Episode 015 – Rohan Gilkes
Welcome to another episode of The HERO Show. I am your host Richard Matthews, (@AKATheAlchemist) and you are listening to Episode 015 with Rohan Gilkes – Transforming Your Small Business to Cater to the New Generation.
Rohan is a serial entrepreneur who has built several multi-million dollar companies in a few short years. He was recently voted one of the 100 most influential African Americans by The Root in 2017 and has been recognized by the Obama White House for his work in entrepreneurship. He’s the founder of Lawn Tribe, Back Pack, Wet Shave Club, Maids in Black, and Launch27. Rohan serves as an advisor for a number of local startups and co-founded the startup incubator Groovelearning.com.
Here’s just a taste of what we talked about today:
- A website alone will not boost your business.
- Systemize and Automate business processes.
- Giving a business time to make money before moving on to the next.
- Overthinking will hurt your chance to automate, increase prices, and have better clients.
- High-Tech for small businesses.
- Be in a situation where everyone wins.
Recommended tool:
The HERO Challenge
Today on the show Rohan challenged Kevin Pereira to be a guest on The HERO Show. Rohan thinks that Kevin would be a fantastic interview because He was a real estate broker but hated it. Kevin came across one of the cases Rohan wrote. Kevin took his money from his final Real Estate transaction and turned it into a business. Now, Kevin has a huge portfolio of companies.
How To Stay Connected With Rohan Gilkes
Want to stay connected with Rohan? Please check out their social profiles below.
- Website: 27days2launch.com
- Facebook Page: facebook.com/rohangilkes
Call To Adventure
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The Webinar Alchemy Workshop: https://fivefreedoms.io/richard/fs/waw-slf/
Automated Transcription
Richard Matthews 0:00
Hello and welcome back to the hero show. My name is Richard Matthews and I am here on the line with Rohan Gilkes or Gilkes. Am I saying that right, Rohan?
Rohan Gilkes 0:08
Yes, Rohan Gilkes, you got it.
Richard Matthews 0:11
Awesome. It’s a very difficult name to pronounce. But hopefully, people will be able to find it when we spell it out later at the end of the show. So let me give a quick introduction to you. So Rohan is a serial entrepreneur. You’ve built several multi-million dollar companies over the last few short years. You were recently voted one of the hundred most influential African-Americans by The Root in 2017, and you were recognized by the Obama White House for your work on entrepreneurship, which is super cool. I’ll hear a little more about that. You develop a presented business case studies for Catholic University MBA program, Northwestern University’s MBA program. And you’re a regular speaker at startup conferences, and you’re a member of the young entrepreneurs Council, which is very, very cool. And it says you’re committed to building impactful sustainable businesses and doing so in a transparent way as possible. So other folks can join you on your journey. So my first question Rohan is, what is it that you are most known for now? Right? If people were to look at you; look at your businesses, what is it that Rohan is known for today and in the business world?
Rohan Gilkes 1:13
So I am primarily known for creating a series of case studies on how to take simple local service businesses and make them more martyr. So I created basically, what I did was I came up with this concept where I was saying, Okay, let me look at a lawn care company or home cleaning service business? And what would that look like if it were run by a company like Uber? It would have like a mobile app, it would have online scheduling, it would have like real-time alerts, and so on. And that’s why I kind of came up with this process. I built a bunch of businesses that way, did the double-digit millions of dollars doing that, and then I basically share the entire process to the world, a bunch of the same thing as well. And now we’re going a combined over about $60 million per year. So that’s kind of why I’m most known for, except for a couple of other stuff, too.
Richard Matthews 2:21
Man, that’s really cool. So when you say develop these, were you actually developing the businesses in South Korea going into existing businesses and helping them transition?
Rohan Gilkes 2:29
Both. So I developed some of the businesses myself, and then I also created software that is used to transform and modernize old-school, traditional businesses into something that feels more real-time and millennial-leaning, more modern mobile apps, and so on.
Richard Matthews 2:53
Yeah. So you’re sort of taking these businesses that have been around for a long time and you’re helping them move into … I tell people that the millennial market is the up-and-coming moneymakers. They’re all the people that are going to, you know, they’re starting their families. They’re having kids, and they’re, you know, getting out of college. They’re starting to drop, they’re getting their careers. They’re the new source of money, right. So you’re taking businesses that were serving some of the older generations and helping serve the new the newest generation of moneymakers?
