Best Self Unlocked Q & A

Here's what went down on the Q&A portion of Best Self Unlocked!

We answered interesting questions! You might just find some of them helpful!

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Transcript:

Alright guys, happy hour, it's like really super close.

– But before happy hour we just wanted to unlock, unlock, I’m reading the thing, we want to give you guys a chance to ask questions, answers, ask us anything that you want, ask the team, ask us anything. We’re gonna open it up and we’d love to hear what questions you have. Yeah.

– [Audience Member] What did you ask Tim Ferris when you met him?

– We asked Tim Ferris about, one, about financing. So figuring out how to leverage other people’s capital in order to grow the business. And he gave us a lot of really great insight. He said, “Do you really want to use somebody else’s capital? “Because it’s very expensive.” They want like a 10x return, back to that 10x number. And it gave us some perspective on, he said, “It’s not as glamorous as you think it is.” So whether you get an outside venture capitalist to give you money, seed money, raise around, or venture capital, he said, “You’re only looking at it at one light. “Why don’t you find out really where you want to go, “and then see your options from there. “Because you’re really limiting your options from…” Now, I just realized you asked me what did we ask Tim Ferris, and I said that, and I’m telling him what he’s saying back to us. That’s what we asked him.

– We also asked him, a good thing I like to ask is, “What questions should we be asking?” So sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know, so he’s seen people at our stage before and has a better idea of what’s coming, so instead of us trying to think, do we even know the questions, which we don’t, what should we be asking? And he gave us some advice on what we should be asking him and then other mentors that were there.

– Sure. But back to the financing, you can get a loan from a bank, you can joint venture with somebody, you can acquire somebody else’s company that’s not doing really well, you can go to other companies who are above you and say, “Hey, what if we fell into your organization “and you fed us capital?” There’s so many different ways to do it, but that’s just one question that we asked.

– Yeah. Anyone else?

– [Audience Member] Can you answer the answer to your question? What questions are you not asking?

– Walked right into that one. So it’s more of the, where are you trying to go. He gave us some book ideas on, I forget.

– Getting everything you want out of-

– Getting as much as you can out of-

– Everything you’ve got?

– Everything you’ve got. Something, yeah.

– Some book that I haven’t read yet, it’s about the Thigh Masters and the marketing they used to-

– [Audience Member] It’s about the Thigh Masters?

– [Both Speakers] Yeah.

– Yeah, I forget the name of it. I’ll send you the, I’ll put it in the Best Self Unlocked, the list of books that he gave us.

– But Getting Everything You Want Out of Everything You’ve Got is by Jay Abraham, I know that much.

– Yeah.

– [Audience Member] And if you guys can repeat the question on the–

– Okay.

– 100%, sure thing.

– [Audience Member] Thank you, thank you guys.

– Henda.

– [Henda] How do you decide who to partner with?

– So how do you create partnerships that make it a win-win?

– Yes.

– Everyone in this room is hooked into the same radio station, it’s called WII-FM. What’s In It For Me? And, I feel like it you can, so for us when we do partnerships, we figure out what the other person what the other, what’s the outcome or the goal of whoever it is that we do a partnership with. It might be just getting in front of an audience, it might be a revenue goal, it might be whatever it is for them. And then figuring out how we make, how we get them to win so that we can win. So figuring out, what the goal is for the other person just by having a convers- you know, having a conversation with where they’re trying to go with their business, or with their life or whatever it is and then figure out how you make it a win for them so that when you ask them, it’s like a no-brainer.

– And I’ll give you an example. There was an influencer on YouTube that briefly, like, seconds, mentioned the Self-Journal. But she’s got a big audience, and a big following. And, my sister sent me the video and said “Oh my gosh! Here’s your product in this YouTube video “I follow her, blah blah blah, this is amazing!”. And I found the influencer’s email, I emailed her, and I said “Self-Journal?” question mark in the subject line. I said “Hey, I would love jump on a call with you “to find out how you found it, and this and that.” We ended up talking, and it turns out she wanted to transition from the area that she’s in, in the niche of health, in the niche that she’s in which is health, and transition into business. I said “Well, perfect! We know a lot of business people “we have a lot of people in, “on our list that have to do with business “and growing their business and scaling. “What if we said “Hey, look at our friend “”over here and see what she’s doing “”in the business aspect.”, and you create “custom content for us related around the journal and then it feeds your audience back to ours?” So we just found out like Catherine said, what her end-goal is, and then we said “Perfect! Here’s how we can help you “get there that much quicker.”

– [Moderator] We have a question from the live feed.

– Ah, perfect!

– Stay away!

– Here? Is this better?

– [Moderator] So there’s a lot of different types of productivity tips and tools and everything out there, how did you guys decide which elements to include in the Self-Journal?

– The question is, there’s a lot of producti- oh, you’ve go the mike.

– I thought you were just buying time.

–

– So for us, we like we read a ton of books, and there are so many things out there. And there was stuff we had in an original framework, that we just took out of it, because it wasn’t helpful. So for us it was more of a personal preference, of “okay, we tried this, doesn’t really work for us, “this is what we like.” And then since we put it out as an actual product, that Allan and I actually created for ourselves first. Since we put it out as a product, we take customer feedback as we apply things and see what actually works. It started as all of my personal preference over what we liked and what worked, and then it’s kind of grown a little bit since then.

– An example of that. Started in a blank Moleskin, transitioned to the Self-Journal. Self-Journal version one, had the weekly break-out as far as recapping your weeks, in between every seven days. If you started on a Wednesday, that next Wednesday you have this weekly recap, and you’re like “It’s Wednesday, why am I recapping my week?” So we got customer feedback, and we found out that the usage wasn’t working. ‘Cuz we want people to pick it up regardless of what day it is. We don’t want them to wait for Sunday or Monday. We took all those weekly recap pages, and put them in the beginning of the journal so now you have this fluent flow throughout the entire thing and not interrupted.

– Anyone else?

– [Male Moderator] We got there.

– Yes?

– [Male Audience Member] So you’ve consumed a lot of content in creating the culture here and within the BestSelf Co. Two part question. What is the one book that started this journey for you or the piece of information that you came across, and is there a piece of required reading that you’ve given to your team members that they should read to know more about what you do?

– There’s two books that I attribute a lot of my knowledge and how I operate on a daily basis. The first book is Success Principles by Jack Canfield. And I read the first one before there was even the social media aspect. He goes very deep into breaking big, ambitious goals down into bite-sized pieces. And then there’s a lot of other practical information inside that book. The second book, which is more of a methodology, of how to operate and how to live your life, and I recommend it to everybody, is Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill. And that book really changes your mindset to be intentional with your time. To be, to have definite purpose rather than drift through life on some, you know, obscure path that you’re on.

– For me, I think, um, I just forgot it. Essentialism was one that I read, which was just about cutting out everything that’s, that doesn’t work. And then The Compound Effect, which is all about compounding interest on the habits that you set up. And it’s very methodical in creating the habits that you want for your life. And then as far as the team, we actually have a reading program that we set up last year, which is, we put a bunch of books in there, about personal development, and stuff that we’ve read and approved. If you want to read it you can, we’ll pay you by hour to read it and then you write a book report on how you’re gonna use what you learned in the book in your life or for the business. Doesn’t have to be for BestSelf, but we want the people that work for us to become their best self as they work for us. Yeah, there’s a lot, there’s a long list of books.

– And they can cherry-pick.

– Yeah.

– Kevin.

– [Kevin] What do you think of some of the stuff

– So the question is, what did you do in order to build a community that goes beyond the Self Journal? It starts with the journal, and goes beyond. The first thing we did was, when we launched the Kickstarter we kept interacting with the customers, the backers. And even the people who weren’t backing, who just had questions. “Hey, well this worked for this goal, “how does this thing work?” And we just kept telling them and providing value for them. And when they provided value back, as far as “Hey, you should make this tweak” or “Hey, I downloaded the PDF and I sold this.” we took their feedback and said “Hey, by the way, “we just wanted to let you know we removed this.” Or we added this, or we tweaked that. And they now felt a part of creating this process. Now, what happens is, the Kickstarter is done, we have a business, we bring people in through our products, and what we do is now we cultivate a community on the back-end, the BestSelf Alliance, and that Alliance is now the reason why people are staying. We bring, we come in with products and then we provide more value above and beyond what they think they’re getting already. They think they’re gonna get a three month day planner, but Oh My Gosh! There’s this whole other ecosystem behind here, with content and people and tribes and “Oh! This person’s actually my neighbor “and I didn’t even know they were into this type of thing.” And now, you’re seeing the value add that’s happening there. And how we did it in the beginning was, everyday!

– Yeah

– When Catherine and I,

– Get in there! it was just Catherine and I

– Get in there! in the beginningget in there! And just publish everyday. Provide some sort of value everyday.

– And I think the difference for us, is that we like were selling a planner, but for us, like the real success is for people to actually use it and to come back and get another one. So for us, finding success, using the product instead of us just selling it once and then it’s like Oh great! How do we make it easier for them to actually use it, how do we give them, ‘cuz not everyone knows how to set a goal, there’s like three segments of people. There’s one segment where we don’t really need to help them because they pretty much can use the framework and go along with it. And then the other two segments need different varying versions of help. And I think by understanding the different segments, and creating content served to the different people, so that it doesn’t matter where you came in from, we can help you regardless.

– Yes?

– [Audience Member] What’s one leadership lesson that could be shared with us?

– I think just learning.

-Repeat the question.

– Oh, what is one leadership lesson that you can tell us? I think, for me, accepting the leadership position was a thing at the start. But then everyone’s motivated by different things, so there’s different personality types, there’s different, when people come on board we have them do the Myers-Briggs, the Love Languages, because we wanna know, okay, if you do a good job and your Love Language is words of affirmation, we can be like, we can make sure that we reward you with words of affirmation. And if it’s

– Gifts

– Like gifts, we know. So it’s really about what motivates people, how do we reward them properly and then how do we give them purpose within their role.

– If it’s physical touch, we’re not, uh..

– Yeah, apparently

– apparently there’s a corporate version where they change that but, yeah. We just don’t go near that one.

– We just go, “what’s your second one?”

– What’s you’re second love language?

– For me, I’m sorry, what’s the question?

– Leadership lesson

– Leadership lesson. The leadership lesson, the biggest one that I’ve had and all of 2017 was me working on myself as a leader and a manager. So all I did in 2017 was figure out this thing called “management” and try to make it work. Because it was the only way to help us grow to the next level and impact more people. ‘Cuz it was just being capped out at where we were. And I will say this: it is the hardest thing ever! Managing people. But, it is also the most rewarding thing. And one book, I’ll give you a book that was really transformative, was Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. What that book taught me was your team, can only get bought in to what it is that you guys are doing, so far. They can care about the business, they can care about the customers, they can care about the product, they can care about the mission. But it only goes so far. And you need to come to them and find out what else they care about outside of work. The term that keeps coming up for me recently is not a work-life balance, but a work-life harmony. That’s what people care about now. How can I take the mission of the company, as far as employees, people that you’re managing, how can I take the mission of the company and integrate that in with my work and how do I know that my work allows me to integrate that into my life? So when you’re talking and having a chat with your employee, or someone that you manage, “Hey, we’re working on this project, great, it’s going well, “what other action items do we need?” “But also, how’s everything else goin’? “What’s goin’ on? What are you doin’ this weekend? “What’s happening in your life outside of work?” Because, there is a whole other life outside of work that impacts the work that’s being done. If you give a shit about other people’s lives outside of the work and the business, they’ll give a shit about the work inside.

– What time is it?

– [Moderator] mumbles Okay. Two more questions. Any?

– Yeah. [Male Audience Member] You guys have worked with coaches before for different reasons, could you each explain one coaching experience that you found really useful, something like that? Is that easy to answer? Or a clear enough question?

– Yeah, we both see, we actually both see coaches, we have coaches personally and then Allan and I have a coach together, sort of, marriage counseling. Where we just, you know, stuff comes up and we go over we have our personal things and we have the business thing. We can just come together once a month and for the personal, it’s like, with this coach specifically, we created a current way of being, so how are we showing up in the world. And then what’s our new way of being, and then each week he would set up an activity or something that we have to do that corresponds with the new way of being. And that’s kind of how the whole coaching is. So we both did that, got a lot of value out of it. And you do it for, what’s it like, an eight-week thing, yeah.

– Can you just repeat the question again, I wanna answer it to the best.

– [Male Audience Member] A useful thing you’ve gotten out of your coaching experience.

– A useful thing that I’ve gotten out of the coaching experience? I think, dovetailing what Catherine said was, Hey, I’ve go this big thing that’s been holding me back in my life, and in order to help me get to the next level, I need to strip it away or work on removing myself from it. A coach will help you do that through the practices, on a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly basis. As you can imagine, being an isolated entrepreneur, working from a home office, communication isn’t really my strong point.

– Use your words, Allen!

– Yeah

– I’ve said that many times!

-Use your words!

– I’m sitting there and Allan’s just staring and I’m like, use your words, Allan.

– So, one thing that we work on is communication. How can I be a better communicator? Not only just orally, like here, but how can I express my feelings, how can I express really what I’m thinking and how, and how can I do that articulately that doesn’t affect or hurt other people? And that’s one big thing that I got out of it.

– Alright

– Oh! One more.

– One more? [Audience Member] When you guys started this whole thing, what was the largest, most seemingly instrumental challenge that you faced? And how did you overcome it?

– What’s the biggest challenge? Oh goodness! I feel like the level of challenges we’ve gotten, we’ve gotten so many challenges, like right after our Kickstarter, we were supposed to deliver, we promised people they’d get it by Christmas time, and we’re dealing with this awful freight forwarder, which delivers the um…

– the products from the manufacturer.

– Yeah, and I’d been asking them for weeks to send us the date of schedule, and then finally the thing picked up in four hours, and they’re like “it’s getting in “Christmas Eve”, which means there’s no way, between like customs and everything, and so I’m like freaking out! I’m going “Allan, like this is awful!”

– Let me just paint the picture.

– It’s two a.m. in the morning

– it’s two a.m. in November, and we had promised the order of our Kickstarter backers.

– And we didn’t want to start our business on, we promised you this and we didn’t make it happen.

– Yeah. And now this freight forwarder is like, “Hey, we’re not gonna get there until Christmas and because of the holiday probably into the New Year.” I’m like, Oh my gosh! So Catherine calls me up at like two a.m., Hey! Here’s the thing!

– We have a problem! And Allan, this is a great thing about having someone you can call at two in the morning, he’s like “Well, it’s a container, right? “We can just” Allan just said some stuff, and then it’s supposed to happen. “We can just put it on another ship!” It’s getting picked up in four hours, but somehow we’re gonna find a ship in those four hours! “I can get this on and get it here in time!” We actually did manage that, funnily enough, but that was one of the things we’re like Oh my God, we’re never gonna overcome that! At the time it seemed like that was a huge problem. Whereas if that came up now, we’d be able to handle it really quickly. But we’ve had other problems. We had another issue with fulfillment where our products are held hostage in Europe over Black Friday. Our level of, your level of problems will equal your level of success. So if we’d had a got that problem when we first started, we wouldn’t have been able to handle it because we didn’t have the knowledge. So I think as you grow, and as the business grows, your expertise in dealing with those types of problems grows, and then the level of problem grows with it. You go from, you know.

– One container to a whole fulfillment center being shut down.

– Yeah.

– To whatever the next one’s gonna be. But how we’re able to deal with that is by pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone constantly. And just constantly pushing that level of what we’re comfortable with. If we were only comfortable to handle that, that first issue, of “Hey, we’re not gonna get the container by Christmas. “You know, now I gotta email all of my customers “and let’em know that it’s not comin’.”

– Yeah, or just not accepting. Looking for alternatives even if it seems unlikely. It would have been easy for us to have been “Oh, I guess we just won’t get it.” But instead we’re like “No, we have to find “another ship and we have to get this container “onto another ship in China, even though we’re here.” And we managed to do it. I feel like, just ask, creating the possibility for doing something differently, and not just accepting the normal. Most people just accept normal, but we won’t. Best is our standard.

– Thank you everyone!

– We’re good!

– Yeah.

– [Male Moderator] We’ll get you doing a wrap up?

– Alright.

This article was originally published in allenbrouwer.com