There’s a huge difference between being a solopreneur — a one-man business where you do everything yourself, versus having a leveraged one-man business — where leverage comes through strategies such as productizing services, repurposing content, or automation.
In this episode of Entrepreneurs Rising, Carl Taylor interviews James Kemp about building a highly leveraged consulting business as a “sovereign consultant.” James is known in the business world for being instrumental in helping entrepreneurs make $1 million in profit with the help of just one team member.
The “sovereign consultant” model involves productizing your skills and knowledge into an offer-driven business through creative yet productive ways, like templates and online courses. This lets you serve more clients with less time commitment from yourself.
Carl and James discuss the value of designing your ideal life first, then building a business to support that lifestyle — not the other way around. They talk about how effective leadership involves flexing across different modalities, as well as sharing their insights about relationship challenges as catalysts for growth, the importance of boundaries and self-care, and mindset principles for achieving your goals.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL DISCOVER…
- What is a sovereign consultant? (01:44)
- Difference between having the skills of an owner and the skills of a creator (05:20)
- The difference between being a one man business and being a one man business with leverage (07:33)
- “Offers” defined (09:05)
- How leverage works (13:48)
- Productising a service when building a business that works without you versus sovereign consultancy (16:40)
- How to clearly articulate the problem you can solve (24:31)
- The difference between a coach, a mentor and a consultant — the three modalities, and the value of knowing when to wear each hat (26:22)
- Learned helplessness (30:21)
- Being a true leader and the ownership of leadership (31:37)
- Integrated versus extreme leadership (33:43)
- Nice guy syndrome and anxious attachment style (34:55)
- Sovereignty and living life on your terms (39:09)
- Two equally effective and valid ways to deal with difficult life situations (49:26)
- Insights on what to do when you find yourself questioning your own life (53:13)
- James’ three biggest pieces of advice (54:14)
QUOTES
“You want to build a business that can work without you. You ultimately want to be the owner of your business, not the operator of your business.” – Carl Taylor
“If you’re going to succeed in business, you’ve got to have a really strong awareness of self.” – Carl Taylor
“An offer, by its nature, takes away some pain and solves a problem for someone on the other side of something. And the bigger the delta between the pain or the problem they’re experiencing, or the benefit they want, and the more efficiently your offer actually fulfils that, the easier that offer is to sell.” – James Kemp
“I think it’s time for people to really decide what life they want, and what they want their life to look like, and understand that you can design a business to feed that.” – James Kemp
“If you want to be sovereign on this Earth, then you need to act to the standards — that of the person you desire to be. And if you do that, then the person you desire to be will become inevitable.” – James Kemp
“BE times DO equals HAVE.” – Carl Taylor
Get In Touch With James Kemp
- Website: https://jameskemp.co/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thejameskemp/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesakemp/
WHERE YOU CAN FIND CARL TAYLOR
Automation Agency
CarlTaylor.com.au
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
TRANSCRIPTION
James Kemp 0:00
It’s time for people to really decide what life they want and what they want their life to look like. And understand that you can design a business to feed that. Whatever your skill level, whatever your desire, whatever your earning capacity, whatever your goals are, there are so many options to make that work.
Carl Taylor 0:30
Welcome to another episode of Entrepreneurs Rising. I’m your host, Carl Taylor. And today we are joined by another guest, James Kemp, and I’ve known James for 10, 10 years or close to somewhere around now.
James Kemp 0:44
I don’t know, at high single digits. Yeah.
Carl Taylor 0:47
I think we haven’t quite hit the decade, but very overcrowded. We’ve known each other, been in similar circles for a long time. And James, Also fun fact, for those of you who don’t know, I used to have another podcast, which you can still listen to called Future of Humanity podcast. And James was one of my guests on that show. So if you haven’t checked it out, you can go find that future of humanity. The reason James is on apart from being one of the smartest people I know, in the business space, like he’s just a different thinker and not afraid to put out his views on things, right, just go, here’s how I see it, here’s how things are. And, you know, I think the world we live in, there are a number of people who do that strong opinions without necessarily going through the fires to have the true conviction that they seem to think they have. Whereas you know, James has got the rungs on the board, been through the different journey to come to it. And the reason I think it’d be really interesting for us to start, is what James does is he’s really owned the space of helping people become a sovereign consultant, because that’s exactly what he has done. And what is a sovereign consultant? Well, he can probably tell you best in a moment. But my understanding is, it’s to help you get to a million dollars a year profit, as a consultant, coach, what it mentor, whatever you want to call yourself, with you, and just one team member. Now, if you’ve been listening to this show, for any period of time, you’ll know that in general, me, Carl Taylor, I spread the message of you want to build a business that can work without you, you ultimately want to be the owner of your business, not the operator of your business. And so what I think would be really refreshing, getting James on is, understanding that both can work and understanding that this is another path, that maybe if you go on, you know, Carl’s path isn’t the one I want to go on. I just want to keep the simplicity of me plus a team member and make bucket loads of money. James is the man to talk about it. So James, welcome. Thanks, man.
