Graham Cochrane (00:07.862)
You're working hard, you're putting in the hours, but something still feels stuck. Here's the truth. Business growth isn't just about strategies and tactics. It starts right here with your mindset, whether you like it or not. And in this episode, I'm breaking down seven powerful mindset shifts that will not only skyrocket your business, but also boost your happiness along the way. Because when you think differently, you win differently.
and be sure not to miss number six because 99 % of brands miss this and the 1 % that do get it are raking in the profits because of it.
Graham Cochrane (00:58.222)
If you are a note taker, today I want you to take notes because I want you to see these mindset shifts visually. So pull out your phone unless you're driving, pull out a piece of paper, write them down, and then what I'm gonna ask you to do is identify the one that you need to shift immediately because you know it's the one that you're the weakest in. All seven of these when applied in all seven shifts will have profound compounding effects in your business for both revenue and happiness.
But all I want you to do today is find the one. Find the one shift that you need to make. We all have a weakness, we all have a strength, we're all strong in mindset around certain things, but weak in others, that's okay. Welcome to the club. Let's find the one for you. Starting with mindset shift number one, which is to shift from scarcity to abundance. This is largely the biggest bulk of what I do with clients and students.
And I think it's because we live in a scarcity driven world and you've probably heard these concepts. There's a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset. But what does it mean and more practically how does it show up as an entrepreneur? The thing that most people do is when they have an idea, they're excited. I wanna start a business. This is great if you're starting a business. I'm super excited about starting a business. Or I long to have my own
thing that I can control and have autonomy and flexibility and I want to get out of my nine to five, we long to start that business. Great idea. The problem is the moment we start to move closer to it, we start to come up with all these excuses and reasons why it's not gonna work. And that's not just for beginners. I see this with guys doing multi six figures.
I want to 2X my business or I want to launch this new offer or I want to pivot into this new area or I want to take ground in this lane. Great idea. It was birthed out of excitement and joy. The moment they get close to it, they start to talk themselves out of it or they stall or they say they're working on it, but it's just a stall tactic. Why? We get scared. We get scared because at a default we have scarcity thinking.
Graham Cochrane (03:12.621)
Because our culture in most parts of the world is programmed to make you think that things are scarce, that resources are finite, and that you have to take what's yours and you're afraid of losing what you have. And we have a predisposition in human nature to be more highly motivated by not losing something than by winning something. So if you go to the poker table or you go to the casinos, people experience a higher pain when they lose money
then they experience joy when they win money. And so our brain wants to keep us safe, not make us thrive. And so we will do things out of protection and scarcity. So this looks like focusing on what you might lose. If I launch this new offer, it might take away customers from this offer. If I talk about this topic, people...
won't like me anymore because I'm not talking about the topic I'm used to. If I start this business, I might actually lose money because it won't be guaranteed. So we focus on all the things that could go wrong instead of the things that could go right. When both could happen, I'm not saying things couldn't go wrong, but why is it that we focus exclusively or 90 % of the time on the things that we could lose or the things that could not work instead of focusing on things that could work or the things we could gain? So I love the question,
What's possible for me if I do this? What's possible for me in a positive way? Because this unlocks creativity, this unlocks curiosity, which leads to innovation, which leads to a willingness to take calculated risks. You have to take risks in life. If you do not take risks, you are basically taking a giant risk of being left behind. If you don't take risks with your money, AKA invest, by definition, investing money means you could lose it.
It's not a guarantee and people are afraid to invest in the stock market, which is bonkers because it's one of the only things we have like a hundred years of data on that's proven to make you money if you just stay in the market, right? You don't even have to know anything about the stock market. You make money by being in it and staying in it.
Graham Cochrane (05:19.169)
but we're so afraid that we might lose something that we don't take action with, then what are you guaranteed to risk? You're risking losing your purchasing power because inflation is guaranteed and that thousand dollars is worth less every year. it's a huge risk to not take a calculated risk and invest in your money. It's the same in business. The people that win in business are the people that not aren't afraid, but they're just willing.
to take a calculated risk because of the possible return on the other side. They see possibility versus scarcity. They see abundance meaning, hey, even if this doesn't work out, I can do something else. It's not the end of the world. I have launched things that haven't done great. You know what's funny? I'll get specific. I had a course that I launched years ago called Double Your Sales, which is by far some of my best content on
two-exing or four-exing your revenue with slight little tweaks. There's six levers that I teach you can dial up just a little bit. And if you dial up a little bit on all six of these levers in your business, you'll double your revenue without adding new customers or working any more hours. It was brilliant content. I launched it to virtually crickets. I might've sold three or four copies with a legit launch. I was so confused.
And so hurt, I had a great launch the year before on a core course of mine, and this was gonna be the follow-up, and it didn't do well. But I knew the material was powerful, I knew it was helping people, it has helped me. I'd made millions of dollars with this material. So I didn't say it was a failure. Once I got over my pity party, I reimagined that offer, and I packaged that course into a membership and made it a bonus you get on day one of a membership. And I've had...
hundreds of people go through it and get great results from it, but they were buying one thing and they got this included, which is just semantics, and they've loved it. And I've packaged it in different ways since then. So I was like, okay, not a failure, I can just reimagine how I could use this in other ways. I'm spending a lot more time here on this one because this is the big one and I want you to get it.
Graham Cochrane (07:30.327)
These six other ones are huge, but if you are living in scarcity, I am afraid that this business won't work. I am afraid that this pivot won't work. And I feel it, because I've been afraid of all of those things and I've pivoted my business multiple times and I've stepped into new things. It's uncomfortable and scary. I don't want to be perceived as a failure. I was literally talking about this with my coach yesterday. I'm not afraid of failure. I am afraid of being perceived as a failure. And there's a difference, but to me, that's what I don't want. So I get the fear.
But success in your business and happiness is on the other side of possibility. So instead of worrying, for example, about competition, if I start this business or if I move into this lane or if I launch this offer, there's other people already doing it or I won't be as good as that person. What if you believe that there's more than enough customers to go around and that your unique voice is going to add something to the conversation and attract the right people?
that would be a powerful shift for you. You might actually go do the thing. When I started my first business, there were tons of resources on recording music. Like literally I was like, why would I start a YouTube channel around recording music? Now some people think I was a genius, like you were the original one. No, I wasn't. This content had been out there for years. I was just adding a unique voice to the conversation and it became a multimillion dollar business.
And then when I started business coaching, how many other people are business coaches? I could have easily talked myself out of starting my personal brand and teaching business. I did talk myself out of it for two years. But because I finally had the courage to think about what was possible and add my unique voice to the conversation, I've generated more millions of dollars and helped thousands of other people who are so glad that I entered the conversation because they like the way I think about business and the way
I talk about business and the way I do business and do life. The same is true for you. So you gotta move from scarcity to abundance. It will change your entire life, your finances, your relationships, your health, and your business. Biggest, biggest shift. I'm gonna fly through the other ones, but I wanted to spend a moment there. Mindset shift number two. From hustle to margin. So, I don't know how to say this, so I'm gonna say it very, very clear. Success,
Graham Cochrane (09:56.683)
And I would consider myself successful, even though there's people that you could measure as more successful. I am as successful as anyone could ever hope to be. Success isn't about working harder. I just, I don't know how else to say it. Hard work is not the answer. Hard work is important-ish. Smart work is more important. The people that are gonna win and always have are the people that come up with a better solution, a more efficient solution, better systems.
There's no merit to working harder than you have to or longer or more hours. That's such antiquated thinking. I mean, it's old, old thinking and it's not proven. The data proves that working smarter is the way to do it. Success is by figuring out a better way. And so the key for you to grow is to stop pushing. Everyone's telling you to push, work harder, send more emails.
get on social media longer, publish more videos, publish more content, more. The common antidote to lack of sales is we'll just do more, bro. And the problem is activity can lead to some bump. And then you're hooked. You're like, well, if I doubled my content and it gave me a little bit of boost, what if I quadrupled it? What if I 10x'd it? You can read a book called 10x. That'll tell you to do exactly that.
and there's just no badge of honor to working harder and you will burn out and it's not sustainable and it's actually not optimized for exponential growth. The only way you can become exponentially wealthier, have exponential impact is to work smarter. So you need to build a business that supports your life, not one that consumes it. You're gonna burn out. You wanna play this game for a long time. So shift from how can I do more to
How can I simplify and create systems that free up my time? Could this be simpler? One thing I ask my clients all the time is, what would your business look like if it were simple, effortless, and fun?