Rohan Gilkes 3:19
Absolutely, and I may have to record how you said it. Because it was perfectly delivered. Yes.
Richard Matthews 3:24
Well, we did record it, it’s on the episode, you could steal it.
But that’s cool. So as you know, The HERO Show, we do actually go through and talk about your story as a hero’s story-arc. So, the first part of that is your origin story. Every hero has one where you started to realize that you were different, that maybe you had superpowers. Maybe you could use them to help other people. Where you started to develop, discover the value you can bring to the world. Where did you start in your entrepreneurial journey?
Rohan Gilkes 3:55
So I started my entrepreneurial journey back in about 2011. Where I just knew that what I was doing was not fulfilling, I was an accountant and I had been doing that for about 10 years. I was not very happy. I felt like you know, I had to find something to–where I could apply my skills and build a business and freedom. And I started–just went online, learn everything I could learn in every type of business, you could imagine trying to find a way…that’s how it started.
Then I stumbled upon…well, basically, my home cleaner at the time…a lady that would come and clean my home. We were already good friends. She wanted me to build her website, she knew that time I was dabbling in website and internet marketing. And she was like, can you build me a website? So I said, “You know, I could build you one, but it’d just sit there online. You need marketing. You need customer acquisition.”
And I said “What if I partner with you, I build it, I handle all the marketing, customer acquisition and so on. And we find a way to split the money that we made.” And she was like, “Yeah.” and that really was the start of it. Because I knew that I had to build it in a way that was millennial-leading. Because I knew that audience of people, they were accustomed to instant gratification. Buying on Amazon, delivered like in 12 hours or something. They wanted, that instant … and I knew I had to build that into that type of business. And that was everything that I’ve done so far started at that point.
Richard Matthews 5:42
So how do you go from an idea? That is something that you just want to work with to scaling that into multiple seven-figure businesses. That’s not something that a lot of people have experience with. Even in my business, we got lots of cool ideas. We do lots of cool things, but none of them have scaled into multiple seven figures. How do you go from an idea where you’re working with one customer dabbling in internet marketing. It is what a lot of us do. We have internet marketing, we’re helping people build their businesses and things like that. How did you make that transition from, I have an idea so I’m running a $60 million business.
Rohan Gilkes 6:18
So some of it was…I speak a lot really quickly. I was in the right space at the right time. Meaning that there was this entire huge hole in the market where the millennial audience that you’re talking about there would be ignored it. They were forced to conduct business in a way that they were unhappy about.
That was the first part of this. I would say luck is also important. But what I did was I just became obsessed, though I want to talk about that part. There’s a lot. But then I was obsessed. After I put the business out there and some person came with a little bit of credit card. On the first day, I opened the doors…
…service for $139, I will never forget the amount… I was just like “Man, this has become something.” and I then worked on it every waking moment I had. I would go to work, work on it at lunchtime, I would get off work at 5 pm work on that till late at night. I wake up at 6 am working on it for two hours before work, worked on it for 12 hours on Saturdays… 12 hours on Sundays. Well, that obsession I think is also an important thing … like that first year, I just become a mad person. I’d read everything I could read. Do crazy things aggressively. And really found something that worked. I just did that thing. Like it was like I was breathing ideas.
Richard Matthews 8:00
how much of that kind of like a really hardcore effort was put into building repeatable systems that you could then use to scale?
Rohan Gilkes 8:07
Oh, yeah. So I mean, I’m glad you said that. So as soon as I would do something, I saw that this thing was broken. Yes, my next step was like, how can I either automate it? How could I make it into a system that would work forever in this space? And that process that you just described is what led to me building software to manage every element of the business? And then that software actually ended up becoming its own product that now does about $1.5 million a year that other people could use as well. And that was the process. But yeah, when I found something I had to systemize it and automate it. Right away.
Richard Matthews 8:48
Yeah, that’s awesome. So like, there was just there was a lot of parts in your story, where you’re just working really hard and building systems and just aggressively following the path that works?
Rohan Gilkes 8:58
Yes.