James Kemp 2:28
Great to be here.
Carl Taylor 2:28
So let’s start with why have you settled on sovereign consultant? Because I know some of your journey. The listeners may not Yeah, that’s not always been your business. You’ve had large teams, you’ve been involved in various different sized businesses. What’s brought you here to this sovereign consultant path? And vision?
James Kemp 2:48
I guess? Yeah, I think the immediate thing is, in the last 12 months, I had to design a business that fed my life, I think we’re all in it for that, whether we choose the team path, or whether we choose the solo path, or everything in between, because there are there are some in between birds. But you know, in the last 12 months, had some significant life changes. So I used to be married, and I’m not anymore. And that entailed me being you know, with having two kids here with me full time. And it meant that I had to put some very serious constraints on where my time and energy when, in the previous season I was in, I didn’t have too many constraints, I was building a business, I was hiring people, you know, I worked the hours that God gave me. And, you know, I had the people that I needed. But in the process of that, I also created a lot of commitments and obligations, which I couldn’t fulfil on this season, you know, in terms of my time and energy. And those things, add 12 months ago, I set out to say, to re-embrace, kind of my roots in the beginning, which was you know, me in a room with a laptop, making stuff helping people make money. Because previous to that I ran a really large ecommerce online business that we grew to 120 million as I know, the online space, and my journey and consulting was, you know, back down and doing it myself and directly serving clients. And I’m back there, again, with a little bit more skills experience and a ton more leverage these days. So it’s very much for me, you know, an important season. So over the past 18 months, I come from 13 people to one. And that’s a pretty significant change in that. But I think the key theme that we both believe in is the boundaries and constraints of you know, when am I creating time and energy for my clients and the commitments of the business and your case, the team? And when am I creating time and energy for myself, my family, my loved ones in those things. So they’re both the path to constraints. I’ve just chosen the one that is pretty lean on me. You’ve hit the
Carl Taylor 4:36
nail on the head, like listening to you talk, what your experience of big team was, is, yes, you had the team, but you didn’t have those constraints on where does my time and energy actually need to go? What are the key things that I have to do versus making sure everything else is just being taken care of by team, which is really my view. If you’re going to build a business that you own or not operate, it’s that you act as the owner and the owner is maybe it, you know, if you go to the full level of the investor level, you might attend a quarterly board meeting. And that’s as much as you’re doing if you’re at the investor level. So yeah, that’s really interesting.
James Kemp 5:20
It was a decision when the fork in the road was presented to me. Do I want to acquire the skills of an owner, the skills of an owner to delegate and higher and those kinds of things in your app level, those which is, there are constant levels of mastery, you know, towards mastery. Or do I want to refine my skills as a creator, you know, get back and down in the trenches, creating stuff for myself that works, that I can think of to other people? Yeah, I’ll always naturally default, that innate creator and me, because my happy place is sitting in this office, there’s probably a dog behind me, I’m creating something that works for me. And that I can use to grow or develop, and then I’m giving that to other people. So yeah, it was a conscious decision not to acquire the skills of an owner, which I’ll freely admit that I didn’t have, I had some of them, I’m not as good as you. And I’m not as good as many of our contemporaries, but it was to double down on the skills of a creator, because that’s, that’s my happy place.
Carl Taylor 6:04
Absolutely. I love it. And that comes down to that self awareness, you know, is something, I think it’s important in life. But definitely, as an entrepreneur, you know, if you’re going to succeed in business, you’ve got to have a really strong awareness of self to know. You don’t have to, you can go off on these journeys, but then what will happen is similar to you, and some of our other friends, where all of a sudden, they get to a certain level of success in their business, and go, I hate this thing. This is not me, I need to blow this up, because they didn’t have the self awareness along the journey to go. Now. That’s not, that’s not my thing. So on that, I think
James Kemp 6:38
You need to, I think you need to have experienced both paths as well to make an educated decision, because otherwise it’s a guess, right? So having built teams and having been solo, you know, the choice for me was pretty easy. And I find that, you know, when you talk to people, like 90% of people, you know, the path is clear for them. It’s just committing to that path, because there’s nothing wrong with either, and the people who can’t make the decision around, do I build a team? Or do I go out alone and focus on leverage and, and the things we have available to us now, then it’s usually because they don’t have enough experience in either or camp to actually make a conscious decision, and they need to try one and work it out.
Carl Taylor 7:17
That’s so true. Well, then that probably is a good place to go is, alright. listener, you’ve gone, you know, what James is talking about? Sounds, maybe, me like or maybe right now, you’re in still in that kind of self employed mode, you haven’t gone down the path of building team. But you’ve heard him talk about leverage, because there is a difference between being a one man business where you’re doing everything yourself, and being a one man business with leverage. So let’s talk a bit about that. Because this is some lessons that someone who might be earlier in their journey could learn from and avoid some of the pain that I know I’d been through, I’m hallucinating that you’ve been through, when you say, leverage, give us some examples from your own business or some of your client business. What do you mean?
James Kemp 7:59
Yeah, so I mean, at the trough, simplest form, I will get practical in a second. But you know, in the knowledge economy, we leverage an idea. You know, we leverage an idea to get us a result, we leverage an idea or a skill that we possess. So in my case, I chose the path of leveraging skills, and my skills, pretty adept at making offers and creating commercial results for people predominantly, because I’ve done it for 25 years of my life, where I was my path through sales with organisations like BMW, Xerox, Vodafone, and these guys, my path into entrepreneurship and my path and startups means that I’ve had 1000s and 1000s of offers come in front of me. So I’ve developed over a couple of decades, that six tenths of what is going to sell to, you know, a large group of people from b2c from consumer offers all the way up to enterprise stuff. I’ve personally sold everything in between. So for me leverage.
Carl Taylor 8:52
Let’s just quickly define offers, to because you know, that word might make sense in our world. But you know, if you’re, you’re going to retail store or you know, you’re in Ecommerce, whatever you might not fully go, what does he mean by offers? So define what you refer to when you say an offer? What do you mean, what are you pointing to?
James Kemp 9:05
So an offer is a group of ideas that’s wrapped around a product. So if you’re an e-commerce store, and you sell a blanket, you know, the offer is that this Blanc is going to make you real, very warm, and the benefits and associated pieces around it. So it’s positioning a product in front of an audience that have an opportunity to buy it nice, you know, and there’s various mechanisms of offers in terms of price and benefits and bonuses and things that lots of levers to pull almost infinite ones. And again, in a knowledge economy where we can, you know, especially when we’re selling information or services, we can pull all that stuff out the toolbox to make an offer really great to make a product super attractive. So for me offers is like the centrepiece of everything because even though I’m known as a marketer, my true skill as an offer making because I want an offer different business and offer different businesses for the simplest thing for years, I sold a book, you know, and the book was $5 and it was really good. It was 100 The 30 pages of how to build and become a sovereign consultant. And the next natural thing was for someone to buy a $500 training on how to become a sovereign consultant. And the next natural thing was to buy a $5,000 program where I worked with them to become a sovereign consultant. And the next natural thing was to buy $50,000 licensing and partnership pack with me, where they use some of my material to become a sovereign consultant. And the great thing with intellectual property is it’s fractal like we can break it down into tiny, tiny little bits, you know, a book, a course, a program and delivery. So the piece for me was always about leverage of the skills and making offers, creating offers for myself and helping other people do it. Yeah. Because the caveat there is, you need skills. You know, and I’m at a point in my life, where the people who come to me are generally a similar age to me, right. And they’re, they’ve built skills up through corporate work, through hustle, through entrepreneurship, through whatever path it is. And so I’ve just got really good at packaging those skills and helping them make money from those skills in various different ways.