Graham Cochrane (12:13.629)
Simple, effortless, and fun. What would your business look like if it were simple, effortless, and fun? Make it up. Like if you can't answer that question, and you've never answered that question, then this is probably the most profound work you could do today, is start to imagine, what would it look like if my business were simple, if it felt effortless, if it were fun? This is so important.
to not only having a great life and enjoying your business, but actually making more money. I've designed an entire master class around this. It's my effortless master class. You can go to effortlessmasterclass.com. I'm linking to it below in the show notes as well. And I will teach you how to go from an exhausting business to an effortless business. I've got five pillars that I teach. I'll teach you a couple of them in this master class. I'm gonna give you some exercises you can do to make the shift from this effort-fueled business
to one that is scalable, free, and feels effortless. Not that it's void of effort. I still show up every week. I don't have much I have to do. I can disappear, honestly, for months and money will still come in. But it's because I've designed systems that support the work that I've done and you can do the same. So hustle doesn't get you anywhere. Hustle is laziness in disguise. I've been saying that for years. It is lazy. Anybody can hustle.
People that have margin are the smart ones. They figured out a way to have gap, to have space, to have breathing room, to be able to take their kids to school, pick them up from school. I take Friday date days with my wife every Friday, weekends off, nights off, vacations regularly. Wow. Simplifying and creating systems. So go to effortlessmasterclass.com if you wanna learn more about that. Mindset shift number three. Shift from fear of failure to embracing growth.
We hinted at this a little bit earlier, but failure isn't the opposite of success. It's actually part of the process. So I actually want you to embrace failure. I want you to reframe mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow. I gave you the example earlier of my double your sales course. It wasn't a failure that I only sold three or four copies when I launched it. I just learned that maybe the messaging was off, maybe my people weren't ready for it.
Graham Cochrane (14:33.951)
Maybe they didn't want to spend that kind of money because it just seemed like impossible to them or just too fancy of a title. how can you just double your sales doing no more work? So I repositioned that offer inside of another offer and got it in front of more people's hands. And then they got the material and they applied the material and they got results and they loved it. So it's always learning. I think Seth Godin said it this way, whoever fails the most wins. I love that concept because
you've gotten more reps at it, you've tinkered with it more. So I don't wanna fail because there's some honor in having lots of failures. Failures might just represent attempts or reps, experience. And I will learn this part of it works, this part of it doesn't. I'm constantly improving everything I do, my messaging, my delivery as a communicator, my ability to coach high performers, my ability to write content that moves people.
So I don't think I have it figured out. I always feel like I'm not quite there yet. I'm never satisfied. I'm never like, wow, I've got this on lock. I figured out how to do this. I'm still learning, but I don't wanna be afraid of failure. Like I said earlier, I actually am not afraid of failure or just being perceived as one, because I have vanity, I have an ego. But what I want you to think about is not when you're about to try something, what if this doesn't work? Shift away from that to asking yourself,
What can I learn if it doesn't? Because you win either way. Either the thing you do does what you want it to do and then it's success or it doesn't do what you want it to do, but if you're smart, you're like, great, well then what did I learn from this? Then I'm gonna apply to the next thing. Does this make sense? Don't be afraid of failure. Just focus on failure as a necessary process to growing. You can live a life where you don't ever fail.
But that will involve never interacting with humans and having meaningful relationships, never making money, never being known for something, never having impact. You just stay home and just scroll and watch other people live their lives. By the way, everything you see online isn't the failure, it's the result of stacked failures. All the successes you see, it must be nice for him, must be nice for her.
Graham Cochrane (16:56.749)
A, that's a victim mentality, which you're more than welcome to play that game. You'll get exactly what you want, which is you get to feel like you're the victim, but you will never get what you really want, which is a life that's meaningful. What you see is their success, and people say, it's just their highlight reels. Sure, very few people want to post their failures. Who cares? The bigger point is that what you see, their highlights, is usually the result of lots of failures.
So the only way to get a highlight reel, my friend, is to have a failure reel. Now you don't have to post that if you don't want to, or you can, it doesn't matter. I'm always open to talk about my failures or the things that didn't work. But the point is, it's the only way to get to things that work. I didn't know anything about building a business. I tinkered. It took me two years to make a full-time income, which for me, my goal was $60,000. If I could make $60,000, that's $5,000 a month. If I could make that online,
Dude, that's amazing. That's double what I was making with a college degree.
It took me two years to figure that out. I didn't know what I was doing. None of it was a failure. I launched course after course after course. My first four courses were by most people's standards failures. But I didn't see them as failures. I saw them as, okay, I learned how to film a three hour course. I learned how to write a sales page. That was a better sales page. I learned that doing that type of course didn't actually do very well. And so those four courses that didn't make me much money that were kind of failures,
gave me a ton of valuable insights. So when I launched course number five and six, which came out very close to each other, those are the ones that popped. And the only reason they popped is because I had two years of quote unquote failures, figuring out, okay, these sold a little bit, but not really much. Why is it? Is it the topic? Is it my delivery? Is it the sales copy and the messaging? And I got better at all of that. And that was just two years in. Then I got really good at that. I've been doing this for 15 years and I don't even still think I'm that great at it.
Graham Cochrane (18:58.263)
but I'm a lot better than I was 15 years ago. So you're not afraid of failure, you're shifting from that fear to embracing growth. What if this doesn't work? We're get rid of that in your vocabulary. Instead you're gonna ask, what can I learn even if it doesn't? Mind shit.
Graham Cochrane (19:19.595)
Mindset shift number four, shift from transactional thinking to transformational thinking. So don't just chase revenue, focus on the impact you're making. This is hard because impact is harder to measure than revenue. And I mentioned this last week that people love the metrics, that's why they love launching. But if you can shift away from,
ooh, is this making money? Is this getting followers? Is this getting likes? Is this getting views in that transactional language? If you can get away from that to transformational, like what impact am I making? And this looks like prioritizing serving others versus serving the metrics and serving the transaction. The beauty is that you'll actually help more people because it'll actually be service oriented. It won't be just what they want. It will be what they need. And the only way to really impact people is to give them what they need.
If you just gave your child what your child wanted to eat every day, that's not love, that's not service. And if you do give your child only what they want to eat, I'd highly recommend you reconsider. You want to give your child what your child needs to grow a healthy body and a healthy mind. It's the same with your audience, the people you serve, your customers, your prospects, your fans, your followers. So it takes...
guts to give them what they need, not just what they want. Do you know how much faster potentially I might grow? Do you know how many more viewers and followers I might have if I just gave people what they want and I know what they want based off of what they click on? What people say they want versus what they click on are two different things. What they click on is what they actually instinctively want. There's a formula. You just look at what's performing well and you just repeat that. I don't do that because it's
not what people need and I suffer from the vanity metrics maybe and maybe I suffer from some revenue maybe short term and we'll get to that in a minute but I'm focusing on long term impact and serving people. So instead of thinking and this is the shift I want you to make from how can I sell more shift to how can I create more value for my audience. So don't worry as much about
Graham Cochrane (21:36.897)
Will this sell my product? Will this content get me more followers or email opt-ins? Although those are important questions. The biggest question is will this create value for my people? If you're a person of value that adds value to others because you view them as valuable, which I believe all people are inherently valuable. They've been given an identity from their creator and their maker so they have value and worth.
Because you have value and worth, I am here today trying to add value to your life and serve you. The play here is, if I've added value to your life, there's really no way you can't value me and want to do business with me. Now 95 % of the people that engage with this free content don't buy anything from me. I understand that. It's a business model I get. Most people will take the free stuff and move on with their life. And it's designed that way. I don't feel bad about that. I don't feel sad about that. I'm not upset.
I've designed my business to give more than I receive. But the powerful thing is the people that become my clients, the people that become my customers, whether you spend $100 with me or $100,000 with me, the beauty of it is the reason you would do that is not because of my messaging or because of my copy or because I got a billion clicks, it's because I added value to you and you felt tied to me in a beautiful way of like, man, I really got a lot from Graham.
I really appreciated that thing he said or that thing he wrote. You know what? I want to do business with him or I want more of his help. I want to go deeper with him. This is the play, my friend. You don't worry about transactions. The transactions will come when you transform people's lives. If you can build a brand around transformation, you win. You will always win. I don't know when you'll win or what it will look like or how much you'll win, but I guarantee you, you will win and it feels so good. Be in the transformation business. The transactions will follow.
Shift number five, shift from control to delegation. This one's hard for me. You can't scale your business if you do everything yourself. Now you can get pretty far these days and you can get farther than you're used to. The automation tools, the AI tools, there's so many great resources and tools that are designed these days to allow you to run a solopreneur business. And I'm a huge fan of having a very small, very light team. Transparently right now, the biggest my team's ever been is around seven.
Graham Cochrane (24:00.831)
Right now my team is three of us. Myself as the only full-time employee and then I have two contractors. I have a customer service rep who takes care of my email and takes care of customers and then I have a content manager who is taking the content like this, creating reels, posting on Instagram, sending out my newsletter for me with my new content, uploading to YouTube, thumbnails, all that kind of stuff. It's just the three of us and I love it. I love a small team. But notice it's not just me.
It was just me for the first four years of my business till I hit a breaking point. Every one of us needs at least one other teammate. It can be a part-time contractor for five to 10 hours a week. Doesn't have to be a full-time employee. I don't have any full-time employees other than myself. But you do need help. And the moment you can let go of control, like only I can do it the best, which was me. I didn't let anybody into my inbox. Nobody can handle the email because what if they're not as nice as me? What if they don't understand what the pain point is? What if they...
piss off a customer, like I had so many fears for years, till I got to a point where I couldn't be in the inbox for the three hours every day that it was requiring me just to respond to fan mail, hate mail, refund requests, confusion, whatever it was. I was like, I can't do this anymore, so I have to hire somebody. So you're never gonna scale if you do everything yourself. You need to trust others to take on the task so you can focus on your zone of genius. I love
Gay Hendrick talks about this in his book, The Big Leap, but there is your zone of competence and your zone of excellence. So competence is, yeah, you can do it. Your zone of excellence, you're really good at it. But the problem with your zone of excellence is it will stop you from stepping into your zone of genius, which is the thing that really only you can do. I'm competent at making thumbnails and posting content. I'm not excellent at
thumbnails or posting content, I could care a lot, but I could do it. Those things you need to hire out for sure. The zone of excellence is tricky because that's the thing that you're really, really good at and those are the hardest things to give up, but if you can delegate some of the zone of excellence things that even though you're really good at are holding you back from having enough time to focus on your zone of genius stuff, like the 1 % of the things you do that brings in 99 % of the results, then you're missing out on exponential growth.
Graham Cochrane (26:22.765)
because you're afraid of it not being quite as good as it could be. And honestly, if someone else does it, they may not do it as well as you do. I have an 85 % rule. If somebody can do it 85 % as well as I can, I'll hire them to do it. Because that allows me to be 100 % in my zone of genius. You can train them, they can get better, and likely they'll become better than you were, to be honest. But we all like to assume that we're the best at it. But you've got to learn to delegate. So move from I have to do it all to who can help me do this better?
and who can take this off my plate so that I can do the thing that not only I'm a genius at, but here's a concept I actually love doing and it fills up my cup so I have, wait a second, more energy and creativity and excitement to continue the mission. When you get bogged down in the competence things and the excellent things that you can do but don't light you up,
you will get tired, you will get burned out. If you're feeling tired, if you're feeling like, I don't really feel like doing this today, there's a giant warning sign. You're not weird, you're not crazy, you're like everyone else, but it's a warning sign that you're not operating in your zone of genius, you're operating in your zone of competence, or maybe incompetence. Competence, excellence, you're playing in those lanes and it's time to delegate some of that so that you can do the things that not only will move the business forward, but will fuel you and when you're fueled, the business will move forward.
Number six, this is the one that I told you not to miss. Okay, mind shift.
Graham Cochrane (27:59.508)
Mindset shift number six is to move from safe content to thought provoking content. Most of you are content creators, every one of us should be a content creator. If you're a thought leader, if you're CEO of a brand or a company or whatever, we all need to create content in some way, shape or form. You don't have to be scared about the idea of content, you don't have to post all the time, but you want to get your ideas out there because it makes you a thought leader and everyone needs to be a thought leader.
because no one pays attention to non-thought leaders. So you wanna create content, I'm assuming you're creating content, but here is the problem. Most people are trying to get liked by everybody. Literally, the content platforms have like buttons. I like this. And so we want people to like our stuff because we're just like the kids in school, we want people to like us. Pick me for the team, right? Like me. But you need to stop trying to please everyone, because the only way to please everyone is to create safe.
agreeable content that we already know they like. And you can do that and a lot of people can like it. But then what happens when you have a lot of people liking your content but your business isn't growing? Well, great, you have very likable content, but you don't have a great business. Because the goal isn't to have likable content. The content is a means to an end. The content fuels the business. So the way to actually grow in business is not to get liked. You need to focus on creating content
that gets noticed and the way to create content that gets noticed is to create content that challenges assumptions, sparks curiosity, and makes people think differently. This is how you stand out. This is how you build a loyal audience. You need to provoke people's thinking. Be provocative, not for the sake of being provocative, just like I want to be contrarian just to be contrarian. But if you really believe there is a better way,
And here's a love, Neil Gordon, I learned this from Neil Gordon. He has this concept called the silver bullet. It's just like a one sentence phrase. Rory Vadum would call these pillar points. These are your catchy, simple, memorable lines or hooks or quotables that state your premise and your way of thinking. And here's a classic formula that Neil Gordon uses, that anybody can use, that you can use. But I learned this from Neil's, I'm giving him credit.
Graham Cochrane (30:21.285)
Most people think blank, but the truth is blank. So fill in the blank with your context, your industry, your niche. I will give you an example. Most people think the way to grow your business is to hustle harder and work more. But the truth is, if you can't make millions of dollars working 20 hours a week or less, you're doing it
my gosh, that's provocative. Because that slaps somebody in the face that's working 80 hours a week and hasn't made a million dollars a year yet. So when I say things like, if you can't make a million dollars a year and working 20 hours a week or less, you're doing something wrong. That makes somebody pissed off. That makes somebody uncomfortable. But I'm not just trying to make people upset. It is absolutely what I believe to be the truth. Because it's true for me.
It's true for my clients. It's true for the most brilliant people in the world. You don't become a billionaire by working more hours. That line of thinking would say, well, I make $200,000 a year working 40 hours a week. If I wanna make $400,000 a year, I should probably double that, so I gotta work 80 hours a week. If I wanna make 800,000, I gotta work 160 hours a week. Well, how are you gonna get to a billion? Not by working more hours.
Right? The logic just doesn't make sense. So the brightest of us, the most successful of us have figured out that working more isn't the solution. So that's a simple statement that you can use. Most people think blank about whatever it is you teach or share a coach, but the truth is blank. Make your own silver bullet with that framework and share it often, build content around it. The idea is to shift away from thinking and asking, well, everyone like this to
Will this make my audience stop and think? If you can do that, that is a power that most brands don't have. This is why said at the beginning, 99 % of brands that are making content don't do this. They just look at what, they literally have interns and teams like, hey, go find the top 10 performing videos, the top 10 performing blogs, the top 10 for performing TEDx talks, sub stacks, whatever, books, best selling books, what's working, let's just replicate that success. And that's smart if you want to get more of the same of what they have.
Graham Cochrane (32:44.631)
but no one will really notice. You'll just get a lot of likes, you'll get a lot of views, and that might help you to another end if you're trying to show a publisher, look, I've got this big platform, or you're trying to show somebody, maybe that's your goal. But if your goal is to grow your business, you really need to get people to stop and think. If you can get people to stop and think, now they're paying attention to you, now they see you as different than everyone else, well, now they're gonna really lean in and they might wanna do business with you more than somebody else, because she's different, he's different.
So the way you people to stop and think is to create thought provoking, polarizing context. Create, you'll know you're doing this when people disagree with you. If no one disagrees with your take, friend, you gotta work harder, you gotta come up with something better because you're saying something that's already been said before. Like say something that gets people to say that's ridiculous. Then you're gonna know you're onto something. And I'm not joking, this is huge.
This is the moment you get the critics and the haters and the people that say that's BS. You're starting to do it right, just starting. Press into that more. Pay attention to your content that gets the most pushback because that's the button to press. That's the thread to pull. That's the rabbit hole to jump into. There's more gold there for you to mine. Because the goal, again, the goal isn't to piss people off. That's never my goal. But if I'm saying something that's
getting to the white hot center of what people feel and surrounds their fears and their hopes and their dreams and their desires, it's gonna make some people happy and some people mad. And that's what I wanna know. I wanna know that this matters because I want to help and serve my audience. I don't want to be lost in the crowd of everybody else and just sound like everybody else. I want to be positioned as a thought leader and to be a thought leader, I need thoughts.
that position me as a leader, not a follower. So I have to get out of the people pile, as John Maxwell would say, I have to get out of the crowd. So shift from safe content to thought provoking content. Most won't do this. If you do, you will win. And finally, mindset shift number seven, shift from short term to long term. From short term thinking to long term vision.
Graham Cochrane (35:09.535)
This is where you can go from building a good business to building a great business to building a future proof business.
What's interesting is if you're newer to business, you may not think that you need to be future proof, but every three to five years, you're gonna have to evolve or pivot. Things just change. And I'm not just talking about AI or online business. Industries are constantly changing. The only way to stay in business for decades, and that's the only way to have the compounding enough to build the wealth that's generational and legacy and all that kind of stuff. The only way to stay in the game that long is to shift when you need to shift.
evolve or die. It's so true. In a lot of ways there are timeless principles that will guide business forever, but in so many ways I have pivoted and evolved my brand over the years. I went from focusing on courses to launching a membership to expanding the membership and pivoting that when I realized people wanted more of this one thing versus this thing to realizing that I can't just focus on
my little neck of the woods, need to collaborate with other people. I realize I will be just a commodity if I don't collaborate with some big time producers and people with other credibility and their audiences and how can I expand that way? I need to...
evolve and actually shut down a membership because it's no longer serving my students or myself the way it once did. I need to focus on a different offer. You know what I need to do? I need to start a whole different brand on business coaching because I'm gonna die on the vine if I don't and I see an opportunity here, at least I wanna pursue it and just see what's possible for me. I don't know if it's gonna work. guess what? The business coaching brand is taking off.
Graham Cochrane (36:57.837)
I'm gonna press into that some more and I've got a course and a membership and then a mastermind and everything's humming along great. But you know, there's this affiliate income potential over here and I might wanna pursue that. That might make me a little bit of money. Oh, that's making me a lot of money. Let's double down, let's triple down on that. Oh, you know what? I don't love the format of my mastermind anymore. I'm gonna shut that down. You know what? I wanna become an author. It looks crazy and it sounds crazy coming out of my mouth. But any time things are starting to work and feel great and humming along,
I assume it's time to start at least getting curious about where the weaknesses are and the holes and then really only for a moment to then think about what's possible. How can I do this better or what's next? Not because I want to be exhausted, not because I want to always be chasing, but because if you don't evolve, if you don't think long term, your business will die and you'll wonder why I've been, this worked for years.
Every time you want to get to the next level, part of you and the way you've done life is gonna have to die.
And I don't like this. Be honest, I don't like this part. Every time I feel like I get comfortable in my business and the way things are going, I get another idea. And as a person of faith, I believe these ideas are nudges, they're wisdom from God. I believe God speaks to me through ideas, through intuition, through something someone says.
through a book I'm reading, I know now, I have enough history with God to know when I read something or hear something or speak to somebody or an idea pops in my head when it's just a random idea versus pull this thread, Graham. Here's a thread, pull it. Let's see what's happening. And I get both excited and sad when I get one of those ideas. I'm excited because I'm like, there's something new, there's a potential and the entrepreneur in me loves to see what else is out there.
Graham Cochrane (39:04.215)
The sadness of me knows that part of me is gonna have to die. The way things have been the last three years, it's gonna change. And death sounds dramatic, but it's just a change. Change is by definition a death to a way it was to some degree. And I don't like change. But you gotta embrace change. So you wanna have a long-term vision so that you don't die out. But here's the other problem. Most people are short-term thinkers in their business. How can I make more money this month?
How can I make more money this year? And those aren't bad questions. They're just short-sighted because there's a lot of ways to make money this month or this year that will actually hurt your business next year.
Graham Cochrane (39:48.813)
There's a lot of ways to make money this month or this year that'll actually limit the amount of money you can make in the next five years.
Graham Cochrane (40:00.939)
There are ways to make a lot of money right now that will violate your conscience and your values.
which then makes it hard for you to sleep at night because you're not proud of the person you've become.
