Why Now is the Time to Redesign Your Work and Life with Graham Cochrane: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down why now is the time to redesign your work and life. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Graham Cochran into EO Fire Studios. Graham is the founder of The Recording Revolution, a seven-figure online music business, and author of the book, How to Get Paid for What You Know. And today we'll talk about how if you haven't started a business, you will have a business hidden inside of you, and how none of us are truly experts.

0:37We're all just normal people who grew up in the dark and are figuring things out and owe so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Graham and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white-label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, success isn't a solo journey. It's about who you surround yourself with. That's why I built the Freedom Circle, a powerful community of entrepreneurs ready to support, inspire, and share the ideas that move you forward.

1:24Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more. Graham, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, what's up, Fire Nation? Thanks, JLD, for having me. I would say something that a lot of people disagree with me on is that I believe the key to growing a richer business and life is to work less. I just think people work too much. And I love work and I love the work I do. But I think if people are willing to do the initial hard work of figuring out what really makes their business tick, if you're doing an 80-20 analysis, if you're doing that kind of hard work, then once you do that, eliminate the majority of unnecessary tasks, which I think most of what we do is a waste of time, to be honest.

2:16And then automate, delegate the rest or automate, delegate what you don't want to do. I think that leads you to an opportunity to not just work fewer hours, but I think when you're that efficient, you can get more focused, you can have more clarity because you have space, you have margin physically and in your brain. And that allows you to build a more holistically healthy life with your family, your body, relationship with rest, all those things that we miss out on as entrepreneurs. I think that's the key is not just when I make it, I'll work less, but choose to work less now, and then you'll make it.

2:51Basically the story of the last decade of my life. And I'm really glad you did bring up the fact that there is going to be hard work at the beginning because it's a lot to figure out. I mean, you've got to put in the hours, you've got to grind it out, you've got to make sure that you are trying everything, you're saying yes to a lot of things because you just don't know when you're starting something, what's going to click, what's not going to click. But pretty quickly, hopefully, you are applying that 80-20 rule that Graham's talking about and you are saying, hey, what's really moving the levers?

3:21What's the real ROI of my business here? And then you start potentially even eliminating some of the things that aren't. And again, it hasn't been a super quick process for me. I wish I had employed this a little bit sooner, but I mean, I've gotten to the place now where 10 years into Entrepreneurs on Fire, I'm working on the business six days per month. Good for you. That was taking a lot of time and energy to look at the 80-20 and continue to trim things down to get the right team, the right systems, the right processes. So it's not going to come overnight, Fire Nation, but please believe Graham's done it.

3:58I've done it. Other people have done it. It is very possible when you're going to apply the principles we'll be talking about here today. So let's start by talking about what's not working when it comes to people's relationship to both work and life. Yeah, I think there's a lot that's not working in the last couple of years of the pandemic and the great resignation, people quitting en masse have kind of showed what we've known to be true. I think you've got maybe two groups of people. You've got employees who are listening to your show and thinking about entrepreneurship and they're rethinking everything, their jobs, their life path.

4:31Are they doing work they actually believe in and care about? Are they on a career path that leads to more life and flexibility and freedom? And I think a lot of people are realizing, no, they're not. And then there's also another group of people that are entrepreneurs that actually have built a business that's successful. And I think that's the scarier group because it's easy. I don't want to use that word lightly, but it's very doable to build a successful business that then you become a slave to. And you're like, man, now I have a harder time walking away because maybe I'm making good money or maybe I would be embarrassed about walking away from something that people are envious of.

5:07But I feel stuck. and I'm listening to JLD saying he's working six days a month and that sounds ridiculous. So I think there's two groups of people that are like the last two years in the world have made them think, is this what I really want? And maybe it's what I wanted five, 10 years ago, but did this lead me to where I wanna be? And they're asking that question very publicly too. Fire Nation loves freedom. They don't like it. They love freedom. So I wanna get real specific here. how can we create time freedom in our work and life let's get specific let's use some strategies here you need some element of passive income and this is something you talk about a lot of something you've figured out but you need a business or an income stream in your business depending on what kind of business you run that does allow you to scale you need to have scalable income that's not tied to how many hours you work right so sometimes that's a service-based business let's say you're a consultant and you've got so much expertise in the field and you help people and you coach people and you consult and that's, you're limited at some point.