Carl Taylor 11:08
Yeah, I love that. And that clarity of the offer is not the product or service. Like I like how you said, if you sell a blanket, because the offer is not the blanket the offer is basically how you the wrapping around how you present that blanket to someone for them to actually purchase
James Kemp 11:22
Or automation agency doesn’t sell people pushing buttons for their clients, the offers that will save you time and headache and pain of pushing those buttons yourself. So an offer by its nature takes away some pain and solves a problem for someone on the other side of something. And the bigger the delta between the pain or the problem they’re experiencing or the benefit they wanted, the more efficiently your offer actually fulfils on that, the easier that offer is to sell.
Carl Taylor 11:45
I love that. That’s a super useful thing. And I do know that you have a training around offers. So if that’s someone’s interested in learning more about offers, is there a place they can go or an email, they can reach out to be like, Hey, how do I get access to this training? Or is it only to your exclusive clients, how’s that work?
James Kemp 11:56
I’ll actually give you a free template on how to create an offer. And someone told me that yesterday a brand new client had come on board, I downloaded a template made 100 grand with a free template that I downloaded on Instagram, which was pretty mind blowing for me. I’ve had people buy cheap trainings and make low ticket trainings and make amazing returns. But I’ve never had someone get something free and turn it into 100 grand. So if you go to the offer code dot c says a lot about the quality. It’s a template to fill in the blanks. Yeah, so offer code dot c offer code.co. If you go there, you can get a free template and understand some of the, you know, the mystery that I’m talking about.
Carl Taylor 12:28
All right, well, we’ll make sure that link is in the show notes as well. So if you missed it, don’t worry about going back and try to find it, you’ll find it in the show notes at writing dot show. So that’s a great resource, though. And I’m also going to put my hand up and say that I want a training from James about the offer code training. And it got me enough to be like, hey, I need to do some more work with James and I upgraded to, I can’t remember what the things called. But I upgraded into the next thing. Because I was like, this is good. This is useful. And I need some extra help. I’m speaking from experience that if this is hitting for you that you’re like this sounds like something I want to know James sounds like someone I want to know, I can also endorse that personally, not just because he’s my friend, but I’ve done commercial work with him.
James Kemp 13:07
I’ll send you the check later my affiliate commissions here and there.
Carl Taylor 13:10
Alright, so offers are super important. But we’re talking about leverage. So offers, a one component of leverage. And you talked about this example is in the knowledge economy ofyou sold a book? And then you’ve maybe got a course? And then maybe there’s a more handheld approach? And then you got your licensing to someone who maybe that’s not there? Well, they’re not from our world of info marketing. Right? Yeah. Where is the leverage in that? Like, to me, it’s quite obvious where the leverage is, that is, but let’s break it down. Super simplistic. And how does the leverage work, is it’s effectively just the same content, but different levels of support? Or how do you define that leverage in that? Yeah,
James Kemp 13:48
I mean, there’s multiple routes to leverage by kind of, and if we go back to the contrast example of your path and my path, for example, the leverage for me is that I have, as it stands, 81 people in a community, and those people have access to all my trainings, and knowledge, etc. And everything I produce that works for me, I give to them, the clients in that community for them to use for themselves. And on a Tuesday morning, and a Thursday evening, I get on Zoom for between an hour, an hour and a half, and help them apply that. Right. And in the old model, if you had 81 clients that you were heading to serve every day, and you say had a you know, a consulting practice with a door and a window and a desk behind it. And the 81 clients had to come in and out of your office all week. There wouldn’t be many hours left in the week to actually live. Right. But you know, on average between 20 and 50 people come to one of my calls every week, and I help them in real time. And of course you’re in mentorship and Masterminds like I am, you know, learning through others is also a form of leverage. Yes, observing and seeing in real time what others are doing is a form of leverage because you can abstract that, well, if it works for Carl, it might work for me when someone gets a result. So that’s just a tiny example of, you know, leverage. And another example of the leverage is the template that I’ve just talked about, you know, it’s an offer that made over $800,000 in sales, that was an offer that I developed and worked and created $800,000 worth of sales, then I use the templates to attract more people to me to say, I can sell with a basic Google Doc and you know, about 1000 words, something that’s really high price. So then I use the template from the results that I’ve got from making $800,000 in sales, to attract more people. So. and make those averages and make more sales, and the cycle continues. So leverage is, you know, really frightening once you start to tune yourself to see those things, you realise that some of the smallest things that people sit on for years, you know, I’ve met consultants who had, there was this amazing workshop I delivered 10 years ago, and it was so exciting. And it’s like, have you recorded it? Have you turned it into, you know, an online program, have you taken the templates, and the cheat sheet server etc. And, you know, leverage doesn’t need to necessarily mean that you have to sell it. But leverage with technology it also means like process, etc. If you’ve got a team, you can take a template and train them on it, right? So leverages this understanding that nowadays with the digitization of things, we can create multiple variants, multiple copies, multiple modalities of things, whether it’s recorded, or video or text or these things, to turn one idea or one piece of information into multiple things. Yeah, and the better you are at that, the more money you can make, and the more people you can reach, and the more people you can help with, with the least and point of view.
