Living The Red Life - Behind The Scenes Of My Success w/ My COO Mike Wisner

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

What are the successful traits of an entrepreneur? And how can we reverse engineer the answers to that question? How about a reverse interview? Rudy Mawer, AKA The Man in Red, is joined in the studio today by his right-hand man and long-time friend and colleague Mike,  who is answering the questions that Rudy wants to be asked! This is a fascinating look under the hood of Rudy's company, as well as an insight into the mind and methodology of one of the sharpest entrepreneurs around today. Learn how growth equals change, and how Rudy is setting up his staff to achieve high levels of success.From clear communication at the start of a brief through to setting the right standard of expectation, and from marketing that irresistible offer to ‘dancing in the rain’, this is behind the scenes at Living The Red Life that will give every hungry entrepreneur out there some clues for their own future success. Please join us!"I've got used to enjoying dancing in the rain. It's gonna rain, it's gonna pour... and when there's a storm, it comes together." ~ Rudy MawerThe first 1000 to click here and send the promo code from the podcast can claim one of my courses for FREE!  - https://m.me/rudymawerlife In This Episode:What did Mike see in Rudy when they met in the UK?How Rudy clearly articulates what he demands of his staff'Dancing in the rain' - when it all comes together under pressureUnpacking Rudy's competitivenessSetting staff up to succeed when you’re the CEOMike's hot take on Rudy's killer marketing strategies  Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/rudymawer/Instagram - www.instagram.com/rudymawerlifeFacebook - www.facebook.com/rudymawerlifeTwitter - www.twitter.com/rudymawer

I got used to dancing, enjoying dancing in the rain, right? And it's like, you know, it's going to rain, it's going to pour. And when there's a storm, you know, it's normally always like it comes together, right? And I said, you know, we had some couple of difficult months and a lot of big change because we scaled so well. So it was self-inflicted damage. But, you know, and then there's multiple things happening and people were starting to get worried or upset. And I'm like,'m like it's fine you know you just get used to dancing in the rain

my name's rudy moore host of living the red life podcast and i'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week if you're ready to start living the red life ditch the blue pill take the red pill join me in wonderland and change your life. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. I'm here with my right hand man, Mike, all the way from Australia, but then moved to England and then flew from England to join us out here. This episode, we're going to talk about the successful traits of an entrepreneur. And we're going to do what I call reverse interview style. So I'm going to interview Mike about the successful traits he's seen in me over. He's known me for 10 years.

I actually used to work for him. He was my manager 10 years ago and it flip flopped. But he's known me for 10 years and a lot of people ask, you know, what makes you so successful really? How do you achieve success? What's your mindset like? And it's always hard. You know, you have your interpretation, but it's always interesting to hear other people's

that, you know, understands business well. You know, Mike's got a great resume, managed massive teams. He's a Guinness World Record holder in tennis and achieved a lot in his life and a lot of business experience. So I'm excited for this episode. I mean, you guys will find it entertaining and hopefully take away a lot of great mindset things and look under the hood of our company, you know, 100 staff that'll probably do 20, 25 million this year with a lot of extra entities on top of the celebrity side. So let's dive in. Mike, first question. When you first met me 10 years ago i was at college right as a personal trainer what was your initial first impressions yeah so yeah when i first met you you were definitely

different to the other people that we had coming in for interviews and for the position and personal training where i was working so you were definitely different so you stood out because you were different and when i say different in the sense of you had like a bit of a quiet awe about you in the sense a lot of the other people were interviewed were really loud brash out there and all of that that were trying to make a statement but you actually made a statement from for not being that so you stood out the opposite way if you'd like that you would maybe anticipate a personal trainer to stand out so that's sort of that was one of the biggest things that I noticed about you in that first sort of snapshot.

And then as you sort of progressed and we went through the process and you got through, which was great. And we put you through a vigorous training sort of task to get you through to see if you were at the level that we wanted to coach our clients on. And you were, and again, you had that calmness about you and, you know, in the activities that we had you doing, I think we had you on a cross trainer and some box jumps or something, stuff like that. You were focused, concentrated and present. You weren't groaning and, you know and making a big song and dance about things. You're in there focused. And that for me stood out as different. And I thought that was great.