6:11So you have to maybe scale to a digital course to take your brain and put it into a digital product like a course or even a membership site. I mean, you can scale a membership site and have really fixed hours and grow a paid community that creates recurring revenue. You need to incorporate that ASAP into your product line. and there's a lot of ways to do it but the key is to just think about other money dials other than the two main ones that business owners tend to focus on which is just working more hours aka getting more clients or going after more customers or and then just charging more and those are our two dials that work but there's a limit to both of those so let's get kind of specific now on a strategy that you've employed in your business or maybe one of your clients or somebody that you've seen you're like okay they get it they're doing it right one of my students is a guy named lane and he was a pastor.

7:01And so he wanted to scale his income. And so he wanted to actually help pastors. So he wrote a book. He wrote an ebook on how to preach better sermons. And that turned into a YouTube channel. I think it's called Preaching Donkey. But he wasn't able to really scale his business. He was coaching a lot of pastors. And that's when he stumbled into online courses. And he started to follow my stuff and a lot of other people's stuff and a lot of your guests. He's learn from them as well. And so what he decided to do was do the hard work of creating an audience for him as around YouTube and then pushing them to or moving them towards like deeper coaching, but through an online course that would help them work through the same thing he would teach people one on one, but through how to preach better sermons.

7:45And it was really about growing the audience, getting them into an email funnel and moving them towards a digital course. And it's been slow at first, but now the guy's gone from around$1 ,000 a month with this little side business to quitting. He left the church he was working at. He was on staff at a church, and he's now crossing over$10 ,000 a month. He's hired his wife. He stays home with his kids, and he's able to create content on the front end and then move people to his digital courses on the back end and sprinkle in a little bit of affiliate products that he's promoting here and there.

8:16And he's taken his expertise and his knowledge that he was getting paid a salary to do at one point and then getting paid as a consultant. But now he can actually scale. I think he told me in December, he said, hey, man, I'm so pumped because most of the$10 ,000 I made this month, over 9 ,000 of it was 100 % passive, only like 900 bucks. I did one-on-one coaching. Fire Nation, I hope you're realizing what's happening when people are adopting this mentality, this mindset. Number one, you got to believe that it can happen. And that's key here. So hopefully you're going to listen to this whole episode and gain some of that belief with some strategies, with some case studies, with some examples.

8:50But what would you say, Graham, to people who are still going to say passive income is a myth? What would you say to them? Yeah, I love this conversation because anyone who's, I mean, you've written books, you have a book and if it sells and you get a royalty from the book, or if you had a song and it streams or it gets played in a TV show, you get a royalty from that. That's passive income. If you own a rental house, rental property, and you've got people managing it and you just collect rent checks. You know, these are real things that are passive income. And same thing with online courses, membership sites, things like that.

9:24I think people give passive income a bad rap because they associate it with something icky, something slimy. And I know some of the, you know, there's people out there or some of the mindsets, but it's a real thing. I think maybe a better word might be scalable income instead of passive. There's always some element of work. But here's what I think. I think people push back against passive income. This is just my theory. And it's that I think we have a culture that worships work a little too much. I write about this in my book. We used to call it workaholism. I don't know if you remember, like, are your parents workaholics?

9:58And I didn't want to grow up being a workaholic. But that's such a – it's a bad-sounding name because it sounds like alcoholism. We rebranded it, and we rebranded it as hustle. And I think that's what we love to use, that word hustle. And I understand the heart that some people have behind that word. But I just think the word is just a nicer way of saying workaholism. And in America, at least, we really do worship people who work really hard. And we love that sort of story of rags to riches. And we love hard work. So when someone like me says passive income, they think I'm saying lazy income. I think that's what they hear.

10:32And I think it's quite the opposite because I think actually hustle is lazy. I think it takes way more creativity, way more diligence to stop doing hashtag all the things every day and then evaluate what activities in your business actually lead to consistent sales and revenue and then do only those things. I love that phrase because it's such a mindset shift that hustle is actually lazy. And you may not quite grasp the concept at this moment, Fire Nation, but if you think about it, listen, when you're just bopping from task to task and you're just like always running a million miles an hour in a million different directions and you're doing this, you're checking emails, you're scrolling social media, you're always giving yourself an excuse where like, well, yeah, I'm scrolling social media because I might learn a strategy or tactic that somebody's using that I can apply to my business.

11:23No, you're really just wasting time. Like you're trying to pretend like it's hustle. You're being busy or you're being productive, but you're just doing a lot of things that really don't matter. And what is not easy to do, by the way, is to sit down in a quiet room and really think and really plan out and really structure a business that can allow you to run something like I've created down here in Puerto Rico, six days a month. I work really hard those six days. And the other 25 days, I'm traveling, I'm relaxing, I'm exercising, I'm family, I'm friends, I'm health. And I have a multi-million dollar net profit a year business doing that.