Carl Taylor 16:40
And there’s a few things that come from your sharing that. Firstly, I want to point out from my model of how I look at building a business that works without you, one of the first things you need to do is, you need to productize your service, right. And you’ve effectively done that James in your model, the key difference right now in the sovereign consultant approach is what I’m picking up is you still productized this the delivery of the service, that you’re choosing to be the person who’s continuing to fulfil whereas if you’re an agency or consultant who wants to fully get out of the day to day, you productize the service and then you also extract you out of the delivery of that product or service completely to
James Kemp 17:17
Follow your own setting that other layer of reverence, which is another exactly right. In some of
Carl Taylor 17:21
the examples just to make sure this lands for people, as you’re talking some examples of how I’ve done leveraged to like, in my dad printer program, our clients get access to pretty well all the SOPs that we’ve got an automation to job descriptions, our client the other day, he’s like, I’m needing to improve our marketing person, do you have a job description for a job, it was like, yeah, let me just pull out our head of head of marketing job description here, you go here with the KPIs everything, this is what you need, to rework it to suit your needs. But this is what you need to go. And it’s like that’s a piece of leverage from something I already have. And you have to use and our entire onboarding. And I’ve recorded the video of how we onboard new staff members in automation and see which again, becomes a, I’ve done that I did that, probably eight years ago that that training was effectively creative internally. And then now it’s something that can be delivered to other people. And then even in the info marketing space, anyone who’s followed me for a long period of time, so if you’re listening to this, and you’ve been around my world from, you know, 20 odd years ago, I used to do this training product called inbox domination, teaching people how to get to Inbox Zero, I did that training, I don’t know 2011, maybe, maybe sold it for a little bit. And then I stopped selling it took it down from the website, I uploaded it to Udemy. It’s a product on Udemy. And every year, I make a lot of money, but maybe 20 3050 bucks, 100 bucks a year, from a training that I’d created, stop selling. And then also my business for $1 program, I used to teach people how to buy a business, I took that product that used to be sold for 1000s of dollars. And I put it up on Udemy. And it’s just out there and every year I make money, that’s another form of leverage. It’s something you might have, that I’m no longer actively pursuing selling that but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t represent value that I can’t put it out there for someone to get value from. And I can earn some passive income from it. So those were a few things that popped as you were sharing that might be helpful for your listener. If you’re going, how does this apply to me in my world? Yeah, yeah,
James Kemp 19:13
I think the story of my first kind of route into leverage is kind of interesting, because we built a Groupon clone in New Zealand called grab one, and grab one grew to 120 million before it exited to a media company. And I was marketing director at the time. In the course of optimising an E commerce site that had 1.1 million users and about 50 to 60,000 daily transactions. I got pretty good at working out how to sell stuff on the internet, what cart pages look good, and you know what checkout flow looks good and what an abandoned cart emails you needed to send and what was copy and positioning that helped people actually sell thing at a product level. And so when I left their business when I went out consulting, I could give that to large organisations and charge three to five grand a day to go and do it but I was kind of just got myself a well paid job again, you know where I’d certain people’s offices help their teams and stuff that I’ve done in the previous years and go forward. And I met a young guy called Sam Owens in New Zealand. And he was like, you know, you’re kind of the rising star. And you know, we’re the second largest ecommerce business in New Zealand, I had a brand, I had a reputation. He’s like, why don’t you do an online program. And so I took all the things that I had developed, you know, inside grab one, I took all the things I developed inside other corporates and ecommerce businesses and packaged them up in a Google Drive folder. And I sold access to that for firstly, two and a half $1,000, then four and a half and later, just shut shy seven grand about 6800. And that was a Google Drive folder. And it was really ugly. And I still got screenshots of it. And it just