Joe Rouse (00:00)
Success is different for different people, right? It doesn't have to be double your business to be successful or to live the life that you want to live.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (00:15)
Welcome back to another episode of Brotherhood Beyond Business podcast. Today, me and Joe are going to kick off this podcast with going through our weekly accountability. In the Brotherhood, we focus on one of the skill sets that we try to develop is accountability between brothers. And so we pair you up with different people throughout the quarter to make sure that you can continue to work on your accountability. So me and Joe, every week we get together, either you can do a text or call or however you do it. We do a 15 minute call once a week.

kind of check in. So we're just going to do our accountability call here and then we'll go into some other topics at the spur at the end of this for our podcast. All right, Joe. So for last week, your accountability, we had three things written down. Number one was write semi private cards has doing that.

Joe Rouse (00:53)
It's Done. Reached out to former clients, sent the cards out. I would assume they probably got them a day or two ago because I sent out cards for the Brotherhood Beyond Business at the same time. And he just got that card two days ago. Or one of those people told me they got that card. yeah, I should be here and hopefully be hearing from him soon.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (01:12)
Awesome. And so the goal that we set up that one for is Joe's just looking for different ways for growth tactics. And one of the ones was reaching out to former members to build up the semi-private former semi-private clients. So that way gives them a chance to have that intimate touch through a personalized card.

Joe Rouse (01:16)
Thanks

Yeah, and our semi-private clients are a little bit older too. I think it's in, it's, know, we can get tons of leads through Facebook ads and things like that, but these cards, I think really speaks to a way that most of them, that generation's used to communicating.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (01:39)
Yeah, I mean, I've always used handwritten cards. I've always been a big handwritten card person because I feel like it's an old school tactic that's lost. And so I've been doing those, you know, I mean, I've been sending you guys Christmas cards for years kind of stuff, you know, or birthday cards. So it's just something I've always done handwritten cards because it's just a way to touch people in a different way. We do it for the brotherhood. Like that's kind of our number one lead mag or lead generating tool is just sending off a handwritten card. It's a lost art. It's not the easiest. It's not the fastest because you got to find the details. You got to

Joe Rouse (01:41)
to also.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (02:07)
do the research on who you want to send it to, but for me it's like a very tailored way to like, know I want this person and I know one way I can get it into their hands, because can send them an email, but I can't even, anymore you can't guarantee the email is gonna be seen. And so it's like, I can pretty much almost guarantee that the card's gonna be seen and they're probably going to open it, because I even opened the mail that I know is junk mail. You know, I know it's junk mail, like, I'm still gonna double check and open this just in case it's not junk mail. And so I,

almost guarantee every single card you ever send to somebody is going to be actually physically touched and read by them.

Joe Rouse (02:36)
Yeah, dude. And AI can't write it for you. So it almost has to be personalized. Like you and it's to me, when I get a written card from you or somebody else, like Mark will send them out every once in a while. And to me, it's as pretty much as meaningful as having a one on one conversation, even though we're not conversating back and forth. It's like usually in a card, we're taking time to specifically say something that we wish well for somebody in the upcoming time to be or

we're telling them something good about them or something cool or great about our relationship. So I think the things that we tend to be able to say in cards or that are traditionally said in cards are usually, they're more meaningful than something we might write in email too.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (03:17)
Yeah, I do find it when I'm writing, I find it to be a moment to be more heartfelt about what I'm saying, even like when we're sending out to brotherhood where I don't know the guy at all. I just like try to find that relatable thing that I found about them on social media through the website, something that I've learned a detail about them that made me excited. And the reason I reached out to them, it just gives that little bit that you can put that in email, but with emails, just like there's so many of those, do people actually take the time to read it like fully whatever you written the cards, you know, that I get in that forward?

Joe Rouse (03:23)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (03:46)
whatever you put in there is actually being fully read the way it was supposed to be.

Joe Rouse (03:49)
That's it, man. That's it.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (03:50)
Cool. Number two was next month's social media post for BFP.

Joe Rouse (03:54)
They are half done, not all the way done. That's what I was working on this morning before this call. Just cranking through them. I need about a full day after just getting back from Deco Worlds. But that will be, we'll move that into a to do for next week. But we're gonna put a deadline on it of Friday of this week. Even though we're not gonna meet again for accountability until next week. I need to get that done this week. Which today will probably be the day that gets done.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (04:15)
And the last one was your coach ascension system progress. Main thing you need to get done was put text and level up for Danny to use.

Joe Rouse (04:22)
That got started. ⁓ do have a meeting with Danny to discuss that tomorrow. Our meeting is at nine o'clock tomorrow. So that will get done today.

because that's where I got to share that with him and let him know that it's available. And really that's a course that's available, going to be available for us to and level up.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (04:38)
Cool, so you got progress on all of yours, which is great. And this is the big part of the accountability. The reason we do the accountability thing is yes, like everybody has checklists. ⁓ Everybody can follow through, but there's just a difference. Be like every week when you have to say yes or no and why you have to say yes or no. It just gives you either one, holds you accountable to getting it done, or at least keeps it top of mind, like hey, I gotta keep working on this until this whatever it is that you're working on to get it done. Just.

I was talking to a guy the other day about the brotherhood and discussing what it is. And he had said to me, he's like, I don't know if I really need to pay somebody to hold me accountable. Like, know, be part pay, you know, the $300 a month, the brotherhood is like, I don't know if that accountability as a business owner, shouldn't have to pay somebody for that. Meaning what he was trying to say was not that it's not worth paying for, which is like, I shouldn't have to do that as a business owner. I should be accountable enough. And I was like, well, my

my feedback to that is most business owners are extremely accountable people. But just like anybody else, there's just things that you put off because they don't feel like as important or it is, you know it's as important as you just don't want to get it done because it's a harder project or it's uncomfortable. And I think that's the important part of the brotherhood is not really holding you accountable to like the small little tasks, like the stuff that you should be getting done, like the admin based stuff. It's the bigger picture stuff that's like, this is what really moves the needle. And this is where business owners for the most part,

Joe Rouse (05:50)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (05:55)
I'm gonna punt until next week. I'm gonna just keep pushing that down the road. And at the end of the year, you're like, oh man, I didn't make as much progress in this thing. It's because throughout the whole year, you just didn't put focus on what the true priorities were. And that's where the accountability inside the Brotherhood is. And what we're trying to do is like, hey, so you and me, our big focus for this quarter has been growth. Our tactics are, you and me are both trying to grow our businesses. And so our tactics have been growth focused.

And not that you me don't focus on growth throughout the year. It's just, we don't focus intently on growth. We focus on like building a coach ascension program or building for me is like a new SOP. It's like, these are great. They are needed for the business, but where our businesses both are, we're both in a pattern where we need more growth than anything else. And we just don't put as much attention on that. And that's where it's like, okay, let's set up the right goals so that at the end of this quarter, that the thing that we needed to truly move the needle on the most will get moved. And the interesting part is the things that don't need the needle moved on as much.

Joe Rouse (06:36)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (06:48)
We're gonna naturally move those because those are probably usually the more exciting tasks for us where the things are like, know, man, I'd love to like get some more social media posts done. You're just gonna get those done because you want to get those done. These other things are like, man, I gotta get these done, but I just don't want to put the focus on.

Joe Rouse (07:02)
Yeah, man, that's where the accountability comes in. It's like to get the things done that the things that we don't want to do that we tend to procrastinate on over and over again. Like for me is usually calling leads. I don't love to call leads, but I do enjoy conversations with people. And I, I'm on the phone with somebody, I enjoy it, but I tend to, I love to slack on that. So depending on the position you're in, like we can either hire out or we can utilize the resources and the accountability that we have to make sure that we stop BSing around and we just get it done.

and we do it consistently and make it a habit. And I think that's the unique thing that we do. And that really any, I would say, valuable relationship should do in your life is call you out when you're not getting done what needs to be done. We can always do it respectfully, but we can be salt and light at the same time.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (07:39)
I actually just read an article for our newsletter from a guy that I follow. Justin Walt. Well, I think his Welsh not lost Justin Welsh is the name. But he's a newsletter that I follow for entrepreneurs. And he had he's in a mastermind group. And he had said he was in a meeting with his 12 mastermind members and to the people are having conversations about their million dollar businesses. And they but

they and their solo entrepreneurs, there's million dollar businesses. So they were crushing it, but they felt like they were behind because they needed to now like double their business because everybody else in the group was doubling their business. So they have to add more players. So they're going through this idea that like the conversation they were having is they got to grow, grow, grow. And it was keeping up with the Joneses. Even though they're more profitable than all the other businesses in their group, they thought they needed to double, even though they're probably going to reduce their profit. But that was just like keeping up with the Joneses. And the thing that you said a second ago that hit me was Justin had said in his newsletter, he's like,

Joe Rouse (08:20)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (08:31)
I wanted to say to them, why? Why do you need to grow? Isn't profit the most important thing? Maybe you should stay where you were at. But he said, I didn't say anything because inside this group, that's the wrong conversation. It felt like I was trying to, I'd be holding them back. And I instantly, when I read that, was like, Justin, you failed there. Your responsibility right there was to step up and say the one thing nobody else would say. And that's really what we talk about in the Brotherhood is like.

I need to be the person or we need to be the person that's willing to say the thing nobody else is willing to say out loud. Regardless of it's the right answer or not, but like we need to at least approach this other question. Be like, maybe you don't need to double your business. Maybe you need to stay where you're You're happy. saying you have no, you don't really have any stresses. Why add on the stress of employees? Why add on the stress of doubling your business when your business is good? So it's just one of those moments where when we talk about in the brotherhood, like the radical candor, like how do I really be like honest with somebody and like,

Even if my, how I wanna build my business is different than how you wanna build your business, I at least wanna have a conversation like there are different ways to build your business that build happiness. And there's one those moments when I read this from an entrepreneur I really respect where he just didn't say what he should have said. And I was like, dude, like that's what the masterminds are about. That truly, it's not about more ideas. At least our masterminds are not about more ideas. It's like not about just more ideas. It's about calling business owners out, not really call them out exactly, but like.

Joe Rouse (09:37)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (09:50)
in this moment is not calling them out. just giving them, hey, maybe look at it from a different perspective and being honest in that moment. That's the most important conversation I can have with you. Because my job is not to tell you how to run your business. My job is to give you enough input from different expertise to say, hey, take another month before you do any action and think through this other idea. Is this worth your time?

Joe Rouse (10:09)
Yeah, don't just jump on something that sounds good right away, right? Like I think that's the biggest benefit of having a collaborative of people who've been doing this a while to advise you on the mistakes that they've made. And I would agree to that guy definitely dropped the ball in that situation. I don't even know who that is, but I cannot count the amount, at least not on two hands, the amount of epiphanies or moments of clarity that I've had in the middle of our meetings.

because you said something that made me think at like two degrees differently than where I was thinking. You know what mean? Like when all we do is think about this stuff inside our own head and we talk about how lonely it gets to own a business and it's lonely at the top, we tend to get tunnel vision in ways that can hold us back or tunnel thinking. I don't know if there's a term for that. having that brotherhood has helped me in so many situations, even just this last meeting that we had.

When I brought my topic up for our live meeting to talk about what was going to be worked on for the remainder of the quarter and what was going to move the needle the most in the way that it needed to move in order for my life and my family's life to be better, we went a completely different direction. And it wasn't a distraction. It wasn't the way that it wasn't supposed to go. It was the right way for it to go. There's such big benefit in that. And also a good point coming from that conversation is

Success is different for different people, right? It doesn't have to be double your business to be successful or to live the life that you want to live. And it changes, man, I think you and I have both learned this. What we once wanted is now like, it doesn't even exist anymore because we want something completely different based on where we're at in life and the things that are happening to us in our life. And it's not like I'm letting things that happen to me dictate my actions, but

things just changed. Like for me, it was all these tons of locations and that was gonna define my success. That was gonna give me purpose. That was gonna make me feel good. now it's, man, I just want my kid who's turning 18 soon to be successful. And I wanna make sure that what I do creates a, helps create a successful path for him and that I guide him and that I have the time to spend guiding him. Like on a Monday night last night, we went to the movies and it was awesome. We got to have some, that's where we have our deep conversations, driving to the movies.

We go out to eat before we go to the movies. That's where there's lots of mentoring being done with my son. And that's the most important thing in my life to me right now, besides my wife is my kids. So that would have been, I would have loved to have been in that room to have that conversation. I feel like we've had so many conversations like that in our group where people are talking about, we got to do this, we got to do this. Or I need to add this service to my business. And we're like, couldn't you just do more of what you're already doing?

Or could you tap into like the parents of those kids instead of trying to add a whole other service or something, depending on the business that it is? Yeah, I think that's a really interesting newsletter. It's cool that he shared that perspective though.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (12:51)
Yeah, it is like, ⁓ I mean, the perspective he showed in, didn't the article is really good. He talked about another business owner that he had worked with. ⁓ and she was doing, or he was doing, like $3 million as a solopreneur, just crushing it. And he had all the business coaches this guy talked to had kept on telling him like, you need to grow more. You're doing this well. Like you can add another associate to your team and you guys can double your business, all this kind of stuff. And this business owner kept on saying,

Joe Rouse (13:05)
Yeah.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (13:17)
you he was like, he just kept switching from business course to business course, because they weren't telling him what he wanted to hear, which was like, your business is crushing it, like leave it because he's like, the guy had said he's like, you know, I'm making he was taking home like $700,000 a year personally, he had some part time people that he outsourced things to, and they were super happy with it, what he was outsourcing, he didn't want to overload their plates either. And then he was working 30 hours a week, and spending a ton of time with his wife and kids.

and they were taking roughly six weeks of full vacation throughout the year. And that was what this, the other business owner, this is not in that mastermind meeting, this is just somebody that he was coaching. He'd said the other business owner, he's like, that was a different level of fulfillment for him. Like everything, he was making plenty of money, ridiculous money, really $700,000 a year is in my mind, ridiculous money. I don't really care about the people that talk about being millionaires and stuff. don't understand.

Personally, I don't understand what I would do with over maybe $300,000 a year. I don't know what I'd do with money after that. Like, what would I do with that money? And so realistically, it's like there's a certain number where I don't even know what to do with the money after that point. But the man, the 30 hours a week, that's like a dream scenario. I've definitely since I took over, built level up and stepped out of GCP, I work way less hours overall, which has been awesome. It's still definitely not down to 30 hours a week.

Joe Rouse (14:28)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (14:32)
the idea is like how much more time he gets back every single week and then six weeks of like vacation where you don't have to think about your business. Like I don't have that. I know I went on a two week vacation to Alaska this year and like I was able to shut down for the most part, but it also like it was still in cheeky in the back of my head. And I'm not saying this guy's not itching in the back of the head because like entrepreneurs are always itching in the back of our head. We always worried like what's, what's breaking right now. What's falling apart right now. Why I am not like steering the ship. Um, but it is one of those perspectives where man,

When we, so I'm 39 right now. When I was 29 years old, 10 years ago, I could never imagine I would want a business that I have right now. Meaning when I was 29 years old, I was building location number two for GCP already. You we'd only been open two years and I was like, oh, I'm building location number two already. And so at 29 years old, I was like, man, I'm heading for five locations. I'm blowing up this franchise model, like blah, blah, blah, blah. And now I'm sitting with like all these employees. I'm going to create all these jobs for people. And this is like my mindset.

perspective wise is I came from a manufacturing corporation. My dad built a huge manufacturing corporation. I had just seen scale, you know, and I'd only understood scales like this is what my dad has built. And because my dad has built this scaling, this huge scaling business is like this is where for me to be successful. This is the only way to go. And then somewhere in my 30s, really what happened was I got I met my wife and then I realized there's life outside of business.

Joe Rouse (15:46)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (15:53)
And it's like, ⁓ this is way more enjoyable. I enjoy this part of life as much as I enjoy business. And then decided to move to Arizona and like my lifestyle had to change because of that. And I was like, I'm not going to work all the time, build another gym and not enjoy like this environment we live in. Cause we live out in the mountains. like that perspective now at 39 years old, I'm finally building that dream business. I'm building the business that we were just talking about where the guy's like, I want to see how big I can build this business without, without adding any employees to it. As soon as I need to add employees, this business has grown big enough.

Cause I just want the like, I want the lifestyle that sits outside of that. But I want to be able to, I want to have fun with building the business, but not have the stresses of like we work with the gyms, right? It's like, how do I get more? I need more coaches or this coach needs more money. I was like, I just, like if all of a sudden I decide, Hey, I don't want to grow this business anymore. And I have to decrease my personal salary by, you know, $30,000 a year. I want to have that ability back. I can just choose to reduce my overall salary and we'll be fine if I really need to make that decision. But when you have employees, you can't make that decision.

Joe Rouse (16:51)
Yeah, yeah man, everything changes when you meet that wife for sure.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (16:54)
It really does. I mean, it's game changing for that. So if you're somebody that's listening to this and you're in like your 20s or early 30s, you're not married yet, the perspective is that your life will change in the best of ways. It will change. the idea is like, I only want to do business right now. You know, there's a lot of entrepreneurs or gurus out there right now that like are married, but they only, don't have kids and stuff. They don't have other responsibilities. And they were just like, me and my wife just love to do business, right? And I agree to that in a very small.

Joe Rouse (17:19)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (17:21)
portion, like can see that if you have a wife that's an entrepreneur mindset, but I also think for the most part you guys are just like partners, not maybe husband and wife as much you think you are, because there's so much more to life than like that business component of it.

Joe Rouse (17:35)
Yeah, yeah, man. Like I've got, I've got a guy I'm going to meet with on Wednesday. He's a chiropractor and we're going to be talking about the brotherhood and he and his wife own a business together. but he's the one that's always reached out and made the connections with me. So maybe that's just a part of the business that he enjoys more, but you know, they also, they have a great life. Like they're not, they're not, they're doing great business. ⁓ and they've even had business coaches.

but he's still interested in accountability and being a part of a group of guys to help hold him accountable, to provide that brotherhood because it's just something that's been so valuable in my life. Anyway, I don't know where I was going with that one, I decided to meet with him on Wednesday. I met with another gentleman yesterday who is, he has an interesting path, completely different path from us.

And he's interested in being a part of the brotherhood. And he alluded to, after I wrote him the card, he alluded to the relating to the feeling of being lonely at the top. Or just, I mean, whether you're at the top, I don't know why I have trouble saying that. Like just being lonely, like owning a business. And he alluded to days where he had two other business, like professionals that were doing their own thing that he would meet with. And sometimes they would meet like, and they were from different parts of the

of at least the state. think one of them was from up north, the other one was like in Charlotte. And then he was here on the coast of North Carolina. And they would meet and they would just, they called it like something like, like drink of the week club or something like that. Cause they were just, you know, casually meeting and just talking about what they had going on in life, ⁓ business wise and what they're going to be working on next. And I think there's, there's huge benefit to that. But then the conversation moved into, but then life got in the way and you know, we haven't met.

together in a long time. And he's like, so I miss having that. He's like, one thing we didn't have, he said, we had discussions, but we didn't have accountability. Like actual structured accountability to make sure things got done. Like we weren't checking in on each other's tasks and things that had to be done. And not everybody needs that, but he realizes that's something that he was probably missing. So it was a really interesting conversation to have with him about that because the businesses and the things that we're talking about with him, he's not a gym owner.

He owns, he's a military vet who is a 50 % owner, I guess with his wife, they'd be a 50 % owner together of a franchise, restaurant that's local here. It's very, very similar to like a Chipotle, but it started here in our small town. And now they've franchised that restaurant to like 18 locations, franchise locations. And...

They've been open for probably two or three years and they're already at the point where like he doesn't ever go, he very, very rarely goes in to the restaurant. And they're at a point, I asked him yesterday, I said, would you have any intentions on just selling that to the other owner? He said, no, this is just a cashflow thing now. He said, it's just giving them money. They just built a new house, everything, they're doing well. But he gets that, you talked about when you go on vacation and stuff being in the back of your mind about your business,

I don't think that's specific to our businesses. I think that's the part of having, however our brains work as entrepreneurs or wanting to create things, you're always thinking about something. And that's where this guy's at because he has a piece of land in a good spot that he's paid off and he nonstop, for the most part, nonstop is just thinking about how he's going to develop this land to.

to continue with some sort of business practice there. So he's talking to me about like the potential of opening a business, putting up, had, at one point they had, he showed me all the plans they had for this big tap room they were gonna put in there. And then things changed a little bit. Then now he's talking about somebody wants to open a sports complex on it, the potential of that, they're looking at getting investors and they might even also have like a strip mall on the other side of the property. And we were talking about opportunities there. So, I mean, I think,

six weeks of vacation, eight weeks of vacation. I think if you have that mindset, it's not even a mindset, it's just a way that we're wired. It's just a different way of being wired that you're always gonna be thinking about something. Like I can't go to Disney World without thinking about how I love specific aspects of the customer service side of what they do or how they could have made things slightly better from a business standpoint. I know it doesn't matter how much vacation I have.

I'm always thinking about something. And it will always come back to, we could implement this in my business, but wait, is it worth it? Is that priority right now? You know, stuff like that.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (21:47)
Well, one thing I personally enjoy about being in the brotherhood is all everybody. I enjoy all the different businesses. So meaning like when I'm thinking about business now, it's not just about how can I build another business. It's like, how can I help somebody else in their business? So you come with this idea. So like for when you're saying that my first instinct is like, this guy has land in Hampstead and I'm thinking about like, okay, I know the owner of founding fathers here, founding fathers collective, which is like a barber shop, tap room, speak easy.

coffee shop that wants to expand to 50 different states. my instance, my brain goes like, Hey, man, like maybe, maybe there's a point to connect these grant together with your guy and see if like, Hey, maybe they'd build a founding. They're putting them in 50 states anyway, like, can't to be a great place for it North Carolina. So like the idea is like, but the cool part is, is like you said, is I'm always thinking business, but I don't always have to think about business just growing myself. Cause now I'm in certain ways. We talked about this with our businesses. We're like board of directors of other people's businesses. And so you have this investment in them too. like, okay, I

Joe Rouse (22:20)
yeah!

Brotherhood Beyond Business (22:44)
I, it's not like I spend a lot of time in a week thinking about your business, but if something hits me that like this would work great for Joe, instantly I'm sending you a text. You know what mean? Like that's like, mean, how many people do that for somebody else's business where they're invested in somebody else's business that way, even your family members for the most part, probably never think about your business. And so it's like, it's the ideas like it's, it's just a, such a different level when you get that, that brotherhood that you create through other people, you start to like,

Joe Rouse (22:54)
Yeah.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (23:10)
be invested in what they have going on as well, which is really unique because as entrepreneurs, you have so much going on, you wouldn't imagine thinking about somebody else's business, but as soon as you have investment in somebody else's business, like man, like I would love to just help this person succeed.

Joe Rouse (23:22)
Yeah, I would love to have a bourbon coffee place you're talking about here. I would love to have a place like that here that has all those things. We have probably those things individually here, but, and that's, those are all things that he's into. So, I will actually text him after we get off this call and be like, Hey, I got a business idea. Cause that's the kind of guy he is. I love those conversations, man. All right. Let's get back to accountability.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (23:29)
That's pretty dope.

There you go.

yeah,

so, let's go into my accountability cause we got yours all taken care of. we'll, we'll set up our accountability after this for the next week. But, ⁓ for my accountability for the week was, ⁓ I officially launched my book and so it was, ⁓ going to go through what task needs to get done for like after the book launch. so for those guys don't know, I launched the book called the brotherhood beyond business, the journey to become the CEO of your own life.

Joe and me are going to a podcast about that in the next month or so after the books officially we get the book in but What the process was for me this week is okay the books launched is on Amazon now How do I go about and get this out to the world? I mean you can obviously just send an Amazon link but as an entrepreneur I want to be a little bit better at that so I was to Build a page for both sites my personal site and brotherhood site got both those pages built

You got the schema, got all the SEO stuff done for all that. Created social media posts. The first one went out last night and those will be coming every day for the next two weeks. Yeah, pre-scheduled, except for the stories ones. The stories will come, I'm only doing stories once a week or twice a week and those will come, I'll have to manually send those because to add that little Amazon link at the bottom for people to click, they can't schedule that out so I have to do that manually.

Joe Rouse (24:45)
Do you have those pre-scheduled?

Brotherhood Beyond Business (25:00)
So those I have, I have that scheduled in my phone to remind me, okay, the post on Wednesday morning, you know? And then add, create an Amazon authors page, which is good for SEO. And so I created that and then add it to my email signature as well. So I put it in all the different places I could think of for book sales, set up pretty much all I want to do is like, I want all the tasks I needed done for the book sales for me to say this task is done and move on. That was my goal for this week, got that all done. So I don't have to worry about the book.

Joe Rouse (25:17)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (25:28)
Yeah, right now I'm not worried about the book at all. Like it's on the back burner of things. Cause like my goal with the book isn't to sell a lot of the book. If you guys don't know much about Amazon books is like, if you publish on Amazon, you make very little money on it. So say I sell it for 1999, I'm going to make at most $4, but realistically it's going to be under around the $3 range. And so you don't make a lot of profit on it. So it's not one those things where I'm looking to be super profitable, but we're using it as like, okay, this is a chance for somebody to read our story, the story of the brotherhood with the story of the brotherhood really is.

Brotherhood book is the story of me, Joe, Danny, Mark, people that have been in the mastermind group that I've been in for the last like eight years. It's like our story over time on how we've improved ourselves, the habits that we've created that I've seen through either myself or through everybody else's journeys. And we'll tell it through a parable form. So Sam Sutton's form, ⁓ Sam Sutton is the name of the character. Think of like if you ever read the book, Chopwood, Carry Water, it's like a story form. So we go through and tell a story and this is pretty much the habits on how how Sam Sutton,

becomes the best business owner he can be, but also the best man he could be. It's really the journey of becoming the best CEO in other aspects of life as well.

Joe Rouse (26:33)
I'm excited to dive into it, dude. I'm definitely gonna read it. I mean, I remember seeing parts of it, but I'm excited to read it and share about it, talk about it and all that good stuff. I think it definitely adds credibility to the brotherhood.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (26:42)
Yeah, I'm excited to have this story

out there. I don't, in general, it's like, ⁓ people have asked me why I wanted to write a book. And it's like, why, why wouldn't I want to write a book? It's kind of more along the ways. It's like, I was like, I want to be like, so realistically, ⁓ if Jim watches this, ⁓ I want to give him some props. Jim Herrick, a friend of our guy in our match mind group. He is currently writing a book in the fitness industry. And he was telling me he's writing a book and all of a sudden I'd always kind of want to write a book, but I never really had any push. Well, because Jim was writing it, I could use.

him as an accountability. And so I reached out to Jim was like, Hey, Jim, I'm interested in writing a book to like, can we kind of create an accountability for this? And so that's how I got my book done over the last years, because me and Jim just kept sending messages back and forth about check ins every single month about how much progress we made on writing our book. And so by having that another in certain ways, because Jim is in my mastermind group, it almost in ways gave me permission, like, this might sound bad, but it's not meant to sound bad. Like, if Jim can write a book, I can write a book, like not meaning like there's

Joe Rouse (27:37)
Yeah,

Brotherhood Beyond Business (27:37)
It's

Joe Rouse (27:38)
yeah, yeah.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (27:38)
not that Jim's not smart or anything. It's just like he's like Jim's busy. He's got a lot going on. If he can take time to write a book, why can't I take time to write a book? Like, why can't I find a way to do this? So it also gave me permission a little bit to be like, I can write a book to Jim, write a book. And I've always wanted to, and I had a story I wanted to tell. just didn't really like, just didn't have the courage in many ways to do it. And so that accountability over the last year has been awesome between me and Jim. Jim's book's getting close. I think he's still got about six months left. He said to get his finished because he's going through.

Joe Rouse (27:45)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (28:05)
rewriting process right now. But it's one of those things where it's like that accountability over the last year has been awesome to have that accountability buddy on.

Joe Rouse (28:11)
Mm-hmm. so well, let's talk about you. So you just I mean, you checked all the boxes of everything you want to get done. And that was all related to the book. So and the book is related to growth. So what's what are the next steps that you need to spend time like? What are the things that? What do you need to focus on over the next week for growth and specifically like, is there anything that you're procrastinating on in relation to that?

Brotherhood Beyond Business (28:13)
⁓

So for the book, no, the book is completely done. There's nothing I need to touch on the book side of it. Cause promotion wise, I'm probably gonna send out maybe a social media post a month on it going forward, just to say we have a book, but like outside of that, it's not really meant to be a huge, it's really a marketing tool for us as when we send out handwritten cards, if we have somebody want to kind of overwhelm like, we have a book about this, we can send the book. That's really what it's meant to be as a marketing tool for that. So I really don't have tasked with the book.

The big obstacle, so one thing I added to our accountability that I sent you a text later was write four handwritten cards, because I'm supposed to be sending out two cards a week and I move it to four cards a week. I did not send out my cards at all last week. And so we had talked about this before, so here's an accountability. Reason why I think I'm extremely disciplined in business tasks, right? One thing is I have it set up, I'm gonna do them. But this is why I think entrepreneurs do need...

somebody to hold them accountable because there are things that you're gonna slack on. Writing handwritten business cards is super simple. It's not hard to do at all. It's not hard to research the people, like I'm doing them locally, people in Prescott area, not hard to do. But for some reason, because I have all these other systems and stuff I'm building at times, those seem like they're a higher priority because if they don't get done, there's a project path they're on, right? But handwritten cards don't have a project path. So it's just like, this is a task I had to recurrently do every week.

And but it's very, very valuable to our business is how the brotherhood has like become known is starting to get known is because we're sending out these cards. So my thing is, I just didn't do it. And mainly because I kept other I kept on like every single time I had it as a task on Thursday. And I just kept moving other things and moved it to okay, I'll get it done Thursday afternoon didn't do it moved it to Friday morning didn't do it moved it Friday afternoon didn't do it. And it's like man, then I had a weekend we went to ⁓ the Vegas Raiders game. So I didn't do it over the weekend either. And so and

So on Monday, yesterday came back late, didn't get it done yesterday. Then this morning, it's like, okay, I still haven't even got my four four cards written. So I want to get it done before this meeting and didn't get done for this meeting. But it's one of those things where it's like accountability wise, I there was absolutely no reason for it not to get done. I just chose not to do it.

Joe Rouse (30:35)
Yeah, yeah dude. I just, yeah, I see where you added that to it. That wasn't on that original note. So that can be something I can definitely hold you accountable for and I'll check in with you like, let's see, we meet every Tuesday. So on Friday to see if you get it done.

I'm just going to pre-schedule a text to go out to you.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (30:50)
Yeah, that's if you guys don't know that's something I do all the time is pre scheduling text out like crazy just to like, okay, I want this to come to them a certain moment, but I'm not going to remember to send it in that moment. So I'm just going to pre schedule it out.

Joe Rouse (31:01)
Yeah, and I don't want people to think like if whoever listens to this, whoever watches this, whatever you're doing, like when I'm sitting here, like I'll send you a text in the middle of the week. It's, know, I've known Trevor for years. So part of that's cause I care about Trevor and we have a relationship beyond just the professional side of things. But it's also a lot of people, think some people when they hear the detail or the level to which we might hold each other accountable in business and in life.

They might say that's that's not for me. That's too much. I don't have time to do that I'm not gonna follow up with somebody once a week. I'm not gonna send them reminders. It's like it's not like I'm Trying to I don't know foster a loving relationship with my wife like it's not that I'm just gonna pre-schedule a text to go to Trevor and then he knows I pre-schedule it so that means I sent a text like it takes five seconds it's not a huge detail or like you don't have to be detail-oriented you don't have to be

hyper-focused on certain things, it's just a simple thing. Like I'm just gonna pre-schedule a text probably before we get off this call to go to him on Friday. And those little things matter because they just bring it back to top of mind. Like the things that you need to get done and especially when it's something that we procrastinate on. And that can contribute to the fall off that we tend to see in most people, especially if you're like me, where we have these accountability calls or we have our quarterly.

goal setting meetings, whatever it might be. And even with the one-on-one mentor that I use outside of the brotherhood, there's always massive action taken after those. Like very, very, like for a good, you know, a few days or so. And then it tapers off. You know, we get distracted, we start to procrastinate or we get 90 % of a project done and it starts to feel like it's done and we might move on to something else to try to start working on that before this one's, you know, 100 % done, tested and been run for three months and then delegated.

So having these extra check-ins can keep you in that massive action or just that higher performing mode, more focused mode, it helps with focus. And those little things matter a lot. And I think that's what's missing from a lot of people's lives when it comes to business.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (32:53)
Yeah. And if, if, like, if I would say an overall time commitment I have to like accountability for like the accountability partner I have, cause you only have in our brotherhood, you only have one other person you're accountable for. You know, there's a group of 10, have your pair of many groups of two. so it's not like you're keeping everybody in your group, all 10 members accountable. only focused on that one person for us. It's like 15 minute call. Like that's, know, and realistically people piss more time away on social media than 15 minutes. So it's not, not that hard to do a 15 minute call. That's so much more valuable to your life.

And then it's like maybe 10 total minutes the rest of the week when I send you a text that you might respond to and we'll just text back and forth a little bit about that one thing. But it's like maybe 25, 30 minutes max all week and that's on max side of it. And so it's like, it's really not that much of a commitment, but it's like it truly moves the needle. And it's like all we're trying to do as entrepreneurs is find ways to move the needle. That's all we're trying to do. Like what can be ways that can move the needle every single week? So if I can move the needle every single week for 52 weeks a year, like

Joe Rouse (33:34)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (33:50)
Imagine where your business is gonna be and that's all it is. It's so simple but nobody does it.

Joe Rouse (33:55)
Yeah, and that's why sometimes you just gotta pay for it. That's what we do, right? People pay us to coach them in fitness because they won't go do it on their own. And we pay people to guide us. I pay somebody to write my fitness programming and I have a master's degree in kinesiology because I know I'm gonna do it.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (34:01)
I mean

Yeah, I mean, there's I pay for nutrition coaching. there's, mean, there's different like, if you just think about learning, right, things I want to learn, like I'm paying for knowledge to get from other people. Accountability is just put a way of taking that knowledge and putting it into action. But it is one of those things is some of the stuff is so simple. And it's just, but it's just that even like in our group, I still have to reach out to other people that I'm to be like, Hey, are you guys holding each other accountable? Because even from there, you still fall out of it a little bit. And so it's just like, oh, just a little bit reminder here and there. Good to go.

Joe Rouse (34:18)
Mm-hmm.

Do you, what else is it, what's the next steps for, I know we were working on or you were working on the done for you direct mail campaigns. That's something you were talking about doing. You were not gonna do it during Black Friday, but you got everything done for it. What's the next steps? Did you reach out to everybody about that? Did you send that to your leads and everybody you knew?