12:03And again, it took time, had to build it, had to sit alone in a quiet room by myself doing the hard work to build this, but it's possible when you're intentional about it. And we have some really cool topics around limiting beliefs, Fire Nation. When we get back from thanking our sponsors. Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business. And they are also our featured partner, High Level. If you're an entrepreneur, coach, agency, or course creator looking to grow faster and smarter, High Level is the all-in-one platform that replaces your entire tech stack.

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14:25Quicksilver Scientific makes advanced liposomal supplements so you can actually feel the difference. Energy, focus, calm, recovery. Get 10 % off plus free shipping at tryqs.com slash fire. That's T-R-Y-Q-S dot com slash fire. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Graham, we're back, and limiting beliefs are all around us. What limiting beliefs do you want to talk about today? Yeah, I've got three that come to mind. And one of them is the belief that I don't have enough time. And you alluded to this because people are already overwhelmed.

15:11I mean, I don't know. From my experience, when I'm coaching students who are trying to build a business, they're already feeling like a failure because they're like, Grandma, I don't have enough time to build this thing either because it's in my spare time and I have a full-time job. Or even if they're giving it 40, 50 hours a week, they feel like I'm literally filling my week, to your point, doing things that I think are important, but I'm not making any progress. And so I think it's just an excuse people make to let them off the hook. And I think, you know, you always hear the phrase, you don't have time, you make time.

15:42But I think there's something true about that. The time isn't really people's problem. It's just, what are you doing with your time? Doing the right things with your time is the problem. And so maybe it's an analysis of what are the tasks. And that goes back to, you know, Pareto's principle, the 80-20 rule. And if you really believe that, and even if you don't, it's worth the thought exercise of, is it really true that roughly 80 % of what I'm doing is at best contributing to 20 % of my results? And if you believe that, it's worth having the guts to say, what if I were to eliminate, just like cut out 80 % of what I'm doing?

16:17Wow. I mean, that's hard because if you eliminate 80 % of what you're doing or anything you're doing, you're basically admitting that what you were doing was a waste of time. We just, we in our minds have to make ourselves right. So I think we have a hard time owning that reality of maybe what I'm doing doesn't matter. Most people can't get to that place. But I think that's what's holding most people back. I think you have plenty of time. What are the other two things? Yeah, limiting belief number two is that I'm not an expert or credible enough. And this, I hear this a lot because I'm helping people build knowledge commerce businesses, teaching what you know, sharing what you're good at and building courses and memberships.

16:55And so that's a hang up of like, look, I get the business model. It sounds nice. I'd love to live in Puerto Rico and work six days a week with JLD, but I don't – I'm not an expert in my field. So why should I make a course, especially now that everyone's got YouTube channels, everyone's got podcasts. There's so many more courses coming out. It almost becomes more and more profound of a limiting belief. But the reality is that people need to stop comparing themselves to other people. You just need to stop looking what other people are doing. I don't even look at what my friends are doing, and I don't mean that to be cold, but I've unsubscribed from business partners of mine, their email lists, because I get jealous when I see the cool stuff they're doing.

17:32So for me, it's easier to unsubscribe, not follow anybody on social, and just keep my head down to your user language and focus on how can I help people? That's the only question that matters is can I help somebody? And if you've never built anything online, but have you helped somebody in real life in the past? Do people come to you and ask you for help and advice in an area? Probably. What have you helped them with? That's your credibility is your experience helping people. And you only get more experience if you put yourself out there and help more people. And that gives you more credibility.

18:04It's not about letters at the end of your name. It's not about any of that stuff. It's about whether you can help somebody. And that's what gives you credibility. I don't have enough time. I'm not an expert. What's number three? This is the one that I think gets a lot of people in the room. and that is that it has to be perfect. Or if they don't use that word perfect, they'll swap it out for the word optimized. I'm just trying to optimize my funnel or optimize my business or optimize my sales page. And what I think is I love the heart in that and you could squeeze some more dollars out of it or improve your business.

18:36And I think that's a good thing to want to improve and tweak in the goal of improvement overall. But I think it holds people back because they don't launch, their funnel isn't ready, their emails aren't dialed in, they don't like the copy on their sales page yet. I just say like, look, it doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to make money. You got to get started. My first sales page was awful. I made it on iWeb. I don't know if you remember iWeb on the Mac and I slapped together a PayPal button and I had a zip file that PayPal would deliver you of my course. I didn't even have a tool like Kajabi or Thinkific or any of these tools.