had all these templates and all these things that I knew worked. And I went to ecommerce people and said, I’ve got stuff that works, do you want it? And I put them in a free Facebook group, and I got on a call with them every week to help them customise it. This is the, in the early days before people were on Shopify, and everything was one click and optimization it was you had to work hard and Magento. And all these things. Oh, yeah, that was the form of like, that was the leverage trail that I followed a lot. And 13 months later, I’d say one and a half million dollars worth of that product, that program, from templates, from knowledge and experience that I’ve had. And the best thing about it was that I could focus on helping people implement and the more people used my stuff, the better my stuff became. Because I could see, it wasn’t just my examples I was using and the sites and big ecommerce stores, it was no small clothing brands. And they’d be like, That’s interesting, because
Carl Taylor 21:31
You’re getting the leverage of testing, you’re getting other people testing your idea in the real world. Exactly.
James Kemp 21:36
That’s the power of it. Right? You know, so the development of like, setting your IP free and setting your ideas free, that doesn’t come back to you and just money where, you know, and the perception of the info space is often right, like, what can I sell to make money, and I don’t care how good it is. But when your stuffs good, and you put it out there, it will always come back if it’s given to good people or use it. So leverage has this wonderful flywheel effect when Good ideas are spread. And because good people use them and take them and run with them. And when you’re inside that, and action, you actually, you put your ideas out there, and you get more ideas to put out there. And the positive cycle continues.
Carl Taylor 22:14
And present what I originally set out and imagine I would have in the dead printer program, when I outlined what kind of trainings would exist, I had a pretty clear idea, and many of them got created. But then along the journey, like the idea of like, Oh, you have these job descriptions that didn’t hadn’t even occurred to me that hey, having a library of here’s a whole bunch of roles in a company that if you’re trying to build, you know more of a leadership team in your business, like I’ve got, swipe and deploy ready, like I didn’t even occur to me. But once you’re in the real world, putting your ideas out there, people tell you what they need, and you just go, oh, yeah, I’ve got that. Or I can create that and see it work.
James Kemp 22:45
Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And I’m not sure the whole profile of your audience. But it was interesting to me, my current girlfriend’s friend was over the other day, and she comes from a consulting consulting background. And about 18 months ago, she was, you know, had the travel bug, and she wanted to go and travel overseas. And she started selling Excel, essentially, Excel macros and templates, on Gumroad. And some of those, you know, $10, $15 here, and in 18 months, she’s funded, you know, herself around the world where she doesn’t have to work for a corporate anymore. And those things from skills and things that our corporate job gave her, you know, skills that she had developed and those things by selling things in Excel. So I think a lot of people devalue their knowledge. And a lot of people devalue the skills. Because if you can solve a problem where you give someone a currency back, you know, time or, or relationships, or money, or anything like that, and you can show them a shorter path to doing the things that they want, and you’ve got a tool to do that, then you can create leverage around that tool by making an offer.
Carl Taylor 23:42
I’m curious how you tackle the problem that I know I’ve faced, and I’ve seen others face in this. Because you, you hit the nail on the head, like if you can solve a problem. I think for many people, myself included, like you know, you know, a bunch of stuff, you know, you’re really good at some things. But you may not be able to articulate this is the problem that it actually solves for other people, which is really the key mechanism to make an offer work, you’ve got to be able to clearly articulate this is the problem I saw. And I can’t remember the exact scientific term for it. But you know, the more you know about something, the less you actually value your knowledge. Right, the less you know about it, the more you’re like, this is the best thing. I’m the smartest person in the world. And the more you know, the more you’re like, Yeah, I don’t know everything. And this is just kind of what I do. How have you tackled that? Or how do you help your clients tackle that when it’s like, I don’t actually know that I can solve problems, even though they, can they?
