2482 - Building Houses and Businesses Without Losing Your Mind with John Cavendish

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now is John Cavendish. John, you are a, what would you say, a strategic advisor for second decade founders. You have had three exits in your time. You're an NLP master practitioner and you were found on the web at johncavendish.com. John, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh. Thanks so much for having me and the amazing introduction. and I can be found there, yes. Ah, so we were talking, I always love kind of finding out what high-level leaders are doing for fun or kind of keeping busy with outside of work.

1:31I understand you are in the process. You're currently living in Vietnam and you're building a house there and that has some steps to it. You shared just a little bit. I mean, it's certainly been keeping you occupied and I think you've also, So you mentioned that you've learned a few things. Tell us what this process is like. And by the way, you're doing this while you have a newish baby. Newish baby, yes. He's just started kind of just standing up and walking around. So yeah, so we're like settling down. And me and my wife, who's Vietnamese, we were like, oh, let's build a house. Let's buy a house.

2:07We bought a house. We're like, oh, no, screw that. Sell that one. Let's build a house. So we bought a piece of land and Vietnam's crazy. So Vietnam, if you're anywhere in the world, has the craziest real estate market. kind of a bit like china because it's a closed system there's a closed communist system you can't take money out of the country so people invest in gold or land so it's like a land banking it's like an asset so land is super expensive here way more than the us like talking about like new york city prices if you're in a major a major city here and we bought some land we'd got an architect we started building well he started planning to build then trump invaded the middle east and all the prices went up for everything in the world like if it's costing me an extra supposed to be costing me an extra hundred thousand dollars how much is it costing everybody else in the world um anyway so everything's delayed we go back to the drawing board building in a few months once rainy season finishes and i'm super excited but it's uh it's definitely a journey we've been through several crazy crazy things so far in the last six months trying to build this thing gosh oh my gosh well uh well when when are you hoping to have that process done uh well if we start building the end of rainy season they throw houses up here it's like solid like concrete so they're like literally building 14 hours day every day six months they'll build you 4 000 square foot solid concrete house concrete floors and brick bulls.

3:34Yeah. Well, congratulations on the endeavor. You know, again, I know it's, you've had some fits and starts. So we'll just, we'll just say it that way. You know, John, I thank you. I really would love to learn a bit more about your work. I love the title that you have. And I think that this resonates with a lot of founders, particularly if they've been at it a little bit the time, you know, perhaps they expected a little bit different trajectory or experience at this point, but they're here. And, you know, your opening line is, you know, is you built this for freedom. So why do you still feel stuck?

4:20What is your experience of, you know, working with the kinds of clients that you do? Obviously, you've been through some exits. You've been through this process. Explain this dynamic. Yeah, thanks for asking. I mean, I worked with these people because they were me. You know, I was doing the same thing. I was building, building, building. And I wasn't experiencing the freedom that I thought I would experience on the other side. You know, I think a lot of us go, if we get to here, then I will feel like this. If we do this, then I will feel like that. And I was holding it over myself like a hammer, you know, as they say, like push motivation.

4:54I was running away from scarcity, away from lack of money, being poor or not having freedom rather than towards some amazing vision. And I held all these entrepreneurs and all these coaches talking about you need this cool vision that you're running towards. But I didn't have it. I was running away from being poor and I wanted I wanted freedom. So I got super into Tony Robbins several years ago. I credit that for like my ability to connect with people, meet my wife. it changed me a lot and then once I sold the last company and I had the baby like perfect timing after some time off I got really deep into becoming an NLP master practitioner and applying all the stuff that I've learned over the last decade in business and also through all the Tony Robbins stuff to you know to help to helping others and really figuring out why they're stuck because most people in their second decade they know what they should be doing or they have a good idea um but they're just not doing it so they're figuring out is what's the biggest lever in their business and how can we figure out why you're not pulling it and make things easier usually it's not that they're not doing enough it's that they're doing too much of everything and i can talk you through if you want that a little bit yeah all right let's let's just continue on in this journey doing too much of everything i can identify with that i know i think a lot of people can because Because, you know, John, there is an unlimited appetite for activity, for things that you can invest in, for focus.

6:23And that's overwhelming. So a lot of times it's, you know, I think it's just really just a question of where it's really. And I think, you know, one of the superpowers of being a great business owner is just, you know, where do you prioritize? It's all about prioritization and just having that wisdom and also drive to do the things that really matter when there are a lot of other things that we might opt into because we're like, well, maybe that's not as challenging. I like doing this better, but maybe that's not the thing that my business needs. But I'm not willing to engage in that conversation in my head.

7:01I don't know if this is a dynamic that you see or how you would describe it. Exactly. Yeah, so you talk to someone like I'm walking 40 hours a week, 50 hours a week, 60 hours a week. But then once we've had a conversation, we figure out what the biggest lever is or lever is in their business. Well, how many hours a week are you working on that? And we get down to, oh, one, two, three. Say the biggest thing is lead generation or going on podcasts. And they're going on one podcast every two weeks. Oh, OK, well, what brings you clients? Well, podcasts have been my main lead generation form so far for clients.

7:32Well, how many podcasts does Josh do? every two weeks or every month, maybe more than two. So the three biggest things that I see, like the three biggest things that people get stuck on and the reason they're not moving forward, tip from Josh, three biggest things, are, well, the first one's hedging. So I talk to a lot of people, I ask, what are you doing? And they usually say, I've got this opportunity, that opportunity, I'm doing this business, that thing, I've got these three income streams in my business. And then I ask how much revenue you're doing. And if you're not doing more than 80k a month, when you've got all that going on, you're doing too much.

8:07You're doing too many different things. And all of them are doing something. Like usually I talk to entrepreneurs in their second decade and all of their revenue streams are making some money and they don't want to kill the thing making$2 ,000,$4 ,000,$8 ,000 a month. But when we get down and deep and we analyze each of the opportunities and we figure out, okay, well, which one is the real opportunity, both in terms of growth and also in terms of like a sellable business, usually it becomes pretty clear that either one or two are the thing. And that level of clarity means that we can just start chopping off all this other stuff.

8:40Because really, you want to make a million dollars, you only need only, you only need to be having, you know, ideally one offer, one go to market strategy. And you know, whatever your business model is, it's just one thing, you know, you should be able to scale one offer to a million dollars, whether it's helping selling you know an offer that you're selling as a service business you know it's only eight clients at 5k a month that's 40 it's only 12 clients at 5k a month and you'll get your million dollars it's not crazy crazy it's just what's the plan to get from here to there so who would be some examples of folks that that you have worked with and i mean you're right i I mean, that sounds like an incredibly simple formula.

9:27I feel like a lot of founders would then look at that and go, yes, on paper, that sounds incredibly simple. Yeah. But, you know, the reality is it's kind of almost like building a house in Vietnam. I mean, it's, you know, there are just things that are going to come up. And, you know, I wish I could get to eight$5 ,000 clients. But again, there's all this and all that and this and that. And, you know, so how do we where do we go from there? Good question. So I'll use an example and I'll explain how we applied it to this client. This is one of my clients. So when he came to me, he was making$8 ,000 a month.

10:10He's a friend of mine. He's done a few businesses. This is a new one. He'd started because he had an econ business and then everything literally blew up. caught fire. So he started a new consultancy business. And he was like, Okay, John, how do I scale this up? So we applied my kind of principles of almost everyone I work with, if you're if they are working on a new offer or a new way to sell their offer, which is stack the stack, the bricks in your favor, stack the odds in your favor, sell recurring models, sell something simple, and make it easy for other people to deliver. Because too often people, well, clients, and I know, we all are as well.

10:45We're experts in the business we get into. So we think we have to be super smart in what we do. Like we need to apply our brain power in order to move things forward. And most people I work with are super smart people. And they don't, you know, then they quickly realize that the bit the client wants the most and pays the most for isn't necessarily the bit they're applying their brain power. It's this bit of their process. So if we can take a step back and stop selling time, of course, as everyone always says, don't sell time for money, but stop selling time, figure out the thing people are willing to pay for on a recurring basis that's part of their business.

11:20Then we go back to market and we figure out, okay, how do we apply that? So for this guy, he was doing AI, it's very trendy, but he was doing AI consulting for 100 bucks, 150 bucks an hour. We took a step back and realized that what all his clients needed was somebody with a business brain who also understood the AI and how to apply it. So we said, okay, what is that? Well, fractional is super hot and important right now. Fractional is a super hot topic right now. So we came up with the idea of a fractional AI engineer. So we went out to market saying like, we will be a fractional guy in your business.