19:10And so it was ugly, but it got the job done. And I think that people need to just get out there. Stop looking for best practices to validate yourself or validate your work. That's not what validates your work. Sales validate your work. So just put your stuff out there, make sales. And at the end of the day, optimization and potential improvement, while those are good things, they can actually rob you of enjoying a profitable and simple business in life. I don't have enough time. I'm not an expert. It's not perfect. And I'm actually going to come down on my audience kind of hard here. And this is just for you, Fire Nation, who have ever used these words, which by the way, I have.

19:47I've used the words I'm about to share right now. And I give myself the exact same label I'm about to give anybody else who uses these words of, oh, I'm a perfectionist. I'm just a perfectionist. Like I can't put anything on the world that's not perfect. Replace the word perfectionist with coward. You're not a perfectionist, you're a coward. You're scared. You're hiding behind a word that you think is a little pat on your own back. And it's not a pat on your back. You claim me you're a perfectionist. I only hear that you're a coward and it's okay to be scared. It's okay to be fearful. It's okay to be a coward at times.

20:23I was absolutely a coward when I refused to launch entrepreneurs on fire 10 years ago, because I was so scared and so positive that it wasn't good and it wasn't perfect. And guess what? It wasn't good. It wasn't perfect, but it had to go out in the world because I had to get version one out so I could do version two, version three, version four. And now you're talking to me, Graham, on episode 3674. So guess what? Version one is never perfect. So stop calling yourself a perfectionist. If you are that person, start calling yourself a coward because you at least be being truthful to yourself. And I know that may sound harsh, but some people need because I needed somebody to tell me that back in 2012.

21:02And I'm so glad they did. So Graham, let's end by talking about the three most important components to building an automated online business that will actually give us time freedom. At the end of the day, it comes down to these three things and you can dress it up however you like and really suit it to your preferences and to what your calling is. But at the end of the day, you need one, evergreen searchable content. I'm a huge organic content guy, content marketing. I just love the idea of putting out a video or a podcast or a blog post that will show up in a Google or YouTube search all day every day and serve me for years down the road.

21:41And it's going to attract my target market. So that content is what's going to drive people to you. It's not quick, but eventually when you're putting out the kind of content like you are, JLD, like that, that content is discoverable and that's your engine for discovery. when people are looking for help, you show up. And then number two, that should lead to an automated email funnel. You want to move them from the content platform, which is never bankable. Like I built two businesses on YouTube, but I don't trust anything. I don't trust YouTube. I don't trust, I wouldn't build a business on TikTok and just trust TikTok because that could disappear.

22:16I mean, anything could disappear or change. And when there's mediators or in between gatekeepers and algorithms, all that kind of stuff is dangerous to bank your business on. So that's a great place to be discovered. But quickly, we want to move them to an audience that you own, and that's your email list. And on that list, you should have some pre-written emails that welcome them, that over deliver, that sort of show your credibility in the space, why you're a coach to listen to and bring them in and automatically offer them the third component, which is a digital product. And that could be an online course.

22:48That could be a membership site, which is a community where there's content and coaching in a community. That could be a group coaching program or an application for a high ticket group coaching program, or that could be an app or software as a service. It almost really doesn't matter what the digital product is, but that's what allows you to scale and all that can be sold automatically. So evergreen searchable content to an automated email funnel to a digital product, that is the foundation of time freedom in this modern era. One, two, three, Fire Nation, a lot of value bombs coming at us here, talking about limiting beliefs, those three components.

23:23And of course, so much more value was shared. Graham, give us the one key takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our conversation today. Then give us a call to action to connect with you, anything you have for us. And then we'll say goodbye. Yeah, I would say that if you haven't started a business, you have a business hidden inside of you. You're sitting on a gold mine, and that is your life experience and your knowledge. And if you already have a business and it's not giving you time freedom, then you need to seriously challenge the way you've built your business and know that none of us are truly experts.

23:56We're all just normal people who are groping through the dark and figuring this out. But now is the time for you to have the guts to rethink things and go after what you really want and be willing to have the humility to change the way you're going about it if it leads you to success. And as far as connecting with me, man, Hang out with me anywhere you like on YouTube, Graham Cochran, or on Instagram at The Graham Cochran. But I got a gift for you. If you want to dive into passive income and see how this plays out a bit more and sort of see the business model in depth with a lot of scripts and templates and things you can follow, I have a free workshop for you at GrahamCochran.com slash gift.

24:33You can check it out there and continue to dive into all this material. Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with GC and JLD today, so keep up the heat. Head over to eofire.com, type Graham in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with everything that we've talked about here today. Graham, one more time. What's that URL? Grahamcochran.com slash gift. Graham, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation.