the bossbabe podcast - 14. Personal Discovery, Stepping Into Your Power and Creating Scalable Brands

Episode Date: May 22, 2019

In this week’s episode, co-founder of BossBabe Natalie Ellis chats with Jon Boles, founder of Avintiv Media whose passion lies in building brands. They deep dive into the journey that has led him to where he is today. From pivotal moments in childhood and young adulthood to accidentally starting his first business and making over a million in revenue the first year to becoming a serial entrepreneur in tech, consulting, e-commerce, fitness and media, he’s taking us down his prescribed path to happiness. We get insight on how Jon has launched eight brands in the last ten years. Jon shares the significance of reading for personal self discovery in regards to business and successful entrepreneurship and his book recommendations for getting started. They chat openly about the human need for approval, control and security and gaining confidence and stepping into your power. Jon shares what it takes to have a brand that is scalable and how to balance your soul with operations and marketing in bringing your vision to life. “Nobody has it figured out, you just have to start” JB This episode is sponsored by IGA. A twelve week accelerator designed to help you grow and monetize your Instagram account. www.instagrowthaccelerator.com  

You have to know who you are as a person. You have to have a vision yourself. Your company has to have a vision and you have to have a product or service offering that is going to change someone's life. If you don't know where your end goal is, it's very hard for you to step into your power because it's going to be very hard for you to know that you're progressing every single day. Stop comparing yourself to what everyone else is doing and do what you need to do to level up. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Natalie Ellis, your host of this week's podcast and co-CEO of Boss Babe.

So I thought we should just start this one with like a little life update and just dive into the podcast a little bit differently. Things have been really, really good lately. We're spending a lot of time right now building out the next phase of our growth strategy at Boss Babe. We have been growing so fast. It's literally insane, but it's really exciting. And we just have the most incredible team around us. I feel like me and Danielle are getting to pull so far out of the business again. And you kind of have this cyclical process in your business where you're so in it and then you hire around you so you can pull out and then you grow so fast again that you are back in it and then you hire more people and then you get to pull out so we're in that kind of pulled out state right now which just feels really really

good there's a lot of exciting things that we're working on that you're going to find out about really soon I've also just finished planning my first two-week vacation actually in a really really long time I did take a full week vacation last year like no work whatsoever and this week's gonna be two weeks and I just love pushing that to see what we can get to and I feel like we just have the most amazing team that can totally handle it so this summer we're actually gonna head up to Italy and we're gonna do some island hopping I just literally can't wait for like carbs, sun, wine, Danielle and Greg are going to come and join me and Stephen for the first half of the vacation. And then me and Stephen have got a few days to ourselves. We're actually going to be

celebrating our second wedding anniversary, which is absolutely crazy. First of all, it doesn't feel like two minutes ago that we actually met, nevermind got married, which was just crazy. And here's a little fun fact. I don't know if you know this, but me and Stephen actually got married when we were 25, just six months after we met. And it just goes to show like a single decision can truly change the entire course of your life. And that decision for me was like when he DM'd me asking if I'd have coffee with him. So that's definitely going to be my quote of the week. But it was so funny. He literally just DM'd me on Instagram and was like, will you go for coffee? I didn't know him, but I like stalked his profile and saw that he was from Scotland which is really close to where I grew up at home and I was like

yeah sure so yeah just like be really intentional about your decisions because you really never know what they could lead to and how they could completely alter the course of your life or you know bring it into alignment so yeah on top of all that that's feeling really good me and Stephen are currently looking at buying a house in LA. So I'm learning all the things that come with that, which is really exciting. And I just feel like such a grown up, like buying a house, like we're thinking of moving a little bit further out.

So not super in the center and just having a bit more space. That would feel really good for us. My health is still up and down. If you have been kind of following along on Instagram or you listen to the hormone podcast episode, you'll know kind of what I mean by that so I'm still waiting for some answers there but I'm starting to surrender more and more which is definitely a lot easier said than done and lately I just feel quite proud of the balance that I've been able to have in the space that I've created for myself and I don't know if I would have been so intentional about doing that had I not had all this health stuff to deal with. I feel it's kind of pushed

me into doing things differently and I feel like that happens a lot like something will happen for us that really forces us to think about things differently or do things differently or realize what's so important to us and just like on a personal note for me I realized what was so important to me was like being able to have children note for me, I realized what was so important to me was like being able to have children and have a family of our own. And it's just nice to get that reminder of like, this is what I care about. And that's what I'm kind of working for and driving towards. So that's been good. So yeah, there's my little life update. It'd be interesting to know if you like enjoy this kind of thing before podcast or if you just want to dive straight in.

So let me know, like drop me a DM, screenshot and tell me what you think of this episode and we can just dive in. So this week I interviewed my friend John Bowles. John has been an entrepreneur for more than 10 years and has successfully scaled eight companies now selling one of them in 2018 and is currently growing a nationally recognized award-winning brand. Over the past decade alone, he's helped scale and consult on over 160 brands across the country, grossing millions and millions of dollars to his clients along the way. And his latest company, Aventive Media, is set to do multiple seven figures this year from simply helping businesses grow through branding, web design, digital advertising,

and business coaching. So I'm really excited for you to hear this episode and just before we fully dive in I've got something really exciting to share with you. So a couple of weeks ago I actually did an amazing training to show you exactly how to grow your Instagram audience by 10,000 of your absolute ideal clients in just 30 days. The training was full, we couldn't let any more people in and it lasted for about 90 minutes. It was just packed with so many tips and tricks that I've never shared before. You know, in the past, I've typically done training specifically on growth hacking or specifically on your content strategy. And in this training, I brought all together and just gave a

really specific step-by-step strategy that if you listen and you implement all of these things, you will grow by 10,000 of your ideal clients in 30 days. And I don't just say 10,000 followers, because honestly, what does that matter? Like if those people follow you, do not give a crap what you're selling or who you are and are going to engage with you, then it's kind of useless having them. Like it's very much a vanity metric and I'm just not here for the vanity metric. So I say ideal clients because I truly believe you should be able to add 10,000 of your ideal clients in just 30 days to your audience. So if you think this would be really helpful and you think that learning how to grow your audience with these ideal clients who are engaged and actually buy from you would be helpful for your personal brand or your business, whether

it's a product-based business, service--based business whether it's actually an in-person brick and mortar business then you have to check out this training I've actually activated a completely free replay specifically for our podcast listeners so just head to bossbabe.com forward slash ig dash growth that's bossbabe.com forward slash ig dash growth to watch an instant replay it is epic it is totally worth those 90 minutes of your life make sure you come with a notebook and pen and are just really really focused because there's so much in there and I talk really really fast so with that let's just dive straight into this episode and I know you're going to love it a boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise,

keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own welcome to the podcast i'm so excited to have you here for those listening probably don't know but we've just sat for like 10 minutes and already had an amazing conversation so i definitely want to continue more of the same so i would love to dive in and for you to tell everyone a bit about your story and i would love for you to tell the story that I know, and perhaps you don't share so often, or it's not the typical story. How's it going, guys? Thank you, first of all, for having me on this podcast. You are like my spirit animal. You're my favorite person in the universe. You and I vibe so well.

And getting to know you and Boss Babe community and just seeing the tribe you guys have created and how amazing these women are and what they're doing to entrepreneurship, I will say you guys are paving the way for a lot of guys right now. And you're making us get our shit together by seeing what you girls are up to. So more power to you guys. So my story, how I dive into it is a little bit different than how a lot of other people dive into their story. Through all the coaching I've done, life coaching, business coaching, I've realized there's one thing that happens to a grownup and you are at where you're at in your life because of one pivotal moment that happened in your childhood. You might not remember what happened. You might have to dissect and analyze

your entire life to figure that out. But in the past years, I've spent a lot of money going through deep dive life coaching seminars, courses, masterminds, you name it. And there was one pivotal moment that happened in my life. And that's going back to 1992. So we're going to go on a little bit of a journey right now. And it's Christmas morning. And I just get done opening up my presents. I was an only child. I was in the living room by myself with the TV going Christmas tree. And I'm like, where's my family? Where is everybody? And I look down, I have a black Power Ranger in my hand and I have a Nerf gun in my right hand. And I can remember it to this day, old school Hitachi TV with the wooden panels. Like it's more vivid than

me looking at you right now and having this amazing podcast. And I go to the kitchen table, my parents, they're sobbing and they're crying so hard. It almost looks like the wooden kitchen table wants to collapse because of how many tears are on the table. And I'm five years old. I have no idea what's going on. So I look over the door and my dad's bags were packed, you know, two, three feet tall. Didn't look like a normal trip. So I look at my dad and I look back at the door.

I was like, dad, are you going on another work trip? And my mom just started, lost it. My dad started crying. And at that moment, that was the first time in my life. I found out what not having control was. I found out what not having a family was, even though I had a family. But as a child, when you get something so dear and so close to you ripped apart and you literally have no control, your entire world shifts. So it started happening. And my dad was, he's my best

friend, very respectful to my mother, never cheated. They never fought. They never argued or called names. I was raised in a very respectful household. My dad just fell out of love, which happens from time to time, you know, so I don't have anything against them. But what started happening is back in the nineties, where I'm from in Racine, Milwaukee, Wisconsin area is no kids were divorced. So at school, I'd get made fun of every day. You have a broken family, your dad left you, you don't have brothers and sisters, you can't play with us. You know, I went to a higher end school that my parents could barely afford to pay me and they called me the broke kid, the poor kid, made fun

that we didn't have any money. So every single day for an entire year, I was going to school, getting picked on, beat up on the playground, getting bullied by a bunch of rich kids. And that carried over into, you know, six, seven, eight years old when my parents, they thought that giving me gifts would get me to stop crying, which a lot of parents do. So I started bringing these toys to school and everyone started wanting to be my friend. So at that moment of five to seven years old, I lost control. And now I'm seeking approval from all my classmates off the money and the toys that I of five to seven years old, I lost control. And now I'm seeking approval from all my classmates off the money and the toys that I just brought to school. So it clicked for me

back then at the age of five to seven, money equals happiness. Money equals people liking you. Money equals power, control. And I felt like I had the control back from when I lost when I was five years old. And if you research happiness, happiness is a very mainstream term. Now, if you break it down, you're actually seeking three things. That's approval, that's control, and that's security. So I had all those things when I started bringing, you know, toys onto the playground. You know, we'll fast forward a little bit. I wasn't the greatest kid when it came to school. I just wasn't. I'm a visionary just like you. I live in the clouds. I was thinking of business, probably 10, 12, 13, 14 years old. I didn't care about geometry or economics or

any of this other stuff. So I got B's and C's all throughout grade school and I started getting wrapped up into the wrong kids. And this is where my story takes a deep dive, which a lot of people are very shocked when they hear this story. And they started coming around with new shoes, new hoodies, new clothes, new toys. I'm like, where are you guys getting this money? My parents give me maybe $20 a week for an allowance. And I barely get that. Like, what are you guys doing? And I found out what weed was for the first time. And coming from a small town, you know, going to private Christian schools, I didn't know what it was. And I was like, well, if you guys are making money off that, can I make money off that? And I kind of got lured into starting to sell drugs.

So 16, 17 years old, I started smoking pot for the first time, started selling weed for the first time. Fast forward to 16 going on 17, I had a million dollar business. I was selling everything from Oxycontin, Percocet, Vicodin, opiates, you know, you name it, I've probably sold it. And I had no idea what I was doing at that time. I had a business model. I would get product from X at a very small cost, and I would sell it for Y. And my Y was almost 400% over what my X was. So I had a very lucrative

business model back then at the age of 16 or 17 years old. But I didn't know what I was doing to people. I didn't know what I was doing to families. I had no idea the destruction of drugs. And I learned the hard way. I had hundreds of thousands of dollars on cash on hand. I made over a million dollars before I turned 18 years old and I lost it all. A lot of my drug dealers got caught and busted. I was dealing with some pretty dangerous people. So I'm glad my family didn't get put in jeopardy or anything happened. My parents did find out, you know, they kicked me out of the house for two weeks. So I didn't really have a place to live for a couple of weeks in high school. But fast forward through that, you know, I'm giving the synopsis right now.

It was a very painful time in my life going from having the power and the money and the success, which obviously goes back to when I was five years old, which I didn't have the control, the money or the power or any of that, which drugs and being a drug dealer brought that to me. I started taking my own pills. I started taking, you know, Oxycontin, Vicodin, Percocet, and I was addicted to drugs for almost three years. At that time, it ruined my entire life. But what I've learned over the past decade is it didn't happen to me. It happened for me. And I have gone through hell and back my entire life from the age of five to being an opiate addict to going through rehab at the age of 20, going bankrupt, my parents having to borrow me money for my first apartment building, and then launching my first successful six-figure company later that year. But I used to think, poor old me. My parents got divorced.

No one loves me. I'm not good enough. I have to bring these toys divorced. No one loves me. I'm not good enough. I have to bring these toys for these kids to like me. I always thought that happiness was external. I thought that I had to achieve something to get people to like me. And I did that since five years old. How crazy is that? 20-something years, you're living a life that you think happiness comes from things you have no control over.

Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place, so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening

and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash boss babe i feel you on that i'll just jump in to say thank you so much for sharing that and it's funny because i'm also a kid of divorce and i can remember so my parents got divorced when i was three and it's funny because i could play that entire movie out for you right now just exactly how it happened and these things do affect us but we brush them under the rug because it's what we're taught to do. And for me, I learned that achievement equaled love. So I just would achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve. And if I wasn't achieving, I had this voice in my head,

you're not worthy, you're not deserving. And it does take a long time to rewrite that story. So you said you got to this point, you had a million dollar business. You must've been running pretty epic business at that point. It was pretty scary. Yeah. So you had a million dollar business. You started taking your own pills and got addicted to drugs. How did you lose the million dollars? How did you end up losing all of that? And what kind of brought it all to a head? Yeah. So I would say that was over like a year, a year and a half that I made that type of money. But when you're living that type of a lifestyle, I was spending money on everything to get people to like me. So that quality never left me. I was buying girlfriends, diamonds and pearls and all these things that kids our age should not know what it

is. I was spending my own money on my own pills. I was spending money on parties and alcohol and just buying tons of clothes and needless stuff. So it's like having a business and your sales keep going down and down and down, but you're so messed up on your own product. Sales started going down, going down, and I was spending my own money to keep it going. I just woke up one day and everything was gone. I'm like, holy shit, I have a couple hundred dollars left to my name. Like, this is not okay. So from there, and you talked about just soon after that, you were able to launch your successful six-figure business. And now you have an amazing, incredible, successful business. You have a massive team. What has that journey looked like from going from this really scary business

model and being addicted to drugs to actually a leader of this incredible company? How did you even step into that? And we can talk about the leadership aspect after that, because I know that's a whole new ballgame, but how did you step into that role? So once I got off of drugs and going through rehab, it was the most painful hell you can imagine. Picture rehab, picture what hell looks like. Amplify that by 100 for 30 full days. And that's what I went through. So when you go through hell, and it feels like the world is ending, your skin is crawling, it feels like there's a demon trapped inside of you. When you're clean, and when you're out, at least for me, a lot of the other people that went through treatment actually ended up dead or in prison. So I was one of the, you know, anomaly that went in and I'm

very grateful for making it out because I can share my story and impact the world like I'm doing now. I got out and I was like, screw this. If I'm going to let another day go by where I don't fix what I just caused better my life, better the universe, because I took so many, not taking lives, obviously, but I did so much bad things where I was taking kids away from their families or harming the world, let's just say, that I had a new mission. And I said, I want to become a better version of myself each and every day. I want to inspire every single person around me, and I want to do it the legal way and the legit way. So the first company I launched 10 years ago, I just fell into. I didn't even mean to do it. I moved to a new city, Milwaukee,

Wisconsin, which is the largest city in Wisconsin. I started bar backing. So picture going from having all this money and super powerful, everyone loves you to cleaning toilets in front of the hottest girls in the city. So it was a very big ego check. I'm sitting here behind the bar, you know, kind of flirting, whatever. And then I have to go clean the toilets. So it was a very big ego check. Just like you, I'm a social butterfly. I could move to anywhere in the world and make friends and have energetic conversations and people end up, you know, liking the energy that we have. So long story short, I ended up knowing a lot of people in the city within a very short amount of time. So the bar owners and restaurant owners started seeing that and they stopped having me work my normal shifts and they wanted me to start promoting. And then I had my own Wednesday night and then it was Thursday hosted

by John Bowles. And then it was Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I had no idea how fast that would pick up. I soon had the hottest parties in the entire city for almost a year, two years straight. And it got to the point where I was like, I hate saying like local celebrity, because that was definitely not the case. But I was very well known throwing parties for celebrities, professional athletes. I was the gatekeeper at all the nightclubs that everyone wanted to get into. So if people love me, they really love me. If someone didn't get in, they wanted me dead. I had people follow me home to my apartment and my parking structure. I got hate mail back on Facebook, death threats. So

it was way too public facing for the age of 21 to 22. So I accidentally said, well, if we just throw a logo up and a company name, can we just hide behind it? Because I was sick of being the face of everything. And we started a company. We did a little over a million in revenue that year for our clients and took home, I think like a quarter million for ourselves that first year. So that was my first business experience. So it went from selling drugs to being broke to way too much attention to accidentally starting my first business and it picks up like wildfire. So that kind of transition, you know, let's say just you know I've launched eight of my own brands over the last decade and I honestly don't think and I've been called success many times in my life I think I've done more amazing things in the past six months internally with happiness and who I am

that makes the last 10 years look like I had training wheels on or bumper lanes in a bowling alley and it's almost like that was just like I was playing in the sand with Crayola crayons, like people view it as success. But it's almost like I've done so much life transformation discovery in the last couple of months, that it makes it look like the last 10 years was just a test run. I went in from launching that company, I had a tech company that was going to raise a couple million dollars in funding, I got screwed over on that deal by a best friend, you know, lost almost a quarter million dollars on that. I started consulting for nightclubs, restaurants, hotels, salons, and spas. I did really well at that, but I was miserable. I got into the e-commerce game and fitness, ended up selling that company

back in May. But my passion lies in building brands for other people. My passion lies in helping business owners achieve something that they don't know how to achieve. I'm a giver. I'm a provider. I am a visionary and serial entrepreneur. I love creating things. I'm not the guy that starts a brand and I'm like, okay, I'm going to have this for the next 30 years and we're going to launch this product and that product and that product. I love working with a hundred different brands on different marketing campaigns, branding websites, coaching. Like I'm such a creator. I can't just stay with one thing.

I love that. And it kind of shows when you have this evolution of different companies and trying different things, you get bored and you move to the next thing. So to find a way of serving all those different people, I think so interesting. So you talked about the last six months being a place where you've done so much work and I feel like it's true like success might look like success on externally and you might be making money and all of those things and people might be liking you but if you're not internally feeling like your soul is connected to what you're doing then it doesn't feel like success for you and I've had that experience too where I had a company that was externally doing so well and for me I saw it as a stepping stone it helped me to learn a lot of things it helped me to get out of the position I was in and start to move towards where I want to be but my soul wasn't connected to it and I

ended up walking away from it and people couldn't understand why I would do that when my biggest goal was just to have a business but it's like Maslow's hierarchy right like when you've started to establish that and you aren't worrying about where your next paycheck's coming from you aren't worrying about those small things that's when it's a real luxury to be able to lean into what you're really passionate about and I think that's just some of the journey of entrepreneurship and where it gives you, and you can get that in a career too, but entrepreneurship really is like a mirror, like you're holding a mirror up to show all sides of you.

If you have big goals and plans, you have to be the absolute best version of yourself that you can be. And I know you've got a pretty big team and you're scaling really quickly. And so what kind of work have you had to do that's kind of turned you into work have you had to do that's kind of turned you into the leader you need to be? That's a great question and all very valid points. I used to think, and for any entrepreneurs or boss babes that are listening or people that want to be successful, I used to be the guy that would always spend time researching other brands

and companies and marketing and all these different cool things that we could do. I've always been into fitness. I've been into personal development. I've lived a very good and clean lifestyle ever since getting out of rehab a decade ago, but I've never gone as deep as I'm going now. And I realized it's not a rather of who I have to become. It's who I have to reveal to step into my true power. It's not becoming a John Bowles or a Lewis house. And the funny thing is, is I did MITT in LA with Chris Lee, who is Lewis house's business and life coach as well. And Chris Lee is a dear friend of mine, love him like a brother now. And I remember getting up on stage and I said, my limiting belief is, and I'm shaking with the microphone, there's 150 intimate

people there in an intimate setting. And I was like, I have a fear. I'm never going to be the Lewis house. I'm never going to be a New York times bestseller. I'm never going to be the influencer because I don't care about the press or any of that. I care about influencing people, inspiring people. I'm never going to be these things. And Chris grabbed the microphone and he's like, when are you going to be John bolts? When are you going to step into your power and not look at what Lewis is doing or what this person is doing or what that person is doing? When is John Bowles going to get over his shit and step into his power because there's millions of people's lives that are counting on you to get over your own bullshit. Since then, I started reading a book a week in January, which has been the biggest,

I kid you not, the biggest benefit I've ever done in my entire life. And I've invested over a quarter million dollars, probably just like you in life coaching, business coaching, masterminds, but reading a book a week on personal discovery or development or mindset vision. I don't read any storytelling type books. That has gotten me so much better as a leader in understanding how people think, on how they feel, on what their emotions are.

And the biggest misconception I had as an entrepreneur is I thought I had to be this powerful guy with these huge companies and all this notoriety and success. And that's not the case. You need to be, to your core, the most authentic you can possibly be. You need to know yourself like the back of your hand, because as you and I can both relate to

right now, you know, you're definitely growing a lot faster than we are. But when you're going through growth spurts that everyone wants to have, that is almost as vulnerable as if you're failing. It's a house of cards, the glass house, and there's no insulation. There's no cushion. When you're growing at the level that we're growing one small move or a kink in the process, a kink in the armor, the whole castle comes down and you better know who you truly are. Stop with the highlight reel and Instagram, stop wearing the mask, stop faking it till you make it. I used to be that guy. I used to be the guy that was making a quarter million dollars a year, who was spending $300,000 a year to live this lifestyle to make people think he was successful. And up until 2018, I never shared my story about addiction or being a drug dealer.