Richard Matthews 9:02
So it sort of sounds like in this process, you discovered your superpowers, right? So your superpowers in your story here is what you do. You build your offer to the world that helps solves problems for other people. It’s the things that you do that help slay the world’s villains. So if you could narrow down to like, what you discovered in this process that really is–either your superpower that you brought your businesses or the business’s superpower that you’re bringing to other people’s business? How would you describe that?
Rohan Gilkes 9:30
Yeah, so that I think, is my superpower through all of this, even looking back, you know, five years, six years now. I’ve been doing this, and how I’m able to impact so many people to quit their jobs and do the same thing and kind of like really change their lives. For me, that thing is copywriting. Content creation. So a lot of what I do to drive traffic to my businesses, and to inspire other people to do this stuff, is I put out these long-form case studies, where I tell them like this is exactly what I did, I’m going to peel back the layers and let you essentially watch me as I build this business, and you can then go forward and do the same thing. You can use the system that I’ve created to do that, and I’m going to leave everything there for you. And that has really – that is the thing that propels myself into success, by creating super transparent case studies, and I’ve written so many ago, on Reddit, and on Medium, even on my Facebook page. And that’s really what has been a change for me.
Richard Matthews 10:36
That’s really interesting because it’s actually the same kind of model I follow for growing my businesses. I tell a lot of my clients the same thing. It’s like, you can give and teach everything, right? And people, like, they don’t buy the information, right? They buy the intimacy, they buy the ability to actually work with you. So giving them all the information up front is not a kill for your business. It generally helps your business grow. So that’s really fascinating that like, you’ve used that strategy to build a $60 million business.
Rohan Gilkes 11:09
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. People are usually concerned, they usually say, Well, if I give away everything, what is their left? What is there going to be left to sell? Exactly the opposite. Just like giving away so that people feel more connected to you. They don’t want to like essentially executed. They want to hire you because you’re the best person in the world, your ability or brands, they feel that you are the expert at this thing, now there’s an opportunity to be close to you to work with you. You don’t ever have to look for customers …
Richard Matthews 11:45
Yeah, so I tell people all the time, people don’t buy information, they buy intimacy. You can literally give away the farm and people will still buy from you because they don’t want to be in that business. They’re not in the business of building apps and things like that to help run the marketing. They want to clean houses, right? They want to do the plumbing, right? I want to do the thing that they want to do. Yeah, I mean, I work with like, real estate trainers, they want to do real estate, they don’t want to build an expert brand business. That’s what you do. Right? That’s the thing that you do. So like you’re just proving to them that you can help them ahead of time with your case studies. And then they’re saying, “Yep…” …the offer, essentially, even if it’s not spoken out loud is you can learn to do all this yourself, you can hire us we can do it for you.
Rohan Gilkes 12:30
Yes, for sure.
Richard Matthews 12:32
Yeah, that’s awesome. So, the next step, right, the next part of the hero story is the fatal flaw. So every hero has a fatal flaw, you know, Superman has kryptonite. Batman is not actually super, that kind of thing. And I tell people in my business, I have a problem with being a perfectionist, where I’ll spend so much time trying to get something exactly perfect. And it doesn’t actually, you know, lead to anything useful in my business, I’ll get stuck on things. And the question is less about what the fly is and more about, what have you done in your business to help overcome the closet? Do you have in your business? So what would you say your fatal flaw is? How have you helped deal with it?
Rohan Gilkes 13:18
Hmm, that’s a good one. Um, I feel like one of Okay, so this is a really good question. So I feel like one of the fatal flaws that I had to do is I would have at some point this like, or term orientation, where I would, the working on something, it could be a project of business or whatever. And then like the next week, I think of another project or business to work on. So I go do that. Then, two weeks later, I think on something else, and I go do that, and I was never able to fully commit to bringing something to fruition and making it as big as it possibly could become. And so what I’ve done is, I know that focus is what wins like focus wins, focus wins. So what I do instead is this, I focus essentially, on one project, one business that’s all I’m going to work on, and I usually give myself a time like 6 months to 12 months. If by that time this thing is not working out, either financially or with what other metrics are used to measure success, I then give myself permission to move on to something else, but not until I can I hit that time period that I give myself to work on that thing. If that thing does become successful in that time and is making money bringing in you know, $20,000 – $25,000 a month or something, then I feel comfortable enough where I can hire some person, they can manage it, and then I’m able to basically buy my time and move on to that next thing that I’m really excited about doing. So I can set this framework for myself where I have these rules. Now. I know unless I hit that marker, or, or I’m able to hit that goal or satisfy that rule. I cannot move on to something else.
Richard Matthews 15:09
Yeah, I really like that. So it’s a thing that a lot of us struggle with is that whole, you know, a lot of times is called shiny object syndrome, right? Where we’re so interested in the new thing, and the next thing that we want to move on before we finish the thing that we’ve done, right, and like I tell people, like one of my other flaws is I am satisfied by learning. Right? So like, I’ve learned the new thing and that was enough satisfaction, I don’t actually have to go out and do anything with it.
So it’s the same kind of problem. So what you’ve done to solve that is you’ve built yourself a framework that it’s like, here’s the amount of time that I know I have to put into something in order to get a legitimate result from it. So in advertising, we call that statistical relevance –have like at least 1000 people seeing the offer, before we make a decision on whether or not the price is too high or too low or something like that or go change the button color. So you’re like you’re giving your business time to achieve that statistical relevance? Is it delivering the revenue that we want? Are the customers happy? Right? Whatever your metrics are? Is it delivering all those things, you’re giving it enough time to actually to hit those? And it’s like a hard and fast rule. Like if we don’t give it this time? We don’t focus on anything else. Right? Until you do. So do you ever have anything that you actually cut it off early? Or like there’s a big red flag that you’re like, Nope, it’s not worth giving it all the time?
Rohan Gilkes 16:35
Oh, yeah, sure.
I essentially, …that time…30 to 60 days, for some person to come to that website, or that landing page or whatever. Put up their credit card, give me that credit card and buy something. So that’s kind of like where I am right now, like 30 to 60 days, I want here to be a transaction from a complete stranger. Now that time, because I’ve done so much I have a team in place, it seems short for people that may be listening. But as you can only get better. That is kind of late what I would think that goal really essentially should be unless of course, you’re building software that takes a long time to develop. But even with software, I want to be paid even before the software is completed. Um, but yeah, I’ve cut so many things off, I get to the 60-day mark, I haven’t seen a single dollar–the business has been open for at least 30 days, nobody’s buying, I’ve put in the marketing effort. So I know I’ve put in the solid effort, there are no transactions, I move on and then start up another domain and do something else.
Richard Matthews 17:48
So you have like an early cut-off. And then like if it makes the early cut-off, then you’re like this is getting my focus until it hits our goals at the end of the year. And then your step, your next step then is to you start pulling yourself out of the business and building the systems to replace yourself and like have that business run on its own.
Rohan Gilkes 18:05
Absolutely.
Richard Matthews 18:08
That’s a really cool framework, and I feel like you should build a course on it.
So that’s, it’s a really cool answer to that fatal flaw too. Because I think a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with that. So anyway, uh, I like that a lot. So, the next one is your common enemy. So every hero has the common enemy, the thing that they fight against. And the way I want to think about this is if you could go into your client’s life, and you can pick any one of the businesses that you work with. And you could just remove something from their life immediately, and have all of them get a better, faster, cheaper result because of removing that enemy. What would that be?
Rohan Gilkes 18:55
The thing that came to mind right away is the mental piece of this. And the thing that I find the people that I work with my clients or even people that I mentor in some way…The thing that kills them the most is overthinking. Overthinking. And I’ll just define that as I can present to them…that led to the success of 100 people before them. But what they’ll do is they’ll create a storyline in their minds, that tells them that if they are the hundred and first person choice, this is not going to work. And here are the reasons why. And they will tell themselves this really compelling story on why it won’t work for them because of some specific pain like their left toe is not the right size, something that’s completely ridiculous.
Richard Matthews 19:56
My left toe’s not the right size either.
Rohan Gilkes 19:59
Exactly! It’s gonna be something completely ridiculous. And it really hurts them. It hurts them from automating, it hurts them from increasing their prices and hurts them from building better relationships with their clients and having more and more conversations with their clients and so on. It hurts them in so many ways that whole thing of overthinking this whole thing. I don’t know what to even call it in general. But if I could remove that from, from people’s face, they could double their businesses–a lot of them–in a year or two.
Richard Matthews 20:32
Yeah, it’s that negative self-talk, right? It’s that little voice in your head? Have you ever seen the little movies you got the good guy and the bad guy your shoulders? That bad guy was saying “You’re not good enough. You’re in the wrong market, nobody’s gonna believe you” that kind of stuff. It’s that voice that you just have to learn how to shut up. How to not listen to it. Do you have any strategies that you use to help clients get over that negative self-talk?
Rohan Gilkes 20:57
One of the things I see and only because it is specifically the only thing that I have actual experience with. I only recommend things that I have had to do myself because I felt that thing when I started. And I still feel that sometimes, even with new projects, even though I’ve done so much, I still feel it sometimes. What I do personally, is I make myself so busy. I lay out the step-by-step that I need to overtake. And I could tell this analogy. Like, if I had to drive from here to from Vegas to New York City, I’m not going to like, come up with all these reasons anymore, why the car may break down in Arizona or I may run out of gas, I won’t have enough food, I just get in my car and start to drive. I then make myself so busy and I take steps every single day. So aggressively. I don’t have time for those voices to really sink in as much as they used to do when I was first starting out. So my answer is just I make myself super busy.
Richard Matthews 21:55
Yeah, and the reality is like even if you do run out of gas in Arizona, or you know the tire pops. Those are things like most of those things you can deal with. You can change the tire and you can call in the service provider to put gas in your tank that kind of thing. But that only happens if you’re in motion.
Rohan Gilkes 22:14
Exactly.
Richard Matthews 22:15
So that’s a good way to fight the little negative voices. Just get in motion and ignore them. Right.
They can tell you the story all they want but you know, just not listening. You’re driving anyways.
You’re driving. I’m going–I’m getting to New York through hell or high water. So the other side of the common enemy is the driving force. tries to save New York. Batman fights to save Gotham. Google fights to index all of the world’s information. What is your mission? If you could go out and do something for all of your clients? What’s the mission that you serve?
Rohan Gilkes 22:57
I would say…My main mission right now–the thing that makes me most passionate is the business that we’ve been talking about most. Where my goal would be to bring the same level of automation that high-tech companies have for their businesses. It’s just normal for Uber to “feel like Uber”. You pull your phone and the car shows up, you jump in and you don’t even think about payments. I want to bring that same level of automation and technology that high-tech startups have to regular local people in Boise, Idaho, that are starting a three-person company moving along. That’s the thing that drives me right now.
Richard Matthews 23:52
So interesting question on that. Is that mission more geared towards the people those businesses are serving? You want them to have better experiences or because you want those businesses to be like…to whom is the mission geared towards? Is it geared towards the small business or is it geared toward the small business’s customers
Rohan Gilkes 24:09
It is firstly geared towards the small businesses because, if they’re able to provide this to their customers, they’re going to do so much better than they’re doing right now.
Their customers are going to be happier. They’re going to bring all these competitive advantages over their competitors. And it really just allows you to build this place where regular people who are just doing so well … building businesses in traditionally ignored spaces.
Richard Matthews 24:46
So if I’m hearing you, right, it’s a type of ripple effect mission. Whereas you start impacting these businesses all over the country, they’re going to start having bigger, more thriving businesses contributing to the economy hiring more people. You have a really tremendous ripple effect for the work that you’re doing.
Rohan Gilkes 25:04
Absolutely.
Richard Matthews 25:06
That’s cool. Yeah, and it’s a really interesting thing that you’re doing for businesses, too, because like you’re taking something that like I would imagine most businesses think of that stuff as unreachable, unattainable. They couldn’t do things like that. So they don’t even try. And so you’re showing them how they can have all that stuff in there and their business?
Rohan Gilkes 25:25
Absolutely. They don’t even try it seems impossible. It also seems too expensive. How can they like…Uber app seems like it probably has been like 100 million dollars in development costs. But what I’m saying is like you can do this dealing with technology challenges and completely change your business, change your life and your customer experience…
Richard Matthews 26:03
Yeah, and I feel I feel like we’re going to have to do some demos of yourself at some point because it sounds really cool.
Yeah, excuse me. I’m recovering from the flu years on my little bit.
So next question, is your heroes tool belt, right? So maybe you have a big magical hammer like Thor or bulletproof vests, like your neighborhood police officer, or maybe you just really love the way like Evernote helps you organize your thoughts? Or maybe how you build killer slides in Keynote. You know, I’ve had people on the show that say it’s their A-3 sheet of paper that they draw out their mind maps and stuff on what is a big tool that you use in your business to help you do what it is that you do?
Rohan Gilkes 26:39
Okay, good. So with my accounting brain… it was like 10 years before I got into the space. I go straight to the cash flow. And for me, the thing that has been the most awesome for my business has been Stripe.
Richard Matthews 26:56
Really? Tell me a bit about that. I’ve never had anyone say that a merchant processor was the biggest tool for their business. How’s that a big win?
Rohan Gilkes 27:04
Yeah, absolutely. So for people that may not know what stripe is…it’s just a merchant processor. You know, credit cards and they charge you 2.8%… But what Stripe has done is when I first started in my actual local service business myself, I was starting a home cleaning company and I wanted to make it as forward-thinking as possible. At the time, we used to take cash, we used to take checks, and we will have like bounced checks every single week. And people will forget to leave the cash on the dining room table. And just managing that thing was, it really hurt the growth of the company. We lost so much money along the way. And then somebody hit me in to say, “You know what, let me try to plug it in Stripe.” And making that Stripe only they can only pay us by credit card. My company grew so much faster. One, I removed all the not getting paid, of course. But then I was able to plug our customers into their own account. So each customer has an account in our business. And we can use their credit card to automatically charge them every week and every month and so on. And we just made the business much more streamlined grew so much faster. And it just completely changed our operations. Now everything is aligned with stripe. The money goes into Stripe. We’re able to send it out to our contractors automatically without even lifted a finger. And it just…it freed me up completely to just do marketing. All I need to do now is drive more customers into that overall funnel and everything’s taken care off completely.
Richard Matthews 28:48
Yeah, so what’s really interesting about that is if you pull back a little bit, the thing that was really beneficial for you was figuring out how to apply automation to your finances. So when you were able to automate your finances in your business, it helped free up a lot of the mental power and physical, you know, labor power that had to go into finances. You were able to take all of that out and then apply it to other parts of your business, which allows you to grow. Because you freed up all the mental cycles that we’re going into that. And it’s interesting, because I found the same thing in my business, something that I spent, actually, the last three or four weeks I’ve spent taking everything in my business and transitioning everything into automated payments. And we’re actually using Stripe for the same thing. And like this first month, we just had it happen where all the payments came through automatically. And it was like, oh, man, it just totally changes everything that I can do this month and going forward. Because like, you know, four or five hours a week of you know, trying to get payment stuff taken care of is just gone now. Like it all just happens automatically. So I can totally see how that was a huge change, especially at the scale your business is talking about.
Rohan Gilkes 30:01
It’s incredible…you’ll really enjoy these next couple months.
Richard Matthews 30:07
Yeah, well, I’ve like I’ve already noticed that I can, that I was like man with that part taken care of I can like take out a few more clients, I can increase revenue, I can put some more effort into these other things because like the money’s taken care of.
So finances are automated. That’s a really cool thing. And like, I’ve never had that come up in a discussion on these calls before. So it’s really interesting that automating finances and being able to take that effort, move it into the marketing of your business has really helped you grow. Okay, so next question is your own personal heroes, right? So Frodo had Gandalf. Luke had Obi-Wan Kenobi. Robert Kiyosaki had his rich dad. Who are your heroes? Were they real-life mentors? Were they speakers or authors? Were they peers that were maybe just a few years ahead of you, and how important were those heroes to what you’ve accomplished so far in your business?
Rohan Gilkes 30:57
So the first one that comes to mind, I usually go with the first that comes to mind is back in 2011. At that time, I was still having a job, right. And I would take the train every morning. And one morning, I was taking the train in DC. And the train station has a little bookstore. And there was a table at the entrance of the bookstore with a couple of books. And there’s a book on there that said 4-Hour Workweek. And I was walking by the 4-Hour Workweek, what is this? I was like, Oh, you know, I’ll grab it really quickly. I’ll read on the train for these couple of days. And see what this is about. That thing changed my entire life. I know, I’m probably not the first person to mention this book. It was Tim Ferriss, he wrote this book about how you can build an online business, and you’re able to overtime, extract yourself from that business, and do very little still get paid six figures per year or something even higher than that, and just change your life to live a completely different life. And I read that book, and it changed everything. So now even though I’m still building businesses, with each business I built, I extract myself out of the business bring my obligations down to less than four hours per week now. And then they go on to this same thing, and I just repeated in the cycle. I got that entire idea from that book.
Richard Matthews 32:27
That’s really awesome. Actually, I read the same book, I don’t remember when it was maybe 2008 or 2009.
And it really helped put my business on the trajectory it’s on now. So like, I didn’t quite go the same route of building, you know, multi-million dollar companies, I went for more of the freedom lifestyle. So like I’m in an RV right now I travel the country full time. And I’ve been traveling full time with my family for two years while running my business and have the freedom to do that. So I have pretty much complete time freedom and complete location freedom, but it’s the same catalyst for that was reading the 4-Hour Workweek… helping build my business to that point. So yeah, I mean that he changed my life, you know, learning how to hire people and how to automate things.
Rohan Gilkes 32:34
Yeah. Dude that is incredible! I did not know you live in an RV and traveling! That is amazing.
Richard Matthews 33:22
Yeah. So like, currently we’re in, we’re in Texas. In a couple of weeks, we’ll be down on the coasts going to go see the international sandcastle competition. And a few weeks after that, we’re going to be in Southern California and, you know, going off the coast of California for the summer and enjoying it. But I have my clients all over the country. And I… you know, I use this little–I’m in an RV office in here that I do my shows from and yeah, so we travel full-time and really take advantage of the freedom and everything that you can have with today’s technology.
Rohan Gilkes 33:50
Right. That’s incredible. Okay, so now you are “new goals” for me. So…
Richard Matthews 34:00
Yeah. I had a client in the past, it was like he makes way more money than I do. He’s in your boat, right? Makes several million dollars a year with his businesses. And he’s like, “I’m jealous of your business because you have so much time freedom, location freedom. I can’t do that. I need to do some of the things you’re doing.” So anyway, yeah, we can certainly connect and talk about some of those things. But yeah, it’s super cool.
Rohan Gilkes 34:21
Absolutely.
Richard Matthews 34:23
Cool. So, um, did you have any other heroes you wanted to mention? Or just Tim Ferriss, before we moved on?
Rohan Gilkes 34:29
Yeah, that’s probably the best one.
Richard Matthews 34:34
Okay. So, last real question for the interview is your guiding principles. Bring it home for our listeners, what are the top one or two, principles or actions that you use every single day in your business to contribute to the success and influence that you enjoy? And specifically, are there any that you wish you had when you first started out on your hero’s journey?
Rohan Gilkes 34:55
So the thing that comes to mind is, as I am working with my employee, my contractors, my business partners, working with suppliers, for our businesses. I’ve been working with all of these different constituents. My goal is to always create a situation where everybody wins. And if everybody wins, people are going to want to work with you more, they’re going to be more invested, they go to work harder, they’re going to be more creative. They’re going to…everything positive, you can imagine goes to you, if you only enter into relationships, where everybody wins. And I can look at that as my face. And that is the face for everything I do as I interact with all the stakeholders.
Richard Matthews 35:49
Yeah, that is incredible. It’s actually one of mine as well. I do the same thing. I talk to all my clients about this. And it’s like that every, every situation we enter, it needs to be “Win-Win-Win”. It’s a win for me as your contractor. It’s a win for you as the business owner, it’s a win for your customers who are buying your products, and going through your stuff that everyone who touches anything that we’re doing together, walks away feeling like they’ve won something. We even approach our marketing from that standpoint. Where we’re looking at how can the marketing be put into the marketplace, the people who interact with that marketing feel like they’ve won or had a positive impact in their life when they interact with our marketing. So like, it’s incredible what happens in your business and the businesses around you. When you approach everything your business from? How do I make this a “Win-Win-Win” for everyone that it touches?
Rohan Gilkes 36:38
Absolutely. We share a lot of the same ideas.
Richard Matthews 36:45
Yeah, I think it’s interesting, I’ve discovered that a lot on this show. As you interact with people who share success in their business, a lot of them share a lot of the same like life principles and things like that. So it’s truly fascinating. And I particularly like that one, the whole idea of “Win-Win-Win” because it’s so foundational, right? If you can learn how to approach things from that way, and really think about what the transaction looks like, from the other person’s perspective. If you can get into your employees’ shoes. If you can get into the person who’s interacting with your marketing or your business partner and be like, how does this impact you? How is this exciting for you? Then it just changes the conversation completely. And you end up building much better products and much better journeys for your customers when you think about it that way.
