Graham Cochrane (00:05.016)
You ever feel like the only way forward in business is bigger, faster, more? We're told that success means endless growth, more revenue, bigger teams, scaling to the moon. But here's the truth. I keep meeting entrepreneurs who made it and they're exhausted, unfulfilled, even miserable. They blew past their happiness point, chasing more, only to realize it didn't give them
what they were really after. So today, we're breaking down the myth of endless growth and how to build a business that actually makes you happy. And be sure to stay to the end where I share my simple but powerful business happiness formula. Let's dive in.
Graham Cochrane (01:13.87)
So I'm your friend and I want you to be both rich and happy. I think I would choose happy over rich. I don't think you need to be rich to be happy, but we're here on this channel, on this show to grow our businesses. And so yeah, you want to make more money. I don't think you would be watching this or listening to this if you didn't. So the question is, can you be rich and happy? Or more importantly and more specifically, can we grow a business
to reach the income goals that we have and also save our soul and really keep our happiness because there is a moment where you cross over and now you're richer in a fiscal sense, in a monetary sense, but you are poorer in a happiness and a joy sense. And I know this sounds crazy. If you're really struggling financially, you're like, this is BS. It's not BS.
It's just a problem you haven't been able to deal with yet and it's a problem I hope you get to deal with because that means you'll be out of your financial turmoil. And this is coming from someone who's been broke. I I've literally had to have the government pay my grocery bills because I can't afford them. And so I was broke and had to build a business out of nothing. So I know that pain of not having any money, but what most people won't understand and I'm willing to have the conversation openly even if I get judged because I do anytime we talk about this. And it's just from lack of
understanding, people just don't know, they're not being mean. I'm willing to have this conversation because I know at some point if you are following my advice, you're gonna grow your business, you're gonna make a lot of money, and then you're gonna get miserable. And you're gonna be so frustrated and confused and you're think there's something wrong with you and there's nothing wrong with you. This is the path that we must go down. And so what I wanna do is not just warn you, I'm not doom and gloom, I wanna give you a framework to give you some guardrails
So you actually love your life and you don't just build this successful company and lose the life in the process. And so that's what we're talk about today. And this is something that's near and to my heart, but it came up recently because a few days ago I went out to Austin, Texas for a one day mastermind. was invited, I don't know how I was invited to this group. I got on somebody's radar, but it was a free event that this company's putting together. They just wanted to bring together really cool entrepreneurs.
Graham Cochrane (03:38.059)
seven, eight and nine figure entrepreneurs. I was clearly one of the smallest in the room. Everybody shared their revenue, so we knew everybody's revenue. There were some very big names in the industry, people that have been in this industry for 25 years. Some people whose podcasts I've been on, just some incredible people. And I was one of the small fish in this pond. And it was just an event to get really cool people in a room and to talk about what's working, what's working right now in online business and marketing and all those kinds of things.
and I was just humbled to be in the room, so I went and I kinda kept my mouth shut, because I was like, oh, these are ballers. We're in room full of ballers, and let them speak. And so I just listened and I met cool people and had a good time. I'm gonna give you the punchline real quick though. I was freaking insecure out of my mind. Like I just want you to know, I walked into that room, super excited, and then within an hour I was like, oh my gosh, I suck, I suck.
Like I can't do anything. I'm not big enough. I don't know what I'm doing. And it's amazing how when you get in a room with people that are playing at a bigger level or a more impressive level based off of metrics that are meaningful to you, how immediately your confidence can go out the window. So if you've ever felt that way, yeah, your boy still feels that way. And I felt that way for sure. I was like, dude, why did I come here? I don't feel good about myself. I want to go somewhere. I feel good about myself, but I'm in a season of growth, uh, like personal growth.
I'm on personal growth journey in the last couple years, so I've been intentionally putting myself in rooms that make me uncomfortable. And the problem with that is that I'm uncomfortable, dag on it when I'm in those rooms. So I was very uncomfortable. But it led to a great moment that's leading to this episode, and I think a very meaningful conversation, because it forced me to do some soul searching. One of the guys in the room, the group that was leading this group,
pulled from some of the big players in the room to get them to speak into what's working. One of the guys in the room was big in ads, and he had helped a financial company scale to multi-nine figures. I believe at one point, $450 million a year in revenue. That's the number I wrote down that I thought he said. But I looked at their financials, I know the last couple years they've done $160 million a year at least. So at any point, this guy,
Graham Cochrane (06:00.48)
spent eight years at the company as the chief marketing officer, running point for their ad strategy to acquire customers, grow the business, and make hundreds of millions of dollars. And I think the company, he sold, I think the company was sold recently to private equity in the billion dollar range. I'm not really sure. So we're talking about ads at a mass scale and marketing at a mass scale. And so he was walking through his funnel and his ad strategy and people were asking great questions and they were taking notes. I he was like the ad guru and all these,
a lot of people in the room are already doing 10 to $50 million a year and they wanted to get to 100 million and beyond. So they're all learning from him. I don't run ads. So I was just listening and, and, um, feeling like a small little, you know, fish. And towards the end of his moment, after he was teaching all this amazing stuff, he'd like the tone shifted and he said, I want to let you know, though, I just taught you how I created $450 million of sales online.
But at that point when I was doing the most amount of money right at the very end, I was miserable. Like I hated what I was doing. I was like, my gosh. I was so proud of this guy for admitting that. But also like, because he's serving so many people in that room, like these people were on the edge of their seats, willing to jump. If he said jump out of a plane, they would jump. If he said the secret to making $450 million through ads is to take your shirt off and wave it around like a helicopter.
They would do it, you know? But then he said, but I gotta be honest with you, I was miserable and I hated it. That's why I had to sell and take my cut and now I'm semi-retired. But it was miserable. It worked. And if I told you that I was miserable at the beginning, you wouldn't have listened to what I said, but I wanted to warn you, it wasn't fun. I didn't like my life. And he said something very, very powerful. said, now the numbers sound crazy to us, but he said,
He was miserable at $450 million a year. He's like, I realized I was my happiest when I was running a $45 million a year company. This is top line revenue, right? So there's ad spend. So, and who knows what he's taking, but he said the team size was what I liked. The amount of pressure was what I liked. My rhythm of life was healthy. Like that was when I was happiest, but I blew past it. You know, and he said the first time I made it to a hundred million dollars a year,
Graham Cochrane (08:24.238)
which is a humongous goal we had as a company and that it was on him as the marketer. He said, you know what my first thought was once we had $100 million a year? How do you make $200 million a year?
Graham Cochrane (08:37.07)
Like that's what we do. We reach the goal and then the goalpost move. It was a sobering moment when he started to share. I really appreciated that he was sharing. And then it paved the way for the rest of the day. We broke up into smaller groups and had like many hot seats with each other and it paved the way for I think some very vulnerable, transparent, honest conversations about, yeah, I'm making this amount but I'm really unhappy or yeah, maybe this was my happiest sweet spot. Maybe I've gone past it.
I had a beautiful conversation with a gentleman who had a really successful boutique ad agency and he burned out on it and he's building something new and I asked him, like, how are you gonna build this new thing in a more sustainable way and we were talking about that. It was just a beautiful, real conversation, so I loved it. But it made me think, I was coming back from this event, feeling miserable about myself, but then also thinking, man, this is a powerful conversation we need to have on the show. And so what I think it comes down to, and I wanna share my formula in just a minute.
for business happiness, because I want you to be happy. But I think this boils down to a simple question, which I ask my clients all the time, which is, what are you optimizing for? Growth or happiness? Because they're not the same. They are not the same.
If you don't know the answer to the question, what am I optimizing for? And that might be specific in different moments. like, if you came to me, if you're a client of mine or you're in my effortless business accelerator, like I just answered a few questions for some of my members over there, right? If you came to me with a question, Graham, what's the best way to generate leads? Or Graham, what is the best type of offer? Or Graham, what is the best price point for my offer?
I have to ask you a follow-up question, which is what are you optimizing for? Because there's an answer that might lead to making the most money, but at what cost? So there's other follow-up questions there. If you really want to learn how to ask yourself and ask your coach better questions, and the way you'll do that is by figuring out what you're optimizing for. And this is why, I'm gonna tell you what this looks like in a minute, this is why comparison is so pointless.
Graham Cochrane (10:53.742)
And this is why it's so dangerous. me going into this room and meeting people and they're like, oh, wow, you do a couple million a year, I do 10. Oh, wow, I do 50. Oh, wow, I do 450. Oh, I met a guy that sells radios. They're doing $45 million a year. He sells radios. I like, do radios still exist? $45 million a year.
And if I, in that moment, compare myself to them, it's pointless because there's so many things that we're all optimizing for that are very different and they're largely invisible to everyone else. So I have no idea what these guys and gals are optimizing for and they have no idea what I'm optimizing for. let's talk about the problem with goals. Right? The problem with goals is that a goal by itself has no qualifier.
So these are the questions I get. How do I make six figures a year? That's a goal. Well, there's a lot of ways to make six figures a year. You can start an OnlyFans account, but do you really want to do that? Is that in line with your morality or ethics? What would your husband or wife think? What do your kids think? Or the kids you're gonna have in the future when they find your OnlyFans account? There's a million ways I could sell drugs.
but that would go against some ethical, so you start to realize, okay, maybe I don't wanna do everything to get to six figures, but it makes the point, right? Which is the goal by itself is pointless. You need a goal with what Rich Liffin calls a rider, goal with a rider. It's like a rider, like if you've ever been in entertainment and you're an artist or a speaker and you have a contract that they're bringing you into speak or to perform a song.
Inside your contract, have these writers like other things that you require, like I need bottles of water in the green room. I need, you know, Krispy Kreme donuts at all times or whatever, whatever you need. So yes, pay me this plus I need these things. It's on the writer, right? Well, the goal with a writer concept is I want this goal, but there's these qualifiers to it, right? Or you're filtering the goal through these things that have to also be true. So for example,
Graham Cochrane (13:09.294)
You could say I have a goal of a million dollars a year. That's a goal without a qualifier, a goal without a rider, not good. A better one would be I want to have a million dollar a year business that's simple, effortless, and fun. Simple, effortless, and fun. I want it to make it as simple as possible, I want it to feel effortless, and I want to have fun. That could be a rider. Or you could get more specific, like I have a goal of making $500,000 a year, but only working 20 hours a week.
That's great, that's a goal with a qualifier, a goal with a rider. So I'm getting your wheel spinning, and then we'll give you the formula here in a minute. Is this making sense? What are you optimizing for? What goals do you have, revenue-wise, that you don't have a rider or a qualifier for? Have you ever thought about that? So let me explain what I'm optimizing for, to give you an example. And this is something that
I typically am bold about, but for whatever reason in that room, it felt like, and I could be reading the room wrong, it felt like...
what I'm optimizing for would be shunned or made fun of a little bit. Just by virtue of the tone of the room I was reading, not because they're bad people at all, just they all seem to be collectively optimizing for a similar thing, although again, I don't know. But I kept my mouth shut because it just felt stupid. Like I felt a little stupid sharing it. And I'm just being very vulnerable and transparent with you so you see like I am a human that struggles with this. The numbers might be different than yours, smaller, bigger, I don't know, but.
It's the reality of it. So here's what I'm optimizing for, right? Here's what literally my company is shooting for. I want to make one to two million dollars a year, working five hours a week or less with a completely flexible business, meaning I can turn it on or off, so that, I love that quote, those two words, so that I can spend time with my family, write my next book, travel,
Graham Cochrane (15:23.022)
and connect with cool people.
I am optimizing for a one to two million dollar a year business working five hours a week or less with a completely flexible business model so that I can spend time with my family, write my next book, travel, and connect with cool people.
Graham Cochrane (15:43.33)
That's what I'm optimizing for.
Graham Cochrane (15:47.79)
Could I make more money? Sure.
Graham Cochrane (15:52.889)
But at what cost would it require spending more than five hours a week in my business? Don't want to do it. Would it require hiring a bigger team? Don't want to do it. I've done that. Would it require giving up more profit by running ads? Not interested. Now there is a reality in where if you got the ads right, even after the ad spend, your profit would go up. And if you put in the
the time to get it dialed in, didn't have to be managed very much or by me at all, then in theory that could be some growth. I'll take the extra money and I don't have to do any extra work. I could get behind that. I want a completely flexible business. This is one reason why I blew up my mastermind a couple years ago. I had a beautiful product and it was, I worked with 12 amazing multi-six and seven figure entrepreneurs. We had a weekly standing call.
And after two years that I realized, man, this goes against one of the things I'm optimizing for, which is complete flexibility. it made it hard to get away knowing that they had, they had paid for a weekly meeting with me. And I was like, why did I do that? So I blew it up, right? cause it kind of went against, it made me money. multiple six figures a year recurring and it was fun and easy, but flexibility piece.
was a problem. So yeah, so you can see how this filtering mechanism allows me to make really, really good decisions. When people say, do you have time to write a book? It's because I have lots of time on my hands. I'm really not that busy. It's how I have time to travel and my business doesn't fall apart. I have set it up in such a way to do that. So that's what's meaningful to me.
But that's, and I need to remind myself of this so that I go, when I go into a room where people are, you know, if you're doing 10 million a year, you're on the low end. This helps me have context instead of comparison, right? When I'm comparing myself to a $10 million a year gal or a $50 million a year guy, whatever it is, it's pointless because they're optimizing for something different and it's neither good nor bad. Like hopefully they're getting exactly what they want. I met a guy who has a
Graham Cochrane (18:17.536)
a protein powder company, meal bars, all these awesome things. And he's in build mode. And he's raising money. Their company was valued at 200 million. He's trying to get it up higher. And he wants to cash out in three years. Like his whole goal is to work hard, blow up the value of the company, make it worth a lot, make it make a lot so that he can sell it to a private equity company. And he personally wants to pocket $100 million a year after taxes.
Like he has a very specific goal. That's what he's optimizing for. So he's gonna have a big team and he's gonna sacrifice in certain ways. But his writer is that he's got a time frame on it because his kids will be a certain age and he doesn't wanna work past that. He wants to have more time with them. And also he wants his kids involved in the company. It's pretty cool, his kids help him in the company. And so that's a different thing he's optimizing for. That's great for him, it's different for me. So what are you optimizing?
So I wanna share with you the business happiness formula, which is very simple and we'll wrap this thing up.
Four things.
And you need to answer these things and have them written down somewhere. Here's the way to be rich and happy. Because we want both. Ideally you want both. You want to be happy and you want to plenty of resources to do all the good you want to do in the world and have all the fun you want to have in the world and to take care of your family. There's nothing wrong with that. We're here to make money. Money is not evil. Money is not bad. But it is not enough. Money is just not enough.
Graham Cochrane (19:46.093)
And you don't know that or believe that till you make a lot of it. And then you realize, wow, it didn't fill that relationship size hole in my heart. I still need healthy relationships. yeah, money didn't fix my broken body. I still need a healthy body. yeah, money didn't fix my relationship with my spouse or my kids or my parents. Or it didn't fix that spiritual hole in my body, right? Money can't get me to heaven or get me back in touch with my creator. Money doesn't fill the peace.
shaped hole in my heart. We're all looking for peace. It won't give you peace. It'll actually steal a lot of your peace and create more anxiety at times, because then you're like, I gotta keep making this amount of money or now the business is going down. Money doesn't solve a lot of things, so it's not enough. It's perfectly fine, and I want you to have as much of it as you need to do the things you wanna do in this world, but it's not enough. So I want you have money, but I want you to have happiness and joy. So how do you do this? Well, at a broad level, here's the way I think about it as a formula. Let's get real practical.
You need your enough income number. So we are talking about a number.
How much is enough for you?
Graham Cochrane (20:59.96)
How much is enough for you? No judgment. Not what you think enough should be based off of how you were raised or what some idiot on the internet says or something you read in a book. Like this is very personal. And it's probably higher than it was when you were younger. And it's gonna be different if you have a spouse and kids. It'll be different if your kids go to private school or not. It's gonna be different if you like to be generous and give away a portion of your income or not.
So whatever, like there's no right or wrong here, but be honest with yourself. Is that number what you, is that really enough? Is it on the low side? Like it's not enough, like you actually need more? Or is it more than your enough number where you're like, no, I really don't need that much. I'm not saying you shouldn't make that much. If you, let me put it this way, people are so afraid to shoot for a smaller number. This is a side tangent. Like, well, Graham, I don't wanna say I only wanna shoot for $200,000 a year because
wouldn't I at some point want to make a million? Yeah, that's not the point. Ironically, if you optimize your business for fun and profitability, which most businesses are not optimized for either, they're optimized for growth, which is not fun, and that's not the same as profit, like you can have top line revenue, but if you have a business that's optimized for fun and profitability, and it's built in a sustainable way, there's no way it won't grow. It's it's gonna grow. So don't worry.
Pick your enough number and know that you'll probably blow past it. And that's a fun problem to have, because at least you love your business and now you've got more money than you need. You can give it away, you can reinvest it in your business, you can hire people, do whatever you want. So what is your enough income number? Plus your ideal max work hours weekly. This is a number I find fascinating that most people have never asked themselves. What's the most number of hours you want to work?
met a gal at this event who wanted to get her work hours down to 30 this year and I thought that was great. That was a great goal. I typically help my clients get their work hours down to 20 hours a week or less. That's what I shoot for. think 20 is a magic number. If it takes you more than 20 hours a week to run your business, you're doing something wrong. And so I think everyone should be shooting for 20 or less because then that's really like you're working half days, Monday through Friday, or you're working, you know,
Graham Cochrane (23:31.513)
five hours Monday through Thursday, and you take Fridays off, or you're working two long days and you get five days off. I think that's like the most you should be working, because if you're working more than 20 hours a week, you're probably largely inefficient, which just means you're not doing more, you're really wasting time, and I would hate for you to do that. I rather you have that time back to do something fun or do something meaningful.
or at least just even use that time to reflect on your business and grow or learn or hire a coach. That would be a much better use of your time than to just keep working. So I always shoot for 20 hours a week or less with my clients, but what's that number for you? So you got your enough income number, and that could be monthly or annually, way you like to think about it, your ideal max work hours per week, plus your ideal customer or client. Who is the ideal person you wanna work with?
That's a large part of being rich and happy in business. It's just working with good people. And even if it's not that you were working with bad people before, but the type of person you wanna work with is shifting in terms of what brings you the most satisfaction. Good example for me is I used to do a lot of coaching for absolute beginners, helping them launch their businesses. My first book, How to Get Paid for What You Know is all about this. My course, Automatic Income Academy, exists for beginners. And so much of the content on this show and this channel has been designed
to help non-online business owners become successful online business owners. And I love those people. But who do I feel most excited to be partnering with and helping in this season of my business? It's the multi-six and seven figure entrepreneurs who are burning out, who are capped with their income, who need fresh perspective, who need permission to redesign the business to give them joy.
and then break them free from the income limits. Like that's the ideal customer and client for me these days. And so I'm doing more private coaching. My prices have increased to reflect that. I launched the effortless business accelerator for six figure entrepreneurs and up. For that purpose, I wanna have a really tight-knit community, a curated community for those people, because they're just different problems at those different levels. And so that's my ideal customer. That gives me a lot of joy these days. What about you? What's your ideal customer or client?
Graham Cochrane (25:52.943)
And then the fourth and final piece of the business happiness formula is only doing tasks that give you energy. I know that's not a number, but it's a list. What do I mean by that? How do you do that? You do a simple energy audit. This is something I teach inside my Effortless Masterclass, which if you wanna come to it, it's absolutely free. It's an on-demand video training I put together. Go to effortlessmasterclass.com. I'll link to it below as well.
I'm teach you this inside the master class, but at its basic, every few months, you should take out a piece of paper, put a line right down the middle and create two columns. Column one is the tasks, people, and environments that give you energy, and column two is the tasks, people, and environments that drain your energy. And this is not a judgment, this is just data.
because there are things that you're doing, I bet, in your business that drain your energy. And there's no reason for you to do them. Probably because they don't actually drive your business forward most of the time. That's like people posting on Instagram all day long. Prove to me that that's actually putting money in your big bank account. If it is, then great, it's a big part of your business model, then great, then keep doing it. Or if you don't like it, then hire somebody else to do it, right? But that's the other thing is eliminate these life
draining tasks or automate and delegate them if they are necessity for your business. But you need to know the ones that are draining so you can stop doing them. But you really wanna know the ones that are life giving because energy perpetuates energy. Energy begets energy. And so how do you not burn out? You build a business built around optimized energy. This is the first pillar of five pillars I teach instead of the effortless business accelerator. It's super important.
