Episode 192 – Jane Sagalovich

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Automated Transcription

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Jane Sagalovich  0:00  

I think what comes up to me again and again, when I think about something like this, is my ability to see through the bullshit. And that is, there’s so much inflammation everywhere and I think you could get overwhelming like, well what’s, and I have an ability, college combined intuition, experience wisdom of all the things I can look at something pretty clearly and pretty accurately give it a yes or no. Obviously, within certain areas, the areas that I have knowledge in. I don’t have to analyze that and think about it. It’s just this instant yes or no that time after time has proven to be incredibly accurate. And so that’s something that I’m able to do for myself and for my clients. That saves us a lot of time not chasing the wrong things.

 

Richard Matthews  0:50  

Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell, the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers, and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what, I can fix that, I can help people, I can make a difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers, their success, and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money, and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3…2…1…

 

 

Richard Matthews  1:45  

Welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews. And today I have the pleasure of having on the line, Jane Sagalovich. Jane, are you there?

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:51  

I am here. Thank you for having me.

 

Richard Matthews  1:54  

Awesome. So glad to have you here today. I know you said you’re calling in from Denver. Is that right?

 

Jane Sagalovich  2:00  

Sunny Denver, Colorado. We’re still what? It’s almost mid-December and we’re still waiting for our first snow. So yes.

 

Richard Matthews  2:07  

No snow yet? That’s what Denver is famous for, it’s the snow. We’re in Southern California. And I was just blown away because we just drove all the way across the country and it’s been cold the whole time. And we get here and I’m like, oh yeah, California. It’s 76 degrees and sunny and glorious. And I drove my cousin back home this morning, his hometown and about 45 miles south of here. And I’m like on the freeway doing 85 miles an hour and getting past like I’m standing still. And I was like California where everyone speeds and the weather is perfect.

 

Jane Sagalovich  2:37  

Yeah, hard to leave. I did. I lived there for a little while. And I did miss seasons being in the winter, seeing the palm trees decorated with Christmas decorations was a little weird for me.

 

Richard Matthews  2:48  

So my favorite thing the other day, we were just down the street here, there’s a community college. And I was driving back home with my wife from wherever we were. And in the parking lot of the community college, someone has taken bicycle ramps and driven up to the mountain that’s just about an hour from here, packed their truck up with snow, brought it all back down, and coated the bicycle ramps and snow and has a bunch of kids taking sleds down bicycle ramps, and I was like, California winter right there.

 

Jane Sagalovich  3:21  

It’s not natural, we’ll make it, we’ll make it happen.

 

Richard Matthews  3:23  

Make it happen. So what I want to start off with is just do a real quick introduction for you and what it is that you do. So you run a company called Scale Your Genius, is that right? 

 

Jane Sagalovich  3:35  

Yes. 

 

Richard Matthews  3:36  

So I’m going to go through just a brief part of your bio here. And talk a little bit about what you do. I’ll see if I can actually find the bio here on your page. So, Jane, you founded Scale Your Genius in 2018, to help people whose works make a difference in people’s lives, to make a bigger impact, make more money, and have more freedom in how they do their work. So what I want to just start with is, why don’t you tell me what Scale Your Genius is, who you serve, and what you do for them?

 

Jane Sagalovich  4:07  

Absolutely. So Scale Your Genius is a boutique consulting strategy firm, and we help in-demand professionals, people whose work makes a difference, people in helping professions, so therapists, lawyers, coaches, consultants, authors, other people with a lot of wisdom in their head that they want to use to make a bigger difference in the world. We help them package that into programs and courses so that not only do they get that work out to more people, they also don’t have to hustle as much to do it. So a lot of my clients start out in the one on one model because if you think of someone like a therapist or a lawyer, that is the industry norm today, and they get to a point where they’re just a capacity, they may have a waitlist and they don’t want to cap their impact. They don’t want to cap what they’re able to do. A lot of them already make a lot of money by the time they’re ready to scale. So they may not want to make more money, some do, some don’t. Some may just want to free up their time. So whether it’s more money or more free time, how do they take their wisdom and their expertise and package it in a way that they’re able to do that. So, super, super fun work, I get exposed to the most interesting creative things that people do and have knowledge on. And so part of the fun that I get to have is learning about all this stuff that people out there are doing and creating.

 

Richard Matthews  5:25  

Yeah, I ran a company for a long time, we still do some of this work in the background, it’s part of the back of the hero show is the digital alchemy formula. And we help people do the same kind of thing, take their expertise, and package it up. And we do less of that now, because we’ve gotten more into helping them build their audience with our podcast agency, but I spent many years doing what you do. And it’s a fascinating space to be in because you get the chance to work with people who are experts in their space. One of the things that we do is we teach them how to teach because being an expert in something doesn’t necessarily make you an expert teacher. That’s when we come in, and we could help them be an expert teacher in that space, and scale their impact by being able to do one too many, or by doing asynchronous learning, which is what the online courses and stuff are. So it’s a cool space, more and more people need to be doing what you’re doing. Because it’s such a needed thing and it’s not easy. If people are like, oh, I’m just making a course. But you can’t just make a course, you have to know how to teach, you have to know how to present, you have to know how to take what’s in your head and unpack that expert blindness and help people get there. So it’s a really cool thing to do. And what I want to find out from you is how did you get into that game? We talked on this show about your origin story, as a comic book superhero, everyone has their origin story. And I want to hear that, how did you become a hero? Were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you get into wanting to do online coaching and teaching that way? Or did you start in a job and eventually become an entrepreneur? Basically, where did you come from?

 

Jane Sagalovich  7:05  

Yeah, absolutely. I’ll start way early in the beginning, my family moved here from Ukraine back in 1991. We were refugees from the former Soviet Union. And so where that plays an important part of where I am today is the American dream. That business and it wasn’t business ownership yet at the time for me, I don’t think I actually really knew what business ownership versus corporate was. Because the whole business idea was so new to me, I knew it was something about business, making money and having a successful career that I wanted to do. And so the first part of my path was very typical business. So I got an undergrad in marketing, I worked at Ford Motor Company was actually my first job out of college, I went back for my MBA and had more jobs in the business space and the strategy space. And so I was doing that climbing the corporate ladder that I thought I really wanted to do. I thought that to me, was the definition of the American dream. At one point I wanted to do marketing for Ralph Lauren. I’m like, how much more American Can you get? I never had that job. But I did.

 

Richard Matthews  8:11  

What’s fun is I actually had a lady the other day who did marketing for Ralph Lauren on our Podcast.

 

Jane Sagalovich  8:16  

Oh, no way. Well, that’s somebody you might need to connect me with, to see what that world I thought I was gonna have.

 

Richard Matthews  8:22  

She also worked with Estee Lauder, and a few others, I’ll find her name and send it to you. Because she was cool. We just did that interview, which should be coming out in a few weeks.

 

Jane Sagalovich  8:30  

Oh, fascinating. Yeah, I’d love to see what that world I thought was going to be like, actually is like, probably different. In some ways.

 

Richard Matthews  8:38  

The same kind of thing, she started in corporate and moved into her own stuff.

 

Jane Sagalovich  8:43  

Yeah, and one thing I will say is, the experience of being in corporate America is such a valuable one. I spent 15 years and the things I learned absolutely allowed me to bring things into the online business experience that don’t naturally come with online business experience. I like to say that we combine a proven time tested business strategy with this funky online space that’s constantly changing. So that’s part of kind of going back to that journey is I loved it until I hated it. I loved the high visibility of roles, the things that look really good on paper, I was getting promotions, I was getting new jobs, all the things that you think you want when you’re coming into that world I had. And inside I was still miserable. I knew it totally wasn’t it. Two of my core values that are very evident in my business now are efficiency and freedom. And if you think of bigger corporations, those two are definitely not anywhere of the things you see. And so even though I was making a difference. So there was a lot of really great stuff in my career and I learned a ton. What was eating up inside of me was this is not it, you need to really break out of this box. And boss after boss was telling me to get back in the fishbowl, stop being too big for your britches, whatever that freezes. So it was signal after signal that I’m like, I don’t belong here, I’m not wanting to dim my light and play small and play your game. And whoever the boss is of the time is. So I knew I needed to leave. Unlike anything I would ever recommend to somebody, I just left with zero plan of what to do the next day, I was lucky to have had a good savings amount. So I wasn’t really worried about the financial side of it, I just had a very clear off button to what I was doing. I said that is no longer what I want to do, I’ll figure it out.

