SFM Ep 37: David Ralph On Lifestyle Design By Podcasting (Plus bladder control, morning sex and more hilariousness)
In this hilarious episode, I bring David Ralph on to talk about a huge variety of topics. What was supposed to be a conversation about growing your business through podcasting turned into an episode talking about…
- Designing your own lifestyle based on what you love doing
- Daily routines and productivity hacks
- Various tips for applying his podcasting growth hacks to any area of your business
- Secrets on being authentic and getting better results in EVERY area of business
- And a million other topics that will help drive your business forward
… but not before we have a little fun! Throughout the conversation we also discuss having to pee in bad situations, morning sex, and even why he thinks my wife is beautiful!
It’s an entertaining (hint: that’s one of his secrets) episode that you’ll truly love.
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Transcript
Jeremy Reeves: Hey everyone this is Jeremy Reeves and welcome to another episode of the Sales Funnel Mastery Podcast. Just based on the last 2 minutes of conversation that I have had with David, I think we are going to have a really, really fun and funny episode. We have already been laughing, we have been talking about (inaudible 00:00:35) we have been talking about coughing and whose cough is worse. We have been talking about being sexy and that has all happened in about the last 2 minutes. I think this is going to be an interesting one. I am going to give you a super, super quick introduction and then we are going to tell them kind of what we have been just talking about because it was pretty funny.
David is from Join Up Dots, it is a podcast, I think it is a daily podcast and it is listened to over 157 countries worldwide. It is one of the top rank podcast in the world right now. I think he has got something like 300+ reviews which I am extremely jealous of him. I am probably going to ask you about that because I have been — I just started a new strategy to get more reviews from my own podcast.
So, I am kind of going to ask you about that, introduce yourself, tell everybody what you are about and I also want to throw out the warning that David has given me full access to ask him any questions about his life. I am not sure if he knows how dangerous request that is, but we are going to find out.
So David how are you?
David Ralph: I am extremely well. It is an absolute delight to have you on the show — only my show. I am sorry — on your show.
Jeremy Reeves: You are trying to steal it already. C’mon.
David Ralph: I am taking control already, and yeah, I know, I do not think I would ever spoken about somebody is bladder control except that probably my wife during birth that is about the only time ever, so that was a new one for me but I have already enjoyed it.
Jeremy Reeves: So before we get on the show, we were talking about — because he came on Skype and he said, “Alright, I am ready to go†and I said, “Alright, hold on, I had to pee really quick.â€
So we got into a discussion about peeing and we were saying, telling each other kind of what our horror-story peeing or horror-peeing stories, I guess you would call it, and my worst was I was on the phone with a prospect to who was going on a little bit too long and I drank way too much water before the meeting with them and I got to the point actually where I was actually holding a mug and was like about to go on the meeting with him. I did not, thank God, because that would have been funny, although I had to that while I was driving, a couple of years ago going down the Philly I got stuck in a — I drank a coffee — on the way — into a… I forgot what it was, a seminar or some kind of thing at Philly and I got stuck in a really, really bad traffic in an extra 2 hours and I actually had to pee in the coffee cup, obviously that got thrown out since I got there but yeah.
David Ralph: Was it Starbucks? Did you have your name on the side?
Jeremy Reeves: No, it did not have my name on the side. It was a local store. I am not a huge fan on Starbucks, it is a little too dark for me.
David Ralph: I am not (inaudible 00:03:22) coffee anyway though Jeremy. I do not understand why people. In the United Kingdom, it is literally a coffee house on every corner. Everybody wants to drink that much coffee. You can go home and make your own one very easily, I am drinking (inaudible 00:03:37). It is lovely and of the thing I do not like about Starbucks, I want to be a Starbucks rant here, is — I just want to know — it’s like they have created their own language.
What kind of shop expects you to learn a language before you can go in and buy anything from there. So it is a small one, large one, medium. All these red stuff, that is just bizarre. Always a genius marketing. I do not know.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, I think it is smart marketing I think because it is like part of the culture and that kind of thing, but I personally hate it because I do not fall into their tribe or whatever you want to call it. So I do not like it, I go in and I asked for medium. I refused to say venti or whatever it is. I do not even know the different words, but yeah, I think it is smart marketing because you — the people who go to them loyally I think it makes them feel like they are in — it is like a tight-knit community.
David Ralph: That is what it is. It is a Starbucks coffee-drinking cult.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, there you go. I think it is smart but — it is kind of funny because I do things that kind of — the people who resonate with me attracts them more but then the people who do not pushes them away. For example, as you can tell, I am not like super professional. I am me, I am not like — I am not standing here in a business suit that kind of thing — in fact I’m in — actually I am not in pajamas today, usually I am, but I went for a run before lunch today. So I am in — kind of just like running pants and a t-shirt so that kind of thing.
That pushes away some people or attract other people. So I do several things like that in the business.
David Ralph: I am English, I am in Tux. That is what we wear all the time. We love James Bond. I am a professional, Jeremy. I actually dressed up for this.
Jeremy Reeves: I have a feeling that is not the case.
David Ralph: I will send you the pictures. I am only wearing the tux from the top. I want to (inaudible 00:05:47) with me.
Jeremy Reeves: Tux in the top and no pants.
David Ralph: There is an image for you. That is going to boost the downloads up a bit.
Jeremy Reeves: You know, I have actually done that. I have actually worn — done videos for — this is probably 2 or 3 years ago, I have actually done a video. It was in the summer and I was on a — I think it was 611 they have like sales funnel summits that kind of thing.
So you could only see my top half, so I was actually in mesh shorts and I had a t-shirt on before but I threw that off and put like just a regular kind of dress shirt on. So I was standing there, I am on dress shirt mesh shorts under it and no socks, no shoes, nothing like that.
So I have actually partly done that — it was not my underwear that day but close enough.
David Ralph: This is 6 minutes and I hope the listeners are taking notes because this is helpful, we covered that you like to pee in cars but (inaudible 00:06:45) this is gold. This is Emmy Award winning material.
Jeremy Reeves: Well you know what they say, you got what you paid for, right?
David Ralph: Absolutely, it is a dream. Knock me off people.
Jeremy Reeves: I may have to charge for this one.
So actually, it kind of leads me into my first real question. You have done really, really, really well with building your audience, building your podcast, that kind of thing.
Do you think what just happened, is that part of your strategy?
David Ralph: What, like a free-flowing strategy?
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah. Not like, “hi this is Jeremy and this is my guest†and “hey, what are your 3 biggest mistakes? What is your number one thing, the whole, the typical kind of interview is kind of just the free flowing like just talking to another person. One of your strategies that helps you build an audience.
David Ralph: It is a bizarre strategy when so you say you can make entertaining and engaging by throwing all your questions, but that is how life is, you would never go into a bar to meet somebody and then when I come with the drinks you pull out a bit of paper with 15 questions you have written down beforehand but you hit the (inaudible 00:08:04) and a lot of shows that they used to listen to at the beginning. I really, cannot listen to now. I would not say their names but you know who you are guys if you got the same questions time and time again because it just becomes a bit flat really and so I like the fact that — in the show Join Up Dots, I was very fortunate at the beginning, I did not listen to many of scripted shows so I kind of — well I did not listen to any shows really, there is may be about 2 or 3.
So I kind of made the made it up as I went along so I turned on the microphone and did my own thing, and it was interesting as you were saying, Jeremy, you are you. Do not try to be anything else, you do not try to be professional, you are you, and I think that you are a super talent. I think that is the authentic self coming out big time.
So I just basically turned on the mic and did what I did. Now, of course over 500 shows you get better in doing it, so there is not a lot of preamble at the beginning. I literally go like a laser straight to where I want to go but then I came back and forth, back and forth sort of culture into the entrepreneurial story and all that kind of stuff, but no, it was not a strategy but I would certainly say now, I would never go back and it is interesting I am just about to do another show, a spin-off show and it is going to be slightly more scripted because of the content that I am presenting and I am trying to get my head around it because you get so comfortable doing in one way when you actually go to a different format which you got to to (inaudible 00:09:33) it is almost like patting your head and rubbing your stomach. You are trying to sort of work your way through it again, but it has worked really well and my audience is going up and up and up and up and I could not want anything more because it is kind of easy, it is hard-easy if that make sense.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Nice. It is kind of the same — not even just podcast, but all throughout marketing, I always tell people, you cannot expect to just sit there and write kind of like the corporate tone and make sales, it just does not happen because people buy from people and people with podcast and if you are writing articles and stuff like that, they listen to people. They want to be — that is why they called it what is it, edutainment or what is it called, infotainment. It is kind of — there is an actual phrase for it, it is combining education with entertainment and there is so many if you think about it. There are so many shows and stuff like that out there. If you watch any like for example, cooking shows, I love cooking, if you watch any of those shows it is — the judges are funny, they are making jokes, they are like doing — they show all the failures and stuff in the kitchen, something like lights their arm on fire and they are showing it, they kind of laughing about it. That is how a lot of shows and things like that are and because, like you said, it is boring listening to people if it is just the exact same thing over and over and over, every guest that comes on, it is the same questions, it is the same tone, it is the same like all that stuff. You do not come on and start talking about peeing.
David Ralph: Well, I have covered that one now so that (inaudible 00:11:15)so I have moved that one up.
Jeremy Reeves: Nice, nice. By the way for anybody listening, what we are going to be talking about today or kind of — a little bit at least, like kind of wrapping around it, is being a successful podcast and why we are doing them and that kind of thing and how to put them in your sales funnel.
I am going to lean on you a little bit for more like strategy and then I am going to kind of like bring it back and give the readers, well listeners, kind of like some applicable advice relevant — advice based on what you said and that kind of thing.
David Ralph: You take away you want to take me sir and I do not often say that to a man.
Jeremy Reeves: Well, I am privileged to have been said that to. When you are doing podcast, is there — let me ask you this, how did you get started in doing podcast? Was it something — are you kind of naturally like a charismatically seem like it but are you naturally charismatic guy were you walk into a bar and you sit down, you have like 4 friends or (inaudible 00:12:19) you walk in and all of the sudden the entire bar is in a conversation with each other, are you that kind of like personality-driven guy?
David Ralph: I am and I am not. It is quite weird actually. If you put me in a situation, a social situation, I can be quite shy. The famous song, I don’t knw if you remember it from America, but you always find me in the kitchen at parties is my kind of song, so either way I will be standing nearby the toaster hoping that people does not come up to me but when you put me in front to 300 people in an audience situation, I would come alive. You put me in front of a thousand people, I would become better and better.
So I was a corporate trainer and a financial trainer. So I used to stand up doing training courses and it was whirlwind switch. I could sit there for days not saying a word to anyone but then when I chose to be sociable, I can just do it and I have a talent which I did not realized until I left my company, when I did the leap and I left.
I realized that every single person knew me but nobody knew anything about me if that makes sense. So they know me as David, they know me as a trainer, they know me as a friendly personality but if you actually ask, could you name his kids? Do you know where he lives? Do you know what his hobbies are? And all that kind of stuff, you could not.
So I kind of created this facade for myself that I can be out there in the front but I hold a lot of myself back, so that when I am ready to go again, bang! I am there, if that makes sense. Be like Batman, he is not Batman all the time because it just going to get tiring. So he does appear Bruce Wayne and a bit of Batman and I think on the microphone that is when you are super talent, that is your superpower but then you need to lay follow for a while to be able to come back big and strong and that is what I found with Join Up Dots, I would do it hour upon hour upon hour but then once I switched off that was it, that was my other time and I am in totally different personality.
Jeremy Reeves: That is interesting, yeah. It is kind of like just switching back and forth. I am trying to think of like a good analogy but nothing has really come to mind. That is interesting, and I think a lot of people are like that. I am kind of a same way in that like I could go and depending on the situation, I could either be super shy and I just do not want to talk to anybody, I could just kind of sit there by myself or I could be kind of the life of the party, the guy that every — you kind of go in and everybody’s basically knows that you are there and it kind of depends on the situation. I think I am more — in more cases than not, I lean towards more of the shy side but it is interesting how people can switch like that. I wonder if there is any like —
David Ralph: I think the interesting thing Jeremy is, as we have said earlier about you being authentically yourself, being authentically yourself should be the easiest thing ever, it’s actually one of the hardest things because actually allowing yourself to just be you. So it looks like you are making up. Takes a lot of practice and I can see certainly I was very good at being me in a staged situation but then once I started podcasting, I had to grow into again so if you listen back to the early shows, I am kind of myself but I have not got the competence, I have not got the power that I have on the microphone now to make it seem authentically me again. And I could imagine when I start podcasting and I do something else then you got to change again so it is, it’s these little pockets of personality that you have to channel in different ways to be effective for that audience and it’s the same for the website, it is the same for the speech, a pitch or whatever. You tailor it to your audience and so if you need to operate in a certain way on the microphone, then your voice is going to change.
At the moment, I am talking (inaudible 00:16:09)I would not so of wake up in the morning and go, “Hello everybody, fancy a cup of tea and a bowl of cornflakes?†you would never do that, you just say fancy a cup of tea and a bowl of cornflakes it is a totally different way of operating and I find that fascinating of how you have to tailor yourself to become more effective in those different environments.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah and it is funny even if you think of like the beginning of a podcast, it is basically the beginning of it, it is kind of fake because you are like, “Hey, you know it is Jeremy back here again welcome to another episode†if somebody walked in — if one of my friends or a client or something walked through my door and I just finished a podcast episode I would not say, “Hey, it is Jeremy here again. Hey do you want to listen†you know what I mean? Maybe the next podcast episode, maybe I will do a different intro, off to see that. Just have silence.
“I kind of really don’t feel like talking today  so maybe I will do something like that. I am going to say —
So how did you get into podcasting, was there something about it that attracted you? Kind of take yourself back to that timeframe when you were switching out the corporate world coming into what you are doing now and — was there something about podcasting that said, this is what I am going to do, this is going to be my main focus versus going out and doing paid traffic or doing webinars to people or doing articles or all the other gazillion different marketing tools that you can do. Was there something about podcasting that brought you to it that kind of attracted you to it?
David Ralph: There was 2 things, one of the things that we talked on my show Join Up Dots is and my show has various sort of entrepreneurial is about going to leave but we are going different directions, so it is a different show every single time but one of the sort of themes behind it is if you can see something that you think, “Yes, I think I can do that,†you are half way there, then you become better and more professional but you need to find that thing, “Yeah, I think I can do that†and I basically did my corporate leap, I was a web developer for 3 days but I realized it would all be stupid and after 3 days I was thinking I cannot do this. It was fun as a hobby making websites for people but actually doing this all the time is dreadful and I realized that the house was so quite and in the office there was always people walking around having a chat and all that kind of stuff so I thought I am going to recreate the office environment at home and the only way I could think about doing it was putting a podcast so it was like people’s voices in the background and I turned on one just randomly who actually became my first guest in my show and then I listened to another guy, actually it was a gentleman called Tom (inaudible 00:19:03) listening to Johnny (inaudible 00:19:04) talking to John —- never heard of this guy at all then I thought oh he’s got a show, I will listen to that.
I went over to John (inaudible 00:19:11), he was talking to a guy called Michale O’Neill who runs (inaudible 00:19:15)and then I thought, oh Michael was releasing a show, I listened to that so within an hour and a half on a Wednesday afternoon, I’d listen to 3 shows and when Michael was here, I thought this is for me, I could do this.
I did think it was going to be a lot easier. I did think that all I have to do is record some shows, throw it out there, get an audience, get some advertising on blah.. blah.. blah.. and global domination and I did not realized how difficult it is. Once again, how difficult it is to look easy and that is what you think. When you see you like Jimmy Fallon and all those guys and they look like they are just having a fantastic time. You do not realized that they have been rehearsing to 3 days to make it look like an easy fantastic time and I certainly found that with Join Up Dots.
It was something that I felt I could do based around being able to get up and talk in front of people but when once other people were listening and you realized you are not just in the room in an office, people from Alaska and people from Australia are contacting you then that is when you really hit home and you think this is something special. Yeah, basically, where else.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah and I think the big lesson that you kind of take from that is — that is what worked for you. There are probably a lot of people listening to this that are thinking, “Oh my God, I would hate doing podcast, I hate talking to people, I hate going on there and doing that kind of thing†and that is fine. You do not have to do podcast, you do not have to do webinars, you do not have to do articles. You do like I — over the last — I am really starting to get into a role where I am starting to market a lot more (inaudible 00:20:54) and build a big team so our capacity for working with clients has gone way up recently.
So I am going out and doing a lot more marketing than I used to do. So I have been kind of in this phase lately where I have been thinking about like what I want to do and it is not really what is going to work best because all of them will work. If you want to just focus on writing articles, that is going to work. If you want to just focus on paid traffic, that will work. You going to just focus on getting joint ventures to send you clients that’ll work. I you want to just focus on getting referrals from existing clients, that will work.
So everything works it is just what you are going to have the most passion to put into it, so if that is podcasting do it, if that is doing webinars do it, if it is going out and speaking then do it. Speaking for one example that would work absolutely incredible for what I do. I would absolutely kill it but I do not really like doing that because I am not — I do not really travel all that much because of my wife’s whole situation, she has epilepsy and my son has autism so it is hard to travel. That is not, like in my wheel house, you know what I mean. I might kind of thinking of doing it like once in a while or like once a year or something but the point is like you had passion for it and you kind of like — when you get on a podcast, you are probably excited to do it. You are probably not sitting there thinking, “All God, I cannot wait until this is over†is that true?
David Ralph: Well no, I have been a lot of times when you think — I used to do it, not it has slowed down a bit. I used to do 7 days a week, it was a daily one and it was over hour content every single day and so there was times when you think, “I just want to sit on a sofa and watch Netflix for an hour†but I have another 3 episodes to do, but you would never know because as soon as I pressed record “Yes, hello there welcome to another episode of Joint Up Dots. This is your host David Ralph†and boom, I was into it again.
So I think that what it build to professionalism and then I realized that the beauty of doing something is by batching and that became (inaudible 00:23:03). When I started at the very beginning I used to do a show on Tuesday and a show on Monday and 3 on Wednesday and I was all over the show but now I do about 6 or 7 on a Thursday and it is a very long day because it is a 7-hour conversations, all the show notes and everything, so I do probably 16 hours on Thursday but I know that at the end of it I can finish and go “Yeah, I’m actually done for the next 2 weeks. I can come back and look forward to it again.â€
So it is not always the case Jeremy that I look forward to it but when I start doing it you would never know that I am not enjoying it.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah and there are things —
David Ralph: I fake it until I make it.
Jeremy Reeves: Talk about batching a little more because that is another really important kind of business concept that can be applied to basically everything. It is actually something that I — actually today I was working on. I am working on rearranging my schedule to do exactly that.
So certain days are writing days, certain days are meeting days, certain days are podcast days and that kind of thing. So talk a little about that — have you taken that concept of batching and put it anywhere else in the business, like increase your productivity?
David Ralph: Oh absolutely. When I left corporate gig, one of the reasons I left (inaudible 00:24:24)I got very into 4-hour work week (inaudible 00:24:28). So I used to think, “why the hell I am sitting here for 8 hours, when I could it all in 3 hours and I have 5 hours to myself†and then once I got that mindset I started thinking along the lines there is a brilliant book by Richard Koch called, The 80/20 Principle and started looking at when my rewards were coming from my efforts and I saw (inaudible 00:24:50) bought it into it.
So once he started doing the podcast, fondly enough, because it was new, all the productivity hacks I had in corporate lane kind of went out of window and I forgot them and I literally killed myself in the early stages doing 20 hours a day 7 days a week trying to get everything done.
So I know that something had to change, so that is when I started saying no. I am not going to say to people, “Oh yeah, I will be there on Sunday morning to do an interview when I do it first day afternoon, it is going to be first day and if you do not like it — and it is funny people will always say to me, “No I cannot do Thursdays†and I will say, “well that is the only that we can do†and they go, “Oh, I can do Thursdays, 3 weeks’ time†oh then book it then, it is fine.
So I have them lined up, that is brilliant. All my emails and all my conversations with people are going to be scheduled and now I have a Join Up Dots work road, I am looking right now where Wednesday every week is totally free even if I want something to do in the show, I would not do it, it is free and (inaudible 00:25:56) tonight is a work night so I am doing this but tomorrow night it is not, and I structure in free time because I used to find that once the passion hit, I want to do it all the time. It was not work, it was something bigger than work but it is your legacy kind of thing and I would fly up to my recording studio because I do not do it in the house. I’ve actually got a recording studio at the back of the garden and so I used to creep up there at 5 in the morning and I work like midnight and then get up the next morning to do it again.
So I knew that I had to batch in time for me as well. So I have done that and literally every single process that I look at. If I realized I am doing it more than once then I would look a way of automating it somehow. So a lot of the emails that I used to type out manually, they’re all sort of canned responses so I can just send them all a lot of the other things that I used to do, I used to find out I was doing it time and time again and now I have got a lovely lady called Mira in the Philippines, it does a lot of my administration which is great, she does 15 hours a week whatever so that has taken a load of it. I got a couple of guys who is doing my marketing in Serbia and Amsterdam or outside Amsterdam in Holland, so that is good as well.
It really is a case of once you look at your business and you know what you want from it, not from the business but from your life, I am a great believer in starting it by planning your perfect day so that you keep on track on how you want your life to operate then the only way to do that is by batching it, so you know that you going to eat the flock as they say, you have got to go out to the office and do the thing you do not want to do first of all to get it out of the way and then you can (inaudible 00:27:40)after that.
It is very, very structured but because it is structured, it makes it a little bit more flexible.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, it is kind of funny how that works and I like that last sentence that you said, it is very structured but because it is structured it is flexible, because that is — I really cannot even say it any better that perfectly describes how you should be scheduling your days and I totally, totally agree like literally everything you just said because I have a lot of the same experiences, especially having that — I like the Wednesday, having a completely like just — now Wednesday, you said that you basically — it is completely open, does that mean completely open as in you do not work or you can basically work on whatever you want to work on?
David Ralph: No, I basically do not work anymore. I spend the morning making love and — no, I do not really, I would not (inaudible 00:28:34)actually
Jeremy Reeves: You have tried for it every Wednesday at least.
David Ralph: Yeah, I say to the wife, “it is on the (inaudible 00:28:42) it is going to happen.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, it’s on my to-do list.
David Ralph: Yes, I want to do it once before I die, that is all I want to do. So yeah, I do not do anything and last week I went to a local town and just walk around with my wife and the kids and stuff so I tried to totally keep away from it because the passion for doing something you love can ultimately destroy you and I totally believe in that. I went to Spain last year on holiday and when I was over there I have not structured to show well enough. So I was — take my laptop and try to find dodgy wifi in Spanish bars. I could log on to make sure the emails are gone out and all that kind of stuff and after 2 weeks, I came back and realized I have not had a holiday. I was getting up past 6 in the morning and working so that when the kids got up at 10 o’clock I could be there for them in the pool and it was just right, they are not doing something, they have gone into a kids’s cup I get the laptop back out and I carry on working, and that is never going to happen again.
So the 2 things I think Jeremy I have got is the structure to make it flexible and if it goes wrong, if a show does not go well, it is not going to cure. People are clinging to it like a life support system where at the beginning, I used to think it is going to come out, every single day is going to come out every single day and now I think, oh if it does not? I will sort it out, I will apologize on the mic next time and 2 days later there will be a new show.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, I think as entrepreneurs, we put so much — I think most of the stress that we deal with is just self, just self-pressure that we put on ourselves and expectations that we are trying to live up to ourselves. I think like for example, if you have a list like an action list for the week and you do not finish it, in your head you are probably thinking, “Oh my God, I am such a failure, I should just quit business, I should just give up and get a job and blah.. blah.. but if any other person look at that list of what we actually accomplish that week they would look at it and say, “Holy shit, you got a lot done this weekâ€
It is funny because, this goes across the board for entrepreneurs, it is such a big difference I think between like the typical entrepreneur and the typical employee. Obviously, there are people that kind of mix the lines a little bit, but just looking at — typical on both sides, employees pretty much do what they can to get by, to not get fired, and it kind of depends again on the company they are in, the culture of it, that kind of thing, none of my employees are like that because I — they know not to be like that because we talk about it and the whole culture is built around being the best possible person that you can be and that does not really include doing the average mediocre work.
So that is the whole different thing, but most like — the average kind of employee person, a really average person in the world is kind of — they are kind of just like floating by and the average entrepreneur is — I mean we are all pretty much hard workers even if you want me to work 2 or 3 days a week and take the rest off, the days that you are working you are going full force. There is no kind of like medium speed, it is either you are fully on or you are fully off.
David Ralph: But you do not think about it at the beginning, though, Jeremy, do you? When you do, you corporate leave, you think, “I am in the office 5 days a week and I only have Saturday and Sunday to myself, so I am going to leave, I am going to leave and I am going to have pub lunches everyday and I am going to be able to lay in bed. No, you do not. You actually end up working 3 times as long and Saturdays and Sundays are a thing of the past but it does not feel like it somehow because you know that you are building something.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. I think — kind of a typical and at least — the structure in my or the progression I think in my head is you start your business and depending on your background, people that are coming in — it kind of depends on why you want to be an entrepreneur. There is a lot of people that wants to be an entrepreneur to not work a lot. They want the whole like — instant riches and that kind of thing. They come in and it is kind of like — Oh, you know, they see the pictures of you like sitting outside and your laptop, well, they do not know that you have been out there for 12 hours and you are not giving that information too.
They think that what it is and then they get in there and then they realize that, Oh my God, I am working all the time, it is constant, even if I am not working I am working inside my head when I should be with my family and even if I am physically with my family my emotional and mental state is on the business, you are thinking about clients, you are thinking about marketing, you are thinking about —
David Ralph: That is the problem I have. That is the switching off. That is the problem I have. When I am with my family, I not really with them and I find that very, very difficult and I say, “oh c’mon let’s watch the new Muppet film tonight†and I do not hear the word that Kermit says. He is like a mute frog.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, and one of the things that might help you by the way is — I have actually had — my typical days, I work from roughly 6 o’clock until about 3 o’clock and then from 3 to 7 is family time and then after that is either my time or I come back and I work a little bit, getting stuff ready for the next day or from behind that something — that kind of thing.
So between 3 to 7, what I am starting to do that has really been helping is I shut my computer off at 3 o’clock when I go upstairs and I actually give my phone to my wife and she hides my phone and I do not where it is, so I literally cannot check my email or go on and get calls and that kind of thing.
That is one thing that has helped me and I need to actually do it more, I will do it every day. I will make sure, actually when we get off this call I will be done working, so I will go up and give her it today, but that is when I — on the days that I do that it helps a lot because it just kind of — for some reason, it just switches your brain a little bit when you know that you cannot check it but that helps a lot.
David Ralph: Because I cannot check anything when I do not have the phone, I do not have the tablet, I have no mobile devices at all. So I have a plugged in stand in the desk double monitor system and once I turn that off that is it. I do not have a watch so I do not what time it is, not one person can contact me, I absolutely switched off and it drives people mental because they want to contact me when it suits them and I say, what is your cell phone number I do not have a cell phone and then they get, how do you operate? Well I have been doing it for 45 years, I am alright, but that is how I do it I just make sure that I have no way of being contacted, I kind of like that.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, it is nice. It has to kind of be like an all or nothing thing and then it kind of bringing it back to like what you said, if you kind of mix that with that batching, you get so much more done. I have noticed even just — if you think about like all the things that we are all doing, there is like — you write down your to-do list and it just keeps going. It almost like your hand starts hurting by the time you are even getting anywhere near the end of it and it just goes on and on and on and then you finish a project and that brings up 3 or 5 or 10 more things to do. It is a non-stop kind of like escalator of to-do list.
One of the things that I found is by kind of categorizing them that helped me kind of free my brain up, going back to what I was saying before I have days that are just writing days, I have days that are just talking to clients and podcast and that kind of thing and so when I am — like today is not a writing day for me, Wednesday is going to be a writing day for me.
So I am not even — I already know — I already have it planned out on — this Wednesday what I am going to be writing, I do not think about that until Wednesday comes because I have it written down and planned and even — I am trying to check my counter here — sorry, Thursday is a writing day not Wednesday.
The fact is I have certain days for certain things and that has helped me kind of — by doing that like chunking and breaking it into certain like kind of categories like that, that has helped me with the whole thinking about everything all the time. Just writing it down rather than being in your head. If you write it down, okay I got that, that is going to be done on Thursday. Okay, this other thing that’s going to be done on Friday, this other thing that is going to be done on Wednesday and when it gets down then you just wake up every morning and you look at your weekly to do list, your monthly to do list and all that kind of stuff and you already know it just relieves so much stress from your mind.
So that when you are working on whatever you are working on, you are actually there. You are present with it and working on that and then when that is done for the day, you finish your to-do list for that day, you go upstairs you see your family and you are actually with them versus being with them and your work is still down there and you are in both places, does that make sense?
David Ralph: It makes total sense. There is a guy, famous online guy, Pat Flynn and when he started he was actually like a stay-at-home dad and he would work from something like 10 o’clock until 2 o’clock in the morning every night. So his kids never saw him working at all and he created this whole industry while he is gone on those peak hours because he knows it is the quiet time, nobody is going to bother him. His phone was not going to ring and he cracked it, I like to get up and do — I like to be at my desk by 5 in the morning and I would like to do 5 to about 7 and then the kids get up for school and then I like to be with them until 9 so that they go off to school and when I come back and then the idea is, as you say, I work from 9 o’clock until 3 going to pick the kids up again and then that is it unless I have other things to do in the evening and that kind of works well for me. I am very much more productive. You get this (inaudible 00:39:12) owls. I am a terrible owl by the time it’s 9 at night, I am ready for bed but at 4 o’clock in the morning I could get up at any time and get going and I find that very, very productive.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, it is really a similar, I mentioned my schedule before it was really, really similar to mine. Even the school time is countered and when he goes 8 o’clock they come down stairs and get ready and he gets on the bus to go to school about 8:30 or so and I come back down but then I pick him up. On Thursdays, I pick him up at 11 and it is kind of — you lunch with them, spend time with them that kind of thing, but it is really, really, really similar.
I hate when people say like, oh well, that works for me so that is what you have to do. There are some people that — and I know really, really successful people. They do not wake up until noon and they work from, most of them do not have families, they work from noon until, 9 or 10 o’clock at night and then they go out and party and then they go to bed and they wake up. They go to bed like 4 and they wake up at noon and that works for them.
Some people are built differently, you are in different stages in your life, you have different family issues, you have more or less energy in different points of the day. It really just depends on what you are used to and what you like. I am all about lifestyle design, I think both of us.
David Ralph: Yeah, but that is the madness about corporate life that I used to be but they go everybody is going to be at their desk by 9 o’clock in the morning and everybody has to work until 5, but as you see some people that is not good for their body clock. They would be much better to do it later on. It just seems lunacy that you have to work around somebody else’s timescale.
Jeremy Reeves: Absolutely, yeah. We are starting to get a little bit close to the end of time — our time together, I should say. We will bring it back for maybe 1 or 2 more questions about podcast and kind of go like that but I really like our kind of deviation there and to more of like the lifestyle design and that kind of thing because I think it is important to talk about because some people they want to — I apologize my dog, one second, I am going to go and get the toy off my dogs. Alright, and I am not going to edit that out. The full me, the authentic Jeremy and his dogs.
Some people, it depends so much on the stage of your business and why you started the business and your situation and that kind of thing. For me, I was never and will never be interested in building a huge 8, 9, or 10 figure business. I do not want to do that. I do not want to have — I think that kind of my max employees I ever want to get to is around 10, give or take 1 or 2. So I can develop my business very easily with that like working how I want to work. I am not looking to build a business that I am going to build up and sell it for 10 million or anything like that, like a software company — it is just me, consulting business.
So I can kind of schedule it how I want it to be done and enjoy it now instead of waiting 20 or 30 years, but that is me. There is other people — there is probably a lot of people listening to this and I know a lot of my clients are in the situation where they do not have families or they have made the conscious decision to put that off for a little bit and build a 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 million dollar company and then sell it and then do whatever they want after that and right now they are in the stage where they are working just all day, all the time, they are always on, but the ones that I know that are doing that have made conscious decision about that.
Typically, they are not letting the business grind them into a pulp they have made a decision and said, okay, I am going to do this, I am just going to work my ass off all the time, forget about my friends and family and stuff like that for the next 3 to 5 years, I am going to sell it and then I am going to use the 5 or 10 million dollars or whatever they get when they sell it to then live their kind of perfect lifestyle.
There is nothing wrong with either approach, it is what you want to do. Some people like to with exercising, some people like to run, some people like to lift, some people like to eat really healthy, some people do not. They like eating McDonald’s all day, it is just your choice I think. What do you think about all that.
David Ralph: I think you are absolutely right (inaudible 00:44:08) and no matter how you do it, I certainly would like to be beyond comfortable but have no employees or anything, that would be my thing because as soon as you start getting employees even if you got the virtual ones, there is a certain hassle that comes with it and so I would very much — my utopia would be that I come up to the microphone, I record and the whole monetization of my show is based around me talking into the microphone, so that is very much what I am building at the moment. So I have got 5 different income avenues coming through to me and is very much under my control, so I agree with you totally. I think that global domination and a huge business it might be exciting for some people but I just think it is going to be a pain and on Monday afternoon when it is raining and I just want to watch, I do not know, Top Gear on telly with a nice cup of coffee but I cannot because I have got to then be talking to some employee or whatever.
Keep it as small as possible but as profitable as possible is my way.
Jeremy Reeves: Sure, definitely, definitely, I like that. So speaking of — with podcast and stuff like that, how are you using your podcast to kind of fund your lifestyle?
David Ralph: I have got different avenues. When I first started it, the plan was to have advertising front-end and end and mid-row in the middle and once I started getting into it and I realized I was at the point of being able to monetize by sponsorship I suddenly had this moment when the clouds opened and for some reason, I thought to myself, this seems a bit dodgy to me.
Getting somebody to pay me money and if I decided that I do not want to advertise on my show anymore there is my income, it just disappears. So I changed totally, and I thought to myself, now what I am going to do, I am going to have that as a bonus. If I get to the point when I am fully funded by myself by then I can do sponsorship and stuff, that is great because it would not affect my lifestyle. So why did I created Podcasters Mastery was the first — well, the first one I did was a bit of coaching, that is what paid the bills and once I got a certain amount of coaching clients I decided to do a Podcasters Mastery which is my online platform, it is about 400 videos because when I started podcasting, I realized that it is very easy to podcast but it is very difficult to grow a business around podcasting and that is a different ballgame and a lot of the training courses out there were very much focus on that, teaching you how to record and edit and push up a podcast.
So I teach people how to record and edit within 2-1/2 minutes afterwards so your whole show is done and dusted and very productive fast sort of traffic. That has been very lucrative for me and then I podcast mentoring one to one if anybody wants to come along then I want to do the online vote I would do that. Public speaking has been okay, I have done a few of those which is quite easy money because I have so done it before and it is quite good I have done a couple of them, well I actually been into conferences on Skype and I do not even have to leave my home and it is just like doing a radio show, I just sort of been in and I can see the audience in front of me and I say, yes the lady over there on the left hand side and I can sort of run it from home, that is good but the one I am building at the moment, I have a lot request for a group membership, a group mastermind which I was a bit reluctant to do at the beginning, but I am just about to get that off the ground and we are aiming for — but I was going to big dreams so we are aiming to get a million people into that. So we are going to keep it very low cost, but try to over deliver on value on a daily basis, that excites me because once again it is scalable — it’s the scability that you can do what you are doing and it affects numerous people, a million people if you can possibly do it.
That is how I have done it and I have created a very nice income for myself and it is unusual because a lot of podcasters struggle and I think that when I struggle, Jeremy, let us just be quick on this, is they create a show but I do not think about how they are going to monetize it, so I will say to people, podcasting is not a business, podcasting is the engine on a business.
So you have got to think a bit like a business owner first of all then find out what your customers are looking for then create the podcast about that content that those problems or issues that they have got then it starts coming together, but a lot of people start recording, they do 200 shows and I think how do I make money from this — it’s just (inaudible 00:49:00) money.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, it is funny because if you look at that and you take a step back from what you just said, that is how you build the sales funnel. You do research, you understand your customer, you give them what you want and then you find a way to get them to it. It is applicable in any kind of business whether it is, first of all, just building the sales funnel itself but then also even driving traffic into it whether you are doing podcasting or all the other things I said before — referrals or strategic alliances with people or articles or whatever it is. It is all about notice that you said the customer first like find out what they want. Find out how are you going to build that customer is first and get a like-minded group of people here and then okay I have them, now what would I do to monetize it.
I think the part that people missed is that a lot of people will create something first and then try to find the audience where as you should be finding the audience and then creating the product to give to that audience that is there, it typically works better that way.
David Ralph: It is obvious so isn’t it? It is totally obvious. If you want to be a millionaire, burger or hotdog seller, you put your hotdog stall where people are the hungriest. It just seems simple and so if you can find out where the issues are in people’s lives and then put your hotdog stall there then it is an easy win. Yes, you have got to work on it and you got to do other stuff, but people seem to put their hotdog stall next to Starbucks where all the other places are and it just seems bizarre where operating. You have got to go on your own path, you have got to find your own thing become authentic going full circle to this conversation. You find your own thing, your authentic that is going to appeal to a loss of people but there is going to be a lot of people that dislike you as well, do not worry about that because you are building a tribe, then canvass them.
Find out what their issues are, their problems and then start presenting it to them and that is it, simple.
Jeremy Reeves: That is beautiful advice and one last thing before you hop off, I also want to point out to people that you do not just have one income source. You have several services and things that you have given to people based on the type of person because I am sure you know there is a lot of people that listen to your podcast and different people want different things.
I talked about this all the time about having a kind of like an ascension ladder of offerings that you give people and it could start as low as — mine go from $7 which is a 50-page or 40 something like that I gave away for $7 and it goes all the way up to — I am going to be launching this month a program for $120,000 a year. That is a very, very big ladder, but the point is there is people that want each step in between that.
A lot of people do like the $7 report and that is typically just the kind of check you out and see if you know what you are talking about and then there is a lot of people that get like just my information products and there is a lot of people that get some smaller level services maybe like just 1 sales letter or a couple of quick email campaign or something like that and then there is people that get full on sales funnel rather and then there is people that have to go way beyond that because they have a 10 or 20 or 30 million dollar business and just doing a sales funnel once is not really enough for them. They need constant tweaking and they need better strategy and you have to go in and find their hyper response of customers and you have to and you have to start testing each individual step of the funnel that kind of thing so it requires much higher level of service.
It is the same thing with you, what you do to help people. There is a different levels of services and I always try to tell people that is the case in every single industry in the entire world.
I am working with the client now, he is in the dating niche we have everything from a $1000 up to $15,000 for dating. It is just — I worked with them actually another one of my clients they have everything from a free book, so they have a free book on the front end and then they have like membership sites and stuff like that for like — one of them is $97 a month, another one is like $3 grand for the year and then they have a trip, it is for finding Filipina wives, for guys who like — they are trying to find what fine wives that are Christian Filipinas, right? It is a very specific.
So they have everything from that and then they also — their highest level of service is a vacation to the Philippines where they charter the whole thing, they give you like a tour guide over there like the whole shebang and meet the girls that you are kind of like interested in and that kind of thing and it is a different packages but I think it is typically between like $30 to $70,000 for like a 2-week trip. It is like — all it is is just your mindset and people are going to pay and obviously they are not getting thousands of people every year to do that but the people that do do that it makes up so much of a good margin for them that they can afford to lose money on the front end because they know a small portion is going to do that really high end thing and it completely — makes it working for them so that is like — when I tell people all the time is make sure that you are taking care of all of your customer’s needs because most people just do not.
David Ralph: There is the gold, that is the gold. For all the listeners out there just play that back, if you are thinking of starting a business, just play that back because it is there. That is your blue print for success that Jeremy is just giving you.
Jeremy Reeves: It took 57 minutes to get to it. We have to peel back the whole bunch of layers of onions.
David Ralph: We got there and even the dogs joined in (inaudible 00:55:09) .
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah right. They are standing in my feet right now, poking at my legs because they want to go outside.
So I have an awesome conversation today, it has been fun, it has been funny, it has been entertaining and educational. I am very glad that we got to meet and I think we will be working together in the future, in couple different things, I can be probably reaching out to you for some help with the podcast, actually.
So tell everybody where they can find out about you, if they have a podcast and they are trying to grow it, maybe why they should grow the podcast, I think we went over that a little bit. You are given like 30, 60 second pitch and basically why they should reach out to you.
David Ralph: Well you can always just come over to Join Up Dots that is the home were everything is there and so you will get a collection — it is not even a collection, it is coming up to 500 shows that you can listen to with the entrepreneurs of the world, some high movers, some low movers and people with interesting stories that is the great place to start and then all our products are there, I think the main one at the moment to anyone who is out there who has got a business, all that they’re thinking of doing a podcast is Podcasters Mastery because we go into such a level of depth from that one that people have written to me numerous times and said we have been buying courses left and right and center over the last 6 years but this is the first one has made sense and that really sold as an ex-trainer, somebody who can explain something that means the world to me, that people say it make sense and they can now see the big picture.
Just come over to Join Up Dots and if you want to drop us a line, we would love to hear from you, it has been absolutely great to be on Jeremy‘s show so thank you very much Jeremy, you are an absolute legend. I have to say I am going for your website, you have got a very pretty wife but I wonder why it is filled with cake all over her face.
Jeremy Reeves: What was the last part?
David Ralph: Why does she got cake all over her face, it is obviously your wedding.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, that was on our wedding day. We smash each other in the face with cake. We stayed — funny enough, we actually still do stuff like that. We still have a very, very in fact since we got married we are — we just celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary and our relationship is a thousand times better than it was when we got married even. Incredibly fortunate to have finally married her but that is the reason —
David Ralph: She’s now 400 pounds because of all that cake you have been giving her.
Jeremy Reeves: I think she is actually the exact same weight that she is now than we got married. I am pretty sure — within a pound or two. I am pretty sure she is like the exact same weight. She’s gone up and down — we have 2 kids and obviously she’s gone up and down. She has got lucky, her whole family — she got the skinny genes but yeah, we still do — we are still very much kind of that like — kind of playful love type of thing. If we are eating cake, sometimes I will just walk by her and just smear it on her face and run away.
David Ralph: That is the way to keep it vibrant.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, definitely. In fact, I can actually hear my — she is with my kids right now, I can hear them upstairs screaming.
One thing that I want to point out, people go to JoinUpDots.com if you go on his David’s navigation bar, and click on work with me that is where you going to find out all of the various options that he has, there is the Dream Starters Academy group membership, there is Podcasters Mastery Online Training, one-on-one mentoring and public speaking, so if you are doing any events stuff like that, just so when people go to JoinUpDots.com they know where to go.
David Ralph: Perfect. You are a legend, the way you just directed traffic where you wanted to go.
Jeremy Reeves: I am a salesman. I am a very, very big believer in basically selling as hard as you can when you know that is going to help the other person and it is the only I turned down projects all the time because I just do not believe in it, constantly every single week. That is how I think people should be living their life. If you own a business then you are not 100% compassionate about it, you should not be in it. I actually had somebody the other day who — they were asking me kind of what to do and they said, you know I am trying to explain it to people and people just are not getting it. Instead of saying you should try this technique and this thing I said you know you might want to consider getting out of the business entirely. People just do not get it and there is not just enough there.
Some things you just get, they just are not. You just have to leave it because people do not want it and it is the same way like if you were not going to work every day and you are excited to get out of bed, when I get up every single day I cannot wait to get down stairs. You can ask my wife, even yesterday. So I took the whole weekend off. Yesterday, I was telling her — we were playing with the kids and I remember looking back and I was like I cannot wait to get up and work tomorrow. Literally I get excited to get up and work and I feel like — if you do not have that passion, then you should not be in it. Maybe put that business on autopilot and start something you are passionate about depending on your finances and everything. That is kind of how it feel about selling it.
A lot of people are kind of shy about selling what they have. I have to go over this — this is the big mental block that a lot of clients have — is that they are like, I feel bad like I should not be putting up pop ups on my site and I should not have sales letter that sales — they should just come to me that kind of thing and I am like, alright question number 1, do you love what you do for your clients? Yes. Does it help them? Yes.
Then why you would not want to tell them about it? I mean there is no — if you know that you are ripping them off and yeah you shouldn’t be doing it anyway but like if you are feeling in your heart that you are ripping them off then I could understand that you kind of just… you do not want to really put anything up there but if you are genuinely helping people I mean you should be singing your praises until the cows come home because you know that you can help people and you should be doing everything in your power to make sure that you can help them.
David Ralph: I know exactly what you mean sir.
Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah and I can tell that is how you live your life and you do awesome work obviously, just look at your podcast and the success with that and your history so again anybody if you have a podcast or you are interested in starting your own, I would recommend it because it is fun and it is like I was saying in the last episode, it is one of the 3 big things that I am focusing on over the next 90 days because it works, it really does because you can show your expertise, anymore it is all about transparency, you cannot hide behind walls I was telling you before, I do not think you should be getting — because I never do notes on podcast and neither do you and I was saying like you should not be doing it if you cannot just go and talk for 30 or 60 minutes about whatever your topic is without notes. I never, ever, ever have notes.
David Ralph: Steve Jobs once said, and I love this because — as I say, as a trainer, you see so many people clinging to PowerPoint. I used to say, if you know your subject, you do not need PowerPoint, he said the same thing and I think that on a show like this, you should be able to do deep dives and backgrounds and whatever because you know your subject and that is the only reason people they kind of come and listen to you because you are talking knowledgeable and there was a lot of shows out there that are fun to listen to but there is no point to them so that’s certainly not the one that I have and the one that you have, there is a message behind it and if you cling to that message you can go anywhere you want really but that flavor of what the show is delivering it is going to be there every single time.
Jeremy Reeves: Absolutely, absolutely. That is a good way to end the show for today. Again, I really appreciate you coming on. Everybody go to JoinUpDots.com and I apologize for the dogs again, now they are whining to go outside, but go to JoinUpDots.com and let me know if anybody has any questions for me about David, if you have any questions for him, just shoot either of us an email. That is about it. Thanks again for coming on and I will talk to you soon.
David Ralph: It has been absolute delight sir. Thank you so much.
Jeremy Reeves: Thanks.
