1987 – Helping Business Owners Thrive Through Community and Mentorship with Nick Berry

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1:05With us right now, it's Nick Barry. Nick, you are a serial entrepreneur, a founder of many companies. You are found on the web at nickberry.info. And to our podcast listening friend, you are the host of the Business Owner's Journey podcast. It's got a black background. It's got your smiling face on the cover. Nick, it's great to have you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Josh. Yeah. Tell me about your primary impact in the world today, who you serve, what you do. Yeah. So as you mentioned, a serial entrepreneur founder, I have owned, co-founded, acquired several dozen businesses, do a lot of work with other business owners.

1:49I would say by trade, I'm entrepreneur business owner, but in terms of like maybe a unique strength or unique ability, I make business owners better at what they do. Yeah. What specifically? I mean, obviously, making business owners good at what they do. I mean, in business ownership, there's a million things that we can do. There's an infinite number of activities we could do. There's certainly a lot of plates that we got to spin. Are you just kind of overall strategy? And if so, obviously talking business owners that could span multiple industries, Please nail it down for us. Like what your superpowers are.

2:31The thing that you just described there, like the abundance of potential things that could distract us, like that's part of the problem that I help solve, right? It's like we put a strategy in place, first of all, that helps you narrow down like what you should spend your time on. And then how do you spend your time on that? Well, what I tend to focus on are a couple of different areas of business owners. Number one is that leadership, helping them grow themselves as business owners. two is their strategy three is having a business an operating system something in place that ties the strategy to the action the things that are going on every day so they make sure that they have a clear direction in mind for their business and they know how to put action in place do things every day that are going to move them closer to that and don't waste a lot of time effort money and ideally lose fewer nights of sleep.

3:25Yeah. Nick, tell me about your own, like what do you spend your week doing today? Like in terms of like the companies that you're involved in. So, and do you mind maybe just listing a few of the companies that you're pretty actively are involved in? Yeah, I don't mind at all. No, so I have a portfolio of companies and that do a few different things. Right now, I have three that I am actively involved in. I don't spend much time on the day-to-day, but I'm the CEO and was a co-founder of Fitness Revolution, which is a business coaching firm for gym owners. And we've been doing that since 2010. I am a partner in a marketing firm, Entrepreneur's Edge, and I am also a co-founder of SEOcontentsurge.com, which does SEO content writing for businesses.

4:18Yeah. What are you most excited about these days in the business world? Well, I think that there are a ton of people who are making the leap, who are getting into business for themselves in some way, shape or form, right? It could be like the side gig or the hustle, or they could be opening up a new franchise. It just seems like there are more and more people who are making that move. And at the same time, there are more and more people who are having this realization like, I don't know. And it's what I went through. All of these businesses that I've been a part of, getting them off the ground, getting them up and going, had some successes, had plenty of failures.

5:03They all have helped brought me to this place where it's like all these lessons. There's a pattern there. There's some predictability to it. But let's like roll that up and see if we can shorten the learning curve for the other Nick Berries, the people who are brave enough to make the leap, but don't know what they don't know and are trying to find it. So right now we're in front of a business owner community, folks that have, you know, they're 30s, 40s. They've been running their business for quite some time. Like if you were to give a bit of a little mini TED talk to them, what do you think is important for that audience to understand today?

5:42Well, yeah, one of the most important things is you don't have to do this alone. You don't you should not try to do it alone. You need to curate your support system. I think you need to be looking for some type of one on one guidance. And obviously, I'm biased towards coaching. It doesn't have to be coaching, but you need to have someone who knows your business very intimately, who's there to hold you accountable and help you advance yourself forward as a leader and a business owner. You need to be part of communities. That's to help you be around other people who are, it's the bigger group who are, have similar characteristics to you that are, that you can expand your network and kind of feel the ebb and flow of how things are going.

6:33And I think you need to be part of some type of smaller, more intimate community of like-minded peers that are going to help you kind of take a see your business from different angles. They're close enough to it that they understand it and close enough to you that it's OK for them to say, hey, maybe you could look at it this way. So I think just curating those three things alone as part of your support system is, for me, it was one of the biggest inflection points of my career. And I've seen it time and time again for other entrepreneurs who follow in those steps. yeah um without that um because it's tempting to just kind of hang out behind our computer monitor and watch a lot of youtube videos listen a lot of podcasts chat with chat gpt um but but it sounds like again you know that that sense of community or that you know the kind of that personal support's pretty critical why do you think that is well because you can go out there and you can learn a lot of this stuff on your own the hard way, or you can go out there and you can learn from other people and their mistakes and what they're willing to share.

7:47You know, their chat GPT can't really put itself in your shoes and say, okay, here's how this looks to me. Here's how my experience went when I was in your place. I didn't, but I can, Nick Berry can, Josh Elledge can, right? Having those peers, mentors, coaches, being parts of communities, those things, those are other perspectives that are going to help make you a better thinker. And that's really powerful. Like that's, at the end of the day, as a business owner, that's your job. You got to be a good decision maker. And that's not easy. You don't just, most people don't just wake up and be really good at making decisions like that.

8:31We have to work on it. And until you think about it in that way, you probably don't ever consider how do I get better at it? Now, so do you serve other businesses or other business owners? Obviously, there's your podcast, The Business Owner's Journey. But what's your, I guess, you know, to that business owner community, like, how do you serve them or what value do you, what's your, I guess, intention there with the podcast and beyond? So my methodology, the one that we've developed over the years that we use in our businesses, I share that in the content on my website through the podcast. I also do some strategy work, business coaching with clients and through like mentoring and partnerships.

9:21and we use that methodology there. So like, yes, if someone wanted to, I guess your question is more like, what do I offer? How do I give someone what I have? Then it's beyond the free content in the podcast and available on the website. I do work directly with people through mentoring, coaching or partnering. Yeah. What does that typically look like? And who would kind of be that ideal person that would be a good fit for you? Because, I mean, there's a lot of coaches out there, right? No shortage. Yeah, yeah. So, like, why would someone say, you know what, Nick is my guy. And here are the reasons why, based on maybe what their gaps or their needs are or what your superpowers are.

10:10Yeah, good question. And to the point about there being so many options out there, I think that's become a really good thing. So if it's not me, that's fine. Just make sure you find somebody that's for you because it's pretty important. As far as people being a good fit for me, I'm primarily B2B, primarily in service businesses. A lot of the work that I've done, like we were building creator businesses in 2008 and 2009. Like they weren't called, it wasn't content creation then, right? That economy wasn't there yet, but that's what we were doing. So, you know, if you're a creator, somebody who has this expertise, but you don't know how to like make it a real business, that's typically been somebody who's come to me and I can say, yeah, here's a quick checklist.

11:02Like I can save you a ton of time. Yeah. Yeah. Nick, your podcast is called The Business Owner's Journey. To our friend that's listening right now, it's a newer show, so congratulations on the recent launch. Thank you. I guess, who would be the ideal listener, and what would you hope that transformation that would take place when they start diving in and spend time with you? Yeah. So those business owners who are or potential business owners who are trying to figure out like, what does the path need to look like? So they're kind of aware that I don't know what I don't know, but I know I need to look for it.

11:43And so they want to go out there and they want to try to get some exposure to other people who've been down that path, who will share their stories, share their lessons and ideally shorten the learning curve for you. And that's why I bring my guests on and it's other business owners, experts from all walks of life. And if people who I think are smart and have something really valuable to share that will help like save you some time, some money, some effort, some blood, sweat and tears, some sleepless nights. Like it's all about shortening that learning curve for all of us, any of us who are on that journey of building our business and growing ourselves.

12:25And as far as the transformation, like my goal is shorten the learning curve and ideally make you a better, give you more ways to think about the problems that you're trying to solve, make you a better thinker, better decision maker. Great. Nick Berry, host of the Business Owner's Journey. Your website, nickberry.info. When someone goes to your website, what would you recommend they do? Yeah. So if you want to find the podcast, it's right there in the menu. It's right in front of you there. You can find information about the podcast. If you want to read some of the things that the people, the businesses that I've built or people that I've worked with, there's a page on their endorsements for that.

13:03And then there's like plenty of content that you can go and find. If you go to nickberry.info backslash tools, that is going to take you to a page where we're sharing all of the resources, anything that our guests have offered to the audience. We're putting that there. Yeah, excellent. Nick, thank you so much for joining us again. Yeah, my pleasure. Nick Berry, serial entrepreneur, coach, and podcaster. Thanks, Nick, for joining us. Thanks, Josh. Appreciate it.

13:37Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders, asking them where their best business comes from.

14:19I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed.

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