Yeah. And just for context, if you're listening or watching, this was a personal training job. I was a college student, but it was a very prestigious gym, like one of the most famous gyms. So I wanted to work there for my resume. And it was a lot of high-end clients. And it was a very prestigious gym, like one of the most famous gyms. So I wanted to work there for my resume. And it was a lot of high end clients. And it was an interesting interview. It was like a free part. And the first I mean, the initial one was a big group one. It was like 1012 personal trainers. And I still my memory is terrible. But I do vividly remember this interview process. I mean, it got you know, most of the rest of that year got damaged by alcohol damage from drinking too much as a student. But I do remember this part. And, you know, you're in this room, a bunch of personal trainers, they go around the room, you do intros. And then I'm sure one of

the questions was like, why should we hire you over everyone else? And you had to say that in front of everyone else, which I, you know, found interesting, funny and entertaining. And now, you know, we obviously have radical transparency entertaining. And now, you know, we obviously have radical transparency in our company and sometimes ask awkward questions in front of other people. And then I then you went into the fitness element. And there's definitely a lot of like big fitness bodybuilders that were way fitter, probably from an image perspective than me. But I had good cardio and I was also smart. I knew how to, you know, achieve the goals and I did well there. So it was an interesting start. And then obviously we stayed connected.

So what about fast forward to today? Obviously you worked in more corporate, you've worked with big companies, big organizations, international brands. What have you found different to what we do here what we run how we run the show here how you obviously help run the show and how i operate as a ceo yeah again it's very different and again i had a sense of this at the beginning when we first met and obviously we became friends after you you know progressed and moved on to the us and you know done all your successful things that you've done. So since coming on board and working with you, I feel like I have a bit of a head start as opposed to other people who are new into the team because I've got that and I have a bit more of an understanding with you.

And some of the things that sort of stick out for me is with you and it's super important that I try and get with anybody who's going to work with us or you directly to sort of give them the Rudy, you know, the top 10 tips for Rudy type thing. And so what I noticed with you is the calmness and the focus and the unrelentlessness of being able to take something that is a little bit all over the place and being able to condense it, put it together, neat, tight, bow around it type thing, and then be calm during that process. In business, we all know that there's going to be some turbulence, especially when you're growing and scaling and doing those type of things.

And in order to be good like you are, you need to be calm during those times. So I notice that a lot about you. I also notice some clarity for people on your expectations and what they need to deliver, and you're relentless on that. And I like that because it's very clear. There's no sort of gray areas. You know, you're clear, this is what I want to do, this is how it should be, and away you go and you follow up on it.

So there's some of the things that sort of stick out. I think there's important points on that. Like the first one is, I mean, I got very good at, you know, I use this quote in my company a lot and I've started to use it more and more is I got used to dancing, enjoying dancing in the rain. Right. And it's like, you know, it's going to rain, it's going to pour. And when there's a storm, you know, it's normally always like it comes together. Right. And I said, you know, we had some couple of difficult months and a lot of big change because we scaled so well. So it was self inflicted damage. But, you know, and then there's multiple things happening and people were starting to get worried or upset. And I'm like, it's fine. You know, you just get used to dancing in the rain. And I mean, that's one of the most important skills of entrepreneurship. I spoke to one of my good friends yesterday. Ben Pakulski is a pro bodybuilder, built lots of successful companies. And we were chatting about it, right? It's like in life, when you're pushing your limits,

there always seems to be something. And if you look at pro sport, they do well, and then they strain an ankle, they do well. And then they say something stupid in front of the news. And now they're blown up on the press for a year. And, you know, they lose their contract. And then they say something stupid in front of the news. And now they're blown up on the press for a year and, you know, they lose their contract. And then they get drunk one night and push their wife or slap their husband. Now they're in the press again. And there's like there's always something. Right. And then and I mean, if you want to have high levels of success, you've got to get used to that. And that's maybe I think that's where the calmness came, because I don't think it was always there. But after you've done it for five years and I used to get a lot more stressed.

But I mean, I had like this kind of wake up, not wake up cool, but slow transition of, hey, if I want to do this for the next 30, 40 years, I probably can't stay stressed like this all the time. And then I also learned after it happened enough of nothing's ever as bad as you think that's kind of one thing I've learned is like you always work it up 10 times more in your head so you have to just stay the course right and I think that's what you say and then the next thing is expectations for all of you out there building a team hiring your first freelancer or employee whoa whoa whoa wait a second before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of

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I appreciate you guys and let's dive back in. Biggest piece of advice is in your head, what you think is clear and understandable and good expectations is definitely not clear to the person on the other side of it. And I almost treat people and talk at a third grade level, which some people don't always enjoy. But I do it because it's like, I would sooner that than the pain of missed expectations and misalignment, which is some of the worst things that can happen in business. So I'm always, you know, third grade level. Is this clear? Okay, just to be clear one more time, though, just even though you said it was clear at 11 a.m.

You are going to send me this. Good, right? good right and yeah and i think that part there ties into your competitiveness as well because that links you know being clear with somebody because we want to win yeah you want to win and you are where you are now and we are as a company because you want to win and we want to do well and we want to get to those dizzy heights yeah but being having that clarity and speaking to somebody a third grade level isn't belittling. It's not to be making people be treated like children. But because we want to win so well, we want to make sure that we're setting that person up for success.

And that's why I believe you do that. And that's why I believe I was talking with some of the guys in the team there. It's our jobs and your job as a CEO to set people up to succeed. And you can't set people up to succeed if you're not giving them the right tools. And if you're not communicating to them in a way that's going to proactively help them do their job at a high level. Well, the thing too, even when I coach clients and business consulting is when you get a due, we're going to drive to my

castle tomorrow, right? It's nine hour drive from Tampa. It's in the mountains in North Carolina. When we turn on the GPS, it doesn't say these are the 274 directions you are going to take. What it says is it shows you a small screen where you can see about a hundred yard radius and it shows take go right and then you're going to go left and then in the top border it really says the next step so it shows you one step and then maybe at the top it shows you the second step so it's really the same with clients and businesses i consult or with employees it's like hey yeah we're not speaking at third grade level to sound make you sound silly it's just, we want to make it real basic and simple. Like this is it. Right. And, and most people, I think

you go through this like learning curve where when you start to get a little smart, you over complicate everything. And then when you get, like people say, you get more to that genius or like really high level, you actually come back down the other end and simplify everything. And I saw that in the sports science fitness world after 10 years getting really smart and then realizing it's the basics and the same in the business side so so we've talked a lot about you know expectations communication how i handle situations anything else you've seen or seen in the company or how we operate as a company that you think is part of our success yeah i do and one. And one of the things that, well, it's a bit like your story really, and where you've,

you know, where you've come from to where you are now. And you've done that through progression. You've done that through learning. You've done that through development, spending time with like-minded people, intelligent people, you know, people who are going to add to your, you know, add to your goal or your journey to get you to where you want to go. And what I think we do well here as well is we always promote the progression for people inside the company. And I think you're good at doing that because we sort of say, hey, listen, you're coming in to do X with us at the moment. And when you get really good at X, then you've demonstrated that you can do it. Then why wouldn't we put you on to Y or why wouldn't we get you doing Z?

You know what I mean? So I think we do that really well. And I won't sort of shy away by saying this, but we do this with people who are superstars or who are doing a really good job. So, you know, set people up to succeed, get them to demonstrate they can do the job at a high level. Then we get somebody else to do that job for them and then we progress them onto something else.

Yeah, and I mean, growth equals change, right? And I shot a podcast on this a couple of weeks ago to like the faster you're growing, the more change and the more opportunity you create. So, you know, this company that we're sat in right now went from zero to 10 million in two years. And I still had my other companies. It's just this one we grew from a from a new entity. And if you grow to 10 million, that's like a lot of decent amount of revenue and a lot of positions, especially in this sort of company. We have a lot of employees because we don't sell physical products or anything. It's all manpower based. So we don't have, you know, any cost of goods, but we have a high labor cost. But that does create a lot of

opportunity and cross training, cross roles, promotion, senior roles. And I think that's something that's important as a leader too. And a CEO and entrepreneur is understanding your vision and then casting the vision to the other people, right? Yeah, to inspire people. Yeah. So they can see, because, you know, I mean, and that's why people join entrepreneurial businesses. We might not have the healthcare benefits that a Fortune 500 company has, maybe probably not the security either, right? But I always say to some of my staff,

I'm like, you're not going to get a five or 10 grand pay jump, salary jump in corporate every year or two. But in this company, if you change roles, you can. And that's pros and cons. And I think having it clear for your staff on where you're going but most importantly, the key part you're saying is how they are interconnected to that is something we try and do well.

And it's always a fine line of promoting people too quickly and giving too much opportunity, which I mean, we definitely have made the mistake of as well with many people and just balancing that. Yep. Yeah, I agree. I think being able to set the standard and the level that's expected and then rewarding that level for progression keeps people excited, energetic, fresh, all of those type of things.

And that's what I think we do. I think that's what you do. That's what you've done on your journey. And I've done some of that along my way as well. Otherwise, I wouldn't be sitting here with you either. So I think that's super key about being, you know, proactive with your team and making a difference to them in what they're doing at their job. And what about just to finish the last few minutes, let's talk about marketing.

Because you came in, you weren't from a big marketing background, more operational business growth standpoint. And obviously, sport was a big part of your background too. So you learn a learn a lot of digital marketing right you didn't know a whole term when you came in so i think that you can probably give a lot of lessons too just from watching because you have this unbiased opinion almost right so what are some of the biggest things you've learned about marketing and for everyone watching that's trying to grow to their first million or to 10 million like that you've seen us do over and over again that's created success yeah yeah quite a journey really for me to start from where i was to where i am now and i think again the pathway for me for my education and learning enhancement was a lot through what was provided to me, as well as on the hands-on type of thing as well.

So for me, front-end offers, call to actions, big promises on our sales pages, and that is super, super important and was a big learning point for me about what to look for. So when I'm scrolling through Facebook, I'm seeing the others, I'm comparing to what we're doing. And then a lot of the stuff around the backend about how we fulfill people, how we satisfy clients, how do we provide the opportunities and for people to engage in what we do. Sales is a big aspect. So I've been leading the sales team now for probably a good 12 months or more and what our nurturing sequences look like, what our actual calls and we've evolved the scripts together as well. So those type of things are super key. But I think what stood out most is around how we get a customer and how we

bring them into our business. And then once we bring them in, whether that be through a funnel or an email or whatever, how do we get them in? And then how do we get them on a call with one of our team? And then how do we help them get to that goal that they want to get to? So things like that have stood out for me, definitely. Yeah. The sales process side, right? And then the, we're very good. And I think what's so important these days, I teach you guys a lot is the irresistible offer, the front offer, the thing that hooks them in. And you've seen all of that develop and seen how that's worked. And that's generated millions and millions of dollars in sales from those customers, right?

Just by creating those. And the other thing I'd add to that too for everybody who's watching is it's about optimizing. And it's not about just doing the same thing over and over. You have to, you know, when we get something that's working really well, we don't just, sure, we leave it there, but then we look at how do we make it better or what could we split test or optimize to make it better. So I would say to everybody out there, whatever you're doing, keep doing it if it's working, but then look at the little offshoots

that you can do on top of it that makes it work even more. Yeah, and some of those offshoot ideas make us another million dollars over a year or two, right? So, I mean, when you start, you get into this idea, and it depends on your goals. If you want to make 200 grand a year, maybe this is true, but if you want to keep growing and grow a massive company, it's not like, oh, I can just build this one product

and sales process, set it, and forget it. It's like, maybe if you want to make 200 grand a year, you can. But if you want to grow to millions, then tens of millions, it never stops, right? It's like, you know, baking, right? If you work in a burger joint, you can't just make a few burgers, get them ready for the day and say, okay, I'm done. It's like, no, there's like new people every minute coming in and you're just turning, turning. And that's what we have to do. So last question to wrap up today. Anyone listening that's trying to be successful, maybe like I was 10 years ago,

what have you learned being part of this world now, watching me grow, your own business growth? What would you say to everyone listening? Yeah, what would I say? I would say surround yourself with like-minded people. I would say surround yourself with like-minded people. I would say surround yourself with smarter people than you and never pretend that you know everything. They would be my top three.

And I see Rudy doing that. Well, I've seen him do that. Yeah. Because you've got some really obviously successful skills and personal bits that really have got you where you're going now and the businesses. But I think, you know, you've also demonstrated those three key things at a high level to help you get to there. So I, that's what I would suggest to everybody. If you're not doing that, those three things, you should be doing those things now, which will really help you get to that journey and that goal. Yep. Good. All right. Love it. Well, I appreciate

you coming in and excited for the week ahead. And I mean, it's a, hopefully an interesting episode for everyone to kind of see under the hood and behind the scenes and from the side observation. Cause I can always say, Hey, here's what I think made me successful. Here's what I mean, you should do. Here's the key focuses, but sec, you know, different perceptions are really important. So guys, you know, work on these things. We're going to do a second show, second episode on the operations of a $10 million company and what it takes logistically

and the ups and the downs and the pros and the cons. But until next time, you know, you can tune in for that one in a couple more weeks. But until then, keep living the red life. Take care.