Many business owners have a business they’re proud of… with great products or services… satisfied clients… the whole deal.

But, says Dan Kuschell, they haven’t been able to translate that into growth and profits. They’re like the best kept secret in the market, and that’s not a good thing. 

Dan specializes in helping business owners get out of their own way and recognize the blind spots that are stopping them from optimizing their operations so they pull in more leads, more sales, and more profits. 

A big part of that is getting “out” of the business. We get into the details on that, as well as…

• The power of investing in yourself – and not just your business
• How to run a business like a championship football team
• Must-haves for your marketing and product strategies
• The biggest mistakes most business owners make that are easy to avoid
• And more

Listen now…

Mentioned in this episode:

• www.dankuschell.com 
• www.championbusinessblueprint.com 
• www.growthtofreedom.com
• breakthroughstrategycall.com

Transcript

Doug Hall: Hello, everybody. This is Doug Hall, the host of the podcast Go for Growth with Doug Hall, and today I have a special guest. Dan Kuschell is the founder of Breakthrough3X and the host of his own podcast, Growth to Freedom. And he’s coming to us today from the Phoenix area and I’m excited to have Dan with us today. Dan, welcome to the podcast.

Dan Kuschell: Doug, it’s a pleasure to be with you, my friend. And I know we were talking, before the show, talking about kind of our connections and obviously, you’re working with great people with Steve and Mark and Gina Whitman and carrying forward and helping others implement. So it’s awesome to be with you to share that message. 

Doug: Excellent. Thank you. So as I normally like to do, Dan, let’s start a little bit with your backstory. How did you get here? What’s your mission, cause and purpose and help folks kind of put you in context. 

Dan’s Story and Mission

Dan: Awesome well short version I mean your show and your value system is built on Go for Growth, right? And if I had to, you know to sum up my career it’s very similar. It’s hyper-growth. It’s hyper learning. It’s you know, I got started at a young age. My sister introduced me to direct response marketing I worked in a company was in college. I fought my way out of the city. I grew up in the inner city of Detroit, Southwest Detroit, near Southwestern High School. I thought baseball was going to be the way out. 

It didn’t quite work out. During the summers, I worked at this direct marketing company and I got fascinated, Doug, by human psychology as it turns out, right? Why people make decisions, why they buy stuff, why they don’t. And I was very fortunate and blessed to work with this direct response company. It was pretty large at the time. Direct Mail was the number one source but we are also doing TV ads, radio ads, and more. 

And I was able to cut my teeth and learn all aspects of the business. And at 22 when I got done with college, I started my very first company where we would go out and help health club owners, fitness club owners who were struggling to generate clients and we went in with a very unique proposition and helped them grow and scale. And so that was my first company after a couple years it didn’t quite work out due to some, you know, because I wasn’t very good at business. I was good at like the tactical things and I, you know, started learning that you need a different skill set to be a business owner than a tactician. 

And fast forward to today I’ve now had 11 plus companies. Three of those 11 companies, Doug, I had to bury in the backyard. Yep. And then I’ve had a handful the companies you know, a handful of them did seven figures, a couple of eight-figures. I’ve been able to buy companies. sell companies and You know, it’s been an incredible privilege. Now of late, I get to work, you know, with people who are, you know, at a place where, you know, they feel like they’re sitting on gold with their business, but maybe just haven’t been able to turn it into that high profit, high growth business they were expecting. 

Or maybe they’ve tried other things or maybe they feel like they’re the best-kept secret in the market. What I do is I help people get unstuck, see the blind spots, connect the dots to reduce suffering and get out of overwhelm so they can optimize and grow their business, grow their sales, grow their leads, grow their profitability. I’ve been so blessed and fortunate to work with some amazing leaders out there. You know, people like Joe Polish, Genius Network, Verne Harnish, Daniel Marcos, Mike Angular, Janet Attwood. 

I mean, the list goes on and on of our, of people we’ve been able to go into their business, isolate and identify what are their key assets that are not being leveraged, and then help them leverage him and many times we double and triple growth and you know, pretty short order. You know, collaborating and helping them build a new system and bridging that gap. So it’s a lot of fun. We get to work with some amazing as you know, I mean, because you do some very similar things with Go for Growth in your business. 

You get to work with some amazing people. Our values are real simple. I mean, we have three main core values that are business. Number one is hyper-growth. Like I’ve not only for me, I mean, that’s who I am. I’ve invested millions of dollars in myself education, training, courses, consulting, coaching programs over the years. So I’m a lifelong learner and have been since you know, I can ever remember. Since my dad introduced me to personal development, about nine years old. So hyper-growth is one of our number one value. 

Number two is teamwork. Teamwork being, you know, having a collaborative approach. We don’t all have, you know, there’s no one person who has all the answers or is always right. There’s a lot of ways to be right. So having the spirit of collaborative inclusion, both with our clients, but also our team, it’s been a great asset and a key value of what we do. So teamwork is our second one, the third is looking at how do we have a bigger contribution? Right? I’ve been blessed because of building companies that have done hundreds of millions of dollars and being able to exit those companies and so on. 

And like, I didn’t realize I was in a unicorn, Doug. You know, there’s a lot of coaches in the world, right? From business coaches, to use personal development coach, life coaches, etc, right? I didn’t realize this to literally like, maybe two years ago, that I’m one of like a handful in the world that has ever built a coaching business that was able to sell it and exit it, right? 

We had built that business in a coaching business up to 25 million a year, and I was able to sell it to a large company out in New York that was, you know, doing over 100 million years. I believe they’ve done close to a billion dollars. And I was able to be acquired by that company, and, you know, created a lot of opportunities. I just kind of figured everybody was able to build a coaching business and then exit it and sell it and so on. And so it takes a different, and now I realize how rare that is until my mission today is really about helping entrepreneurs reduce suffering, to set up the system so they can get out of the day to day, get out of the business. 

And they can have their cake and eat it too, meaning they can have a great business, but they can also have a great life. This idea that you have to give up everything, you have to sacrifice your family, sacrifice your kids, I mean, I’ve done that. One of my early mistakes, I went that route. And I just wanted a better way. And I think there’s a better way. And so we’re out helping entrepreneurs get out of that overwhelm, reduce suffering and build great businesses that if they choose to exit, they can, but more importantly, it’s about giving them freedom. And that’s one of the reasons our podcast is called Growth to Freedom. 

Doug; Perfect. So you’ve had both the personal experience and you’ve observed dozens if not hundreds of client cases. So tell us about one or two common themes when entrepreneurs get that business rolling, and they kind of paint themselves into that corner of a great biz, but not such a great life. You got me thinking there.

The Five P’s

Dan: Yeah, well, let’s talk about a couple things. I’m going to share history. My son, now he just turned 12 a week ago at the time of this session. And, you know, he’s into little league football. And so we have found there’s five P’s, right, that you want to have in place to build a championship team, which they’ve now won two city championships. And the same five Ps I’ve also reviewed and assessed over 4200 companies in the last six years, right? Financial, right, you know, all kinds of different aspects of the bid. 

And we found that these five P’s not only played sure the building a championship, little league football team, but the same five P’s apply to whether you’re going to have a successful, scalable, enjoyable business. And so  I think I’ll start there. So the number one mistake most people have, and I’ll start with the biggest mistakes, Doug, and then I’ll share a couple insights for each one time permitting, on each one. 

And if people want to go deeper we can get them access to some other resources. But the first mistake most people make is they don’t have a great plan. So like, so let’s look at a little league football. Most youth football teams that come together, youth sports teams or leagues come together, you know, they just kind of bring people together. They don’t really have a plan. Well, the coaching staff of my son’s team, you know, they have a playbook and they have this risk playbook where, you know, they have like, I don’t know, 20 plays on their risk. 

But then they’re adding new plays, subtracting new plays, adding nuances through the year, that it’s not a one size fits all type of model, right? They have practice. They don’t just show up on game day, right? They practice during the week, like they do two practices a week, right? And then on top of that, my son who’s a quarterback for his team, we do film study, one day a week, right? To review if he did well in the last game. He’ll go reviewing his technique is throwing their form. 

And then we occasionally bring the team together to do film study so they can also see like, what did they do well, whether it’s oftence, defense or otherwise, right? So a plan. Most businesses don’t really, truly commit to not just having a plan today, but having a plan weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual right? Part of what you teach, right? With Go for Growth with the EOS system. It’s about taking like a three year, five year kind of vision and kind of packaging it down into quarterly. And then weekly chunks. Well, that same planning process works in great sports teams. Like there’s preseason sports, and then there’s the regular season, right? 

But in business, sometimes we just show up on game day every day, and our team shows up on game day. And there’s, we don’t have the time to have a preseason, you know, game time and then like some decompression time to review what had worked, what didn’t work. So planning really, really quick. So let’s flip this to business. The number one mistake planning right? When’s the last time as you’re listening right now or you’re watching, we’ve identified six key areas and I just want to talk about one. 

Like as you’re watching or listening right now, if you had to evaluate your marketing as a business and  it and read it one to 10, 10 being great, as great as it could be, where would you rate it? As you’re listening right now, think about that. Now you’re not to answer verbally, but just think about it. Maybe write that number down. Well, what’s missing that would take it to a ten? Well, let me give you a couple of spots on that. Number one, did you really taken the time to develop a marketing plan blueprint? 

Now, this doesn’t take you investing three, four or five, seven days to come up with a mark, you can sit down in an afternoon. And you know, Doug, if you want, we can make a couple resources available. But if you want to get access to a marketing plan blueprint template, we will give that to you, right? I got companies like our high paying clients I mentioned a little bit earlier, invested 25, 30, 60, 100,000 200,000. Our top client we worked with has invested over 900 brands, this same tool we use with them, right? 

It’s the same tool that can work with you. So your marketing plan blueprint. Now, you might go Oh, well, I’ve done that before. Okay, well, when’s the last time we did it? Have you done it every six months to a year, or are you doing like are you still in a plan that’s three years old, five years old. That’s number one. Number two is have you gone beyond the avatar, right? Because there are a lot of companies, you teach a very good powerful process called the avatar exercise. Our version, we believe, it goes beyond the avatar, right? So that’s one. So another one. 

Like today, most people are going okay, well, I want to develop leads from traffic that isn’t relying on just referrals, right? So if you want to go beyond referral marketing, well, what do you have to do? Well, you have to get prepared first. Like maybe you go well, Dan, I’ve hired agencies before. I’ve hired Facebook experts. I’ve hired traffic experts, and I tried it and it didn’t really work for me. I didn’t get a good return. Well, part of the challenge is you probably didn’t have a good plan to prepare for running paid traffic. 

And I see this time and I’m like, 99 out of 100 people I talked to, they’re just a little bit ignorant. It’s not their fault, they just haven’t been trained in this way of operating to develop online leads or sales. So now they’re, instead of delegating something, right Doug? You see this probably all the time in different ways. Instead of delegating, what are they doing? They’re advocating. They’re just counting on this expert to know everything. And, you know, the fact is, you as the owner of the business have to take responsibility. 

Now we have a template for that how to put care for paid traffic. Again, we’ll make some links available. Doug and I will work it out that we can get you access to a couple resources, but those two tools in and of themselves, if you take the time and there’s more. There’s hiring, there’s you know, there’s leadership things there’s actually building a you know, Cameron Harold version of building a vivid vision for your business and others. But, you know, as the old Allstate commercial goes if you don’t plan to fail, if you don’t, if you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail. 

So right I did, we discovered to very late and there’s probably another three, four or five, six key things of planning that you can do that if you do it like if you use Doug’s system with, you know, what they do and teach it Go for Growth in his business, you’re going to be immensely prepared to have more success than your competition. You’ll eat your competition alive in many cases.  So anyway, that’s the first P that’s the end. It’s also the first mistake in most of the football teams. So second P, and I’ll probably fast forward just a couple of these for sake of time, Doug, so you help me here. 

Yeah, the second mistake most businesses make and most youth football teams make that are striving to win championships, is they don’t have people in the right position and/or the positioning in the marketplace. So you got to position yourself in the marketplace. So ask yourself this as you’re listening, right? Are you positioned as the definitive authority in the marketplace? Like let’s give a quick visual example. Like if you have in your wallet, you pull out a wallet, you’ve got bills in your wallet, right? Different assortment of bills. Let’s say I’ve got $1 bill and whatever $100 bill. 

Like if we put a $1 bill on $100 bill side by side or put them on top of each other, what’s fascinating about a $1 Bill $100 bill, is they actually are the exact same way. They’re both printed on the exact same color papers same color inks, right? And they are the same way the same color ink. There’s only one unique factor of a $1 Bill $100 bill that makes it unique. And it’s the message on the paper. That’s positioning. How are you positioned in your marketplace? Are you position more as $100 bill? $1,000 bill? A million dollar value? 

Or are you just taking anybody and everybody, right? So positioning, same thing in sports. How is the team positioned? Like there’s certain things that you can do to be, A you got to have the right people in the right position. That’s one factor, you get the right people on the right bus. But two, you’ve got to be positioned properly as a team. You got to have a quarterback, you gotta have receivers, you gotta have people, etc. So how are you positioned in your marketplace? 

The third mistake that most companies make, and I’m fast forwarding through these, is packaging. How are you packaged in the marketplace? Right? What’s the package, right? So for example, let’s say going back to those five things that make a successful championship football team, again, the same things that make us successful championship business. Packaging, per se, let’s say the kids show up at game time. You know, the game is at 12 noon, and they show up at 11:59 and a half. 

Versus the team showed up an hour early, they’re in full uniform, they’re going through, you know, kind of certain types of warm ups, rituals, building good habits, good practicing, right? There’s a difference, right? That’s packaging. How are you packaging? How is your team packaged, right? If you’re looking at let’s go to marketing, since I use marketing, how can you package your marketing better? Again, going beyond the idea of an avatar exercise, so we call it and I’m going fairly quick, Doug. So there’s a couple key pieces, like four key pieces to better package. So number one is you want to think about your unique message. 

Or I’m sorry, your unique method as a business, right, is one factor. You want to have a unique model. Let’s start with the market. Like have you gotten clear this might even be a very big marketing plan blueprint. You can start today and be reiterating all the time and each of your products actually fits into this category. It’s not a one size fits all model. So what is your unique market? That’s number one, what is your unique message in the market? What is your unique method in the market? And then what is your unique process for how you deliver that outcome and that result? 

So if you go to those four layers of your business and you start really working on you communicate this, you start training your team to communicate it in simplicity, because that’s what this does, you suddenly have the ability to attract more referrals. Why? Because people are hearing the same message consistently throughout your team. And also other people will start ranting. So let me give a real life example. One of our clients was Joe Polish from Genius Network. And so Joe had gotten very clear on his unique market, right? 

His unique market are entrepreneurs doing at least a million dollars a year, right? Who also are big on coming from a place of contribution, right? Wanting to contribute. Not takers, their givers, right? His unique market. His unique message, reduce suffering for entrepreneurs. That’s part of his unique value. He’s got some other things but that’s at a core one of one of the key pieces, reduce suffering for entrepreneurs is unique. So we got unique market, we’ve got unique message. Now, what’s his unique method? 

His unique method he calls Genius Networking, right? Genius networking is bringing smart people together to collaborate and contribute and help each other at the end of the day. So that’s, he calls it also happens to be the name of his process, which is called Genius Network, which is the highest level mastermind in the world or at least that have been, and now it’s evolved into some other things where he’s got hundreds and hundreds of members, he attracts people to say annual event he does. 

But it started with a core of those simple things. So as you’re listening right now, what could you do to package up so you’re very clear? Notice none of those were longer than a sentence. They were very simple, right?  Here’s another real life example of packaging for your business. I’ll use another industry outside of like coaching. Let’s look at a high, probably one of the most highly commodified businesses industries in the world today. And so it’s the coffee but I’m not going to mention the name yet but I’m going to give you the blueprint and then at the end and see if you can guess who this is. 

Getting Ahold of Your Target Market

And it’s know him great. If you don’t, you’ll be fascinated by the story. But his unique market for this coffee company are fitness enthusiasts who love coffee. Who knew there was a market for fitness enthusiasts who are in love with coffee? Till he had ever done it, no one had ever done it. Now people are kind of copycating him, but that’s his unique market. His unique message, get fit drinking coffee. That simple. Get fit drinking coffee. Now, who knew you could actually get sit while you drink coffee and articulate it? Right? So that’s his unique message. 

His unique method is called bulletproof coffee. Bulletproof coffee. Now he’s on a run rate to do well over 100 million dollars this year, and maybe more, right? But his unique process is also called bulletproof, which has now evolved in some other personal development programs. I actually mixed that up. His unique method is actually how does he accomplish this, and his method is adding grass fed butter to coffee. Now others have done this years before, but he was the one who kind of coined it. 

Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach who I believe we’re kind of tied in with in one way or another Doug, he said, if you name the game, you own it. He named it. Others have done it, but he named it. Adding grass fed butter, so now he’s kind of gotten credit for kind of being a at least an instigator if not an initiator if not the creator of it at this point, right? Which then led to his unique process which is called Bulletproof, right? 

And now evolved the Bulletproof Juices. So again, as you’re listening right now for you, this mini marketing plan blueprint I just gave you. imagine how powerful your business would be if you got clear in your unique market, your unique message, your unique method and unique process. I can share a couple of examples where when we work with clients so I mentioned Joe Polish when Joe and Genius Network got really clear on these couple things. It wasn’t as formal as this. It kind of evolved out of some different things that we have done over time.

But his business tripled, right? Another client I’m working with right now, we got them very clear they work in the stem cell industry, fascinating technology, new technology, you know, he was kind of known as a done for you kind of service for doctors and medical fields. We move them and move them into these areas and got clear on his unique market, his unique method. His unique process became something called the Patient Infusion Method. H named it. He owns it. His business has tripled since we started working together, right? 

So what can happen for you if you got clear, going beyond normal avatar things, you took this it would come back to this episode that Doug is going to make available to you. Grab a pen, grab a piece of paper. Come back and I can share with you I’ve seen clients. I’ve had clients come on oh my god, listen to a message about you sharing that four layers approach to building my packaging, and it’s changed my business. I doubled. And we never even worked together. And still they were able to get. What does it mean for you? 

What will it do for you, if you apply this? It’s simple. Notice the simplicity in all of these that I’ve shared. Ideally, you hear one sentence really describing each. Is that repeatable? That’s critical if you want to scale a business. It’s repeatable. Your clients will repeat it, your team can repeat it, you can repeat it. Now you don’t have to be the one that your sales, your business growth is predicated just on you anymore. It’s predicated more on like, we’ll call this a process, that system. So that’s the third step is packaging. 

We don’t have time for the fourth and fifth, but I’ll just name them. The biggest mistake championship. football teams make, just like businesses, in the assessment, we added over 4200 companies. So we’ve got, we just, because I go kind of quick. So let me go back to the beginning. We’ve got your starting point is your plan. Like the different planning segments. You’ve got your positioning. You’ve got your packaging. That leads to promotion, which is really now actively marketing, advertising etc of your business. 

We don’t have time to go into those strategy but that is the fourth P. The fifth P is process. Building process around this so it can be replicated. We call this a 3d approach. What is the 3d approach? It’s different than probably you’ve ever heard before in business. Number one, you got to document something. Number two, you got to duplicate it, right? Replicate it. Duplicate it. Third is now you got to delegate. So it’s document, duplicate, delegate. 

When you can get a process in place, especially around marketing or sales, it becomes the ultimate leverage tool. You know, great promoting, great processes. You know, if you do it, right, like we work with clients right now. We help a client recently where we helped them package up a message to a certain client base they wanted to market to and advertise to, we focused on less than 200 people, we put a direct mail package together set it up to 200 people generated for this client, $200,000 in revenue right? 

Wasn’t about trying to go to everybody and be all things for everybody was getting very selective. And, you know, there’s an idea with this, which is also tied in with the other factors, which is niche down, scale up. Clarity in messaging to the right single group of people is far more important and trying to be everything to everybody. So the five P’s, again, just to go through and again, for sake of time, if you want to go deeper, I’m sure Doug can give you access to some links or resources where I have those posted. Yeah, so first P is your plan. Your second P is your packaging, or your positioning. 

Your third P is the packaging. Fourth P is you’re promoting. Your fifth P is the process and then all of those tied together, when you get the five P’s right, what does that lead to? It leads to profit and progress, right? Because just as you get to a point where regardless of where you’re at, as a business right now. Let’s say you get to, you know, a million dollar business. What got you to a million dollars is not going to be the same thing that gets you to three, so this will evolve. 

And you’ll have a new plan, you’ll have a new positioning new or revised packaging, positioning, promoting opportunities and also the progress profitable, or process and then progress and profitability. So, ideally take action with this. Take the time to think about your five P’s. And as a simple exercise, just identify like how do you feel your planning in marketing? In sales? In leadership, in hiring in productivity for you and your team? Right? So rate at one to 10 and identify what’s missing. 

And if I were to give you advice as you’re listening right now, likely start with if you’re not in a million plus business at 30% profit, start with marketing and then probably sales pretty close behind. Those two areas can be huge game changers for you at that level. Number two is identify your positioning in the marketplace. What, if you’re not at a 10 if you evaluate it, one low 10 high, and you’re not at a level 10, what would have to happen for you to get positioning as an authority? What could you do?

 Could you go out and do what Doug’s doing and create a podcast with world class leaders, world class experts, or talk to Doug about teaming up and figuring out how to do that, right? Or get on shows or get a book out there? Or start running education-based webinars? Education based events online or offline? What are some of the stepping points that you could do immediately to change the authority and positioning. Packaging. What could you do to package you up better? Right? What could you do for the fourth P, which is the promoting, right? 

What promotions could you get in place beyond referral marketing? Go beyond just one on one. What could you do to get to a place of group opportunities? One to many. One too many can change the game. We’ve seen it time and time again. And then the fifth P is your process around these kinds of things. So how are you processes? One to 10, what could, what has to happen to improve those. Get these five P’s in place, it will certainly lead to greater growth, greater opportunity, greater impact, the ability to have a bigger reach. 

One of the clients we’re working with was, what I love about what we do today, Doug, is when we help clients put some of these things in place is they get freedom from the business while their business grows. And it gives them the chance to focus on, you know, some of their other kind of passions and projects, but still ties into their business. Like for me. I’m grateful I get to spend four days a week with my son, playing, who plays football. 

And so we practice on Monday, Wednesday, we have film night on Thursdays or Fridays, and then game days, on Saturday. I get to be actively engaged. I haven’t missed a game. I rarely miss practices in two years. And it’s because of having a great business. It’s not, nobody’s business is perfect. But by having these five P’s it just, does create the right opportunities. One of our clients, you know, one of his passions, he built up his core business to a very good rate for what he wanted and what he has identified he wanted. 

He is now, you know, really pursuing a passion project, which is helping solve addiction in the world. Like talk about like, like one of the biggest missions in the world. This is someone who is solving addiction, right? And so many great things can come out of it when you can truly get free from the day to day. Get out of the business. Get, you know,off the computer and off the desk so to speak, t get out there and make that bigger impact. So anyway, I went probably a little longer than you’re normally used to, but hopefully this is some great value for you listening and also your listeners, Doug. 

Doug: Tremendous stuff, Dan, tremendous. I mean, you’ve been in the trenches yourself and with dozens of clients, if not more. Think about the typical situation where you see an entrepreneur with a pretty successful business and they’re completely wrapped around the axle with the business. What got them there, and what the first change that they can implement to kind of free themselves? What’s the first key to unlock the first lock? I mean, there’s many locks that we bind ourselves to the business, so what’s the first one or two keys to unlocking? 

Unlock Your Freedom

Dan: I like to use Socratic methodology, which are questions. Like the power of questions, I think unlocks most of us, right? So it would be truthful, ask a better question. So in the case, like if you’re listening right now and you’re feeling stuck, or you’re feeling blocked, okay. So let’s ask the question, what is getting in the way of you getting to that next level right now? What is really getting, and speak the truth. You know, Dan Solomon, I love the quote he has, which is saying the first progress starts by telling the truth. So what is getting in the way, right now? 

Be brutally honest about it might be you. I know for me for a few of my businesses that especially failed, and anytime, even now, I’m my biggest enemy, like I’m my biggest bottleneck, right? So just speak the truth about it, right? and identify what is the bottleneck that is keeping me back, right? Or holding me back? Or what is it that is limiting you from getting to where you want to go? So that’s number one. Number two. Now, once you’ve identified Okay, well what has to happen to solve this today? Which is another question, what has to happen to solve this today? 

Now, here’s the reality when you ask these two questions. They’re pretty simple. But now implementing them is like the magic trick. Like so many people have great ideas, and then we get stuck. So let me go back to my son’s football team, and how this team has won two city championships in you know, just a few months. It didn’t happen because these kids were all on their own. What did they have? They have coaches, right? 

My son who’s chosen to take the step of being a quarterback, Well, I can give my son some advice, and I do, but we got on the quarterback coach who could guide him, who had experience playing high school and college football, right? So he’s getting, so I encourage you to take the same, especially as it relates to where the rubber meets the road, which is implementing. And guess what, where do you want to go to get support? Just depending, you know, connect with Doug. He’s an implementation expert. 

Get with Doug, talk to Doug about how his team might help you implement it for some reason that’s not a fit, then just go find somebody who fits your needs, who fits the thing that you like, if you need help with like, marketing implementation, well, that might be a little different. Right? If you need help with hiring implementation, that might be a little different, but it might not. Right? So the key is, is get like when I played sports, I kind of brought this, I was fortunate, Doug, to play.

 I think I learned to me the two greatest personal development platforms ever in the world are sports and business because we learned more in a couple months about ourselves as human dealing with success dealing with failure than we do and years and years and years. other opportunities. And so they’re like hyper chambers of growth, which is what I love. So when I was playing sports, I played college baseball. I played semi-pro baseball, and I coached a college summer All-Star team. 

And what I knew about baseball is even in baseball, you know, I had a hitting coach, I had a baserunning coach, I had a fielding coach, there was a pitching coach, there was a third-base coach at first base coach, right? You had to a trainer, right? We had like six coaches to play one sport, yet so many of us try to take this DIY approach to business and life. Well, what would happen for you? And I think people ask me, sometimes they go like, what would you say has been like your greatest, you know, transformation? 

It’s, I guess, being dumb enough or smart enough to believe I  didn’t understand that I didn’t have all the answers. And I would go out and get advice from people who were. And I would then work with them to implement. I wanted to go beyond that. The idea is the implementation. So as you’re listening right now, ask a better question. ask the questions, and it only takes one. One great question can solve 1000 problems, can’t it? Think about that you’ve done this before, as you’re listening right now. 

You know, it. Just ask a better question. If you can’t come up with a question then get someone who can help you facilitate the questions, right? The one, two or three key questions because you don’t need 400 questions, you just need one or two that are the right questions. And then go find someone who can help you implement like a Doug or some others, depending on what your needs are in your business. So those would be a couple things, Doug, that from my experience that I would highly recommend and have used myself over the years. 

Doug: So I think a lot of our listeners are building a growing business and they’re maybe hitting the ceiling of leadership or management. And I’m wondering from you’re both experienced directly and helping clients,  what’s a good tip or two to help these entrepreneurs bust through the ceiling of leadership and management? How can they be better leaders and better managers?

Advice to Improve Leadership and/or Managerial Skills

Dan: Better leaders and managers. So there’s a couple, there’s 360 degrees to this. And I’ll probably cover just a couple, right? So realize that as you’re thinking about becoming a better leader, right, or a better manager or a better business owner, right? A better team builder, right? Whatever that means, or however your is you’re listening, however, that shows up for you. Right? 

Again, if you go at it alone, you’re going to have a very microscopic view. But if you do, get yourself and surround yourself with others, it’s amazing how fast you can shrink the learning curve. Right? And so whenever possible, what I like to do, and what I’ve seen work, and I know it’s taught everywhere these days is, you know, you’re the sum total of the five people you hang out with. 

Doug: Yeah, right. And so everybody says. 

Dan: So I would encourage you as you’re listening right now if you want to become a better leader, get around better leaders. If you want to be a better manager, get around the better. You want to be a better entrepreneur be around entrepreneur. And these are all different, by the way, capabilities. Right? An entrepreneur, especially the creative entrepreneur is very different than a business owner. And a business owner is different than say a franchise owner. A franchise owner is different than a leader is different than a manager. 

They have universal similarities, right? So identify where you’re at, like which one or mother thing to do you is which one do you want to be? And then go find three to five people. One of the early if I can share a story, one of my, I think the greatest gifts I had I met a Nightingale Conant, which, if you’re listening, you probably have never heard of Nightingale Conant because they don’t really exist anymore. The way it did when I was younger, that they were a personal development. 

Like think about Audible for personal development back in the 1980s, right, and 1990s and even the 2000s, early 2000. And so Nightingale Conant had a lot of very successful experts and speakers. And these were people that I was purchasing programs. And then, you know, mentoring with way back in the early 1990s. And one of the experts I got a chance to meet because my ex-wife’s grandmother worked for one of these experts who I had grown an affinity to listening to his stuff. His name was Michael Wickett, and he was a leadership expert, and also a relationship expert. 

