case. After many struggles and many wrong hires, we found this concept called top grading. And basically the 30 second pitch is every step of the interview process, you're letting the candidate know that you are going to be doing a reference check.

8:04And then at the end of the hiring process, you actually do a reference check and verify all the things that they said their references would say. So that's a really good way of not only like kind of weeding out the C and D players, but it also helps the candidate go into a third person mind where they're no longer, self-promoting and kind of describing their weaknesses as strengths. But actually, when I say something like, hey, when I call your supervisor, how are they going to describe you? And then we call their supervisor and we verify if that's how they would describe them or not. It's so funny you brought up that story because we have somebody on my team that's now been with me personally for about 14 years because she was actually with me two years prior to the launch of Entrepreneurs on Fire.

8:59And I just went on Upwork one day and I just hired one of the first people that responded to my post. And she literally ended up being this person that's been with us for 14 years and is in our top virtual assistant based out of the Philippines. I've met her multiple times and it was an amazing experience. But guess what? That was not how we built our team out because the next like seven to 50 attempts of that were just close to disasters because it just wasn't, you know, as simple as I was led to believe the first time. So, I mean, there is luck involved, but then there is processes that you need to create to make sure that you're hiring the right talent.

9:36And then I love that kind of addition that you have on there, which is that you love to be around because if you're going to really be spending time with these individuals, man, Fire Nation, you've really got to like to be around them because, you know, how you spend your days is how you spend your life. And you're going to be sending your days around these people. Like I actually joke with my virtual trainer, Jeff, who I've been with for nine years. I'm like, you are literally the person that I spend the most time with outside of my wife, Kate. Like literally, if I didn't like you, I mean, man, I don't think I could do it because you're basically the person I spend the second most time with in this world.

10:11And that's crazy to think. But when you put things out like that, Fire Nation, it really matters. And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Being a small business owner comes with a lot of challenges, especially now. It seems like everyone is working with smaller budgets, shorter timelines, and sky-high expectations, and that can make growing a business feel pretty painful. Thankfully, HubSpot can help. HubSpot just announced dozens of major product updates that'll make impossible growth feel impossibly easy, like Breeze, a suite of new AI-powered tools that deliver personalized insights to level up your work, plus AI agents designed to automate your work for you.

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12:23Become the next success story. Schedule a free consultation and request tickets to join Tim Tebow and Clay Clark at the next business conference today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Whether you're starting or scaling a company, demonstrating top-notch security practices and establishing trust is more important than ever. But how do you do that without hiring an entire team to help? Vanta helps SaaS businesses of all sizes manage risk and prove security in real time. Vanta automates compliance for SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more, saving you time and money, all while helping you build customer trust.

13:01Plus, you can streamline security reviews by automating questionnaires and demonstrating your security posture with a customer-facing trust center, all powered by Vanta AI. Over 7 ,000 global companies like Atlassian, Flow Health, and Quora. Use Vanta to manage risk, improve security in real time. And right now, Fire Nation, Vanta has a special offer waiting for you of$1 ,000 off at vanta.com slash fire. That's V-A-N-T-A.com slash fire for$1 ,000 off. Eric, we're back and we hear these things all around us. They're swirling at all times, passion versus value. So I want to discuss us working on passion projects within our business?

13:49Because in some areas, in some ways, in shapes, in forms, it's gotten a bad name, but I'd love to hear your take on this. Yeah. If you're good at your job and you do it long enough, you do start to implement a lot of the things that you were talking about earlier in those systems and those processes. As those systems and processes get executed, as a typical entrepreneur, you have a tendency to get bored and you want to start tinkering. And tinkering can be good, but a lot of times you end up creating your own problems that teams need to solve and fix. One of the things that I think about is like, how do I build a business that I can enjoy doing for 20 or 30 years rather than the prevailing thought, which is like build a business for three to five years and then sell it for a few million and do it over and over again.

14:38So for me, that means like working on projects that don't necessarily involve team members that I can kind of do at my own leisure and help keep my mind, not only like engaged into the business, but also keep my mind from being a distraction to my team and throwing in, you know, like new curves to our strategy that aren't really going to move our business forward. So Fire Nation, I really want you to think about that and about that mindset as you're going forward to really decide, hey, what am I going to do with my life? Because again, going back to that quote, how you spend your days is how you spend your life.

15:21It all matters. It really all matters. And the right partnerships, these are key to long-term success. So Eric, I want to talk about how we keep business partnerships that are important and actually help them grow. And then by them, I mean, these partnerships grow in strength over time. I've got two business partners who have been around since the beginning of Beardbrand. And me personally, as much as Beardbrand is linked to me and I am customer number one, Beardbrand would not be anywhere close to where it is today without my business partners. they kind of are great for lifting me up when I hit those doldrums and starts getting really dark um and also you know I'm there when when they're facing their struggles but also when you have wins you know to be able to to celebrate all your achievements all the hard work that goes in and I found that you know a lot of businesses will be destroyed over partners partnership conflicts.

16:23And for me, I think the right answer is like being able to have trust with your business partner, let them own a domain, and then you can bring input and bring ideas, but understand that this part of the business is my business partner's domain. And from there, what we do at Beardbrand that we found a lot of success is we put on quarterly strategy sessions away from our office so that we get out of the day-to-day and we get to work on the business and where the business is going and really connect as business partners in a way that allows us to maintain what the big picture is for what we're trying to do.

17:01And at the end of the day, you kind of realize how we're building Beardbrand and what's important for us is that we enjoy the journey. And that means that maybe the business doesn't grow as quickly as we want, or maybe it means we miss out on some opportunities to launch things quickly. But we enjoy it. So like every day that we show up, we enjoy it. And then we enjoy the small things in life. Like my business partners, one of them has five kids and the other has three kids and I have two kids. And we get to see the kids grow up together and we get to celebrate those wins. So it's just, I think like understanding that in 20 years time or 30 years time, the thing that we're going to look back on is the relationship that I have with my business partners, not what the revenue was for July of 2024.

17:45Fire Nation, so many great lessons here. And I want to really end with a bang, Eric. I want to talk about comparison to others. I know you have some strong feelings on this, so take it away. You are being hit all the time by messages. If you listen to a lot of podcasts, there's always going to be self-selecting winners that appear on the show. And the winners are usually going to talk about their rapid growth and how they grew so rapidly and how great their products are. Very rarely are these entrepreneurs coming up here sharing all the terrible things that have happened to them. So when you put yourself in this position to always be listening to the most talented people and bluntly the winners of entrepreneurship, you start to get this perverse mindset of what life is.

18:36And the reality is you've got to look in the mirror. I think daily affirmations are a great tool to use to really define what you view success as. Because behind a lot and many successful businesses are failed marriages, are poor relationships with their children, or poor relationships with their parents. Behind every Lamborghini, there could be similar thing where their kids don't talk to them or they have failing health and their body doesn't move like they want it to or they should have it. And then at the end of the ropes, when you're 65 years old and you're overweight and you can't do all the things that you used to do, you wonder, was it worth it?

19:16You know, was it worth it chasing that extra million or chasing that extra a hundred thousand? In my opinion, no. So the earlier you learn this lesson, the more you're able to build a life that is your own success and sets you up to really enjoy the one shot you have at life because you got 100 years or 80 years on this planet and you might as well enjoy all of those years that you can. Fire Nation, that's a very powerful quote behind every Lamborghini. You can just stop there and just think of that. Every time you looked at somebody with their house, with their car, with their significant other, Instagram on their vacations, whatever that might be.

19:57There's something behind that that you're not seeing. Maybe it's poor health. Maybe it's a poor relationship. Maybe it's, you know, just stress and anxiety because that's just what they're dealing with. You just, you never know. And so, you know, instead of like trying to compare yourself to that quote unquote guy in the Lamborghini or girl in that dream house, like compare yourself to you yesterday. Are you winning that comparison? Are you getting a little bit healthier every day? Are you getting a little bit further down the path towards your goals every day? And by the way, if you're doing that four days or five days a week, because there's going to be some off days for you, then you're winning because if you're doing it more days than not, you're winning your comparison to yourself yesterday.

20:41And Eric, we talked about a lot of great stuff today. Give us the final takeaway that you want to make sure Fire Nation really gets from our conversation that's all focused around avoiding the pitfalls that make us hate our business. My goal is to leave the world a better place than when I entered. And how am I doing that? I'm doing that through Beardbrand by helping men love the man looking back at him in the mirror. I believe that when men invest in themselves, they become better fathers, they become better partners, they become better stewards of the community. And through that grassroots effort, we're going to improve it.

21:14So my products help men on their journey of loving themselves. And the more I can reach out to men and the more I can tell that story, the more I'm going to be able to make a positive impression. And it allows me to do unique things. Like I wrote this small book called the book of reminders that are kind of like my lessons in life as you face adversity. and we include those in order. So like I'm able to slowly like impart my mission, you know, in a non-monetary way. The book of reminders costs me money and doesn't really drive any additional sales, but it is something that's important to me to help other people on their journey.

21:50And I think like that brings a lot of fulfillment that allows me to really love the work that I'm doing because I'm spreading a mission that I believe in. And I would encourage everyone to find that purpose in life and how your day-to-day efforts are going to revolve around that. Eric, if Fire Nation wants to connect with you, learn more of what you have going on, what is your call to action for our listeners today? You can listen to my podcast, which is eCommerce Conversations by Practical E-Commerce. Or if you want some hot takes on And X, follow me on X at Van Holtz, which is my last name. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

22:33And you've been hanging out with EB and JLD today. So keep up the heat. And for links to everything that we talked about, visit eofire.com. Type Eric, E-R-I-C in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. Eric, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks, John. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Eric for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 4 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment.

23:10I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, which is personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams, visit UncommonSuccessBook.com and I'll catch you there or on the flippity 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. Matt and Nathan are leading AI creators in your guiding light in the AI and technology frontier.

23:46AI 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. Are you looking to start or grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated and most reviewed business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and football great Tim Tebow at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Again, request life changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire.