Swell AI Transcript: EP 48.mp3
INTRO: What if you could build a business in the modern world as big or as small as you want without having to compromise the things that were the most important to you in the very beginning? This is the Wealthy Consultant Talks podcast with Taylor Welch and Mike Walker, and they share with you today their learning lessons from stories in their experiences over the past 10 to 15 years and share with you right here, right now. Let's get into it.
Mike Walker: What is going on my friends? Mike Walker here, Taylor Welch.

Taylor Welch: You crunched that intro, man. I'm really proud of you.

Mike Walker: All right, all right. Let's go. TWC Talks Podcast. Thanks for being with us, guys. We're just jamming, having a good time. It's what we do. If you're not having fun, you're not really wealthy. You got to actually enjoy what you're doing. And ironically, that's a little bit of what we're talking about today. So Taylor, permission to be wealthy. That's what we're talking about. let's jam, permission to be wealthy. What's that mean to you? And let's fill people in on what that feels like, because we've been getting some interesting client conversations going, so let's fill them in.

Taylor Welch: Yeah, we're like, we're in an awesome period where we're just like finally, we're ramping up some of the operations inside of this particular brand. And one of the interesting pieces is there's a lot to do. And when you grow something, I actually just did a podcast this morning for daily mind medicine and talking about growth is brutal. Like the brutality of growing something. I don't think people give it enough, uh, enough, credence in terms of when you change the speed or velocity at which something is growing, you are having to pay a massive price to do that, which is a hell of an opener, by the way. People are probably like, why am I listening to these guys telling me how depressing life is? If you're an entrepreneur, you know what I'm talking about. We were having a conversation yesterday, and somebody said on a call, I don't make enough money to be this stressed. I'm like, yo, welcome to the story of everyone's life who's ever built something. There's all of these… Pressures that you feel and so what I what I'm thinking about Talking about today is just kind of going back and forth and having a conversation around some mental models That can help you deal with the the pressure of being an entrepreneur and the pressure of growing something the longer I do this Mike and you've been doing this for 20 years like we've put together a formidable career and case study around the the way to get Rich is not through what you do, it's actually through what you don't do. You can make money… by doing things, but if you want to become like the top 1% and get into the upper echelon of earners and producers, it's really through what you choose not to do. And we just had a brilliant conversation about this before, talking about this for you as your schedule gets busier and you take on more. And so I think we can talk about our own challenges in this sphere. I think we can talk about some of the client conversations in terms of giving yourself permission to do less. because it really isn't a permission issue. But why don't you maybe start us off, because you're going through an up leveling right now. There's a lot on your calendar. There's a lot of different people pulling on you. And you're having to firsthand go through the process of removal and subtraction, because that's the way to growth. It's not always addition.

Mike Walker: Yeah, that's it. It's speeding up by reduction and trimming things off. You know, one of the biggest things, and you and I do it when we jump on onboarding calls with people that are coming into the chamber and whatnot, you know, one of the first things we talk about with them is, hey, look, yeah, we wanna make more money, we wanna get bigger teams, we wanna do this, we wanna do that, and they wanna grow, they wanna add, they wanna, you know, increase. But before we increase and grow, we actually do what? We start chopping things off. What is bloated? What can we remove? Because you can remove something way faster than you can add something, right? And so it's one of those things, and it's the exact same way in schedules, like what I'm looking through now too, like to your point, you know, it's, success or acceleration or enhancing output is not going to come through doing more. It's going to be by refining, distilling down to those key things that produce the highest leverage. And I think For a majority of people listening here, I would say most people are nodding their head like, oh yeah, not rocket science. Yeah, well, it's one thing to know something, it's another thing to actually do it. And you said something brilliant on the call that you and I were having about the fact that that actually also means cutting off good ideas or good things. You know, that's the challenge. People are like, well, yeah, I'll just get rid of all the things that I know aren't good or I know aren't the highest leverage activities. But there's actually things that are, and you're still gonna have to chop those things off or delegate, automate, eliminate, right? So that's the challenge then is now you're starting to filter through all the good stuff and finding things to get rid of or delegate out. So it's a challenge, man, to be sure. There's no dull moments in the growth curve of entrepreneurialism, that's for sure.

Taylor Welch: To your point on that, that's where the utility of having outside eyes comes into play. When I'm looking at your roster of activities, it's very easy for me to say, dude, this doesn't make sense. And you're like, but that's needed. And I'm like, yes, someone else. It's needed for someone else to do. But then when you look at my calendar, my responsibilities, Sometimes I'm not quite as good at doing that for myself. And so I require someone else to be like, why are you doing this? And so for me, like, you know, Gabe's who we, we should bring Gabe's on the show. She should do the intros for us. Cause she's so happy. She would make it. We would, we make everyone like really like intellectual and like think, but Gabe's would just make people happy. We need to get her on the, on the show, but she'll look at my calendar. She'll be like, why are you doing this? And I'm like, well, because, Because I've always done it, and it has to get done. That doesn't make any sense. You have 15 staff that can take this off your plate. You're no longer doing this. So it's ironic, and I told you that this morning. I said, man, this is the pot calling the kettle black. Because it's easy for me to say, you shouldn't be doing this. This doesn't add to the net improvement of the organization. But we do it sometimes with, we do it in our own lives. We're guilty of committing treason against our future selves. And the issue there is because we don't have the perspective sometimes to view 10 years out, 100 years out. I was talking with somebody two days ago about, can you get to 100, 400, 600, 1,000 years out? And they're like, what's the point of that? But the point of that is that you know everything you're doing right now ties into a long-term purpose. So maybe we can give some tactical takeaways. For me, when I look at my calendar and when I look at my schedule and what I'm building and what we're doing together, there are two types of things that I believe should be reduced immediately or eliminated immediately. The first is something that someone else can do. 100% of the time. If there's something that someone else can do, then that means that it's likely not something that is my unique genius. The only caveat to that is if it makes me happy. If it's something that someone else can do but it makes me happy and it gives me energy, then I'll hang on to that because I want to capture the yield from the energy. But the second thing that is instantly cut from my calendar or my responsibilities are things that remove more than they add. things that take away more than they contribute. And this is an interesting mental model for people to go down. We can do this together if you want, even on this episode. But when you sit down and you look at writing the book, you just wrote a book, Shameless Plug, the excellent experience, we'll be launching that next year. How much energy did that require from you to do it? And let's just be honest because I think that people need to know how hard it is to produce great work. How hard was that for you to do?

Mike Walker: Yeah, it was definitely an iterative process over about 90 days of research, distilling information and notes, going back through those notes again, reading them, going back over it again. It was a multiple iterative process, to be sure. I loved it. It was really fun and enjoyable, and I think we got high leverage out of it, but it was intense, to be sure.

Taylor Welch: So already we're like, okay, this is something that we're probably gonna do again because it makes you happy And it's something that you loved and it gave you energy But this the the second question is how much will that contribute into our organization? Into your own brands for the future and let's just ballpark it because there's no way for you to know until you have it published But what do you think that will contribute to the wealthy consultant to Mike Walker? to our future

Mike Walker: I think it's a huge lift. The whole topic of client services and retention is something that very few people are talking about. As you know, they're all about go get new clients, go get more clients, get you more leads. And we're flipping that on its head. Well, what if you just keep the people you already got? And so it's needed in the marketplace. That's my biggest statement there is that we're producing something that's beyond just what we want or need. It's what the market needs. We're going to impact a lot of businesses beyond just our own with that information that we created there. So it's gonna be, I think it's a seven-figure lift to the business long-term, knowing that that book's gonna be circulating for a very long time and all the cool features and things that we're gonna weave within it. So I think it was a very high leverage activity for sure.

Taylor Welch: Agreed. So that's something we'll definitely do again next year because it made you happy, it gave you energy, it was really hard, but it did not cost more than it contributed. This is that cost-benefit analysis. There's the rice analysis that you can look at, which is like the the confidence you have in it, how hard it will be. Do you remember that score? Like we've taken people through this Rice score before.

Mike Walker: Yeah, I haven't used it in a long time. I'd have to refresh my brain on it. But it's definitely a good frame to run projects through.

Taylor Welch: Yeah, so it's basically got your impact, your confidence, your effort, and your reach. We don't really use the reach as much, but if you take the book, for example, you have the impact of the book, massive, huge. It's a multi seven, eight figure lift. Then you have the confidence. How confident are we that that book will make a big difference? Very confident. On a scale of one to 10, it's hell up there. And then when you look at the effort, it was hard, but it was only 90 days of work. It really wasn't that bad. So the effort is relatively low compared to what we're getting. Compare and contrast this to like, let's say that Mike has the idea to come in and he's like, hey, this is a great idea, guys. I've figured it out. We're like, cool, share it, lay it on us. We're going to build an automobile manufacturing plant. It's going to be the wealthy consultant automobile business. And we're going to compete directly with Hyundai and Honda and Toyota. And I'm like, yo. the effort there is actually so catastrophic that there's almost no reality where that makes sense inside of wealthy consultant. And so that's just a stupid example, but all of the time we have these ideas like, I have an idea, we can do this. It's like, you know what? You're right, that'd be a great idea. We could work 10 years and maybe make $100. It's awesome. Congrats on that. So when you take it through this analysis of filtering and thinking, what we're really doing is we're trying to disqualify ideas. That's what we're trying to do.

Mike Walker: And you and I have a lot of ideas, dude. I will say, between you and I's brains, we have a pretty solid telegram feed. And there's so many ideas that I don't send your way, by the way. And I'm sure you have the same, right? We got journals of ideas, but it's what we don't do versus what we do do.

