Epic Real Estate Investing - James Schramko - Work Less, Make More | 424

Episode Date: July 12, 2018

James Schramko is the founder and CEO of SuperFastBusiness and SilverCircle, a business coach of 8 years and over 2,000 successful students, and author of his new book, Work Less, Make More. Today, he joins Matt Theriault for Thought Leader Thursday to share what makes his business approach counter-intuitive (and why that's a good thing), dangerous pieces of advice he hears everywhere, and 2 things you can do to start working less and making more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terrio Media. A lot of things been ingrained into us like that, you know, hard work, that work should be hard, or that we have to grind or hustle. Or if we want to make 10 times more money, we just work 10 times harder. Now, that's quite impractical because we have a finite number of hours in a month that we could actually dedicate to work. Hello, I'm Matt Terrio of Epic Real Estate, and today is Thought Leader Thurieless. Thursday. Glad you're here. All right. So today I'm joined by founder and CEO of super fast business and silver circle in his eight years. As a business coach, he has helped over 2,000 of his

students create and maintain six and seven and even eight figure businesses. He's grown his own coaching business in his communities into a multi-million dollar business that that fund a lifestyle that he absolutely loves. And I follow him on Instagram. I can see he's living in a life. And he's recently released his new book, Work Less, Make More, the Counterintuitive Approach to building a profitable business and a life you actually love. And I just can't think of a better fit for Thought Leader Thursday than our guest today, Mr. James Schramco. So James, welcome to the Epic Real Estate Investing Show. Thank you for having me, Matt. It's great to be. Yeah, we've been in touch for many years. It's good to see how you've gone as well.

Yeah, thanks. So, yeah, as a member of your community and I've purchased several, back in the day, several of your website and SEO services. And we met briefly at Traffic and Conversion a few years ago. it was it was such a busy night there was something i wanted to share with you that i wasn't able to that night because you know i don't think back 2010-ish that uh i got turned on to the internet business mastery podcast and pat flins podcast that they really just opened my eyes to doing business online but it was your freedom ocean podcast that i found shortly thereafter that really just catapulted me forward to take an online business seriously so thank you for what you've done for me that was my first podcast i had uh a co-host there tim read

who taught me about podcasting, which I then sort of built into my own business. It's such a great medium. It's funny you mentioned Pat Flynn. I was just on his podcast yesterday. So it shows you what an interconnected world this is and such a long game. Well, again, thank you. I mean, you're really one of the good guys out there. And I wanted to have you on the show, anything that I could do to help you.

I wanted to congratulate you on the new book, by the way. Thank you. Yeah, great title. Work less, Make More, the counterintuitive approach to building a profitable business and a life you actually love. I love it. So what is it that made you want to write this book? I suppose like most people, you get this idea that it would be good to sort of summarize a few of your thoughts and put them into a book and put them out there. If you're answering the same questions a lot, you sense that there's a book there. But really the prompt came from the lady you helped me put this book together. Her name's Kelly Exeter. And she was watching me speak at Chris Duckers

event. And at the end, she said, why haven't, why isn't this a book? This is a book, what you've just presented. It really moved her. And that core presentation was the seed of it. And then there was, I wrote an email each day for a week for part of an affiliate campaign, which is short. It just means I was promoting someone else's stuff. And I wrote this heartfelt stories each day for a week. And I don't normally write. So it was kind of weird. I don't know where they came from.

They just came inside me and out. And then Kelly was getting these. She goes, we have to do this book. And so it really was, I think the thing stopping me doing it was how difficult it is to put together a book. And you've published a book. You know, there's lots of challenges to overcome to get that information out of of you and into a format that's useful.

And we work pretty hard on making sure that the book was an easy read and no fluff, because that's my style as well, very direct. Apart from the ugly guy on the cover, great feedback on the book. It only takes two hours to read. But this book is an introduction to my core concepts and ideas that you would have heard in free to motion that I talk about in my membership. that I've helped people with their business

and also things that I talk to my kids about that I want to educate them on, that they're not getting taught in school. The second part was you wrote it for your kids, right? Yeah, stuff that they're not taught. Yeah, dedicated this to my kids because, you know, the way that society works isn't really working that well. If you think about how many people you know

who are always talking about, struggling for money. It's very common. When I catch up with my friends each year, I go to this annual dinner, and 99% of the conversation is about how hard life is and how little money they've got. And it's like, well, it doesn't have to be like that. So that's something I want to empower my kids with to help them be resourceful and to let go of this helplessness that society sort of puts into us because we go to school and we learn to memorize things and regurgitate stuff and they're literally being babysat some of the time, depending on which country you're in, the school system can be pretty bad. And then they're studying for jobs that in 10 years from now,

50% of those jobs won't exist. And they're getting up debts to go to university for these jobs that may not exist. And then they go and get a mortgage with the big, you know, the big friendly bank and finance company. And we know they're quite evil now. In Australia, there's been a commission into their corruption practices. And we saw, you know, what happens at Wall Street in the stock crash. Certainly can relate to that. So the book, it sounds like the way you're describing it, it relates or it applies to all businesses, not just the online type of industry that you're in, right? Yeah, I purposely made it general because it was, you know, it's pretty hard to ignore the online side of things no matter what business you're in.

You know, if you're in real estate, property development, all these online, I mean, that's where your customers are. They're on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and Twitter. So it would be wise to pay attention. Look at any business or any sign writing on any car and you could apply the profit formula to that business and you can see that they have opportunity there to tap into. So yes, very general. So the subtitle of your book is the counterintuitive approach to building a profitable business. So what's counterintuitive about your approach to building a profitable

business? Well, I work less than other people and I make more than other people. I think that's most definitely counterintuitive. Sure, sure. There's a lot of things being ingrained into us like that, you know, hard work. That work should be hard. hard or that we have to grind or hustle. Or if we want to make 10 times more money, we just work 10 times harder. Now that's quite impractical because we have a finite number of hours in a month that we could actually dedicate to work. And then there's this other situation where people, you know, work hard in the beginning,

but they forget to stop working hard when they actually reach some sort of level of financial success. And then they get confused because they might have. made a good foundation of their income and now they feel like they've got nothing left, no more challenge. So they have an unhealthy way of getting self-esteem or satisfaction with the work that they've done that. They're using dollars as the ledger like Warren Buffett, which he states in his documentary. For him, I think his sister says it, but for him, dollars is the scorecard. That's why he works every day. It's, um,

counterintuitive to not diversify as much as people talk about, these sort of normal sort of wisdom things. It's counterintuitive not to be working every minute of the day if you want to become very wealthy. So there are different ways to approach these things. So do you think these are just different ways or do you think this is kind of a trend? This is the new way of how the world is going? I don't think everyone's being counterintuitive, you know, like there's still peak hour traffic jams on the way to work at nine and on the way home at five Monday to Friday. The cinema's still busy on Friday and Saturday nights. Like people tend to be, you know, doing things in a mass movement.

And then the way that I live my life is just like it really is counter cyclical. I'll go to the movies on a Monday morning. There's nobody in the cinema. I'll do my shopping during the week when there's no one in the shops. I go surfing every day. And actually, a lot of people go surfing first thing before work. That's the peak hour and I wait until they go to work and then I go during the mid-morning or the mid-afternoon before the school kids get out.

And, you know, I'm in the same geographic location, but my experience is completely different because of the timing. And same with my work week. I stack my work week to three days of the week so that I can have four off. whereas most people are having five days on and maybe six these days and one or two days off. So you can actually change the rules if you want. With your last two answers, you've kind of answered the next three or four questions that I had prepared for you. That's okay.

That was great. Let's see. You help a lot of people out there start their business. You help the people grow their business. you're well connected and well known within other people that do similar things as you to educate people. I was curious, what's one piece of bad advice that you hear out there that just, you know, kind of irks you?

Is there any? Or is there many? Well, a couple of common ones. One is just take action, which is a bit trite because if it's the wrong action, it's really not going to help you. It could be damaging. Like, you know, people might say. look, just quit your job and, and, you know, it's make or break.

Well, a lot of people will break. The other thing is, you know, people get all wound up and they start taking action, but they haven't really done much in the way of research or planning or validation. So they just get very busy and then they fail and they've lost their confidence. And there's only a few times they can do that before they stop trying. because most people do not have great resilience because it hasn't been taught to them from their parents and they haven't learned it since. Other ones that come up often is the launch model.

A lot of people put all their eggs in one basket and they do this sort of every year you see the same experts, do a big launch and that's their entire business model where all their basket, it flop. they're under normal. It goes well. They're under pressure because they have this strain on their support. They've got a big cash flow spike. They can't look after everyone. They get refunds and they have to pay out big expenses.

And they're usually their adrenal glands are just shot. Another one is the ascension model. That's where this concept where you might put out little free products or cheap products and move people up slowly to more expensive and more expensive products. it's kind of a miss because you can sell the expensive product straight away. I mean, think about Ferrari's entry-level budget car. Can you think about what that might be? It's probably a lot at least, right?

They don't have one. Well, there you go. Exactly. I haven't been shopping for cars lately. They're just top shelf and they don't worry about the Ascension model. You're not getting the baby Ferrari all the way through. It's just like it just starts at the good stuff. And you can do that in your own business.

So that's a common one that I fix. People spend all their time and energy on the low ticket items that will not make them enough money to let their business survive long enough to even offer the high ticket item. Do you think there's any vulnerability in a business that relies on such a high ticket item, you know, vulnerability to the economy? High-ticket item businesses are often doing very well at all times of the year in any economy. And, you know, if you think of top brands, whether it's Ferrari or Rolex or top brands of whiskey, you know, the premium position products have a pretty strong following.

And there's plenty of money around in the top end of town. I found out in Sydney, 50% of the high-end properties are owned outright with no mortgage. You know, like I used to sell Mercedes-Benz and there was still plenty of money in the top end of town. They're still buying even in a recession. The slower stuff or the entry-level stuff can slow down a bit. And I'm sure it's true that, you know, cosmetics and chocolate always sells in a downturn. However, I would say don't be single source dependent on just that one product line. Right, right.

So let's get practical for a second. What are two or three actions that someone could take to set themselves up to start working less and making more? I would score the business activities that they're doing, like literally a task check. You can do it installing rescue time if you're in a computer-based role, but if you're in a pen and paper, we'll do the job. job, just write down what you're doing and see if those things, are they really moving the needle in your business? And could someone else do them? If possible, just delete them. Like stop doing it. You could stop doing a good chunk of things that you think are important that aren't making any impact at all. And then you could have someone else do some of the tasks that you think you can,

you're the only one who can do. We all think that. And then see which ones are critical. And there'll be a few things that really make a difference in your business. And it will usually revolve around your specialty or expertise. And it will usually not be things like building your website or sending out emails or transcribing podcasts. Those sort of tasks are very easy to get help with. And especially in a property field, things like research, writing, ads, taking pictures, all of these sort of jobs. there's so many so many people out there great at those things what's next for you James that has you most excited I'm starting to put together ideas for my next book because I liked the the outcome of making a book I thought it was some it was a better

experience than I expected after the book came out I'm continuing to attract higher level customers for the work that I'm doing and that's that's still energizing me and of course I'm going to be catching more and more waves and improving us a real driver for me at this point in my life and it's a great metaphor for living I think you know basically I want to live like I'm retired and enjoy my life now for the I don't know for the next 50 years or have a long it's going to pan out maybe longer right right we're all living longer now so more surfing is good. And I enjoy your picture.

I enjoy following you on Instagram and you always got it's coffee or surfboards. Fantastic. So yeah, definitely walking the talk. I like it. If someone wanted to learn more about you and wanted to get in touch with you, what would be the best way for them to do that? Well, head over to superfastbusiness.com. There's a podcast there with lots of episodes discussing these sort of topics.

perfect so they know how to find me they know how to find you super fast business dot com is the website and the and the podcast right both take the same thing yes and the membership as well right perfect so coincidentally james what i did just before we hopped on the call is as i went to amazon com i purchased 10 copies of your book and i'm going to give them away to my audience so we'll put a a graphic up there this is uh james's book and this is how you get a copy uh the the book the book work less make more the counterintuitive approach to building a profitable business and a life you actually love go to instagram post in your own creative way what you like best about today's interview and then make sure that you tag us it's a at james stramco and epic real estate and the first

10 people to do that i'll go ahead i'll send you a copy of james book all righty so if you got you lost some of the audio here you lost some of it it's all in the book i'm going to give you a copy to make up for it. And James, it's been a pleasure. I would love to do this again sometime. Thanks, Matt. It's been really a treat to be able to come along and share some ideas. Yeah, absolutely. It's a treat for me as well, and I think it's a treat for everyone that was listening. All righty. So thanks for tuning in to Epic Real Estate Investing. God bless and to your success. I'm Matt Terry. I'll see you next week on another episode of Thought Leader Thursday. Take care. This podcast is a part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts,

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