Brotherhood Beyond Business (34:55)
Yep. So

done for you. Direct mail or SOP was sent out to all the people, personal context, the level of clients, and then also sent out to our entire gym list. Cause that one's focused strictly on gyms. And so that's sent out that whole list. That one's done what I'm focusing on right now. So for this week, my, my three main things are four cards. Those are, have to be done today. Like those are be written. Like I'm to have a breakfast after this podcast. And then from there,

Joe Rouse (35:04)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (35:22)
the first thing I'm gonna do is four handwritten cards. I have moved that now to the first priority every single week because it's so important to our business and I've pushed it off for enough time. That's the first priority every single week. It's not that long. It takes me maybe an hour to do four cards, but it's just one of those things. It's the first priority of the week. Get it done so I don't have to worry about it anymore. Number two thing that I need to do is Jim Calveso. I always say his name, I'm Cabasso.

Joe Rouse (35:45)
Cool,

cool, awesome,

Brotherhood Beyond Business (35:46)
Co-boss.

Yep. It's like, man, I wish I wanted to say it right or wrong. So boss. So, um, I am rebuilding his impact website. Um, and so, uh, I have to get his homepage. My commitment for this week is his homepage rebuilt this week. That's task number two. And then task number three is I'm creating a SO I'm creating, um, an SEO system for fitness businesses. So how, like, how do you help, uh, and search engine optimization for fitness businesses for the website?

Joe Rouse (35:52)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (36:13)
we're creating, we do that for plumbers and trades right now. And so now I'm bringing it back. I've found a way to reduce the price so that gyms can make it's more affordable for gyms. And so I'm redesigning that so that way, okay, here's the main things they need to do. Just pull some things out of that. do like a massive amount of things for plumbers and stuff. I'm just reducing it. What's the minimal effect that can get done for gyms and give it a price point at that one. ⁓ so I'm working on the funnel for that, getting that funnel started. won't have that done this week so that I can sell that, ⁓

Joe Rouse (36:17)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (36:41)
Hopefully in the next few weeks have that out as a recurring membership that we have is SEO marketing for gyms.

Joe Rouse (36:46)
So

SEO for fitness, what would mean that you successfully got that started? What's like one or two tasks that you need to get done to start the funnel for that?

Brotherhood Beyond Business (36:54)
⁓

I would say the, the, the actual funnel started to like making the copying another funnel we have and having all like the settings done for it. guess the settings for the funnel would be really just saying, if I got that far, I'd be really happy. A lot of times for me, it just takes me getting the first step of a project started. And then my mind goes into project mode. And then like, I can't stop thinking about it until this project's complete, which is a great thing. The negative is.

Recurring tasks struggle. I struggle with recurring. really do really well with, with project based tasks.

Joe Rouse (37:25)
I'm the same way. It's so easy. It's something that's really important that needs to get done. And it's very easy to get distracted by it or not to compartmentalize it. It can be, you can set all the time blocks you want on your calendar. But if you're like deep into something and almost feel like you're in a flow state, it is very hard to stop work.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (37:38)
Yeah, that's exactly how I am. Especially now that I have way more time in a row than I used to have. it's like, then you really get in those flow states, like four hours in a row and you're just like locked in. It's really hard. might have something set up after lunch. I'll start in the morning on a project. I have something set up after lunch and I'll wipe that project out and just keep this project going. Cause it's like, I'm in the flow state so good and so exciting right now, whatever that thing is after lunch, I don't want to work on it. That's why for me, it's like, I got to figure out priority wise, what are the biggest mover, needle movers for growth right now?

Joe Rouse (37:48)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (38:06)
and put those at the beginning of the week and put those project-based tasks later in the week because then I can get those tasks done and then I can hit flow state maybe on Wednesday and just work Wednesday through Friday on flow state projects.

Joe Rouse (38:07)
Mm-hmm.

So it's, and it looks like the four handwritten cards are right now, that's your driver for growth with Brotherhood. And then we're gonna go get the SEO, start working on the SEO funnel for fitness, that's level up. What's the update on GCP?

Brotherhood Beyond Business (38:31)
GCP is just, ⁓ continuing to monitor Facebook ads. We've been doing really well with, Facebook ad growth. and then we, I just sent out direct mailers. I got the, the one, direct, when our direct mailers campaign gets sent, I get a card sent to me, what it looks like. And I just got my card in the mail yesterday. And so that means those are beginning to deliver to homes this week. So that's, that direct mailer was to former members. That is just a direct mailer that saying we miss you. Right. So instead of a handwritten card we did to form it, cause we have such a

Joe Rouse (38:47)
Yeah.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (38:59)
a huge list of former members is like, I'm not going to write 380 some cards or whatever. And so we did a direct mailer campaign to them. So that will be going and that's offers is $28, $28, 28 days. So we have that one going on and then our Facebook ads.

Joe Rouse (39:10)
So what's going on, what's working with the Facebook ad, what's gotten better about that?

Brotherhood Beyond Business (39:13)
Well, two things. don't know if things are going better, but like there's two things that are beneficial. One is we were paying for a Facebook ads company before to run them. And we were paying them $900 a month to run our ads. And so we eliminated them and now our VA's are running them for us. And so that's a $900 savings. And so that one, that's huge at the end of the month. And so it's like not to have the extra $900 of somebody running your ads for you.

Joe Rouse (39:14)
because mine are poorly right now.

Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (39:40)
Um, and when we compare ads month to month, we had, got the same amount. actually got more leads. Our cost per lead was lower. Our cost per lead was 1158. So our cost per lead was lower. We didn't end up with more leads, but we also didn't run as big a budget. So with them, we're running a $900 budget a month. So $30 a day. This month, we were only running a $600 budget, which is about roughly $20 a day. Um, just because we're trying to like capture, we had a horrible month with our, Facebook ads company for two months in a row. And that really crushed us on profit margins.

Joe Rouse (39:56)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (40:07)
So we need to reduce everything to kind of regain that. And now we, this month at $600, we got 40, 39 leads at 1158 a lead. So really well there. And according to Nate, were getting one to show at least one to be a legit lead a week. If I think he had a one week where he had three that were legit leads. When I say legit leads, I mean people that we actually got scheduled for our appointment. Not the other ones aren't legit leads. It's just like those are scheduled appointments is what we kind of focus on. so we've, we're getting a lot more in the scheduled appointment thing.

Joe Rouse (40:23)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (40:35)
I don't know anything that's different about how they're running it versus how the other guys work. Cause I'm kind of hands off of Facebook ads. If I'm being completely honest, I don't really touch a lot with them cause I don't, I never really wanted to dive into them cause I don't enjoy Facebook. but it's one of those things where it's like they are getting as good a results for less money. So.

Joe Rouse (40:50)
Yeah, that matters a lot. That's great. Yeah, and that's a solid cost per lead. That's a good number of leads too.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (40:52)
Yeah, but that's going good for them.

Yeah, we're pretty happy with that along with the direct mailers. So remember the way we're using the direct mailers is as a brand awareness tool. And so the idea is like, hopefully when somebody sees our direct mailers and we spend roughly $300 a month, some months like it depends on when you buy a list, it depends on how many people fit in that list. You know, I'd be 250. We put a maximum of 300 on it. So we spend about $300 a month on, on those. the idea is like, I'm already marketing to this, this area, a five mile radius from our gym.

Joe Rouse (41:13)
Mm-hmm.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (41:25)
And now we just pick a current client of ours. We put their address and do a one mile radius of them for the direct mailers. So it's going to their neighborhood, which we know is usually a neighborhood that fits our demographics. And then we also pick, like, you can pick demographics as well on the direct mailer. And so we have a brand awareness that's going to them. And then hopefully that Facebook ad's hitting them sometime in that same period. So we're just seeing GCP multiple times in a row.

Joe Rouse (41:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, dude, and hopefully it gets you set up for a good January.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (41:51)
Yeah, that's a whole foot too. We're not, we're not running a transformation challenge this year. So we're going to push that back into February. So we're hoping for January, because we're really focused on $28, 28 days. And because of that, we feel like that can combat the gyms are doing seven weeks, seven days for free or $1 for this many days, $20, 28 days is more in line with those, those offers. So we can push that a little bit harder in January. And then in February, we can come off with a higher end offer like a

transformation challenge and hit those people that we got leads in over the last quarter, really hit them hard for transformation challenge.

Joe Rouse (42:23)
Call me. Sounds good.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (42:24)
So what are you gonna work focus on this week,

Joe Rouse (42:26)
Let's see, I was writing it down on this side of the paper here. My social media stuff will be done by Friday. Coach Ascension entered into Level Up will be done, at least the text, not the videos. That will be done by tomorrow, so that'll get worked on this afternoon. What's today? Today is Tuesday? Yeah, that'll get worked on. I don't have any appointments this afternoon. And then I need to...

I need to, I noticed it with texts nowadays. Like I get a lot of, like if I'm sending out a text to former leads, like we get tons of stops. I think just because this, partially because of the season, everybody's probably getting hit up with text. But we get really quick D &Ds on our new leads from ads too. Like really, really quick. So I'm gonna review our, I need to, by next week I'm going to review, I'm gonna audit our follow-up process.

which has got to include more consistency in calling leads. And I need to make a decision by our call next week to either hire somebody to do it or I've got to man up and do it and stop procrastinating on it as far as calling leads goes. It's not like I've got a ton of leads coming in right now, but we've got plenty of former leads and about a five to 6,000 person list. So there's people we could be reaching out to.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (43:35)
So I'll give you a tactic after this call about the D &Ds, actually how to physically fix that. But strategy wise, just for anybody that does texting, and so when Facebook lead hits, right, they get a text that's like, you your first text to them. At the bottom of that thing, they'll say like, stop. You have to say that it's required by a technical law now. But if it happens instantly, it was not the human doing it.

it happens instantly, it was the carrier doing it, which means that the carrier is rejecting it. And so you can actually turn that DND back on.

Joe Rouse (44:02)
Okay.

is that when it allows you to turn it back on?

Brotherhood Beyond Business (44:11)
Yeah, you can

actually turn that back on. can show you and level up how to do that. so that's not something fishy or anything because this, person actually didn't do it. and so the, it's a carrier carrier, the carrier is turning on a DND. And so, ⁓ in terms of that, just like, the markets change over the last three years, since like the new rules have been put in for HUP, carriers are getting like more and more, extreme about this. Cause like, there's a lot of, a of, a lot of texting going on.

And so there's different ways around it. And usually when you send off, certain things that certain carriers trigger it quicker than other ones. ⁓ and so we'll, we'll talk about how to actually fix that and level up, but just for all you guys out there, if it's happening to you often, it's actually not your texts that you're sending out to the obstacle. It's actually the carrier itself. That's the obstacle. So don't think you're, you're, maybe your first text is wrong. It's usually actually the carrier's issue, not yours. The same thing happens in emails in certain ways. There's ways around email DNDs too. and I'll explain that again on, ⁓ after this call to you, Joe. So.

Joe Rouse (44:43)
Mm-hmm.

Well, that makes sense. mean, think about how every day you get calls and it says potential spam risk, like right across top of your phone. I'm sure it's a very similar filter or however they do it for text messages with that automatic. I noticed how much quicker those were coming in on text. It's like, man, they just showed interest. They reached out and now they've D &D'd our text messages without even having a conversation.

Brotherhood Beyond Business (45:24)
All right, guys, we're gonna go ahead and wrap up this podcast for the day. We appreciate you guys joining us. We're a little bit longer. didn't expect we'd go almost 50 minutes in this. We're like, didn't really have anything to specifically talk about. but like the accountability call is a good way to kind of go through and see the things that are going on in each other. Like me and Joe might do a couple of different episodes like this over time of just us going through what we're working on accountability wise. Cause I think it allows you to see in real time how we're doing things and like as business owners, what we're actually going through on a week to week basis.

We're going to get back into consistent podcasting again trying to figure out the right themes and stuff to go along But we are excited to talk to you guys again. We'll see you guys in the next episode