 

Richard Matthews  10:41  

And done.

 

Jane Sagalovich  10:43  

And done, yeah, the end button. And so I put in my notice, I left and a friend of mine was starting a consulting business at the time. So I joined him, and really learned a ton. We had a consulting business for three or four years. And I learned so much about how to apply what I knew with the big corporate structures and applied to small business owners, which is who we worked within that business. And our last year together, we were looking at transitioning to the online space. So then I was learning a lot about what this is all about. And I’m taking my being a client in online courses and programs, which is really where I fell in love with a business model is I loved what it enabled me to do as a student, a client, a learner, and learning on my own time, if I can sit on the couch with a glass of wine and hand my feet up on the coffee table and learn something, do something, I love that experience so much. And so that last year of our business together, I was falling in love with the business model from both sides, that business fell apart. And so when I was presented with another blank slate of now what?  This was just such a natural choice for me to focus strictly on this business model. And as I was falling in love with it, the other thing I was seeing as someone with a consultant’s brain is as I was taking people’s courses, I’m like this could be so much better, this could be so much better. So you’re really seeing where they are missing so much. And so it was so enjoyable to come into that space and enable them to create better experiences for their learners and also for themselves too. So not a linear path to hear.

 

Richard Matthews  12:21  

I have a similar trajectory. I started off a little earlier, I started my first business at 13. And I convinced my dad to give me a loan to go to the big box store and buy candy. I got 50 bucks from him to buy that and I was selling my wares on campus. It lasted a grand total of about six weeks before they told me I couldn’t sell on campus without a business license. So I tell people, I had my first government shutdown in 13. 

 

Jane Sagalovich  12:47  

That’s awesome. 

 

Richard Matthews  12:47  

So I ran a couple of small things. I ran a photography company through college and eventually started my consulting firm out of college, doing marketing for small businesses, and then realized that I was terrible at business. And I actually shut that consulting firm down and moved into corporate America for about 18 months. And I was like I want to work as a C-level director for marketing for a small company that doesn’t have a lot of bureaucracy, but big enough that I would learn how to work with big companies. And so I got a job in a few days, and beat out 250 other people that were looking for the same position, because I had the marketing chops, and then over the next year and a half, helped them 10x their lead flow and bring in $50 million in sales. And then I gave them a notice, I was like, thank you very much for helping me get the skills I wanted to get. I actually gave them two months notice because I needed to help hire and train someone to take over all the stuff that we had built. And then I took all of that and brought it back to my consulting firm, where I started getting into doing exactly what you’re doing and helping clients build courses and training. We did that for many years. So yeah, it’s a similar kind of path. But yeah, I love the whole, helping people teach how to learn. And I know my first client you mentioned they’re doing things wrong, and you could help them. And I remember my first client had this great course in real estate investing. And I was going through it and I was like, oh, there are so many good things in here. But it’s difficult to follow. And it’s difficult to follow because he’s an expert here. And he is making a lot of assumptions that those of us who know nothing about the space are like, wait, you did what now? And I sat down with him and we took his course and restructured the whole thing and rethought it. And his course went from having about a 20% success rating to having an 86% success rating and he went from selling about $1,200 a month of it to $250,000 a year of that program just by learning how to do what we do, which is teach people how to teach and get really good at giving answers.

 

Jane Sagalovich  13:28  

Yeah, what’s interesting and I see this with every client pretty much is when we’re coming from a place of expertise. We think the other person wants to become us, even maybe subconsciously, we may not consciously and so we’re teaching to our knowledge, instead of teaching them to what is the outcome that they want to have? And what is the knowledge that they need to have to be able to get to that outcome? And it’s a very, very teeny tiny percentage of what we know or think they need to know.

 

Richard Matthews  14:59  

Yeah, so you’re like, here are all the things I know about XYZ topic. And I’m just going to brain dump them on you instead of like, hey, what’s the specific outcome that you want to get? And what slice of all the information in my head do you need in order to get that outcome?

 

Jane Sagalovich  15:40  

Yeah, and what’s the shortest path to results? I think there’s one other fallacy in the online course, online space is that the longer the course the more stuff there’s in it, the more they can charge, and the more valuable it is. I say this a lot in my public content, too. The big shift is, the quicker the better, not, the more is better. So if your client has a goal of losing 10 pounds, enabling them to lose 10 pounds in one month is much better than helping them lose 10 pounds in a year. And people go into the space with the opposite mentality of like, let me give them more modules. Let me give them more stuff. When instead, the best thing you can do, the most valuable thing you can do is create that shortest, cleanest path.

 

Richard Matthews  16:28  

Yeah, the shortest path to the most significant result. The biggest change we made with that first client was let me teach you how to do real estate investing, to learn how to close your first deal in 60 days, which dramatically restricted the content to all these things you can know about real estate investing to here’s what you need to do to close your first deal the next 60 days, which immediately starts getting people results and you start getting testimonials and case studies. Other people are like I did what you said, and I got my first deal closed, which gets that whole wheel going and people that snowball into larger and more impact, which is your goal.

 

Jane Sagalovich  17:06  

Yeah, the narrow the topic is the other is super, super, super important part that a lot of people don’t necessarily get right, because again, they’re like, well, I’m an expert in all these things. Let me teach all these things. No, teach one tiny little piece as you said, but that is so so important to the person on the other side. 

 

Richard Matthews  17:22  

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to find out then in this whole realm, what your superpower is, as a hero who teaches this stuff. We talk on the show, every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by their genius intellect, the ability to call thunder from the sky, or super strength. In the real world heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that you were born with, or you developed over time, that really energize all the other skills. It’s what sets you apart and allows you to help your clients come out on top in their journeys. And the way I like to frame it for people is if you look at all the skills that you’ve developed, there’s probably one or two that are like common threads that tie everything together. And that common thread is where you find your superpower. So thinking through that lens, what do you think your superpower is in this space?

 

Jane Sagalovich  18:08  

Yeah, I think what comes up for me again, and again, when I think about something like this is my ability to see through the bullshit. And that is, there’s so much information everywhere. And I think it can get overwhelming like, well, what’s what? And I have an ability, call it combined intuition, experience, wisdom of all the things I can look at something pretty clearly and pretty accurately, give it a yes or no. Obviously, within certain areas, the areas that I have knowledge in. I don’t have to analyze, I don’t have to think about it, it’s just this instant, yes or no, that time after time has proven to be incredibly accurate. And so that’s something that I’m able to do for myself and for my clients. That saves us a lot of time not chasing the wrong things.

 

Richard Matthews  18:58  

Yeah, absolutely. It’s definitely a useful skill, especially if you’re looking at something like helping someone do a course or do a thing where you can say, hey, here’s all the things that you have in your repertoire. And here are the ones that are important to help your client get the result. You can laser focus and see those things right. And as you said, all the other bullshit falls away. This is the clear line from your new client to they have the result they want.

 

Jane Sagalovich  19:29  

Yeah, and we can laser in on the topic. You gave a really brilliant example of what a concise topic can do. We can narrow in on the journey book and also narrow in on the marketing if you think of the online space and the noise that happens on the marketing side, so if somebody wants to put out a course a program, they’re going to need to market and all over the place there are messages being thrown at them. So I could say okay, we could look at a strategy and say here is what’s behind it. Here’s why it works for some and doesn’t work for others. So how can we apply that to you, instead of saying,  Facebook Ads work or don’t work, webinars work or don’t work, podcasts work or don’t work, each one of those things has a reason they work and don’t work for certain people. And so how do we cut through that clutter in the marketing space too.

 

Richard Matthews  20:16  

It’s nailing that message. What are you saying? And who are you saying it to? And a lot of people go to a marketing tactic like Facebook, or podcasting without a message for a person. And then they’re like, it didn’t work. I’m like, well, what were you saying? Because if you didn’t have something that you were saying to a specific person, of course, it didn’t work. And for a lot of people who are experts at Facebook ads, or Google ads, or podcasting or anything, they’re tacticians in that space, they’re good at that thing. And so you have to bring them a message that they can help amplify. If you come to them with a terrible message, they’re going to amplify that terrible message. And it’s not going to work.

 

Jane Sagalovich  21:00  

Exactly, the interesting thing about messaging and how we work with clients and the format that I see working well for people is, the message is the first thing you create before you create anything else. So we don’t start creating any course content or marketing content until that message is super, super dialed in. And I know some people in the market will package that was the idea of pre-selling a course or program. I like to disconnect those ideas. And step number one be super, super, super clear on that messaging, and then create to fit the messaging. And so it’s backward than a lot of people think about it. But I find it to be by far the most profitable because then you’re not questioning what to say when you get to the marketing strategy tactics, you know what you’re saying and to who, and then there are so the process is so much easier.

 

Richard Matthews  21:51  

So my curious question then is how do you go through that process with someone to find the right messaging that’s going to bring the right people?

 

Jane Sagalovich  22:01  

Hmm, discovery. So the way we do it is I send them a questionnaire that they do break, it’s brain dumping, and then brainstorming is the way I do it. So I find having those two pieces be important. So brain dumping is anything you’ve ever thought about a course or a program, get it out of your head, clear it out. So it’s not spinning around for the next space. For the next space, I give them prompts to brainstorm on really coming from a much clear space, then we get on a Zoom call together. And this is why this is where I teach courses and programs, but my work is hands-on. And there are a lot of one on one components. Because things like this you can’t do on your own, you can’t see the brilliance inside you the way that somebody else can reflect to you. And so we come together on a zoom call. And that’s where we flesh that out.

 

Richard Matthews  22:50  

Yeah, that’s fascinating. What’s interesting about you just said too, is that’s actually the reason why we don’t do as much of the building courses that we did in the past, is because like you said, it is one of those things that you can’t put it in a course, and have someone get the result that they want to get out of it. Because they need to have someone come in, like yourself or myself, and really help pull that out of them. And it’s a very one on one difficult task to do, which is why I’m like, I’m so excited. There are more people doing that. Because it’s a very tough thing to teach, and a tough thing to pull out of someone, especially if they’re through asynchronous learning, it’s much quicker, you get better results when you do it in that one on one fashion. Which is funny, because what you’re teaching people to do is asynchronous learning.

 

Jane Sagalovich  23:37  

Yeah, and that call is worth every penny. And the mirror we can hold up to someone else is not something they can ever do on their own. And then the whole involving the human in the asynchronous learning is one of the things I teach too. One of the reasons people are so scared, of course, is because they think their course has to be 100 percent at all. It’s like no, digitize the things that you say over and over again, that can be great as modules and pop in as you need. How much do people need you to be able to get those outcomes and keep that in there?

 

Richard Matthews  24:13  

Yeah, you still have the blended things where you have asynchronous and you have live and you have the ability to increase the intimacy. And I tell people, all of our clients, one of the things I always used to say to them is people don’t buy information, they buy intimacy. And one of my favorite examples of that is I have a client and a friend who ran a public utility in Las Vegas for a number of years, and she brought it from several $100,000 a year to like 46 million I think, she made it really big. And then she runs a consulting firm where she teaches people how to take their six-figure companies and turn them into seven-figure companies. And she’s got like, 100% track record doing that. And she has a process that she has a book on, the process is like 10 steps on her book. And you can buy the book on Amazon for $9. And you can go through that process, everything she teaches is in that book. And she’s got a program, a course that you can take, that’s asynchronous learning kind of thing. And that one cost like 1000 bucks, but you can go through that anytime you want. And the content of that course is literally just her walking through that course of content from the book on video. And then she’s got a done with you service where her team and organization will help coach your organization on how to do the steps that are a lot more expensive. It’s like 20 grand, and when you go in and do that, it’s like, okay, month one, here’s the first chapter of the book, we’re going to do these things. And she’s got a done for you service where her organization will actually come in and take over your company for a little while and do all this stuff for you. And that cost like 100 grand plus a percentage of revenue generated. And what they do is on month one they come in, and they start with Chapter One in the book, and they go through it. And what’s interesting to me is the only thing that changes is not the content. What changes is the level of intimacy. And that’s really what people pay for. So to your point earlier, if you don’t need to include more, you don’t need more content. If you want to charge more, you need to figure out how to up the intimacy.

 

Jane Sagalovich  26:15  

Exactly. I’m hearing intimacy, I’m also hearing an increased likelihood of success as you go up that chain, because there’s more of that involvement, especially those upper tiers, where, if you have a question, who answers that question if I’m reading a book, and I have a question on a concept, now what happens? Nothing. Can I put the book down?

 

Richard Matthews  26:42  

Yep. That is true and right. You have more access, that’s why I call it intimacies, you have more access to the expert. And it’s what helps people to really get the results and how you can charge more for your programs and do things like that, as you help find ways to include like you were saying you don’t have to have everything be asynchronous, so you can blend those and do all sorts of cool things.

 

Jane Sagalovich  27:07  

Yeah. And that’s really the key.

 

Richard Matthews  27:09  

Yeah. So I want to talk about the flip side, then of your superpower. So if your superpower is your ability to see that clear line, to cut through all the bullshit, the flip side of that is your fatal flaw. Just like every Superman has this kryptonite, or wonder woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad, you probably have a flaw that’s held you back in your business, something you’ve struggled with. For me, it was a couple of things. In my early entrepreneurial career, I struggled a lot with perfectionism, which meant that I was always working on tweaking things and never going to the market, which is a terrible way to make a profitable business. But I tried it. And my other one was lack of self-care, which really presented in not having good boundaries with my clients and not having good boundaries of my time and my business, and other things that kept me from really being able to grow and scale. But more important than what the flaw is, is how have you worked to overcome those, so people in our audience might learn a little from your experience?

 

Jane Sagalovich  27:59  

Yeah, perfectionism. I don’t want to repeat the one you said, but I think as entrepreneurs, that’s probably one that’s super common in a lot of us. And it’s one that holds us back in a lot of ways. And what was easy for me with perfectionism in the corporate space, I’ll start the answer in that way was that there are clear rules. And so my perfectionist side was able to follow the rules and have good success. So I was always a really good test taker, I was always like, the first one to walk out of the room getting A’s, because I know how to follow the rules. I know how to do the thing. And so my perfectionist side, which I didn’t even know I had at that time was like, yep, bam, we got it, it enabled me a lot of success. What happened once I got into the entrepreneur space is exactly what you said, when there are no rules when there is no bar, I create my own bar that was insanely too high for any sort of reasonable human to set. Whereas in the corporate space, somebody else was setting the bar, sure, I set the bar of like, how many promotions I wanted, or amount of money or whatever. There were clear paths, clear steps and clear requirements. And so that was easy for me in the entrepreneur space where I set my own bar. And I’ll speak of this business specifically. Because my career was so successful in the corporate space, my expectation of becoming an entrepreneur was that I would obviously exceed that very, very quickly. Anyone who’s made the corporate to entrepreneurship jump, I’d say most people will know that that is not true, the things that got you to that point are not necessarily the same things that enable you to be successful in the entrepreneurship journey. And so that’s sort of my perfectionism chest. It put me in freeze mode is really what I did. I just wasn’t able to do anything, nothing I was saying was ever good enough for myself, perfectly fine for everybody else, but never good enough for myself. And so I wasn’t relating it to perfectionism at the time yet, I was just like, why is nothing good enough? I was just kind of stuck in this, unable to move forward, unable to really do much. And when I’m trying to think if there was a pivotal moment, when I discovered that that is the flaw and I think I was doing a lot of online courses around mindset stuff and personal development. So I think somewhere along there was where it kind of came up, I’m like, okay, I think this is the correlation. This is the, I’m setting the bar so high, and I’m moving the bar. And so what I had to do was, I would set silly goals for myself. And I still do that my goal is not to run a marathon, my goal is to walk around the block, one block, if I beat it cool. My goal is to write one page in my journal, my goal is to write one post this week. And so I started setting these ridiculous goals for myself that are ridiculously low. And then working through the mindset of grounding myself that that’s okay, because the first thing that happened when I did that was like, oh, that’s bullshit. Like, how am I ever going to do the things I want to do with such small goals? And so it’s just really working through that process internally for myself of like, No, this is just what I need to move forward. And I still love those little goals. Like it’s funny how much I love checking things off the list that are small and amazing and then allowing myself to feel comfortable with that piece of progress unlocked my ability to go for much bigger goals in this much safer, easier way.

 

Richard Matthews  31:40  

Yeah, it’s interesting. I remember you’re talking about pivotal moments. And I remember very clearly, the pivotal moment for me about learning where my perfectionism is holding me back. And I was in a mastermind group with other entrepreneurs who were more successful than myself, and one of them has become a good friend over the last many years. And she was like, so here’s the problem with perfectionism. And she said, perfectionism is the lowest standard you can hold yourself to because you can’t hit it. That unlocked a lot of things in my head. I was like, oh, you’re right. Because if you can’t hit it, then why are you striving for it? And so you have to change the goal which forces you to ask better questions about, okay, so what is a good goal? And what is a shippable product? What is good enough for the market to get them the result that they want? And so that changed a lot for me. And then the other thing that really changed a lot for me, something I’ve started doing more recently and I’ve given it a name more recently, I call it completion stacking. The same kind of thing you were talking about is having small goals. And I just stopped thinking about goals, because I needed a different mental wrapper to put things in because goals have their own baggage. And so I call it completion stacking. And what that means to me and what I’ve been teaching other people is that you have a certain set of time that you’re working on things today, maybe it’s the next 20 minutes, or it’s the next hour, the next eight hours, whatever the timeframe you have is, you’re like, hey, I’ve got four hours to work on this project, what is something that I can take from start to finish? And I don’t care about all the things that you get told in goals all the time, you want to focus on the things that are urgent or important and not urgent, and you want to focus on something that can move your business forward, at least 1%, all the stuff that you here with completing goals, I’m like, I don’t care about any of that. All I want to know is what can I do in this amount of time that I can take from start to finish and have it be done. And then I can take that done thing, and I can plug it into my business and have it ready to go. And whether that is a headline for a blog post or if I got more time and we’re writing a whole thing, or getting a video edited, or whatever the thing is, get it all the way done. And then you just put it into practice, which forces you to do things like build in inefficiencies, which is a perfectionist you hate, because you’re like, I have to finish this whole email sequence right now. And so you finished it all and you’re like, but I know next week, I’m going to add on to it, which means I’m going to have to come back and change the transition to fit into that next set and like doesn’t matter, the inefficiencies are part of it because I need to get it completed and put in and that’s really helped me get over that whole desire to be a perfectionist because part of that desire to be a perfectionist. The perfection for me is completing something. Does that make sense?

 

Jane Sagalovich  34:39  

Yeah, absolutely. Like that’s where your brain gets a dopamine hit of perfectionism when the thing is done.

 

Richard Matthews  34:47  

Yeah, I’ve completed the thing. And so instead of having this sort of ethereal thinking that it’s not perfect yet, so I can’t do anything to I just need to finish something whatever it is.

 

Jane Sagalovich  34:58  

Yeah, I want to touch on something you mentioned that I think is so important and something that I had to go through. And I think a lot of people do too is like when you mentioned, you have to throw away the things around goals. It can be important versus urgent. Other rules around that are your morning routine has to look like XYZ. There are so many rules getting thrown at us and how we should be performing that I think especially as a perfectionist, it’s like, okay, I can’t start work until my bed is made. And I have done my half an hour workout and all this other stuff. I think we can just really sabotage ourselves trying to follow rules from other people. And so one of the journeys for myself was a little bit like self-testing, like, do I care about this thing? Yes or no? Will my day go better? If I make my bed? Yes or no? And for me, no, it does not. So I don’t care what all the books say, I’m not making my bed. And I’m okay. And so there are so many rules that I think we may feel pressured to follow because someone else says that is how you become successful, that I think we get to just see what works and what doesn’t work for ourselves. And really this is where intuition comes into it with perfectionism a lot too, is it like, do I really need this thing or not?

 

Richard Matthews  36:09  

Yeah, I’ve always been fascinated by that very specific subject because people have success. And we think that we have to model success after them. And what’s interesting is, a lot of times we focus on tactics and not on principles when people do that. So, as an example, one friend of mine is in the coaching space for real estate agents. And he’s like, one of the things that he runs into that’s really, really common on real estate teams is that the one who is running the team will be like, hey, the thing that I was really successful with was door knocking, and I just went out into the neighborhood, and I knocked on 300 doors a day until I became a millionaire in real estate which absolutely happens. And that’s what they can go and do until they’re like, they’ll invite their team in and the team would like, what do I do to be successful? And they’d be like, well, you go and knock on 300 doors a day. And there are some people that like knocking on 300 doors a day and would just destroy them. It saps all their energy and makes them not like it and they don’t last in the business because they’re practicing a tactic and not a principle. And the principle, if you back it up a little bit, is showing up every day and being excited about the task that you have in front of you. And he’s like,  in real estate, one of the things he has to do a lot of coaching on is you have to find the tactic that gives you the energy that allows you to show up long term.

 

Jane Sagalovich  37:28  

I love how he frames that.

 

Richard Matthews  37:31  

Yeah, because it’s showing up long term that allows them to get success in real estate. Whether that’s Facebook ads, or it’s door knocking or working with your sphere of influence, or whatever, there’s a whole bunch of jargon around what they do in real estate. But whatever the tactic is, he’s like, he does a lot of coaching with helping them sort of break that mental thought they’re like, hey, you have to do what the other successful person did. Because that’s not the case. It’s like, you have to use the principles of success if that makes sense.

 

Jane Sagalovich  37:58  

Yeah, it comes back to the point we’re talking about earlier. Like, why does something work? All the things work and all the things don’t work? Why does it work? And what are the things that will make it work for you are the questions? Yeah, if you told me to knock on 300 doors, I would leave. But can I be creative and find clients some other way? Yeah, probably. And we see this so much in the online space, this worked for me, let me teach you how to do that. And that’s fine if people want to do that tactic, but it creates this idea in other people’s minds, who saw the marketing from this person, that this is the way you get to your goal. Like one of the examples would be, pitching people through direct messages on Facebook or whatever platform and it works for people, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it when done fine. But you see these people thinking that they have to do that to be successful, and they hate it. And it’s not the right strategy for them, and they get stuck in it. And so yeah it’s the 300 doors for them, where they could have so much more success doing something else, but this person taught them their quote, unquote, the key to success that worked for them. But it’s not working for other people. And so yeah, it’s like, why does something work is such an important question.

 

Richard Matthews  39:11  

It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, I’m not gonna remember who said this, but it was, the world needs more people who’ve come alive, so go out and find what makes you come alive and go do that. And you realize that the reason that tactics work for people is that they bring their passion and their energy to it. And when they do it, and they do those things, their authenticity, their spirit comes through in that and that’s why that tactic works for them. And if it works the same way for you, that’s great. But if it doesn’t, there are other ways to accomplish the goals and you find the ones that make you come alive. And for me, it’s building systems, the back-end systems of power things, they just make me happy in ways I can’t quite describe. And so we’ve built tremendous systems on the back end of our agency that allows us to scale and allow us to do things at significantly lower prices, but higher quality than other agencies because we’ve built really fascinating systems to power them because that’s what makes me come alive. And we were just talking about superpowers when you figure out what your superpower is, and you can really hone in on that and use that to help grow your business. That’s where you can find the tactics that fit with that.

 

Jane Sagalovich  40:33  

I love the guideline of what makes you come alive. What you just said. I love simplicity and efficiency, so if you think about a strategy, does it make you come alive or not? Or the thing you just did, I think that would solve so many problems for so many people if they just use that one question as a decision guide.

 

Richard Matthews  40:50  

Does this make me come alive? Yes or no?

 

Jane Sagalovich  40:52  

Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews  40:54  

Making your bed in the morning? Does it make you come alive or not?

 

Jane Sagalovich  40:57  

Yeah, frigginly not. Other people might right? Yeah.

 

Richard Matthews  41:02  

For me, it’s a morning shower. If I don’t get my morning shower, my whole day is weird. Like, I just can’t get things right. That’s my one non-negotiable thing in the morning is I always get my morning shower. And then the rest of my day is fine. But it’s not making my bed. I thought it was making my bed for a long time. I still like to make my bed. I like it better when it’s made. But it’s not the thing.

 

Jane Sagalovich  41:25  

Yeah. And you’re not going out there teaching, doing your morning shower is the key to success, right? It may be? But the better and possibly less marketable headline is, what brings you alive is your key to success.

 

Richard Matthews  41:43  

Yeah absolutely. I want to talk then about your common enemy, which is a completely different gearshift here. But every superhero has an arch-nemesis, and it’s the thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world. In the world of business, we put it in the context of your clients. And it’s a mindset or a flaw that you run into regularly that you have to fight against if you had your magic wand, and every time a client signed one dotted line, you could just bang on the head with the magic wand and no longer have to deal with that mindset. So you can actually help them get the results that came to you for. What is that common enemy that you find yourself having to constantly fight against in your space?

 

Jane Sagalovich  42:23  

What comes to mind and is super relevant to what we’re just talking about is the idea of rules and that there’s one way to do something. So people have an idea for using courses. And as an example, they think I need a big email list. I need to be tech-savvy, like whatever they think are truths. Because somebody somewhere told him or someone succeeded in this way. So they told them, This is the way you’re gonna succeed. That’s the enemy are things people think are true that are not true, which is pretty much everything. Nothing in this world is really a fact. So the idea that they have to do something in a very specific way, I would say, is the common enemy. I love helping people find ways to make it work for them. It’s your shower in the morning. It’s that thing that I’m going to steal your phrase, brings more life? Did I get that right?

 

Jane Sagalovich  42:24  

It is, makes you come alive.

 

Jane Sagalovich  43:19  

Makes you come alive. Yeah. And so when we’re thinking of all the strategies and all the rules, if they don’t make you come alive, then it doesn’t exist for you, then it’s not a real thing to follow.

 

Richard Matthews  43:30  

One of those rules that I hear all the time is, and everyone tells you, the money is on the list. Having email lists and all those things. And there is a lot of truth to that. If you have a list, you can do things. But I run a multi six-figure agency, and we have zero people on our list. It’s like it’s true, but it’s also not true. And it’s not the only place where there is money.

 

Jane Sagalovich  43:59  

Yeah because the idea there is the audience, that’s it and humans gonna come across your work. It’s not just what we narrowly think of as a list. And then there are so many big lists that are not buying, there are so many flaws with the idea of having a list too. So it’s the same thing. Does an awesome well-engaged list make it easier to sell? Sure, of course. But that’s not the only way.

 

Richard Matthews  44:23  

I had a client of mine just on that exact point. Money is on the list. There is money there. But it’s not the only place where the money is. We had a client who was like, I have an idea for a course. And I was like, have you asked your audience for it? He’s like, yeah, my audience is asking me for it. And I was like, okay, so we sat down in one afternoon, and in the morning, and we spent four hours we outline the course and we had lunch, we had some weird arugula pizza, because he was in Malibu, California, and that’s the thing they do in California is have an arugula pizza. And in the afternoon, we sat down and recorded the course. And then the next morning we launched that course to his audience and made $48,000 in sales. Yeah, right. So absolutely money in the list, but in the same token, it makes things faster and easier to do that if you have it already. But it’s not the only way. And it’s not like a hard and fast rule. A lot of the things that we get told are we think of them as hard and fast rules. You’re like, well, I’m not tech-savvy, therefore, I can’t do this. I don’t have a list, therefore, I can’t make money.

 

Jane Sagalovich  45:22  

Yeah, I’m probably the least tech-savvy person there is. I’m the one getting on Zoom calls with like, I’m like, where’s my video on? Where is my camera? What mic is connected? And that’s okay. You don’t have to, you know the technology. I couldn’t have had this business 10 years ago, the technology. Same with podcasting. Same with any of these tools we use today that involves technology where the technology takes care of the complexity for you. So all you have to do is show up.

 

Richard Matthews  45:49  

Show up and get the one thing that technology can’t help you with, which is the human connection and creativity. 

 

Jane Sagalovich  45:56  

Exactly. 

 

Richard Matthews  45:58  

I told you a minute ago, I do a lot of systems design. And I have one hard and fast rule and system design. That’s it, only one and that hard and fast rule is, humans handle creativity, robots handle repetitiveness. When you’re building systems. And people are like, how do you build systems that work with both robots and humans? I’m like, it’s really easy, the distinction is creativity. Where’s the line of creativity? Because robots are not creative, they can’t be. AI is getting better, but it’s still any of the AI stuff you’ve ever looked at it all lacks context. I call it the spark of divinity that humans have. I don’t know if they ever will. Maybe we figure that out at some point. Maybe we don’t, but it’s certainly not there now. So it’s just that part of building things is learning how to know what you bring to the table. And with all the technology and everything, if you can show up and bring your humanity to it. That’s the magic.

 

Jane Sagalovich  46:59  

Yes, absolutely.

 

Richard Matthews  47:02  

So the flipside then of your common enemy. So if your common enemy is those hard and fast rules that people think they have to follow that you have to fight against, then your driving force is what you fight for. So just like Spider Man fights to save New York, Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information, I want to know what it is that you fight for in your business.

 

Jane Sagalovich  47:22  

Yeah, I mean, it really is the inverse of the other one, and it is inspiring, and enabling people to ditch those rules that are holding them back. And there are so many industry norms, false beliefs, and things like that. So one example I’ll use is, I work with a lot of psychotherapists, the mental health professionals, and a lot of them get indoctrinated. This is in the US, I don’t know if this applies globally, necessarily, but they get indoctrinated that because of their work, their help, or profession, they’re not allowed to make money. Their job is to grind out client sessions and give away free sessions and take Medicare and Medicaid and do all the stuff that keeps them hustling and miserable. And not making a lot of money is frowned upon in a lot of circles in that space. And so one of my missions is, fuck those roles, who are they to tell you what you can and can’t do? And if you can make a bigger difference, why shouldn’t you? And why shouldn’t you be fairly compensated for that value you bring to the world? So it’s how do we take off those rules, those false norms, the things that hold people back and really enable and inspire them to do the thing they want to do.

 

Richard Matthews  48:33  

Yeah, absolutely. And I love that too, about being fairly compensated for the value you bring to the world. The reason I love it. It’s one of the exercises I run with my kids all the time. I tell them almost every day, you get paid in direct correlation to the amount of value you bring to the world. And as we go through our daily lives, the people that we run into the cashiers, and the people twirling signs on the edge of the road, and the people we see on the side of the road, picking stuff from the farm. What’s the value they’re bringing? And how are they compensated for it? And then going up the chain. You have the waitress, and you might have the manager and who are they serving? And how many people are they serving? And then the owner of the restaurant, and how many people are they serving? Because they’re serving their employees, and they’re serving their stockholders, and they’re serving their customers, so the more people that you serve, the more you get compensated for what you do. So we look at that equation a lot, just in our family. And I think it’s such an important thing that we miss because nobody teaches that nobody teaches the value equation and the value, how do you take your value and scale it to the most people possible? So exactly what you’re talking about is Scale Your Genius.

 

Jane Sagalovich  49:48  

Yeah, an example came to me as you were saying that as a lot of people get in the US athletes make a ton of money, an NBA player. I don’t know, I’m not a sports person. I don’t know how much they make exactly, but it’s many millions of dollars. And people will complain about that. But to your point, they bring so much value to 1000s and 1000s of fans. That is the value they bring, their salary, you could argue, is fairly compensated for how much joy they bring and to the people they care about.

 

Richard Matthews  50:19  

Yeah, they have their fans, they have their advertisers, they have sponsors, and they’re bringing value to all of those people. And they get compensated for those things. So as you scale up the size of your impact is skills up here.

 

Jane Sagalovich  50:34  

Yeah. And they’re not compensated for the level of the skill which is correlated, but it’s not the skill that people are paying for, it’s the value that their skill brings to a bigger audience. And we do that by bringing our skill to a bigger audience, if we keep the skill hidden away, then there is no value you’re bringing with it to other people. And so that’s why the compensation is not there.

 

Richard Matthews  50:58  

Yeah, and that’s why I like I said, I love what you do because what you’re doing is you’re helping people break out of the caps of I can work with one person at a time. And again, there’s nothing wrong with working with one person at a time. But it’s not the only thing you have to do. And when you can add different versions of scale to your business, then you can impact more people and you can get compensated for that impact.

 

Jane Sagalovich  51:22  

And that’s it, I’m not against one on one work, I have a therapist, I have a coach, I have one on one providers, and I help people in a one on one format too. It’s like that could be, what percentage of your business life do you want that to be? And then how do you scale the rest of it?

 

Richard Matthews  51:39  

Yeah, absolutely. In my business, I had a cap. I was like, I could work with four people at any given time because that’s just how much time it took to do what we did. And I know that was limiting how much impact we could make. Just because we can only work with four people at any given time. And that’s why we added the agency component because we can work with 100 people or more. And we’re just scaling the size of our team to help those people. Which is cool, because then you’re scaling. I was talking to my wife the other day. For our taxes this last year, we paid more to our employees this last year than I made in the first several years of my business. And I was like, that’s really cool, because I have families, them and their children. And the people that they take care of, they’re all getting taken care of from our business. So you’re serving your employees, you’re serving your clients, you’re serving their clients, by doing good work for them. And again, as you scale your value, the number of people that you’re impacting, your revenue is impacted.

 

Jane Sagalovich  52:46  

Absolutely. Yeah. I love that.

 

Richard Matthews  52:49  

Cool. So I want to switch gears again and start talking about something that’s really practical. And we talked a little bit about technology already. But I want to talk about what I call your hero’s tool belt. Just like every superhero has their awesome gadgets, like batarangs, web slingers, laser eyes, or their big magical hammers. I want to talk about the top one or two tools you couldn’t live without in your business, could be anything from your notepad you use for notes, could be your calendar used to keep track of things could be your marketing tools, it could be some specific process you use for product delivery, something you think is absolutely essential to getting your job done.

 

Jane Sagalovich  53:23  

My assistant, not only for what she does but because I have to do my things so that her workflows.

 

Richard Matthews  53:39  

It forces you to show up.

 

Jane Sagalovich  53:41  

Exactly, because I may not be motivated by my own timelines, but I’ll be motivated by her timeline. If I give her a timeline, and she needs my input to meet her timeline, I will much more likely do the thing for her timeline, than if I were to set an arbitrary timeline for myself, so yeah, it keeps me showing up in a way that creates a nice consistency for myself. Again spending so much time in the corporate where there was so much structure and then going to working for eight years now for myself.  Some of the structure that I can create from the outside is helpful. So that’s in addition to the amazing value she brings by working, doing the things, it’s the structure she provides to me that I find really invaluable. The other thing that has been actually tied to the perfectionist thing is to constantly jot down my ideas without feeling guilty for not doing them. One of the struggles I had earlier on is when I would write down ideas but then not do them. I would blame myself on like, oh, there’s another idea I didn’t get to write that was kind of like what my year-end or quarter end review would look like I’m like, well that didn’t happen. Whereas instead allowing myself to list those ideas as just a purely creative exercise with the intention that nothing on the list ever has to get done. And that enabled me to tune into my creativity without the negativity if that makes sense.

 

Richard Matthews  55:06  

It’s like a stream of consciousness almost like these are the things that are just going through my head, it doesn’t necessarily make them things I want to do.

 

Jane Sagalovich  55:13  

Exactly or have to do, that’s what my brain would do, like, if you wrote it down, you got to do it now. So that might be like, scared to even write it down.

 

Richard Matthews  55:21  

Then get stuck in your head and built up and you’d have brain garbage keeping you from being able to think.

 

Jane Sagalovich  55:26  

Totally, yeah, so being able to just like clear those ideas. And when you clear them, then the sparkly ones really kind of stand out. And you’re like, oh, that is exciting. And I still don’t have to do it, so I’m still getting rid of the blame shame game. But it just made it for an easier process of creativity and execution. For sure.

 

Richard Matthews  55:44  

Yeah, I find the same thing helps me to sleep at night. Because as an entrepreneur, you probably know how difficult it is to turn your brain off from all the things that are going on. So I find it useful at night before I go to bed to just sit down with my notepad and just write all the things that are happening in my head until I run out of things. And then like once they’re all out, I’m like, now I can sleep, because it’s not in my head anymore.

 

Jane Sagalovich  56:09  

I’ve done it in the middle of the night too.

 

Richard Matthews  56:11  

Yeah, cuz I’m like, oh, that’s a good idea. I have to hold on to that in my head. So if I fall asleep it’ll go away.

 

Jane Sagalovich  56:18  

No, here’s gonna be up all night. Yeah, in the middle of the night, sometimes if I wake up and the idea is spinning, I’m like, okay, I’m just gonna write this down to voice memo it out or something.

 

Richard Matthews  56:26  

I keep my phone, like a little magnet in it. It got a little magnet thing on the back of it. I just stick to the wall next to my bed. And send quick access to the notes. And I have all these notes. Like, I have a whole folder for a stream of consciousness. And I don’t even look at those notes. Because most of them they’re nonsensical. It’s like a drunk person wrote them in the middle of the night.

 

Jane Sagalovich  56:44  

Yeah, same. I never look back at the stuff. But just the process of getting it out of your head verbally, I find either written or voice is the way that they exit. If I think they’ll just continue to go.

 

Richard Matthews  56:56  

And you think that they’re just the most genius ideas, especially when you’re tired. You’ve had a long day, and you’re doing things you’re like, oh, this is the most genius idea I’ve ever had. Therefore, I have to hold on to it all night and never sleep, and then you write it down. And then in the morning, you look at it. You’re like, I don’t know who that person was.

 

Jane Sagalovich  57:10  

Yeah, that was the dumbest idea. It’s like in the middle of the night, this is the most brilliant thing I’ve ever come up with ever, ever, ever. In the morning. You’re like, yeah, no. This is not even worth five minutes of my time.

 

Richard Matthews  57:21  

Totally. The thing that cracks me up about that is the old Greek culture, the Greek politics, they used to have this rule that every idea or a law that they were going to pass had to pass muster, so to speak, when they were both sober and when they were drunk. So they would meet together and they would come up with ideas. And they would do this while they were drunk. And then they would come back to them. And the ones that made sense while they were still sober were the ones that actually got enacted into law. And I was like that it cracks me up, but also it makes a lot of sense.

 

Jane Sagalovich  57:55  

I might have to try that one out. That sounds like a fun study to do.

 

Richard Matthews  58:01  

Fun study. See if this works. You know which ones are good ideas because they’re the ones that are good, both ways.

 

Jane Sagalovich  58:07  

Yeah, both like more conscious brains and like some of the more primal. Yeah, I kind of feel like you’re getting like two parts of your brain coming in.

 

Richard Matthews  58:15  

Yeah, so I thought that was fascinating. The other thing I wanted to mention was on having the assistant cuz a similar thing happened to me. I had someone, one of my masterminds, people tell me again, so I had a lot of good things come out of having a mastermind. So if you’re listening, you don’t have a mastermind, you should because it helps you grow your business. But anyway, I had someone in my mastermind tell me that they were like, you’re your own bottleneck. And he’s like, I know this is gonna be tough for you, but hire someone full time. And I was like, I can’t do that. I can’t afford to hire someone full-time. And he was like, trust me just do it. And I remember thinking I vacillated on that for months, because I was like, I can’t hire someone full time. I don’t have the money to do that. And I remember his words just rolling over my head because he made a lot more money than me and hit a much larger business than I did was far more successful. And I was like he has to know something I don’t know. So a couple of months later, I hired someone full-time, and brought them onto my team. And it immediately changed everything in my business. And it was one of those shifts where you’re like, now you see it from the other side, you’re like, oh, I see what he meant. Because now my work output significantly went through the roof, which more than paid for his salary. And then I was like, oh, that’s where the money comes from. And it was just an interesting thing because it changed my mental conversation. Because my mental conversation before I had someone and I worked with people regularly, I’d hire people for things, but it was like, I’m gonna hire someone to do this task. So it was project work for things. And I would always be asking myself, is this task something that I’m going to do myself or is it something I’m going to hire up to someone? And that question inevitably led me to think that I’m going to do it myself a lot because I could do it better, cheaper, and faster. But I can’t do it at scale. And when I had someone on my team, now the question was, what do I have that I can take off of my plate and put onto his, which is a much better question. But it’s not one that you think about until you have someone on your team to do that with. But anyway, it was a major mental shift for me. So I totally get where you’re coming from that your assistant is one of the most important things in your business,

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:00:23  

It is and anyone that comes into the online space or any space, if they don’t have one, it’s like you said, they will pay for themselves because it will free you up to be more strategic to focus on the things that make you money to focus on the things that grow and scale your business instead of like, figuring out email automations, things that are like, okay, cool, I now know how to do email automations. But that’s not what the value is.

 

Richard Matthews  1:00:50  

Yeah, that’s not what the most valuable things are. So yeah, I love both of those things. They’re both really important tools, at least in my business.

 

Richard Matthews  1:00:59  

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Richard Matthews  1:02:31  

What I want to talk about next is your own personal heroes. Every hero has their mentors. Frodo had Gandalf, Luke has Obi Wan, Robert Kiyosaki, and his Rich Dad, even Spider Man had his Uncle Ben. So what I want to find out from you is, who were some of your heroes, were they real life mentors, maybe peers who were a couple of years ahead of you, speakers or authors. And how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far?

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:02:52  

Yeah, I’m trying to think younger years if no one specifically comes to mind for some of my younger years who’s been very prevalent to me for many years, and now too is Tim Ferriss, podcast or author. I love his podcast because I love the questions he asks. You’ll hear so many people coming, big names, people who’ve been interviewed by some people. And Tim will ask a question. They’re like, wow, no one’s ever asked me that before. And so you just really dive into different angles of people in you’re also really amazing at asking questions too is like, how do you ask questions that take people to places they don’t usually go, in our normal interviews, and so, one thing I love is just being able to get to know the people he interviews just in these new ways because of his ability to ask questions. He also cuts through the bullshit, we like people who kind of match our ways of thinking, but the way he speaks and writes and interviews do cut through the noise to what’s important to what’s present to what makes a difference. And I really love that kind of approach and that feels really inspiring to me. So that’s the one that’s in my world now.

 

Richard Matthews  1:04:18  

I really like Tim Ferriss. His first book, The Four Hour Workweek, was actually what inspired me to start my first business way back in 2007. And I remember reading that book and thinking yeah, I can do this, and here we are several years ago with a large team in two different companies traveling the world doing all those things, a lot of that came from stuff I learned from him and his thought processes. And I loved his concept, he calls it the Nouveau Riche which is the new rich people and it’s not necessarily that they’re rich in money, but they’re rich in their experience of life. And that’s one of the reasons why I took my business on the road and my kids and we travel. We travel full time, all over the world. And I run two businesses from the road. And they’re both fairly successful right now. They weren’t always right, it took me a long time to get good at this stuff. But I was one of those people. I read that book, and I was like, by next year, it took me 10.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:05:23  

Yeah. But it inspired you to act. And it breaks the rules. It’s cut through the bullshit, we don’t need those rules of 40, 50, 60-hour workweeks. That’s how do we make it work for us?

 

Richard Matthews  1:05:38  

Yeah. He talks about the four hour workweek. And it’s funny because I’ve never managed to get it to four hours. But one of the things I did do over the course of my life earlier, in my entrepreneurial career, I had this crazy thought that all I needed to do to be more successful was worth more.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:05:56  

Yeah, we all go through that.

 

Richard Matthews  1:05:58  

I think every entrepreneur goes through that phase, where you’re like if I can get this much done in 40 hours a week, imagine what I could get done. If I never slept or ate or did anything but work? And then you find out, that’s a quick way to die young.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:06:11  

The exact opposite results. Yeah, exactly. opposite result,

 

Richard Matthews  1:06:12  

The exact opposite result, but I tried, it didn’t work well. And I remember going through this process where I was looking at. I learned a really important concept that creativity thrives with boundaries. And everything you look at any sort of creative outlet, you always have your boundaries. If you’re painting you have your canvas, that’s your boundary. I’m a photographer and as a photographer, it’s that frame that you have to work with, and whatever lens that you’re using, it’s what am I going to show the world within these bounds? So creativity thrives with boundaries. And I was like, How can I start applying that to other areas in my life? And so for me, I was like, what happens if I cut my work week down from six days a week to five days a week? And what if I cut it from five to four? And what if I cut it from 12 hours a day to eight, and from eight to six, and from six to four? And I’m at this point now, where I run two companies and travel the world, and we do that four hours a day, four days a week because it changes how you think about things when you give yourself boundaries.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:07:17  

Absolutely. And there’s a phrase, and I’m not gonna say right, but it’s like the stuff fills to fill the time, whatever time you give it, you’ll fill the time. So if you give it less time, you could just use less time.

 

Richard Matthews  1:07:31  

Yeah, it’s like magic. You’re like, oh, I can just get these things. And then the other thing, the other principle that has gone along with that is realizing that as entrepreneurs, we frequently look at our lives in terms of in order to get to rest and recreation, I have to do my work, I have to accomplish my goal. And then I’ll rest and recreate which Tim Ferriss is one of the people that helped break that in my head, he’s like, you don’t have to do that, you can recreate now, you don’t have to wait till you’re 60 and retired, you can do it now. And the way that I’ve sort of internalized that is I tell people, and I tell myself, mostly but I tell people on this podcast all the time that you have to give yourself permission to play. Because your recreation and your rest is not something that you give yourself as a reward for doing good work. It’s something that you have to do in order to show up and do good work. So you have to flip it.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:08:20  

So powerful. On a micro-level where this shows up for me, and sometimes I’ll have mornings where I’m just not motivated. Usually, I do most of my good work, I’m a morning person. But there are some mornings that I’m not motivated. And what I used to do is I try to force myself to do the work. Now I’ll go for a hike, I’ll go for a walk, I’ll go play. And then I come back and I work in the afternoon. And it took me a while to give myself permission to do that. Because again, it was like, well wait, the morning is when I’m supposed to work. How can I not work during this prime time? How am I playing and then I saw like, okay, I don’t usually love working in the afternoons. But I spend the morning playing and actually don’t mind working in the afternoons and I produce some really good work. It’s those permissions that we give ourselves, permission to play at any time. Like, I don’t care if it’s Monday at 9 am, go play.

 

Richard Matthews  1:09:06  

I have this idea. I want to write a book called permission to play. But I’m like, I don’t know how I should say it other than give yourself permission to play. 

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:09:15  

It’s gonna be a really short book. The end. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:09:15  

A really short book, the end, go play.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:09:20  

You can probably sell it for like $1,000 because I’m sure you can come up with really great marketing around it.

 

Richard Matthews  1:09:25  

But it’s such an important concept. And as entrepreneurs when we have that other mindset that I’ll play, and I’ll rest and I’ll recreate, when I get my work done, your work is never done. So then you never do it. So then you can never do good work. It’s this downward spiral that I have gotten myself into in the past and I’ve seen entrepreneurs in and I’m like if you would just shift that mental model of giving yourself permission to play first that allows you to show up and knock it out of the park. And again, it’s an idea that came from Tim Ferriss and his Four Hour Workweek, he’s like, if you can run a big company for four hours a week, what is that? And for me, the thing that came out of that was that whole permission to play.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:10:04  

Yeah. I love that. You should write that book for sure.

 

Richard Matthews  1:10:08  

Permission to play, one page, go play. I will at some point figure out I’ll sit down and actually outline my thoughts on that. Because I think there’s more to it. And like just walking through some of those things. But I have to get more clear on it, I guess. So maybe I need to hire someone like you to help me write that book.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:10:26  

Yeah, I see. I am seeing an Instagram account. That’s totally viral. Because people would love this idea.