But on a practical level, I actually think it makes it hard for your business to grow because we're in a day and age where people are tired doing business.
with you know who's of the world that are full of it. They wanna do business with authentic, real, values aligned and values driven people. We are in a culture shift right now where we actually respect people who live according to their values. So it's good for business to live according to your values because people notice it, they respect it. I get this all the time, messages all the time about hey,
The reason I bought your course or joined your coaching versus somebody else's is because I like the way that you serve and you're not pushy. You're not salesy. You're not sliding to my DMs like pressuring me to buy a thing. And I appreciate that you actually practice what you preach. And so that attracted them to me. The same is going to happen for you. It's a great way to stand out because a lot of people are in the online space, especially
Graham Cochrane (41:24.779)
are way behind the times. They're still pushing the online business marketing tactics that have worked for 20 years and will continue to work for a few more years, but they're short-term thinking. They are burning the bridges and they're destroying the reputation. And ultimately, the only thing we have as humans and as a business or brand is your reputation in the eyes of others. That's the only thing we have. It's hard to build, easy to destroy. And so you want to think long-term.
So ask yourself questions like this. Instead of how can I make money this month, ask myself how can I create a business that lasts for decades? And that's an interesting question because within that question, how can I build a business that lasts for decades? You have to answer the sub question which is how can I build a business that allows me to run it for decades and not burn out?
Nobody seems to ask that question when they start a business. They're just, let's make money. We'll figure it out later.
But I get private DMs and emails and messages almost weekly now from YouTubers, influencers, people with big followings that have, I don't know how they found my stuff, but they're somehow finding some of my stuff and they're privately saying, hey, I've built something great and I'm stuck. I'm stuck in it I don't know how to simplify, I don't know how to get off this train, I don't wanna lose the revenue, but I'm burning out. I don't know how much longer I can do this.
And they either flame out publicly or they quietly disappear. And you wonder where did that guy go? Or where did she go? She was huge for like 10 years. It's hard to last. So it's great to ask yourself, how could I build a business that lasts for decades? Or how could I redesign my brand or my business or the way I show up in it so that I can last for decades and it can serve people for decades? Much more powerful question. Shift from short-term thinking to long-term vision.
Graham Cochrane (43:29.951)
Okay, hopefully you took notes. We'll run through them real quick. Shift number one, from scarcity to abundance. Shift number two, from hustle to margin. Shift number three, from fear of failure to embracing growth. Shift number four, from transactional thinking to transformational thinking. Shift number five, from control to delegation. Shift number six, from safe content to thought-provoking content. And shift number seven, from short-term to long-term vision.
Which one of those seven, and if you're on YouTube, comment below the number, one through seven, which one of those sevens is the one that your eyes and your ears immediately went to and said, I have to make that shift right now. That's the shift that is most pressing for me. Drop it in a comment below. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, message me on Instagram at dgramcochran and let me know that you listen to this episode. Which mindset shift are you going to make? That's all that matters today.
Doesn't matter how many you feel, just one. The one that you're like, I felt it in my heart, I felt it like goosebumps. Like this is the one that I need to focus on right now. If you are willing to commit to that shift, and it's work and it's ongoing, but if you could focus on that one shift, dominoes will start to fall for you and the other shifts will come. It's so powerful, I've seen it time and time again. And this is a lot of the work I'm doing with my clients is they want to grow their business, they want to feel more effortless.
and they're looking for a strategy or tactic and I have some of those, but the most important work we do that actually really moves the needle is up here and in here. It's the mind and it's the heart of like, the way you think about business is just broken and it's not wrong, it's the way we were taught, it's the way a lot of people think, but it's broken, it's not helping you. Let's shift some of these things, even if they don't feel natural at first, so that you can survive, so that you can thrive, so that you actually will stop being
harsh to yourself and instead see yourself as the champion you are, as the leader you are, as the hero to people that you are. You are a servant to others and you have to view yourself as a valuable servant to the marketplace and all that starts with shifting and your brand is really a reputation or an extension of your reputation I should say. So I hope this is helpful for you. If you wanna dive deeper into
Graham Cochrane (45:50.765)
Creating more margin, making your business feel more effortless, I invite you to come to the Effortless Masterclass, it's free. It's an on-demand video training, you can watch it whenever you want, it's about 45 minutes. Click the link in the description or go to Effortless Masterclass right now and sign up. Love to see you there. That's it for me today, friend. I hope you're having an incredible week. I'll see you on next week's episode.
