Graham (00:06.637)
If you want to win a business, you need to slow down. Too many creators think that speed and hustle are the necessary fuel for success when in reality, they're the exact ingredients that will destroy a business. What if the key to massive success and growth in your business was to go slow? Well, in today's episode, I'm giving you three reasons slowing down will grow your business. And make sure you stay to the end.
I'm gonna give you the one question that will give you 100 % clarity on what direction to take in your business.
Graham (01:09.263)
So I think business is an interesting topic and I think entrepreneurship is something that I both love and hate. I love the idea that you can create a solution to a problem. You can focus on serving people powerfully and get rewarded for it in the marketplace. And there's no cap. There's no limitation. There's no one telling me what to do. I love the sort of sandbox creativity of building a business. What I don't love personally is the culture
around business building, at least here in America, where it's really about the hustle and the grind. It's about speed. It's about winning at all costs. It's about beating other people. It's sort of pushing yourself to the front of the pack, getting the attention, fighting for the attention, right? It's all of these analogies for literally fighting, crushing it, killing it, know, jab, jab, right hook, like literally boxing metaphors are being used.
for how to do marketing. And I get some of it's just fun, and some of it's a good visual, but there really is an aggressive tone for the marketplace. And I think what's interesting is that I don't really find that appealing. So I don't typically use that kind of language, and maybe you're the same, maybe that's why you like this show. But I also think fundamentally the idea of going as fast as you can, building as big as you can, and pushing as hard as you can is flawed.
I'm fascinated by business owners who say, yeah, at the beginning you need to hustle and grind and push and push and push and push and push. And then once you're successful, you can slow down and you can reward yourself with a little bit more flexibility, a little bit more free time. When they hear how few hours it takes to run my million dollar business, they say, good for you, Graham. I'm sure that's your reward now. But in the early days, you had to hustle and grind and go fast. And I'm always
shocked that they assume that. Like, why do we assume we have to hustle? I've never hustled. I've never gone fast. I've always gone slow. When I started my business, I was a brand new father and husband and homeowner and I was planning a church, which means I was giving 10 to 20 hours a week as a volunteer. I didn't have a whole lot of time and I certainly wasn't afforded the luxury, air quotes, of just working around the clock and
Graham (03:34.265)
building things quickly. I had to go at the speed of my season of life. Have you felt that you're having to go at the speed of your season of life? Have you felt that maybe it is a detriment to your business growth? You feel like you're falling behind, other people are getting ahead? I know when my wife Shay was building her business, Elevay, in the early days as a commercial photographer, she was creating sort of a stock photo agency. She kind of pioneered
this type of product and service in the marketplace and it got copycatted left and right by people who were younger, single, no kids, and could work around the clock and they surpassed her in the early years because they could work faster. And though she felt that, she felt, man, they can just roll out things faster than I can. They can iterate faster than I can. They can launch faster than I can. I'm raising babies and working two days a week and trying to be a wife and all these other things that she was doing.
And it bombed her out. Have you felt that? Have you felt that that's a disadvantage to you? Well, today's episode is going to encourage you because the reality is, I think going slow isn't to your disadvantage. It's actually the opposite. It's to your advantage. Shay has figured that out. To close the loop on that story, most of her competitors and copycats are gone or their business has floundered and she's still around and she's still serving thousands of incredible female entrepreneurs with her brand and it has
big users like Marie Forleo and Jenna Kutcher using her images and has been on billboards and in magazines and all over the place. She's done incredible work and has had sustained effort, which we'll get into in a minute. But two quotes, before we get into the three reasons and then state of the end for the one question that will literally give you 100 % clarity moving forward in your business. Two quotes that just have haunted me in a good way. They've just stayed in my brain. One is, I heard John Maxwell say multiple times, but I was at one of his events,
in August in Orlando. I was actually speaking at a breakout session type group at this event in Orlando and we got to sit in on some of the main sessions and it's John's event so he got to speak a few times but I've heard him say this before and I love this line. He says, you're good, time is your best friend. When you're bad, time is your enemy.
Graham (05:57.099)
If you're good at what you do, if you're a good person, if you are actually helping people and serving people and you're building something worthwhile, then take your time friend because the more time you have the better. Time is your friend.
But if you're building something shoddy, if it's kind of clickbaity, if it's kind of not really delivering the value you're promising, then you better go quick. You better have speed and hustle and you better make your money as fast as you can because the time that goes on over time, people are gonna figure out that your business isn't legit, that you're not legit. So you might as well make the money now. I'm not advocating that you do bad stuff, but you see the idea of the quote, the spirit of the line is when you're good,
Don't be in hurry, don't worry. The more time, the better. The more time for your reputation to precede yourself, the more time for your customers and clients, even if you only have a few, to go before you and tell everyone how great you were to work with. When you're good, time is your friend. When you're bad, time is your enemy. And then I read this quote, it was in a Seth Godin book, I think it was The Dip, by Sergey Bren, who was one of the co-founders of Google and former president of
Google and Alphabet, the parent company. And I read this line and I thought, my gosh, he's talking about when he was creating Google. This was so counterintuitive, but so freeing and so full of wisdom. He said, tomorrow would be better for people to find out about me or my business. He said, when they were building Google, he kept thinking about this, tomorrow would be better for people to find out about my business. And I love this line because typically how we roll as business owners is we're
focused and obsessed on getting as many people to know about us right now as possible. So we want more viewers and followers and subscribers on social media platforms and YouTube. We want more people on our email list today. We want more views on our content. We want more people to find out about us now. But think about it. If you go back in time, if you've been in business for five years, let's say, would you rather have had everyone find out about you five years ago when you were starting or have those people find out about you now when you're a little bit more established?
Graham (08:14.477)
Like, it's fascinating when you think about it that way, that it's actually better if people find out about me next year versus this year, because I'm gonna be better next year. I'm gonna be more refined next year. I'm gonna have more wisdom and maturity next year. My business, my products, my services are gonna be better. I think about my clients that I've served, like let's say private one-on-one clients. I've been serving people one-on-one as a business coach since 2016, 15.
I did it for free in 2015. But really 2016, 2017 is when I started behind the scenes coaching people one on one. I feel like I'm a better coach now. I know I'm a better coach now than it was six years ago, seven years ago, eight years ago. For a lot of reasons. I've seen more, done more, helped more, seen more problems, found more solutions, I've created more thought leadership, more frameworks. I have more empathy. I feel like I'm a better listener.
I feel like I have more guts and courage to provoke people's thinking than I did eight years ago. I really wanted people to like me. People were paying me. I wanted people to like their experience with me. So I was a people pleaser rather than a real coach or mentor. So in a way, I would rather you find out about me today as a coach and work with me today than eight years ago. And honestly, I would rather you find out about me eight years from now when I'm gonna be an even more world-class coach than I am today. So I love that line.
from Sergi that tomorrow would be better for people to find out about me and my business. Now, obviously we need people to find out about us today to make money, but I'm just wanting to frame your thinking. When you're good, time is your friend. When you're bad, time is your enemy. So if you feel confident about what you're putting out in the world, the content you're putting on the world, the offers you have, not confident that it's the best offer, it's the best conversion strategy or the best sales copy, that's not what I'm talking about. At its core, you know if people,
buy or do business with you, it's gonna help them for the better. If somebody listens to your podcast, watches your video, reads your article, does what you say in an email, it's gonna help them. If you feel like that's you, then time's on your side, my friend. Time is your friend. So what I wanna do real quick is walk you through three reasons that I feel like going slow or slowing down is the secret to your business success.
Graham (10:36.685)
and then state of the end, I'm gonna give you this question that I think will just really frame your thinking. So reason number one is just the sheer fact that success just takes time. I don't know how else to say it, but there is no shortcut to success. There are some people that seem to rise quickly, but as I've heard it said, the faster you rise, that's the speed of your half-life. That is your half-life. That's the fastest, the speed you're gonna fall apart. Like the businesses that are slow building last,
just as long. The businesses that shoot up to the top are impressive and sexy and attractive, but they're gone next year. Real success just takes time. I think you know this intuitively, but can I just tell you as someone that has been doing this for 15 years, somebody told me, bro, just a couple of months ago, Graham, I feel like you're blowing up, like you're everywhere. Like, what's your secret? I'm like, well,
I've been trying to do this for 15 years. I wish I would have blown up 15 years ago. It just took me 15 years to become an overnight success, right? That's the whole joke. Success takes time. Picasso, arguably one of the greatest artists in history, has had officially about 100 masterpieces. Like, my gosh, he's created 100 masterpiece works of art. But do you know that he created 50,
thousand pieces of art over his time? 50,000. What's the math on that? Should have done the math. 100 divided by 50,000 is 0.2 % of his work were considered masterpieces. Right? That's insane. That's really bad math.
The reason he had 100 masterpieces is not just because he's a genius, but because he took the time to create 50,000 pieces of work. Success is a numbers game. It's a numbers game. And two thoughts here. One is, and I've shared this before, I did a TEDx talk last year. One of my bucket list goals was to be a TEDx speaker. I hired a coaching group called Thought Leader to help me develop, pitch, and land
Graham (12:47.926)
TEDx talk. It's a great program. There's a great coaching program and it was worth every penny. But what was both fascinating and encouraging to me was when I jumped on the sales call, even the sales call for them. The guy was telling me on the call, hey bro, here's how our process works. You know, we're going to take you through an intensive where you're going to workshop your business idea and get really clear on, your business idea, excuse me, your talk idea. Then you're to do another intensive to help you map out your
application because the key to landing a TEDx talk is to have the right answers to the right questions that most TEDx organizers are gonna ask in the application process. So we know what they're looking for and we can help you develop the right application. But then really bro, step number three, honestly, is you just have to apply to a ton. In fact, we've done the math of our clients, it takes on average 86 applications, meaning you have to apply to 86,
TEDx events to get your first yes. It's a numbers game. When I heard that, I thought, well, hey, this is why you pay people that have gone to and done what you want to do because they have the data, they have the intel. So I'm like, kudos to you for doing the math. And then two, I got encouraged because it's just a numbers game. It's not about, I applied to three talk events and they didn't say yes. It's not personal, it's just a numbers game. And so for me, it took 70, I applied to 70.
TEDx events before I got my yes. So I'm technically above average, but it was a numbers game. Success is a numbers game. Okay, do you know the 80-20 rule of content? It's very simple. 80 % of your content is just gonna be okay, and 20 % of it is gonna be awesome. Simple as that. 80 % of your content is gonna be just okay. I don't think you're gonna make any bad content, because I don't think that's who you are.
I think you're a hard worker, I think you care about your audience, I think you're gonna put out good content in the world. But 80 % of it's just gonna be okay. 20 % of it's really gonna be awesome. And if you really wanna nerd out, 20 % of your 20 % is really gonna be the content that moves the needle for your business, which means 4 % of your content is the content that's gonna give you 64 to 80 % of your leads, 64 to 80 % of your views, 64 to 80 % of your customers,
Graham (15:11.296)
and it's gonna be shares 64 to 80 % more than your other content. It's gonna be the stuff that you're known for. So if 80 20 tells us that most of your content's just eh and only your top 20 % or if you really, really wanna nail it down, your top 4 % is really the stuff that's gonna blow up, well then if for every 100 videos only four are really great, the problem is I don't know which four are gonna be great. So.
Am I gonna sit around and just wait until I've come up with the best four pieces of content? No, I have no idea what they're gonna be. So all I can do is publish, publish, publish, and that takes time. I publish one good piece of long form content a week. That means I'm doing 52 pieces a week. Let's just call it 50. That means it's gonna take me two years to get four really good pieces.
In two years, I'll get 20 awesome pieces of content that will move the needle. And really, of those two years, only four are gonna be the things that either go viral or give me the most leads or become the things that give me opportunities to step into new rooms or stages because they heard or saw that one piece of content or whatever. Does this make sense? Success takes time. So you need to slow down because you're gonna be in this game for a long, long time. And that's how I need you to think. You're gonna be in this game for a long, long time.
Reason number two, going slow leads to success, is because the opposite or the alternative, rushing or speeding up, leads to burnout and failure. Look, if you run hard and fast, you might have some early success, but guess what? You will also get inevitably burnout. And if you burn out, you can't win. You just can't win. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, came back and led Apple out of the dark ages.
when he came back for his second stint and took it to the golden ages that it is today and invented the iPhone and iTunes and podcasting and the iPad and I mean everything just changed everything, right? Took it to this golden age that it's in. He famously has said that business is a game of attrition, meaning most businesses disappear, they die out. If you stay in the game long enough, you win by virtue of being the only one left.
Graham (17:33.442)
So if you want to play that long game, you can't go fast and hard because eventually you'll burn out. Interesting story. I met a couple who I met the husband initially at a speaking engagement, but he was very interested in what I was doing as a coach. And he said, man, I really think my wife could use your help. And I help her in the business. I'm kind of helping to run the business, but she's the face of it. She's an influencer. And we really need your help because we're making a ton of money, but we need your help. I said, yeah, let's get on a call. So I sit down with with this
Couple and I'm asking her to tell me her story. So here's her story. She's blown up on Instagram. She's got a huge following. She does great content. She's making three to $4 million a year, which is amazing. Brand deals, know, sponsored posts, that kind of stuff. Maybe affiliate. And on the surface, you're just like, this is amazing. And they have a great life and they have a great family and they're great people.
And I just loved, I love this couple, but she's overwhelmed and stressed. Just stressed out of her mind, right? And here's why, because she's having to post every day, all the time. And she was telling me about a story, they just gone to Greece, to Santorini. And she said, you look at it on Instagram and we look super happy, because it's such a beautiful place, I'm so happy to be here with my husband. But the problem is, is my phone was having issues when I got over there and I have content that I have to post, because she's got these big.
expensive brand deals that are paying her a ton of money and she has to deliver posts and she couldn't upload things or it was taking forever and so they're scrambling, they're doing tech, they're trying to find an Apple store and I don't think there's anything like that on the island. I've been to Santorini, it's beautiful but there's not a whole lot there other than great restaurants and hotels. Stressful. So she couldn't even enjoy her trip to Santorini because she's got a post and she's like, I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel and I don't want to shut off the business because we have a great lifestyle.
and it's helping a ton of people, but I'm trapped. I'm trapped, can you help me? And so, you we had conversations, but here's the reality is her business model, speed, hustle, it's led to initial success, but now she's got these golden handcuffs so she can't slow down. And so when I was talking about what we would need to do,
Graham (19:54.88)
was we would almost need to rebuild the business from the ground up and build this of bridge season where she bridges out of the type of business she's in into a version of the business that removes her from needing to be actively involved every single day. And it's possible, but we're gonna have to slow down. And that might involve making less money in the short term. She didn't end up hiring me, which is fine. I don't know if I was the best fit. I don't know if she liked.
what I had to say. I don't know if she really just needed someone to come in and run everything for her as opposed to coach her. Either way, it was a sad story and it was an interesting window into what's happening behind closed doors for a lot of these quote unquote successful people. And I have clients that are big YouTubers. have clients that have come from social media where they're big on social but it's not sustainable. Again, rushing, I'm not saying she was rushing. I don't know. I think she just had a lot of success during COVID and it really blew up. But when you rush, when you go hard and fast, which is what the world tells you to do,
you inevitably hit a wall and you hit burnout and you just can't win if you burn out. So I think that's an obvious one. And the reason number three, and then I want to end with the question that I think will really be useful for you and it's a good thought exercise. Reason number three, I think you should go slow and that will lead to success, is that short-term thinking has long-term consequences. And when you're running hard and fast, you're thinking short-term. Why else would you run hard and fast?
The only reason you run hard and fast is because you're afraid of missing out. You feel like there's this short or limited window of time. So you need to go fast and make as much money or make as much progress as you can in this short term. That's the only reason why you run fast. Think about a race, for example. Like if you're an actual runner, track and field.
The only reason you're gonna run fast in the 100 meter dash is because it's a short race. There is a short window of time to win it. So you gotta go fast. You're never gonna run that fast and hard if you're in a marathon where you're running 26.2 miles. Well because there's way more time. So you're gonna optimize very differently. You're going to run at a very different pace than you would for 100 meter dash. So you gotta know what kind of race you're in. And the problem is,
Graham (22:11.638)
Running hard and fast is short-term thinking. It's optimizing for the short term. You're trying to get quick money or quick results. And the problem is you might actually get what you want. You might actually get quick money and quick results. And that feels good in the short term and you feel like, well, aren't I doing the right thing? The problem is it has long-term consequences. You will pay for it in the long term. For example, a lot of people in COVID woke up to the fact that you can make money on the internet.
People have been making money on the internet for 24 plus years, longer, since the late 90s. And I've been making money with digital courses since 2010. And I was really starting in 2009, but my first course sale was in early 2010. But it took another 10 years before the world started to wake up to, my gosh, what's an online course? What's a digital course? And so everybody and their mom realized,
this is gonna be the way to make money. I'm gonna make a course, I'm gonna sell it, and whether I use ads or Instagram or YouTube or whatever to get leads, this is all I'm gonna do is I'm sell all my course. And it was so easy to make money in the short term. The problem is that most of those people are no longer making money. And they're really frustrated. So these great short-term testimonials or success stories have turned to, can't replicate my success. So 2020 and 2021 might've been great.
But then 2022 it slowed down, 2023 it slowed down, 2024 it slowed down. And a lot of those people are saying, hey, you can't make money selling courses, you can't make money online anymore. And the reason is, it's not true. They can't make money anymore because they built a business for the short term. They optimized for the short term, which benefited them in the short term, but they're paying for it long term. They don't have a real business. They just jumped on a trend. They saw part of the business model that works.
And the reason inside baseball, and you know this if you follow my show for any length of time, the reason this didn't work for them is because they had a course that they thought was the asset, but the course isn't your asset. Your content isn't your asset. Your Instagram profile isn't your asset. Your podcast isn't your asset. The audience is the asset. If you don't have an audience, you don't have a business. And so the reality is that we're not in the business of selling stuff
Graham (24:36.426)
or even creating great content. We're in the business of audience building and that takes time. It really takes time because how do you build an audience? Well, you build trust and it's really hard to build trust quickly. It takes time to build trust. The fastest way to build trust is in person. So you actually can build trust quickly but it's gonna take in person. If I had 60 minutes to do a keynote presentation for 10,000 people in a room, I would probably have 80 % of those people's trust by the end of the talk.
and I could probably sell them almost anything because there's this magic of being in person. Online, it takes longer. It takes lots of my content being consumed. It may take a couple webinars, it might take some emails. Building trust takes time, but that's what it to build an audience and the audience is the asset. When you have an audience, you can do anything. Without an audience, it doesn't matter how good your course is, it doesn't matter how good your sales copy is, it doesn't matter how good your funnel strategy is, it doesn't matter if you use Kajabi or Thinkific, none of it matters if you don't have an audience to serve and sell to.
Short-term thinking has long-term consequences. You're gonna burn out, you're gonna burn your audience out, you're gonna use your email list as a slot machine, you're gonna pull the lever and flash sale, flash sale, flash sale, and it works until it doesn't. And you've burned them out, you've burned yourself out, you've lost trust, and then your business falls apart. But the opposite is true. When you optimize for the long-term, you reap the rewards in the long-term. You may not reap as much in the short-term, but you will reap in the long-term.
The great thing here is, is that if you want to win and you're willing to think long term.
you really will win bigger and disproportionately than anybody else. So, and I'll give you an example. My first business, Recording Revolution, at its height was doing 1.2, 1.3 million dollars a year in a hobby niche. It was great. I had the biggest YouTube channel in the space. I had done everything I ever wanted to do. I had a great life, a great business. It was super easy. It took me about five hours a week to run. I was getting a lot of people results and people were loving it. The problem was, is I wasn't loving it as much anymore.
Graham (26:42.604)
And I really had this desire to coach business owners and build a new brand around this idea of helping people come online and monetize their knowledge and build a lifestyle business that they love. I knew that if I stayed with the recording revolution, I could make easy short-term money. I could launch another course and it would sell. I could do another partnership with a Grammy Award winning producer and it would sell. I could do more live events and they would sell. I could...
launch a new mastermind or community that it would sell. I had a huge email list at its height 500,000 people, huge YouTube channel, 600,000 plus subscribers. Everything was there. All the levers you could ever want to make more money and it would have been easy and I could talk about the stuff in my sleep. If I optimized for the short term, it would have paid off in the short term but it would have had long term consequences which I think the business would maybe have flattened out or plateaued but I know I would have burned out from it because I didn't love it anymore.
And I think I was at the peak. I really do think I was at the peak for that business. Could be wrong. Anything's possible. And maybe there's people in that space that are gonna do more or have done more than me. But at the height of my success there, I pivoted. And I was willing to walk away and eventually did walk away from a $1.2 million business to build my personal brand coaching business owners, is what we're doing right now.
That was a long-term play. There was no short-term benefits. didn't make, I mean, I made some money in the first year. I mean, I actually made 100 grand in my first year, which is cool, but it was a lot of work to make 100 grand. was doing like private coaching, right? It was no short-term reward. It was a long-term play, but that long-term play now six and a half years later has led to two best-selling books, including Hitting USA Today, meeting some of my absolute heroes, speaking on some of the biggest stages.
building a bigger business. You know, last year we did over $2 million. Meeting new people I never would have met. Learning, growing, walking into rooms I never knew were possible to walk into. And really I have a business that's only just getting started. Like at $2 million last year, I'm not at the ceiling. I'm just getting started. And I'm building something that's like legacy. I'm thinking 40 years from now.
Graham (29:04.335)
Right? When I'm 81, 41 right now, when I'm 81, I'm thinking business that's setting me up for 81 and beyond. And so I'm already starting to reap some of those rewards, but I haven't reaped all the rewards I'm gonna get, because I'm thinking long term. Does this make sense? Even if it's taking a long time, I know it's already gonna pay dividends, but it will pay dividends for longer. So you optimize for the short term, there's long term consequences, but you optimize for the long term, you slow down, you take a look.
there are long-term rewards that are disproportionate. So I hope there's something there for you in this episode. I wanna leave you with this question because I think this is great, like, go think about this.
In a world that says, you're running out of time, you gotta go now, you're missing out on your chance, this is it, this is your moment in the sun, it'll never be like this again. Someone else is gonna grab what's yours if you don't grab it. In a world that screams all those things, I call BS on all of that. And I say, none of that's true. And even if it were true, it's not helpful. Let me give you a better question that will I think give you 100 % clarity.
on what you need to do next in your business. Here's the question, are you ready? What would you do if you weren't running out of time?
Graham (30:29.058)
What would you do if you weren't running out of time?
Graham (30:36.664)
However you wanna answer that, would you run your business? Would you run a different business? What would you do within your business? Would you be doing the things you're doing today in your business if you weren't running out of time?
If I were able to convince you that, friend, you have plenty of time, right? I think there's a Rolling Stone song, Time Is On Your Side. Friend, time is on your side. You've got tons of time, tons of time ahead of you. If you weren't running out of time, I know where everyone says if you were gonna die tomorrow, what would you do? Yeah, flip it though. If you're not dying for another 50, 60 years and you've got plenty of time to grow this thing, what would you do?
differently? Or would you do what you're doing? How you're doing it? What would you do if you weren't running out of time? The answers to those that question are what you need to be doing. It's what you need to be focusing on. It's what you need to be going all in on.
Your subconscious wants to tell you what you really want to do, what you intuitively know is best for you and best for your students, best for your customers, best for your family, best for your legacy. The problem is this fake pressure of you're running out of time, you're running out of time, you got to do it now, is clouding your judgment. What would you do if you weren't running out of time? If you're watching on YouTube, comment below. First thought, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, pause this and stop and answer that question.
What would you do if you weren't running out of time? Because the good news is you aren't. You have all the time you could ever need. Time is on your side. Slow down. Build for the long term. Optimize for the long term. Build a business that you'll never burn out from, never want to exit, never get handcuffed to the hamster wheel. And watch your success take you to the next level. Hope you enjoyed this episode. As always, I appreciate your time.
Graham (32:39.278)
and I'll see you next week.