 

Richard Matthews  1:10:34  

Yeah, absolutely. So I have one more question for you in our interview, and it’s your guiding principles. So one of the things that make heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he only ever brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, I want to talk about the top one or two principles that you regularly use in your life, maybe something you wish you’d known when you started out on your own hero’s journey.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:11:02  

Principles, I would have to say one of the key principles and your prompt of something that’s helping you start. And this relates to the transition from corporate to having your own business, which is sales, you don’t have a business if you don’t sell stuff. And coming from a corporate role where I was never in sales roles, I was always the client, the manager, whatever, so it became a very reciprocal relationship. And so at first, I thought sales was something that was just going to be like, I have to do this so that I can have a business that is successful. And where I have gotten to be and is a core principle of sales is really, really fun. And that’s what it’s all about. And I get to make amazing connections with that process. And I get to help people through the process before they ever become a client. And so really just falling in love with that part of the process, I would say has been a big part of what’s enabled this to be fun and successful.

 

Richard Matthews  1:12:01  

I remember, I had hired a sales coach. At one point early in my business career, I paid him 12 grand to teach me how to sell probably the best $12,000 I’ve ever spent in my business. But one of the things that were fascinating from that experience was learning really clearly what sales were and what it wasn’t because we have all of this really negative baggage about what sales is, a lot of it’s Hollywood’s fault, because it’s always a used car salesman, and all those things. And we’ve had those experiences with people who have that sort of terrible sales mentality. But what you realize is that sales, what sales really is when you get down to it, is someone else has a problem that is causing them pain and strife and issues in their life, and you have a solution to that problem that can help make their life better. And what sales is, is how you connect those two things, their problem to your solution. And when you start thinking of it that way, it becomes a thing that you’re like, not just excited to do that you’re almost obligated to do.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:13:02

It’s part of the mission, that is part of the mission.

 

Richard Matthews  1:13:05  

What would their life be like if I didn’t take the time and effort to do the sales? And depending on what it is that you’re selling it could be horribly traumatic in their life if they don’t get to your solution. And it can really shift your whole perspective on business, when you understand what sales are at its core, and how important it is to helping other people and really taking your value to the people who need it.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:13:35  

Mm hmm. Yeah. And I’ve had some amazing sales coaches over the years, too. And I don’t think I would have figured this all out on my own either. And so yeah, people listening if they are really struggling with sales, get support, because when it clicks, it clicks. That’s how the experience was, for me. It just became this 180 shift from something I had to do and hated to part of my mission and part of my gift to the world. And one of my coaches said, something that really stuck with me too, is like, how good does it feel to buy something that you want to buy? I love buying things I want to buy, and so we can’t forget about their experience is positive, too. There’s no talking, it’s not one sided, I think we think of sales as this one sided equation. 

 

Richard Matthews  1:14:20  

It’s an equal exchange of value. 

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:14:21  

Yeah, It’s an equal exchange of value. And so, why wouldn’t we want to have that? I think that’s probably been the biggest. As far as the entrepreneurial journey, definitely the biggest shift.

 

Richard Matthews  1:14:30  

My favorite experience when working with that coach is he did something with me that to this day cracks me up that he had me do this. He was like, I’m gonna have you do cold calling. And I was like, cold calling for what? He was like, I’m gonna give you a list. He gave me a list of 250 people. He’s like, I want you to call them and sell them. I was like, sell them what? He was like, anything. And I was like, well, who are these people? He’s like, I don’t know. He’s like, that’s part of the process and what he had me do, he’s like, I’m gonna give you a really simple script that you can just follow at the beginning and the goal is to get into a conversation with someone and find out what their problem is and see if you can help connect them with a solution. And so it was an exercise and the exercise was this. So he gave me a list I called the personal list to be like, hey, my name is Richard Matthews, I have your name here sitting in front of me. Can you remember why I would have your name? And what that did is it immediately took the other person off guard. And they’re like, well, I don’t know, maybe I was at a mastermind event, or maybe I was at a thing. So why don’t I tell you a little bit about what I do or you can tell me a little bit about what it is you do. And we just started a conversation and found out from them what they’re doing and where they’re going with their life and with their business and see if there’s something that you could help them with, something that you can give value. What’s funny is this is an exercise that just 250 complete strangers, he didn’t have anything not even related with business, nothing. They were just strangers. I made sales in my business from doing that exercise. 

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:16:03  

Wow.

 

Richard Matthews  1:16:06  

And it also changed that whole fear of getting on the phone and talking with someone. You realize it’s not about getting rejected. It’s not about doing those things. It’s about how I need to create a relationship with someone. And that’s really what sales is. That’s a crazy experience. It’s a crazy thing to do. But for me it shifted a lot of how I thought about sales.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:16:30  

Yeah, and being hung up on is not scary. At the end of the day, it’s not a big deal. They’re gonna think about you maybe for another five seconds, and then their life goes on and your life goes on. And I think we kind of create rejection to this thing.

 

Richard Matthews  1:16:45  

Yeah, that it just isn’t. And nowadays, few people are doing cold call sales. When you and I get on the phone with a client it is because we’ve done marketing other things that they’re coming to us and asking us, like, hey, I’ve seen what you’re doing and I’d like to learn more about it. Which is significantly lower bar type sales and what he had me doing, but it was like, hey, if you can do the hard stuff and still win. Imagine how easy it is when you have someone coming to you and be like, hey, I know what you do. I like what you do. And I’d like to learn more, those are like lay down sales almost by comparison. 

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:17:18  

Yeah, how do you make a 10-pound dumbbell feel lighter than lifting a 100 pound dumbbell first? Then the 10-pound dumbbells like oh, this is nothing? You lift that one first and it’s heavy?

 

Richard Matthews  1:17:29  

Absolutely. So I think that’s a great place to wrap up our interview. But I do finish every interview with a simple challenge. I call it the hero’s challenge. And I use this to help get access to stories I might not otherwise find on my own because not everyone is out doing the podcast rounds as you and I do. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine, and why do you think they should come to share their story with our audience here on the Hero Show? First person that comes to mind for you.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:18:00  

One of my business friends Anca Herman, she’s in Spain. She helps people with the tech stuff of their online businesses. I love her story because she started her entrepreneurial journey, sewing flamenco dresses. And then she has a beautiful story about how that transitioned into the online business space and the kind of the parallels between those. She lives in Spain, not quite a digital nomad, but that same idea of working from anywhere in the world, with an online business. And she has a really fun story that I think your folks would enjoy hearing.

 

Richard Matthews  1:18:40  

Awesome. So we’ll reach out later and see if we can get an introduction to her and maybe get her on the show. Not everyone says yes, but when they do we get some really cool stories out of them. So in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people at the end of the story that are clapping and cheering for the acts of heroism. So analogous to that as we close is I want to know where people can find you. If they want your help in the future. Where can they light up the bat signal and say, hey, Jane, I need help getting my expertise packaged up so I can scale my value? And I think more importantly than where is who are the right types of people to actually light up the bat signal and ask for your help.

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:19:11  

Yeah, so the people that I can help are people who are in helping professions whose work makes a difference in demand professionals that are either working one on one or in a done for you format and want to be able to work with more people using less of their time. Our website is the perfect starting point that’s ScaledGenius.com. If we have a training coming up that’ll be on the front page, whatever the latest thing we’re promoting is always on the front page. We are on all the socials. So wherever you are, just look at Scale Your Genius and we’re there YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, all the things so if you do have a favourite platform, we’re on there.

 

Richard Matthews  1:19:52  

Awesome. So thank you so much for coming on today. Jane, I really appreciate getting to hear your story, hear what you do and have this fascinating conversation. Again, I love what you’re doing. And I love how important it is and the ripple effect that it’s going to have as you continue to grow your business. So as we finish this up, do you have any final words of wisdom for my audience before I hit this stop record button?

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:20:14  

Yeah, I’ll say, if you resonate with what we’re talking about, and you feel like some kind of industry norms or rules are holding you back, I invite you to just question those and see if maybe there is some space for you to leave those behind and pursue your mission in a bigger way.

 

Richard Matthews  1:20:31  

Absolutely. I completely agree with that. Because every time I’ve asked better questions like that, it’s changed my business, and we’ve impact more people. So thank you very much for coming on today, I really appreciate having you. 

 

Jane Sagalovich  1:20:42  

Yeah, thank you. I think I enjoyed this a lot.