Yeah. Cool. So the last thing we do on the show, and we do this every time. I call it The Hero Challenge, So the hero challenge is really simple. And it is: do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a really cool entrepreneurial journey or story that we should bring onto the show and tell their story? One, who is it? And two, why do you think they would be a good person on the show and tell their story?
Rohan Gilkes 38:01
Hmm, I have someone that comes to mind right away. One of my business partners his name is Kevin Pereira.
Five years ago, he was going on real estate. He’s a real estate broker.
Hated it. Came across one of the cases I wrote… He quit. He said he had one more transaction to make in real estate. And if that transaction went through, he’s gonna make $10,000. He took that money turned it into a business–followed one of my case studies. $50,000 per month, turned it to six figures moved to Costa Rica, came back and then started building a whole host of other businesses. Now he has like a huge portfolio company. Getting a bunch of money while he hardly doesn’t work.
His story is amazing. He wanted to … he likes the mountains. He likes outdoors. He’s like he really likes to travel and was on the road. And he wanted a house in the mountains. He just moved here in a mountain in California. He fishes all day. He has a bunch of technology businesses and all this…really cool guy.
Richard Matthews 39:26
Yeah, super cool. Love to have him on an interview. And what did you say his name was again?
Rohan Gilkes 39:30
Kevin Pereira and I can send you his email or something …
Richard Matthews 39:34
Yeah, that sounds good. Well, we’ll definitely ask him to come on. So last thing, thank you so much for coming on. Rohan. It was really cool to get on and, you know, pick your brain a little bit and talk about your journey. Next question for you is where can people find you if they want to learn more about either you Rohan or I think more importantly, the business you’re talking about where you actually teach people how to do the stuff that you’re you’re doing local businesses, where can they find out about that kind of stuff? And like who’s a good fit for that?
Rohan Gilkes 40:05
Yeah, so they can find me on my Facebook. Primarily facebook.com/rohangilkes. R O H A N G I L K E S And for the site where we’re going to teach people how to build these businesses is 27days2launch.com, 2 7 days 2 launch.com. And the people this is most well suited for are you gonna want to live like that nomadic lifestyle that you’re living right now…done from your laptop, which is how I live in Vegas now. But local business service is in Washington.
…build businesses that way if you want. If you’ve been trying to build affiliate marketing, client, Amazon marketing and eBay and Shopify and that stuff hasn’t worked out, this is something else. I think it has a really high chance of working out if you bring the effort. And we have a whole team of people to support you through the process.
Richard Matthews 41:12
Sounds really awesome. So thank you so much for coming on Rohan, and you say you live in Vegas. I’ll be in Vegas in a couple of weeks. So I’ll make sure I hit you up. Maybe we can go get coffee or something.
Rohan Gilkes 41:24
Sure.
Richard Matthews 41:25
Yeah. That’s super cool. I will be there. Like, I think the fifth of May. Right. So anyways, I’ll hit you up.
Cool. So thank you very much for coming on. And again, it’s facebook.com/rohangilkes or 27days2launch.com 2 7 days 2 launch.com you can hit up whichever one there. That sounds like you have some really cool things that you’re doing over there. And again, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. Look forward to meeting you in person when we get a chance to get out to Vegas
Rohan Gilkes 41:58
It will be awesome. Thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate it.
Richard Matthews 42:01
Yeah.
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Richard Matthews
Would You Like To Have A Content Marketing Machine Like “The HERO Show” For Your Business?
The HERO Show is produced and managed by PushButtonPodcasts a done-for-you service that will help get your show out every single week without you lifting a finger after you’ve pushed that “stop record” button.
They handle everything else: uploading, editing, transcribing, writing, research, graphics, publication, & promotion.
All done by real humans who know, understand, and care about YOUR brand… almost as much as you do.
Empowered by our their proprietary technology their team will let you get back to doing what you love while we they handle the rest.
Check out PushButtonPodcasts.com/hero for 10% off the lifetime of your service with them and see the power of having an audio and video podcast growing and driving awareness, attention, & authority in your niche without you having to life more a finger to push that “stop record” button.

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