And I met Michael and we met at Renaissance, what was then called the Renaissance Center in the inner city of Detroit and an event and I had lunch with him, and we served breakfast with him and I sat down and I said, Hey, like, if you were me, I was just kind of getting started in the publishing side of my business. And I said, like, if I was gonna build out a publishing business, who would you recommend? I learned from you’re like one of the most successful publishers, authors in the world, who would you learn to spend your time learning from today? 

And he literally gave me five names to learn from. And I can tell you that over the course of the next 20 years plus, because it’s now I’ve been at this almost 30 years, Doug, I have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn from those five key people. And so if you’re listening right now, I encourage you, if you want to be a better leader, right? Just go find the people who have followings. Not just talking about it, but are doing it in areas you want to do it in. 

And you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Again, I encourage you if you’re part of Doug’s tribe, find out the resources Doug has available. I imagine he would be like Michael. If he were not a fit for you, he’d go here three or five key people that you can and should learn from. 

And that would be an incredible. I know, for me, I was, I want to think I was 24 when Michael gave me that advice, I would say besides my dad and his introduction to personal development to me when I was nine years old, this would have been the probably one of the greatest gifts anybody ever given to somebody that I would hope someone would share with me one day. And I would hope that if you’re listening right now, you would be hungry that someone would share with you too.

Doug: Right. And the key there, Dan, is you asked the questions and you got the answers.

Dan: That’s right. You got to be curious. Hopefully, you’re fascinated about life and you know, don’t lose that childlike enthusiasm like my son and like always asking, Well, why should I read this defender on this play? Why should I read this one and that one? Ask questions. Have that childlike enthusiasm to be inquisitive, curious and lifelong learner. 

Doug: So you have shared a treasure trove of goodies with us today. So let’s kind of get some stuff into the show notes here on where folks can most efficiently get ahold of you, your information, kind of follow you learn from you beyond this podcast. So what’s the number one stop on the internet they should go to? 

Dan: Yeah, if you want to find out what we’re up to and get connected to see where we can help each other, you can go to breakthrough3x.com. You know we’ve got some easy info there that you can just, you know,  submit a request, have a follow-up, you know, either online conversation or a phone conversation. The second one is if your businesses at a million-plus and you really wanting to scale to that next level, then we can set up a strategy call and you can go to breakthroughstrategycall.com. We don’t have one size fits all type of programs. 

Ours are more geared for the individual because we found much like do it yourself which I know, Doug, is a proponent that if Do It Yourself works so well why are so many people struggling, right? We feel bad about custom one size fits all approaches. So if you want to have a conversation, something here resonates or connects with you, you want to you know, find out how we might be able to help you double or triple your growth with less stress with less overwhelm reduce some of the suffering around it and create a business that you’re free on. 

So it gives you the ability to, you know, spend more time on some of the things that you’re passionate about or love, or work more on your business instead of in it, then go to breakthroughstrategycall.com. And then another resource you can check out. we have an ongoing education platform that we rotate education-based webinars pretty regularly and you can get connected there at championbusinessblueprint.com, that’s championbusinessblueprint.com. 

And then one last one. If your business is you know, you’re kind of just getting rolling, getting started or you’re fascinated by learning. A lifelong learner. You want to, you know, look at going to the next much like what Doug has created with his Go for Growth show, you can check out our podcast. We literally now have over 250 hours of insights, wisdom, strategies, from the top experts in the world around business building and business growth strategies, and you can go check that out at growthtofreedom.com. Growth to Freedom. And you gotta imagine Doug will put all those links in the show notes to make it easy. So there you go. 

Doug: We will. That’s awesome stuff. Dan. Thanks for providing those different layers of information. You’ve been an amazing resource today. And that’s part of what I bring is Resources for CEOs. So thanks for doing that for me. Thanks for the links. And, folks, take note of what Dan shared with you. This is gold today. And I want you to study those nuggets and I want to hear some success stories. So Dan Kuschell, thanks again. 

Dan:You’re welcome. Thank you, Doug.

Doug: The Go for Growth Podcast is sponsored by Resources for CEOs. We help overworked business owners take back control of their time, build a team-driven company and multiply profits. Get your free copy of How to Get What You Want From Your Business at resourcesforceos.com/guide