11:55So rather than hiring a real AI engineer who'd cost you$20 ,000 a month, you could have me, which is him, for depending on the package, three to$6 ,000 a month. I'll be there figuring out opportunities, implementing them with you, and getting things moving forward. And it's just month to month. And that was the offer we went to market with. And very quickly, he went from 8K of randomly invoiced revenue to 25K a month and then 30K a month within four and a half months. Because we got the offer right for the market at the right time and then just poured gasoline on it. Yeah. Well, how did you get that figured out?

12:35So I know that, you know, as I've talked with founders, And I've been through this, right, where, you know, you kind of put something out to the market and it's like, it's not quite there yet. You know, and so you have to iterate and you have to iterate. And it can be frustrating to get to that point. But ultimately, hopefully you find it right. You get it. How do you get to that part as quickly as possible? Good question. So I think there's two approaches. First one is most people, most of us, if we've been in business for a decade, have been doing what we do for too long. and we have lots of pre you know pre misconceptions pre thoughts about what the what the market wants and doesn't want so i think having somebody to bounce ideas off who hasn't got any any or in the game is useful whether that's me or whether that's just another business friend or business adult who can be there and sit with you and go does that make sense what about that what about this um the other because we're working on a new offer now with one of my clients i think is don't go in with the author.

13:33So build the hand raising outbound. So whatever that is, like, this is the problem outbound to people like, do you have this problem? Do you have that problem? Do you have the other problem? I'm building this, which I've worked with on a different client. Would you like to talk about it? So we just run discovery. So we get in there, we have a really well formatted discovery script. If you want my discovery script, you can just reach out to me on my website. But just run discovery and just be totally open to ideas so run a well-framed discovery call lots of questions and then come back like okay i'm going to put something together that how we might be able to work together so to start with it's all open and every time we talk to something new we close the loop closer and closer and closer for what offer they might want to offer does that make sense i I'm trying to speak generalities, but people that people understand.

14:26No, absolutely. Your website, johncavendish.com, can you share just a little bit about how you engage with folks, what that looks like? Sure. So the way I work with people is I only work with people who've been in business for a while. It might be a decade. It might be five years. But they've got over the initial hump. They've proved that it may have gone up, may have gone down, but they've continued to push forward. you know that's what you said about business adults i think business adults are people that have put their oren and just continued sometimes it's amazing and you're making hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes it's a bit shit so it's not it's not great and you lost 50 grand you lost 100 grand but you're still moving forward and on the way up so you know if you're interested you check out my website you book a fit call with me it's a 15 minute call for us to jump on and see if you're a good fit for an intensive and on that intensive we see if you're a good fit to do longer work but the goal of an intensive is figuring out the biggest lever that we just talked about the biggest lever in your business the thing that if you put gasoline on it will make you a bunch of money and the block like the thing that the reason you haven't pulled the lever yet so that you can become obvious you know obvious it can become open and not half the time you know we solve things just because we're aware of them i mean because we're not aware of something then it it's just there in the background once we're aware of both of these things naturally you'll start to figure out solutions because we all do you know we're all smart people like coaching which is kind of what i'm doing strategic advisory and coaching is a want not a need you know you have to want it and you have to want the results and if you want it i'd be i'm there to help my clients who want me to be on their side of the table being there you know co-ceo co-director and figuring stuff out together you know no judgment we all go through good stuff bad stuff and I'm there to be with them.

16:16Excellent. JohnCavendish.com is the website. When folks go there, what do they click on? What would you recommend their next steps be? Very detailed. I click on, I click around, look at the testimonials, look at other stuff, then book a fit call. Click on the book of fit call and jump on with me for 15 minutes. But yeah, first thing to do is go to the website, check out the client testimonials, check out the advisory page. And if you resonate with the advisory page, then you should book a fit call. That's the main thing. The advisory page is the best page that best articulates exactly what I do.

16:50John Cavendish, again, you are a strategic advisor for second decade founders. I like that. Three time successful exit. John, it's been great. Thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you, Josh.

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