I hid that in the corner so no one would look at that guy. Telling my story for the first time back in January of 2018 was the biggest transformational moment I've ever had. And since then, guess what I've been able to do? I've been able to coach over five women that have suffered from rape, that have suffered from horrible things in their life. Now, if I was still wearing a mask, do you think I'd be the coach that they were looking up to that would allow them to step into their own power? If I was living a lie and I'm still wearing the mask on my face, how can I help people get them to the promised land? So by me getting over my own bullshit and investing in life coaches or personal discovery and self-development books and learning who John is, not John Bowles,

who's verified on Instagram, who John is. I like John. I love John. I have a very, very good relationship with John right now. And I love to read. I love to meditate. I love yoga, plants, energy, sun. I don't care about nightclubs. I don't care about girls. I don't care about the exotic cars. I am here to be the best version of me because I have an entire team that's looking up to me. A lot of followers and fans that are looking at me to step into my power every day. And I haven't even gotten started yet. I want to help millions of people, not just a couple hundred, not just a couple thousand, because going over my journey over the last 10 years or even 30 years, I have learned that I have a true gift in me. And that's to be able to authentically lower my ego and be able to tell when something's going

wrong with someone and help them through something they're going through. And I want to do that on a massive scale. So to get back to your original question, so many CEOs and entrepreneurs put this mask on and you have to hide from your employees and you have to be this happy guy 24 seven. That was me. And guess what, Natalie, I was fricking miserable. I'd walk into work every day and we were doing very well with every company we had. And I was faking it. I was lying to them straight to their face. It's amazing. It's great. Yada, yada, yada. And you would think that you would have to keep upselling the last story you told them. Well, I told him this last Thursday. I got to tell him a little bit better this time. And then I'd go home and I'd be miserable. And the money coming in didn't fix it. The cars,

I'd upgrade a car every six months. I'd have a new girlfriend every year. Like now I'm dating myself. I'm single and love dating myself because I'm 30 years old. I want to meet the love of my life. A girl who has her own vision, a girl who is motivated without looking at me like I'm a meal ticket or the golden ticket. I want to meet someone when the time is right. But I used to force it. I used to think I would need a girlfriend or a significant other or partners or all these other things with business because I was so afraid of looking at the power I had within me. Yeah, I feel that. And I think there's some people listening and them hearing you talk about the power you have within yourself. They are like probably thinking, I don't have power within myself. Like, how can he even say that? Where does that come from?

Is there some specific work you've done that has allowed you to step into that confidence and step into your own power? Like for someone listening that is probably listening to you and thinking, okay, that's great, but I can't do that. How would you suggest they even start going about that? So first I'll start with what not to do, if that's okay. And then I'll go into what to do because anyone that's listening right now, I don't care how much money you have. I don't care how much overweight you are. I don't care what you think that you are or that you're not.

You are beautiful and you are enough. Whoever is listening to this right now. I used to be the guy that would look at the influencers or celebrities and say, wow, they must've been like born on a different planet. And they came down in a rocket ship because I am nothing like them. And I would compare myself to other people. And as soon as you compare yourself to another thing or being, you give up your own power and you give up your most amazing aspects of your own life. So one, don't compare yourself to someone else. They are on a different journey and a different path. You have no idea what I've gone through in 10 years, just like I have no idea what you've

gone through in 10 years. And a lot of the people I've looked up to, the celebrities, the influencers, guess what? We're both all good friends with them now. And I know their stories. I know who they are away from Instagram. And they have all gone through hell. They have not had an easy rollercoaster ride. When I've been sharing my story in all these podcasts, people used to reach out.

Well, you're different than me. How do you have this power? And I tell my full story. They're like, wow, you've gone through all that and you can still sit here and tell me. So one, don't compare yourself to other people. Two, do not give your power away. Anything anyone does to you is not personal. I went on a rant on Instagram today. If you get let go from a job or a boyfriend breaks up with you or a guy cheats on you, I've talked with many women about this. It's a very big topic. I'm guessing for a lot of boss babes as well. You guys will let a guy cheating on you affect where your business goes,

affect where your career goes, affect how magnificent your sparkle is. You have to realize what he did is not personal. What a boss does is not personal. They are living in their own universe, their own world, and they are doing the best they can to survive. It has nothing to do with you. So to step into your power, one exercise I really like to do, there's a couple of rules. When you do positive affirmations, you have to truly believe them. You cannot write down, I am the president of the United States because it's obviously not true. You have to write down things that are true. I used to be the guy that would write, I can't wait till I can deposit a quarter million dollars into my bank account, right? A lot of that stuff happens or you can hit that goal.

But when you're putting it into the future, you're taking away the present. So step number two, stop thinking about the past and the future because you missed the present. Presence are I am. I am talking with Natalie right now. I am on the Boss Babes podcast. I am amazing. I am influential, powerful. Whatever those positive affirmations that you are, you have to write those down and read them to yourself daily. Even if you start with five or 10, don't worry about 50 to 100 or whatever. Start with five positive I am's. I am here in the present today. I am going to crush today, whatever those positive affirmations are. So if you're trying to discover where your true power is, those are a couple of things. The biggest eyeopening experience I've ever done in my life

was creating a vision. Now, Lewis House, the School of Greatness has a phenomenal vision course in his book that I've had a lot of clients go through. So buy that book if you're looking on how to create a vision. But if you don't know where your end goal is, it's very hard for you to step into your power. Because if you're looking at this huge treasure map, and you don't know who you are, where you are, where it's going, what this universe is, it's going to be very hard for you to know that you're progressing every single day. So create a vision, whether that's one year out, two years out, and just write a couple pages. This is who Natalie is in 2020. And all you have to do is reverse engineer it to today.

And that allows you to step into your power. But I think the biggest misconception is people look at, let's just say you, Natalie, boss babes is crushing it. You're verified. You're beautiful. Your husband and your relationship is absolutely like relationship goals. Everyone looks at you and they're like, wow, she, she's untouchable. She's way up here, but they don't realize you've been focusing on just becoming 1% better every day. And over one year, you are 365% better than you were last year. I wish I could consecutively get those numbers in business every year. We're tripling every year, but I wish for the rest of my life, I could just do 1% better every day with business because that doesn't happen.

That's not real, but you have full power and full control in your own life to become 1% better every single day. The other big thing is you have to start reading, stop watching TV, stop watching soap operas, stop sitting on the couch, get out into nature and start reading books. That is the biggest impact I've ever had in my life. And you start to go through these successful entrepreneur stories and you start to view yourself in those stories. And day after day after day, your power starts to come out of its little closed box. And you didn't even know it was there. And day by day, three to six months in, I want you guys to DM Natalie or myself after you've done all these things. And

you're gonna be like, wow, I had no idea that person was in there. And the question I wanna leave with them on me answering this question is you were a little boy or a little girl when you were first born, grade school, preschool, growing up, what did you wanna be? An astronaut, a firefighter, a ballerina, whatever your goals were, where did that go wrong?

Where did that little girl get lost in her journey that she thought that she was fat, ugly, not good enough, insecure, not cool enough, not smart enough. They need to go back and find that little girl. They need to go back to the happy and joyful knowing that she can do whatever she wants to do to get to where she's trying to go. There's no difference between us. It's what I do every single day that separates me from anyone else. I'm up at five to 6 AM every morning. I go straight to the gym for an hour. I meditate with Muse for about 20 or 30 minutes in the morning. I have the same morning ritual and I go and read for two hours. And I have a company that's growing like wildfire right now. People would think you're crazy. You're not working first thing in the morning. No, I do personal self-care.

John needs his love before he gives it to the rest of the world. So I'm doing more from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. than most people do in an entire day. And then I'm going into the office to work an eight to 10 hour shift. And then I'm coming home, having another healthy meal. And then I'm going and reading for another one to two hours. But people aren't wanting to put that much time into it. They get a little bit level of success and they give up. Or if they haven't even found success, they could just give up in the beginning because they look at these verified quote unquote influencers and they think they have it all figured out, but they don't. This is a journey. No one has it figured out. You just have to start. Yeah, I agree with that, especially when you say no one has it figured out, because we're all just seeing what's kind of happening.

Absolutely. It was funny, one of my best friends, she voice noted me the other day, and she was like, you've just got your everything together. You know exactly what you're doing. And I was like, wow, I must be doing something right if that's how it looks, because it just got your everything together. Like, you know exactly what you're doing. And I was like, wow, I must be doing something right if that's how it looks, because it's not always like that. And there's a few things you said that I just want to kind of highlight. You said this idea about giving your power away.

And one thing I've realized is when you react to someone or something, that's you giving your power away. And one of the biggest transformations I've been able to make my personal life is not reacting to things like I can be sitting in a meeting and someone could say anything to me and I don't react I mean I'm Capricorn anyway but my face is just like stone I'm like okay and I just imagine it bouncing off me like I know it's not personal and I imagine

it bouncing off me I wouldn't say I'm as good as that in my marriage when I'm definitely working on it but I know that when you react you give your power away and on top of coming out and telling your story it's something I did it was only I think last year too I've never talked about my story growing up and I wanted to do it because I knew okay it's time to get rid of the mask because I had tons of people messaging me saying, oh, like, it's all right for you. You're successful because of this and this. And I was like, wow, if they only knew what I truly went through, then maybe they would think it's possible for them too. And I probably told my story way before I was even ready to do it.

I did it at a live event. I was standing up and I was shaking and I asked my best friend. Yeah, it's terrifying right I had my best friend standing on stage with me because I was too afraid to do it alone and I thought I might clam up so she would have to interject and I did it and she hugged me afterwards and I stood on stage just crying and everyone was so supportive and amazing and once I did that I felt like I took off this backpack that I'd been carrying and I left it there because I was like, you know what? There is no skeleton in my closet now. This is me. And anyone that I feel like interacts with

me from this point forward is here for me. And almost this mask that I wore for a long time, I felt like I might not have friends if people knew where I came from or what my story was like or anything. And it's really empowering to know like, wow, the people that call themselves my friends truly like me for me. And that was a big game changer. And then, yeah, just talking about the vision board thing, I think that's essential. And that's been part of my routine since I was about 13. I've always had this vision and it's always came true. And so the vision that I've got now, like I have an absolute confidence that it's going to happen. And confidence, again, what you were saying is a big part. So people are so interested when I talk about my marriage

and how me and Stephen were able to find each other. And for me, it was all about that confidence piece. And once I had confidence in myself and had that figured out, then everything else kind of fell into place. So I love that we've kind of journeyed up until this part went so deep. And I would love for you to talk a little bit about the work that you do, because I know one of your zones of genius is scaling brands. And I would love for you to talk a little bit about what it takes to have a brand that is scalable and what people could be doing

with their own companies in order to put themselves on that growth trajectory. Perfect. So, you know, we do a lot of consulting and business coaching across the world now with a lot of successful brands. The one thing that you guys need to remember, whoever's listening is human beings are human beings. You're not selling to a company. You're not selling to some powerful CEO or some broke college student. You're not selling to a company. You're not selling to some powerful CEO or some broke college student. You're selling to a human being who has a heart, who has a soul, who has their own shit going on in their life. Your brand has to feel something. It has to be something. It has to have a heartbeat. If you think you're just going to go and create,

we're doing a lot of stuff in the CBD and cannabis space right now. And everyone is wanting to launch a CBD company. They're like, Oh, we're just going to use a white label, throw a logo on it and sell it and make millions of dollars because it's a $30 billion industry or soon to be X, Y, and Z. What people are failing to realize is that if you just throw shit against the wall, excuse my language, or do a shotgun approach, it's not going to work. You have to actually strategize on where your business is going. So for any entrepreneur or CEO or business owner, I always like to start with vision, personal vision first, not just company vision, because I made the mistake of building every company I ever had and then building my personal vision around the company versus my company being built around me. Because

let's just say a successful entrepreneur launches a brand, scales it, but his life is revolving around the brand. Guess what? His wife's going to end up leaving him. His kids are not going to know what their dad looks like, just the back of their head. And as time goes on, that's going to be a hundred to $300 million brand, which I know a lot of guys that are at the couple hundred million dollar level. And they said, if they had to go back again, they'd work 40 to 60 hours a week. They'd outsource, they'd hire so they could be home for their family. They're now divorced. Their kids barely know them and they have a powerful brand, but it didn't mean anything. So when you're building a powerful brand or how to scale, you have to like all the personal

discovery we talked about at the beginning is a necessity. I don't regret anything, but if I had to go back again and redo everything, I would have started with the personal discovery, not the business and success. I would have gotten my shit together and then looked at launching a brand. But for anyone that wants to scale at a couple hundred or a couple thousand percent, you have to know who you are as a person. You have to have a vision yourself. Your company has to have a vision, you have to know who you are as a person. You have to have a vision yourself. Your company has to have a vision and you have to have a product or service offering that is going to change someone's life. Unless you're a Walmart or a Target or someone that has venture funding or hundreds of millions of dollars, you have to be doing something that changes a customer's life.

There's so many different ways of intricate detail you need to have in today's day and age where like we're launching a new CBD brand right now. We're going as fine-tuned as what type of silk packaging are we using? What happens when they rub their fingers against the packaging? What type of experience are they going to get? Should we make the blue or the pink gloss? What's that going to do to the female perspective? We analyze everything. So it starts with vision and what you're going to be offering, where your company is going to be going. And the biggest thing, which I know you and I have talked about Natalie is you have to have a culture, right? No successful entrepreneur

did it on their own back. We're hiring about two to three employees every single month right now, which beyond me, I'm not a manager by any means. I am a leader, but there's a difference between leadership and management, right? So when you're trying to grow a brand and scale a brand, stop comparing yourself to the competition. Stop comparing yourself to what everyone else is doing and do what you need to do to level up. So when you're developing and building a brand, it starts with vision. You have to then carry that vision over into what products and services are going to help you get to that vision. You don't just say, I'm launching this company that has 60 milligrams of CBD, or, you know, I'm launching this podcast. Does it align with your vision? You start with a vision first. I want my company to look and feel like

this. It's like a baby. It's a newborn baby. I want it to be running the Olympics at age 13. Okay, great. What products and services do we have to launch to get her to be running the Olympics at 13 or 14? And then you start diving into the product and service offering. Okay, we can tweak this. We can tweak that. What consumers would do that? Then you create your ideal avatars, your ideal buyer personas. And then that trickles down into what colors do they like?

What type of words do they like? And that goes into how you brand yourself. And it's a trickle-down effect. And then your marketing campaigns are built off all the pain points and solutions in your ideal customer workshop that you do. So it's not a hard process. It's just takes time and no one wants to spend the time on developing a brand. And what I'm doing with the Vinted Media now is we're developing an iconic brand, just like you guys are with Boss Babes. I don't want a company anymore. I don't just want a marketing agency. I want an iconic brand that people can get behind, even if they never use our services. They're like, wow, that they're inventive changed my friend's life. Or my

mom scaled her company, or they did this with this person. Like they're so involved with the community. They are a breath of fresh air. I want an iconic brand that changes the world, not just makes a hundred million dollars in revenue. And I get to retire at the age of 40. I want to leave a legacy behind and every entrepreneur that starts a brand, whether you want to sell it or leave a legacy behind, you have to have an end goal. You have to have an end game plan. Otherwise your customers are going to know you're full of shit. You can't just offer a product or service that's white labeled by someone else and think you're going to do $100 million in revenue when you're not even intimate with them on

social media. You're not even intimate in the content. So it's like, how do you expect to do all that type of revenue when you have no relationship with your customers? So it all comes down like coming full circle because I just gave a lot. You have to know who your target customers are and you have to have a very intimate, loving relationship with them, knowing what makes them tick, where their pain points are and offering solutions for those. And you need to have customer service and culture

be at the top of the food chain, not being verified on Instagram or have all these cool Facebook ads and funnels. And that's popular now. Well, I have a hundred thousand dollar funnel. Great. How's your culture? How's your customer service? That is the meat and bones to a business. I've had a lot of friends scaled a $1,500 million in revenue and the business has almost come tanking down because they focus so heavy on influencer marketing and funnels that their customer service started lacking. So culture, customer service, and vision are at the forefront of it all. You can always hire a branding agency. You can always hire a web development agency to outsource all the work to, but it's going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to come to us to build your entire

company for you. So you have to do the intricate parts as the CEO and visionary, and then outsource the branding to someone else. Outsource the Facebook ads, focus on your level of genius and create product and service offering. That's gonna change the world, not just get rich quick because I hate to say it, that company's gonna flop. Yeah, you said a few really interesting things there.

You said, stop thinking about the competition. And one thing I've always said is if you're thinking about the competition, you're thinking too small because we've scaled Boss Babe in the way we have, not because we were looking at the competition, but we were thinking about our vision and what we wanted to create.

And if you look at like a typical influencer or Instagram brand or anything like that, they follow a very specific path. They have the partnerships and funnels and all of those amazing things, which can make a really successful brand. But for me, it didn't feel like that was the right vision so we've been signing huge deals with k-swiss and other massive companies like this and doing things that way that's huge thank you but we've been doing things that people maybe aren't doing so much in our space and the reason

is because we're not looking at the competition and you also said this part about intimacy and I also think that's really really interesting because a lot of people I think have this idea for a great company and they are so good at what they do but then they go out and they build all the funnels and all the things and then customers aren't coming in and they're kind of stuck at square one and they don't have the revenue so it's really hard to do anything else because the revenue is like the blood in your veins, right? Once that's there, everything else falls into place. And I think in the beginning,

it's so important for people to get intimate with their customers. Like you were saying, like don't be afraid to sell in the DMs. Don't be afraid to go out for one client at a time and then eventually it's all going to build up. And I know that's how we started. Yes, same and that's how we built the agency. We focused on one to two to three clients

at first and we built case studies on it. We got a phenomenal result. We put all the case studies in our marketing, in our blogs, on our content. Now, thank God I haven't spent one dollar on ads. We spent 20 grand one year. It all went down the drain with someone who didn't fully know what they were doing, but we've been able to scale to the level that we're at with zero paid traffic because what we did is we focused on referrals. We focused on phenomenal engagement that we have with our customers. We know our customers like they're family. We are a marketing and web development branch of these companies. We're not some agency that charges them an invoice every month. Our team knows each other. We've had food, we've broken bread together. Like we know

who we're working with. And that's so important to start small. I never say perfect, but start small and know what you're doing with those one or two people. Because what's going to happen is if you scale way too quickly and all of your loyal tribe or your community get a really bad experience, you're done. They're never going to come back to you to purchase. And all of your loyal tribe or your community get a really bad experience, you're done. They're never going to come back to you to purchase. And all of their friends that they told you about when they ask it, like, oh, we don't work with them anymore. They did X, Y, and Z. Like you have to start small, focus on the culture, focus on the community, making sure that you're hitting a home run with that and then start to scale. But so many people

want a million dollars overnight. They want that supercar. They want to be in, in ink and entrepreneur and Forbes, but you've got to play the long game. You cannot just do a bandaid fix. I'm so in agreement with that. And what you said about getting people results is such a big one. And we're the same. We don't really spend money on advertising either. And we focused on building our community and understanding our community so well. And I could pretty much have a conversation with myself knowing what people in my community would say when I'm creating something. I can have a narrative with them because I know them so well. And we even have people from our community in focus groups and we meet with them once a week. We let them tell us what to do and we're driven by that. And so I think that's really, really important. So for anyone

listening who is thinking they'd like to start an agency or generally want to scale their business, think about how you are treating the people that you have right now and how you're turning those results into case studies. And I get a lot of questions of, well, how do you start when you've got no experience and no one will give you a chance? And I say, start for free, do whatever it's got to take to get that one testimonial or that one demonstration of your work. Because once you've done that, that's how you can build with other people. So that's a really big thing. And another thing you talked about, which I think is really interesting is this balance between the operations and the marketing. I call it like the left brain and the right brain

of your business. And I'm very lucky because my business partner is the logistical operational one. Yeah, I'm out here behind the sky with all these visions and crazy ideas of what a billion dollar brand looks like. And then she helps kind of bring that down and makes the business on the back end.

She's the integrator, yeah. Every visionary has to have an integrator. That is the biggest game changer. You can't be both. You can try for a little while, but I am not an integrator. I live in the clouds. I'm the visionary and I have an integrator on my team who she crushes it. She's a female by the way. And I probably would only hire a female in that role because you girls are so passionately, emotionally, OCD-ly involved that it needs a woman's touch on it versus a man's touch, which is very rigid. It's very quick, get it done. She takes my vision and integrates it in a way that I don't even think I would know

how to do. And that's so key in making sure that your visionary and integrator role matches up so well. Otherwise your vision is never going to come to life. Yeah. It's so important. And like what you were saying about customer service and everything, we have been in positions where we've scaled so quickly that customer service has been absolutely stretched. And like, I have been sitting on live chat and answering DMs at midnight and making sure

that everyone has a good experience, but scaling that quickly isn't always fun. So having all that side ironed out. And for me, when my team wasn't so big, it was very much about my left brain days, my right brain days. Because as you said, you can't be both. You can't just flit in between. So that's amazing. And I feel like we've just covered so much stuff. People are going to be listening and probably so motivated to go and read a book or do something next. So I would love to ask you, what book would you recommend? I would say from the past six months that you've read that you would recommend most. So if you're an entrepreneur or business owner, you want to be, I would recommend starting with

E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber. And I would also read Built to Sell. Those give you competencies to allow yourself to build your company how it should from the get-go, which are really good. If you are already a business owner or kind of seasoned, this is one of my favorite books. It's The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. Natalie, if you haven't read this book, I'm reading it for the second time this month alone. I'm reading three books right now. This is a game changer. Another book that I just finished last week was The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman.

I think I told you about it before we hopped on. Yeah. That is a very deep book on personal happiness, finding your true power, understanding that everything you need in life is in your body when you're born and brought to this world, not external things. So if someone feels like they don't have the power, I would definitely go back to that book. Another really good book is Man Up, Bedros just launched. And that's a really good book, a nice little kick in the ass. So if you're feeling not motivated or you need a little bit of push,

Bedros does phenomenal at motivating with personal stories and stuff like that. If you like when Natalie and I talked about lowering your mask and sharing your deep, dark secret, I went through that training at MITT like Lewis House did. And I did that before I read his book, but his book mask of masculinity goes through a lot of the training that we went through. So if you're looking to get over the skeletons in your closet, that's a lot of work you need to do before you ever launch a company. So I would recommend anyone listening, if you are still unsure of yourself or who you are or the baggage you carry, I hate to say it, but you have to start there before you

ever launch a company. Because once you are on the growth trajectory like we're both on, you will be stretched way more thin than you've ever imagined. You will be in the spotlight in the media. And when those things start coming out and you're not ready for it, it is going to be a world of hurt versus you getting everything cleared away, knowing who you are and then jumping into the mix. So I would recommend those books for sure. I love it. I'm definitely going to read those. Thank you so much for being on here. I have one thing for everyone listening. So I would love for

you right now, grab your phone, take a screenshot of this podcast, and I want you to share it on your story and write your biggest takeaway. Both of us are going to read it and we're going to repost to our audience. So you're going to get massive exposure to tons of boss babes. And we would just love to know what was really impactful for you. And John, where can they find you and tag you? So my Instagram is J-O-N-B-O-L-E-S.

Okay, amazing. And is there any way they can find out more information about your company? Yeah, so you can go to inventivemedia.com. So it's A-V-I-N-T-I-V-M-E-D-I-A.com. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

If you loved this episode, please subscribe and be sure to leave us a review. We want to hear what you enjoyed, Thank you for having me. 25. This is a brand new resource that we've created and trust me, you are going to love it. So the Boss Babe 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth. Seriously, this little resource is like a little Boss Babe holy grail. You are going to love it. It covers everything from must-have products, our favorite books, rituals that we do daily, and little hacks to help you grow. So if you want a copy, it's really easy. Just leave us a review, screenshot that review and email it to podcast at bossbabe.com. That is podcast at bossbabe.com

and we'll send you a free copy over within 24 hours.