Taylor Welch: Yeah, what did we say the other day? We're refreshing some of the programs and the events by the way. We just sold out February, the ski trip, Barcelona. We're going to sell out. We'll be in Barcelona, London. We'll be in Canada 2025. Pray for us. We got to We got to figure out how to cross the border. Canadian borders. No joke, man. It's easier to get to Europe than it is to Canada sometimes. I'm like, yo, we're literally y'all's best friends. Neighbors. I don't know. Neighbors. I don't get it. But the refresh we're going through is a process of what's not needed. And if it's not needed, it doesn't contribute to the client experience. It doesn't contribute to the overall net growth of the business. If you can cut it and it doesn't break anything, you should probably just cut it.

Mike Walker: And that was probably one of my favorite takeaways from you and I's conversations last week was that exact thing, or maybe it was two weeks ago, actually. Can we remove it? And if we do remove it, does it break things? And if it does break things, how badly does that break things? And that's just such a cool filter. Things tend to grow. I just had this conversation with a client yesterday, actually, Over time, things just kind of blowed out. Team, expenses, calendar, commitments, everything seems to just kind of, it's like a gravitational pull. I think it's just the nature of life in general and physics, I suppose, that things just start to kind of accumulate over time and collect. And we have to get in there. And I think in periods of growth, like we're experiencing now here at Wealthy and Soul, it's like, that has to become a practice that we do more often. We pick up the frequency of that filter again and go, okay, well, it's been 60 days, let's run it again. It's been 30 days, let's run everything through it again. And that elimination, speeding up through elimination is critical. It's very basic, really, in principle, but again, just because it's basic, don't confuse simplicity with sophistication.

Taylor Welch: Ooh, don't confuse simplicity with sophistication. Very nice. Let's end here. I think this is the big caveat. If we can throw an ultra disclaimer at the end as a warning, because I think that the entrepreneurs, we are driven creatures and we usually have large targets and large goals, but we're extreme and we're intense. I was I forget where we were. My wife is an entrepreneur as well, so she's pretty intense. And you know Lindsey, she's super nice, but she'll get you if you get in the way. And she was saying, why are you so stressed? And I was like, I'm not stressed. She's like, we're at dinner and she's like, you seem stressed. And it took me to the end of the conversation or the end of the dinner to realize, oh babe, I think what's happening is like, I'm not stressed. I'm intense. Like right now I'm in an intense mood. I was like, I'm not stressed about anything, but like, I want a margarita and I want it the right way. And they work here and I pay them money. So they need to do their job. And she's like, geez, okay. It's just like, yo, I was like, I'm not stressed. I got a drink. of a long day, I'm intense. And so entrepreneurs tend to have this where we have these moments where we're really intense and we'll take something and we'll like extrapolate it out larger than it should have been. And so this theme of what we're talking about is like deleting and subtraction and it's be careful that you don't remove things that make you happy. I think this is a problem. When an entrepreneur really gets this and you figure it out, you can come through, you can talk with us, we're like masters at helping people free up their calendar, free up their time, get into their top 20%, and all of a sudden, people start making more money, they're way happier, and they have more time. It's just a product of following the model. But every once in a while, someone will go, oh, I'm just gonna delete everything then. And it's like, whoa, okay. And they do it. Because whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish, there's a person in the world you can bring in to do it. Like, there's no such thing as like, no one else can do this, truly. But what happens is they get depressed. And they replace themselves in everything, and then they have no point. And so the key here is, number one, give yourself permission to do less. You have to give yourself permission to not work as hard and use the right people, systems, processes. But the second thing is, you have to ensure that you give yourself permission to do what makes you happy, including your business. Like, just because somebody you know exited their business doesn't mean you also need to exit their business. There's nothing worse than succeeding at someone else's goal. That's the worst. So keep in mind here, there are things that you love to do in your business. Keep them. You don't have to backfill yourself out of everything. And this craze of like, I'm just going to exit. One of my great friends wrote a book called Buy Back Your Time. Dan Martell, look him up. You should buy the book. The book's one of the best books I've ever read in my life. Keep in mind, though, when you look at Dan's life, man, he's not replacing himself from everything. He's buying back his time in the things he does not like so that he can fully engage in the things he does like. When you look at Dan's relationship with his business, it's basically romantic. I mean, dude's romantic. It's like chasing obsession. He loves what he does. So you can't look at any of these principles and think, I'm going to buy back all my time. For what? And what are you going to do with it? We have to have something we push against and we pull against. And so don't replace yourself from things that make you feel alive. Actually do more of those things. And what happens is you feel over time, you'll fall more and more in love with your life. And as a byproduct, you'll make more and more money. Any thoughts on that before we wrap?

Mike Walker: No, man. You said it all. Success doesn't have to mean Mai Tai sitting on the beach with nothing else to do. It can be head down, busy, cranking out new content or doing, like you said, something that you love. Just because you're busy doesn't mean that's bad. Just make sure that you're engaged and doing something that you love. And that's wealthy. That's success. 100%.

Taylor Welch: All right, everybody.

Mike Walker: Cool. Love you guys. We'll see you on the next episode. Adios.

null: Bye!