You gotta know what are the tasks in your business, even outside of your business, that give you energy, and gotta know that you have permission to do these every week and do only these. Like you don't have to do all the things you don't wanna do. I don't know, there's no police, there's no business police that'll come around and say, hey, you gotta do that boring thing that you suck at that you hate that doesn't really put money in your pocket, do it. You get to do whatever you want. That's why I only work five hours a week, because I've really eliminated most things I just don't wanna do.
Graham Cochrane (28:14.926)
I just don't wanna do them in my business. And so you have that same freedom as well. So imagine if you knew what your enough income number was, let's just say it's $20,000 a month, pulling out a number. You're like, man, if my business made consistently $20,000 a month, I'd live a great life. And you know what you would, most people would. I know I did.
$20,000 a month and you only wanna work 20 hours a week, okay, great, and you only wanna work with this type of customer or client, you get to describe what that looks like, and you only wanna do these types of things each week, because they give you energy. Imagine having that written down in front of you. Now you have a goal. Now you know what to shoot for, because now if you're like, oh yeah, I'm only making 10,000 a month, I need to get to 20,000, okay, so we need a 2X.
but that's not really the goal. if you just came to the internet or came to chat GPT and you said, I wanna double my business, what do I have to do? You're gonna get a bunch of stupidity that may be accurate. I mean, it might not be accurate. It may be accurate and it may be helpful to reach that goal, but that's not your only goal. Like you have a goal with qualifiers, a goal with a rider. Like, well, no, I don't wanna work 80 hours a week to do that.
I don't want to do a bunch of sales calls to do that. Now I'm spending more hours when I only want to spend 20, I don't want to spend 40, and I'm doing tasks that are life draining, not life giving. And I'm having to work with types of people that have the money, but not the kind of people I want to work with. So like, you realize I could reach my money goal, but if the other three parts of the formula are not involved, then I will have money, but not happiness. And we want both. Does this make sense?
Your enough income number, ideal max work hours, ideal customer or client, only doing the tasks that give you energy.
Graham Cochrane (30:15.182)
So that's your homework today is to just fill that formula out. Just write it down. Even if you don't know how to get there, that's okay. That's where we start. What amount would you want to make? How many hours you want to work? With whom do you want to work? And what do you want to be doing each week? Have that in front of you and let that guide you as you make decisions. Let that guide you as you get advice or counsel. One of the things I have my clients do before we begin to work together is their best three years vision. And the reason we do this is because
I don't want them jumping in asking me questions on how to make more money and grow their business until we both know what their vision is because their vision is going to determine what I coach them to do and how they interpret and hear and apply what I coach them to do. It gives us both a baseline because they have a very unique life. You have a very unique life. They very unique goals. You have very unique goals and those have to drive what we're talking about in our coaching.
That matters so much more than the advice I could give you to scale to seven figures or multi seven figures. What matters is, well, what are we trying to create in life? And then let me help you get there. And we'll make sure the money piece is right, because you need the money piece to be right, but that's not the only piece. And I know that because I've made millions of dollars and it didn't solve all the problems. It solved the needing to pay the rent and the mortgage problem. It solved being able to do some awesome things with my family problem.
but it didn't solve the happiness problem in and of itself. You need all these other things. So that's the conversation today. If you haven't already checked out the Effortless Masterclass, I it's a great place to start, especially if you're already making good money, but the burnout is real, or you're getting sucked into a black hole of stuff you don't wanna be doing, just go to effortlessmasterclass.com. I'll link to it below as well. Or if you're like ready to work with me directly,
just go to the link below. I'm gonna link in the description for the Effortless Business Accelerator. You can apply there if you're a six figure entrepreneur or up and I'd love to work with you. Got an amazing curated group of people that we're working with every day, helping them not only scale their businesses but make their businesses more effortless so you can have the rich and happy part of the conversation and not just the rich. All right my friend, thanks for hanging out with me today. Have an amazing week. We'll see you another episode real soon.
