Today I have an interview with a modern Renaissance Woman. Kelly Roach is an ex-NFL cheerleader, formerly the top sales person in a Fortune 500 company, author of Unstoppable, the loving mother of a two-year-old, and a successful entrepreneur. Kelly trains other entrepreneurs to launch, monetize and scale profitable businesses.
Kelly was promoted seven times in eight years. She was the youngest Senior VP of the company and managed 17 locations. Her health was sliding to the back burner until she thought, “Every time I get promoted, every time I have success in this environment, it compromises more of who I am.”
Taking some time to think is critical. After reflecting on her core values as a person, she came to the conclusion that she was not living the life she wanted. Kelly’s core values:
By fulfillment, Kelly means making an impact, doing work that she feels matters, and helping people. Every time she has success in the wrong environment, she will have less freedom to pursue making a difference. She also doesn’t like making a company millions of dollars. She can make that money for herself.
It can be difficult to stop your life and shift course, particularly when things are going according to plan. Kelly accomplished one of her goals when she became Senior VP, but the experience wasn’t exactly what she thought it would be. “I’m getting exactly what I set out to achieve, which means I also have the power and the control to decide where this goes next.”
Take time to consider where your core skillsets intersect with what people are willing to pay for in the market. Kelly believes that, with an 80% failure rate, the people who really need her training are small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Mentorship is critical. Kelly’s passion for leadership, coaching others and making others successful is a direct result of her first mentor’s advice, and they are the ingredients of her success. The prevalence of podcasting and social media makes the process of finding a mentor easier than ever. Look for people who have success in the area you wish to pursue and start following them online. You will be able to find the voice and teaching style that resonates with you and begin a relationship.
Kelly’s book, Unstoppable, ties into her message on every platform. To Kelly, being unstoppable means you are so driven, focused and motivated that you have to be the best you can possibly be in any given situation, no matter what life throws at you. The human experience is full of chaos, but the book provides nine key principles that will help entrepreneurs achieve unlimited success in business and in life.
Kelly is generous enough to share a couple of the principles from her book:
Entrepreneurship is heavily romanticized. Don’t expect success to come overnight. There is a grind that everyone goes through – most people fail, often more than once, before they succeed. Entrepreneurs need to be aware that there is nothing wrong with failure, because that’s how we find out what works.
Too many entrepreneurs spend their business life planning. They wait for the perfect opportunity, the perfect product, and it never comes. “The imperfect action is the most important entrepreneurial skill,” so get out there, make an offer, create a course, and start advertising.
Last year, Kelly helped her first client add over $1 million to their business. The key is to put a sales and marketing system in place. Online marketing has been romanticized in the same way as entrepreneurship – to the point that many entrepreneurs forego sales. Marketing is great, but at some point there has to be a conversion event between marketing and sales.
There needs to be a system to convert potential buyers to sales. Kelly’s three-step system:
Kelly’s business has been a great vehicle for freedom and flexibility in her life, and she encourages others to pursue entrepreneurship to gain more freedom in their own lives. I hope she inspires you to reflect on your core values, and to start improving your life.
SOME QUESTIONS I ASK:
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
DON’T STOP HERE…
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
My long-time friend Aaron Hinde came in for a value packed interview today. He’s a fearless risk taker who jumped into one of the toughest industries out there, the beverage industry, and has successfully grown it and now leads a team of 28 people.
Aaron’s always had the unique ability of empathy which has served him well. It’s the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand where they’re coming from. Many people make the mistake of trying to meet somebody where they think they should be, but Aaron says empathy is about quieting your mind and listening with a non-judgmental attitude.
This kind of positive attitude is also a big part of mentorship, something Aaron is a strong proponent of. All successful entrepreneurs have at least one mentor, and some are paid for and some are not. If you’re in the business of offering your own mentorship or coaching at a price, you’ve also got to have your own mentor you’re paying for, as you’ve got to do in order to be.
Relationships are key in business; mentors, business partners and spouses. An understanding spouse is a necessity as it’s all but impossible to succeed without someone supportive at your side. The same thing holds true for business partners. Make sure yours is one you can bounce ideas off of, one you can trust and share a unified vision and purpose for your business with.
Aaron’s a risk taker, and the ability to take risks is important for aspiring entrepreneurs. If you’re gun shy there are ways to train yourself to take the plunge, like going all-in in poker or scaling heights if you’re afraid. “Push yourself constantly in that uncomfortable zone or else you’ll never grow as an entrepreneur.”
Aaron’s entrepreneurial journey hasn’t been an easy one. But he and his family were willing to endure the years of being broke and living in a tiny apartment to gain the success they now have. He started LIFEAID Beverage with the idea of creating a healthy beverage alternative that actually benefitted you (not like the sodas and energy drinks prevalent today). What drives his company is their over-arching vision of having a tangible, healthy impact on the world, and his million+ cans sold every month is a testament to that.
His company not only has a great vision, but some strong BHAG’s as well (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals):
BHAG #2 is his actual focus, because a great team is essential and they’re a reflection of the brand. If you make sure the team is engaged and focused then that’ll lead to goal #1. It also helps to constantly invest in your team by making your workplace comfortable and fun, and being ultra-supportive of everyone.
One tenant that Aaron really holds onto is the tried and true “Hire slow, fire fast” mentality. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is hiring quickly out of desperation as you grow. Aaron makes sure they hire great people by following some important steps in the hiring process:
Taking these steps helps him find great people with a cooperative team attitude and a good cultural fit with the company.
Aaron’s empathy and his passion for entrepreneurship and his company really came through in this episode. I’m grateful that he gave us his time and shared with us much of what he knows of running a successful company.
SOME QUESTIONS I ASK:
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
DON’T STOP HERE…
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Ian and I go way back to high school, and it was great having him on the show today. He’s a lifelong entrepreneur, a creative thinker, risk taker and relationship builder, and I’m thankful he joined us for this episode.
Ian’s always had a natural leader’s charisma; something unique and influential that led people to follow him. He really learned to harness his gifts through his work with ‘The Master’s Program’ with Bob Shank. Bob’s was the most authoritative voice outside of his influential father’s, and the 3-year program really grounded Ian.
He believes that the key to his success is that he’s so committed to mentorship. “If you don’t follow the advice of your mentor, they are not your mentor.” With mentorship, you find somebody that’s a peer or higher than you, and you position them in such a way so that they can start speaking into your life about something or some things. Then you make a deliberate decision to not knit pick their life or how they apply what they’re telling you. A mentor’s role is not to show you how to live, their role is to declare what they know to be true.
Confidence is something that Ian has always had. He admits, though, that he isn’t 100% confident, but he seems to be more confident than most. And there’s a big relationship between confidence and being risk-averse: the less risk-averse you are, the more you’re willing to take chances, so the more confidence you appear to have. One of Ian’s favorite mantras and confidence boosters is, “The wind is at my back, all I do is win.”
One thing that Ian learned early in life is that high capacity people like him need to be challenged in order to avoid some of the perils that life can throw at you. If you’re not challenged, you can tend to look for immediate pleasure or a numbing of feelings in the form of drugs. For these reasons, he has lovingly pushed his children to excel in what they love to do and to help them avoid the things that derailed him early in life.
As one of the co-creators who launched the software company Kukui, Ian learned some value lessons about business and relationships. He wrote about these seven lessons in a LinkedIn article called ‘7 Principles I Learned Launching Inc. 76th Fastest Growing Company.’ He broke down the seven principles for us:
Ian shared quite a lot of powerful and inspiring words today, and I’m very grateful for this awesome interview.
SOME QUESTIONS I ASK:
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
DON’T STOP HERE…
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Dan Waldschmidt is a busy guy whose mission, vision and passions align with The Impact Entrepreneur show. I’m extremely grateful to have this self-challenging, ultra-hard working person (to the point of barfing) on today’s show.
Speaking of challenging himself, Dan is looking forward to running a 500-mile ultra-marathon in July. Just thinking of that is fear inducing, but he welcomes the challenge. At a young age he stumbled across the formula of hard work and sacrifice equals the ability to achieve anything.
With this idea in mind, he took a $150,000 business to $8 million within one year. He did this because he was extremely hungry for success, so much so that he never ate lunch. “When you’re hungry, you’re willing to do things that you wouldn’t otherwise be willing to do.” He started with the challenge of 25 calls before lunch. This led to success so he upped it to 35, then 50, 60, 70 and finally 75 calls. Eventually, he just didn’t have time for lunch at all because he was so caught up in this challenge.
All of this hard work led him to being the CEO of the company at a young age, as well as becoming D.C.’s leading legal litigation strategist without even having a legal degree (or even completing college). He had dropped out of school because he was too busy making things happen to spend the time to learn.
Dan created the EDGY Audit. It’s a simple 12 question multiple choice test that helps you understand your business strengths and weaknesses. Your results give you an EDGY score that’s based on:
The average score is in the 140’s, but don’t compare yourself to others. “It’s not where you’re at, it’s where you’re headed.” Take your score and the interpretations and decide how you can go about improving these to be a more edgy and successful business person.
Through the course of his work, Dan has interviewed thousands of people and not a single one of them ever said, “I quit, then all of a sudden life was good.” In fact, it was just the opposite; “I’m so glad I didn’t quit.” It was fighting through the tough times, when others criticized or outside forces conspired against them, that led to true success.
Dan and I had a fun talk, and he gave us tons of great information. I’m sure you’ll get just as much out of this candid discussion as I did.
SOME QUESTIONS I ASK:
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:
GO MAKE AN IMPACT:
DON’T STOP HERE…
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: