2031 - Taking Control of Your Entrepreneurial Destiny with EntreThrive's Aaron Marcum

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1:05With us right now, it is best-selling author and visionary, Aaron Markham. Aaron, you are the author of Entre Thrive, and you are also, that's the name of your company as well. You are on the web at entrethrive.com. To our friend that's listening to us, just click around in your podcast app, to the information icon, or click around on the, you'll find the show notes. I've got a direct link, Aaron, so we can follow along directly as we're having this conversation. Your forward or your introduction is written by Brian Tracy. And the subtitle here is An Entrepreneur's Eight Laws to Accelerate Financial Freedom While Creating the Good Life.

1:44Well, Aaron, it's great to have you. It's great to be here, Josh. I appreciate you having me. I'm excited to have our quick conversation. I love the quick fire here. Yes, of course. Well, tell me what the good life is. Where are we headed? And how can an entrethrive culture or mindset help us get there? Yeah. Yeah. So I came across this term. I just a couple of years ago when I was completing it at the age of 50, completing my master of applied positive psychology program at UPenn. I studied under Martin Seligman, top psychologist of the last couple of decades. He started that program. He's kind of known as the father of positive psychology.

2:25And that term, the good life comes from Aristotle. And we kind of consider him, he's probably the father or the grandfather of positive psychology, because, you know, he talks about the virtues and so forth. But for Aristotle, the good life was the complete life and a journey. He always used that term eudaimonia as a term to say it's beyond just life satisfaction, but it's living a life worth living. And it's living your best life. And, and so that's why I use that term, the good life is, it goes beyond just what you might think as far as life satisfaction, financial well-being or whatever that you might attach to that, but it's, it's the whole life.

3:08It's the complete life. Yeah. So what are then the tent poles or what does the path look like in order to create that level of, of, you know, abundance and, And just kind of fulfillment is probably a better word. Yeah. You know, and this book I wrote specifically for the entrepreneur, hence the name Entrethrive, Entrepreneurial Thriving. And so I can speak to that, you know, as far as like the eight laws, you know, that I talk about in the book, there's science behind them. When I was doing my capstone at UPenn for the program was when I first had the idea for the book, realizing there's some real science behind entrepreneurial well-being.

3:52We think differently. We're a little bit of a different bunch. I guess you could say our drive is different than maybe the mass population and not better, just different. We just have a different, we're wired differently. And so these eight laws are all kind of more tied to the entrepreneur, although much of it can be applied to anyone, the entrepreneur, a lot of different people. But clarity is the first law entreclarity i'm getting really not just clear we hear about you know know your why all those things i really talk more about getting clear on your what i call your guiding truths like what what do you want to be true about you at all times i have nine guiding truths my first one is my mind is at peace seconds my actions reflect character my body is in good health and i live by these nine my ventures create freedom i don't know i'm an entrepreneur i have a few companies, but I don't want to be invested in anything that doesn't allow me the freedom to be with my time, with my family, freedom to spend the time I, the way I want to that and so forth, freedom of money, that kind of thing.

4:59And so clarity on those things, a lot of it's self awareness also is about that law, accepting where you're at as, as an individual, as an entrepreneur. And so that's the first law. There's so much into that first law. It's actually the longest chapter and I call it the cornerstone law. It's really the cornerstone of all the laws is that you first have to get clear on those things. I love this quote by Dr. Martin Luther King. It goes like this. It says, if you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl, but whatever you do, keep moving forward. And so I wrote this book in that kind of outline just like that so when the entreclarity law we have a a crawl walk around approach to that and the crawl part is get clear on your guiding truths you know the walk part is become more self-aware self-acceptance we have some great science behind that how to do that um the third part is what we call our breakaways i use the term breakaway a lot i love cycling see in the background, my office and a breakaway is when you break away from the pack from the rest of the group.

6:12And that breakaway is something we help our clients do in our coaching side of our business to help them break away from, from where they are today into a much bigger future. And, and those, that's kind of how the book's written, but the, the clarity law, that's the foundational keystone keystone law create second got to be creative and have the space to create and i'll be really quick with these because i know our time is short but third law is grit entrepreneurial great i talk about the five levels of grit and the last level is calling those who are called their staying power is much more set in stone if you're earlier on in those levels of grit your staying power isn't quite as established.

6:58And so that's really important. Connections, relationships. I know you're really big on this, Josh, went to your, you know, been doing some research on some of your work is those connections, the relationships are really important. Number one contributor to wellbeing, our relationships. So many studies affect that, right? Our connections in work life, as well as in our private life. The fifth one's faith, faith in ourselves, faith in others, and faith in a higher power, faith in God. There's a lot of science behind that faith in God, that if we do have a faith in a higher power, our well-being, our ability to live the good life is enhanced.

7:39And I'm not talking just Christian faith. I'm talking any kind of faith in a higher power shows that your well-being is enhanced. So I'm not being at all just siloed in that. I'm a Christian, but again, I talk about other faiths there, that any kind of faith will enhance your well-being that way. A lot of great stories in that section. Habits is the sixth law, entre habits, and we talk about character strengths and they're actually creating virtues as habits. Something I don't think people talk about. We of those things. Well, in that chapter, I don't even talk about that stuff. I actually go pretty deep in how, what it would, what would life be like for you if virtues, leadership, spirituality, creativity, curiosity, some of these, some of these character strengths were just part of your day-to-day habitual routine, just running in the background.

8:41And then the, the seventh habit is vigor, our health, lining mind and body. Entrevigor is what I call it, but having that vigor, talk about the Mustang mind in there, it takes over our body, takes over our mind, kind of Joe Dispenza's work is intertwined in there. And then the last one's agency, entrepreneurial agency, the freedom to choose to take ownership, to help your team take ownership on your personal life, the autonomy to imagine. I talk about these pillars of agency, and I think it's really important in order to create the good life for ourselves, we have to be agents unto ourselves. We have to be able to have the agency to choose to have the autonomy.

9:27Your team needs that in order to live the life that they want to live. And there are a lot of science behind autonomy, an entire theory called the self-determination theory that I emphasize in the book. Anyway, those are the eight laws that help you create the good life for yourself, especially as well. Do you mind talking about the home care industry, which I know you historically, you've done a ton of work in. I suspect that that's part of your background as well. Do you mind sharing maybe what you do professionally for the home care industry? Yeah, yeah. So my history, I started off, my first entrepreneurial venture was a home care agency out of Salt Lake.

10:07And I grew that to be one of the largest in the region and saw a need for data analytics, started Home Care Pulse a few years later. and home care pulse because become the one of the largest brands in the home care space. And they, they're a fairly large company in the space. Now I exited that company in 2020, but I continue to operate in the space. It's like a home care pulse is like the JD powers of home care, a lot of data analytics, measurement training, things like that. And so since then, And since my exit, I continue to coach a lot of home care entrepreneurs. I actually invested in a home care agency out of Raleigh, North Carolina.

10:49I'm a significant partner in that. Golden Harmony is the name of the company. I'm proud of what they've been able to do. We've quadrupled their revenue in a matter of a couple of years and growing like leaps and bounds and wonderful team effort there. It's been amazing to see their growth. and so I'm still involved very much in the home care space also uh during the last five years coached a lot of non-home care entrepreneurs but I have a special love for the home care side of things and we have an entire program called our breakaway program for home care leaders it's a very high-end coaching program for for home care agencies really the CEO and the CEOs of those home care companies.

11:36Yeah, yeah. So I want to give our friend that's listening to us right now, let's think of something that may be given, I don't know if you were presenting to a room of established business owners and leaders. You say, listen, here's one thing I want you to do over the next week or so. Maybe it involves their team. Maybe it just involves themselves personally. Anything immediately come to mind that you think might be a good activity or something to focus on or mind map or plan? Yeah, yeah. You know, if there's, I mean, going back to the clarity part, right? Is that getting clear? If they don't have really what's important to them, we actually, we can put it in the show notes, but then just go to the website, entrethrive.com.

12:20We actually have an AI bot that we've created that allows people to build their own guiding truths. And they have to click on the home care leader tab there. We've created it, but it's agnostic. It's for anybody. And they can, they can actually interact with that. And it's, it's really, and it's all about just asking the right questions as far as what you want. We just know what questions to ask from a science backed standpoint, to help them figure out, okay, what is it that is important to me? What is it that I want? Not just what I'm passionate about, but what is it do I want out of my life and what doesn't support that.

13:01And so another activity that they could be doing, you know, over the next week is look at everything. Once they are clear on what they want, make a list of everything that doesn't support that all the activities, all the things that they're involved in, any addictions they might have, anything that's holding them back from achieving their guiding truths and leaning into those things and achieving those breakaway goals is what we call them. And, you know, Dan Sullivan from strategic coach calls it the 80%, you know, let go of that 80 % that's probably holding you back from really achieving your 10 X goals.

13:39And I would say that's one of the best activities to say, you know, let's, let's identify what is it that I shouldn't be doing anymore, as opposed to what I should be doing and, and try to focus on that first and then lean into that 20 % that, that you're doing now, but maybe you need to do better or update or retool and so forth. So that's an easy activity. Have a lot of different activities, you know, a delegation activity, how to delegate better to their team so they can really be in there. What I call their guiding genius, you know, what they're really wired to do as an entrepreneur. So part of, um, I, I, you know, when you use the term breakaway, um, use this cycling metaphor quite a bit, um, and, uh, um, kind of the visuals associated with that.

14:29Um, and, and I suspect that you have some experience in this. Do you mind maybe just sharing like, um, why that is such a great metaphor for a business leader or business owner entrepreneur? Yeah. You know, I, I first got into cycling in 2016. It's when I really started making some major changes in my health and in my exercise and my business grew at the same time. I had no coincidence, but I got into cycling back then. And initially, you know, obviously for personal reasons, but I found so many business tie-ins to that. One was the breakaway. And the breakaway is when a group, a pack breaks from the group together.

15:08It's usually best done as a team. If you watch the tour to France, you breaking away by yourself, almost a hundred percent of the time doesn't work. Breaking away with a group is far more effective. Yeah. Why? And this is the reason why there's a concept in cycling called drafting. Yes. And drafting, if you can get right behind someone else's wheel, six to 12 inches, you know, or sometimes even up to a couple feet, you can benefit up to a third or even sometimes more, depending on the wind. A third of your energy is saved in drafting. That's amazing. I didn't realize it was that much. It's a ton.

15:50And in business, when we have mentors, other team members, when we're sharing the load, we're not doing everything ourselves as entrepreneurs. we can draft behind other people sometimes we draft people draft behind us good drafting or a good breakaway is when you're rotating that right rotating that that lead and when you're with a team letting people rotate the lead and letting people own different projects that maybe you would traditionally take charge of but let them take it right and let them lead drafting is a powerful powerful metaphor to how we can work better in business and in life you know a marriage partnership you know it's a partnership it's a breakaway team you know where you're breaking away together to to for a common goal right that you're trying to to achieve and so very powerful yeah up to 30 sometimes more than that i've been in some races where I feel like I'm saving half of it, right?

16:52I'm just like coasting behind people, you know? Yeah, it is.

17:02When I stay in my zone of genius, when I stay doing what I do best and nobody else within the organization can do what I do, you know, Aaron, from my experience, I'm happiest. I don't get burnt out. I love what I do. It fuels me. I've got an endless amount of passion to do that one thing. But I'm telling you, the one thing that burns me out more than anything, and I start to not enjoy my business is when I'm forced to do things. I'm just not wired to, for example, get into the minutia and the details on something like that. And I usually, yeah, right. Right. And I'm, I am, I get, I find myself getting resentful, you know, of other people or, or just the situation I started thinking about, you know, and, and, and, and so is as leaders, you know, just how critical that is to surround ourselves with good people to hire for personality to hire, you know, for those, you know, you know, getting someone to be the yin to your yang kind of thing.

18:08and yeah, I just hope, oh, well, look, I got lucky. I have a good CEO who's been with me for a long time and she perfectly compliments and is passionate about doing the things that I do not like. That's key, that's key. I've always had great, I've been fortunate myself to have that kind of other person who likes, I guess not always, not in my first company, it was a challenge, but definitely a home care pulse. Yeah. Amazing. My executive assistant right now, same thing. It's really, really important. Yeah. Yeah. I love this. So your website and the book, entrethrive.com, obviously you can get to the book from the website.

18:57What else would you recommend our friend that's been listening? Where do they go from here? You'd mentioned the AI tool. is the guiding truths uh yeah ai tool that they can build their own guiding truths um a statement they can create a statement from that and it just it just asks them a series of questions and then based upon those answers to those questions it it builds out a nice um a nice little report for them and and and it's it's complimentary they don't they don't they don't pay for that it's just on the website there's there's several resources on the website obviously the book is, you know, getting the book and understanding those eight laws, I think is really important.

19:36We have a resource tab. So if they click on the resource tab, they can also download some various tools that we talk about in the book. One of them is that they just want a PDF version of the, of the, the guiding truths. They can get that as well. Yeah. Very much a give first. You know? Yeah. I got to point this out to Entre Thrive and the entrepreneur's eight laws to accelerate financial freedom while creating the good life. Talk about consistent five-star reviews. You got a 4.8 on Amazon, 113 ratings. And this is a book that just recently came out a few months ago. So you definitely have hit a nerve.

20:20It's a USA Today featured bestseller. It's available on audiobook, Kindle, hardcover paperback. And again, you can get to all of that through your website entrethrive.com. Aaron Markham, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for this. Thank you for the work that you do. Thank you.

20:44Thanks 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.

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