James Kemp 24:31
We mine the past, right? And often, often the problem, the most powerful, potent problem is one that you’ve solved for yourself. Right? Some of the, you know, I don’t work with a ton of people and like fitness and those spaces, but often when you go right to root, to the origin story, their path into that was like losing weight getting fit, you know, doing it for themselves and like working it out along the way. Yeah. And I find over and over again, like the current avatar, if you like the current person that people want to sell to is often a previous version of themselves. So I just help people go back and acknowledge the past and mind the partners. And it’s difficult for some people to acknowledge they’ve done great work, right? That they actually delivered value on some because they had this concept that they were going to deliver value in this way. But someone got the value that they didn’t perceive, you know, you help someone lose weight, but it wasn’t they said, it was to look good in the mirror, but it was actually to feel good about themselves. So they didn’t people have this complex, they say, Well, I helped this person did that. But you know, they didn’t really value the result, they got another result. Yeah. And when you actually honour the fact that you help someone do something, often yourself, you know, either solve a problem, or in the case of mentorship, you know, especially with with more experienced people, remove a roadblock, you know, because that’s my distinction between, you know, consulting and mentorship. Mentorship is much more about peeling, helping someone peel back the layers to get to the root value that they know they have already. And you’re removing barriers by helping them model how you do that. Whereas consulting is very much you’ve got a problem, and I’ll tell you how to solve it. You know, the commitment that people make to those things is, that’s a useful distinction for some people and a confusing one for others. But you know, really, it’s about going to the past, and mining that and understanding how you’re best positioned to help somebody.
Carl Taylor 26:22
And so with your definition, their mentor mentorship is, you know, that peeling back of layers, removing a roadblock, consulting is I’ll tell you how to solve it. Where does Coach fit into that model? Is that just another word for mentorship? Or do you have a different definition of how you define the difference between a coach, a mentor and a consultant? Yeah,
James Kemp 26:30
I’d use a really simple definition, consulting is like, I’ll tell you what to do. Coaching is, I’ll show you that you already know how to do it, which is essentially integration. Yep. And mentorship is like, I’ll tell you how I would do it. Yeah. Right. So I predominantly spend most of my time in a mentorship mode, where my answers to things with people is like, this is how I’ve done it, this is how I do it. And, or this is how I’d approach or think about that. So I very much embody the mentorship mode, because I’m opening the positive loop of the more I improve myself, the more results I achieved for myself, the more success that I cover, and cultivate for myself, the more success that those people around me, I’d actually cultivate, and I love that. So I see myself as the older model. So I make things for me, I create for me, I solve problems for me. And then I embodied the solutions to that and share them with other people. So I’m very good at each modality. Right. And so I can wear different hats at different times. And you know, you’ve been to some of you know, the group calls, etc. Often I’ll ask permission, if someone’s not getting the thing that they need and the timeframe, they think they need it. I just asked them, which is like, can I consult you on this right now? Yeah, and I’ll just tell them what to do. Right, because sometimes you just need to go route one with that. Yeah. And I think I’ve never bought into the internet thing, which is like, I’m a business coach, or I’m a I’m adverse or on a that these things are not very useful identities, they are for a bit, but over the long term, they’re not really useful to embody as identities, but they’re very, very useful to embody as modalities and skills. Because if you’re a great consultant, and a great coach and a great mentor, then you’re the most useful to the largest amount of people.
Carl Taylor 28:13
I resonate strongly with that. And I like that, like, the idea of identifying.
James Kemp 28:18
Dealt with your team, right? You know, you have to play those roles internally, and you play those roles.
Carl Taylor 28:22
There are times with the team that I’m going, here’s how you need to solve it. Other times that I’m so I’m putting four and CEO directive, like this is what you need to do and just get it done. Other times, it’s like coaching them that you know, and I still remember early days of trying to train many people, they train helplessness in their staff, staff member reaches out to them with a question and they go into consult mode, and they just tell them the answer, which then teaches the team member that it’s faster and easier to come and ask you a question than to actually go and do the work to figure it out or put on spend a moment to think about it. And so then the CEO or the business owner gets really annoying, because it’s like my staff are bombarding me all the time. It’s like, it’s your fault. You train them that it’s easy to come to you. And so what you got to do there to untrained helplessness is sometimes you just got to ignore them, too. They have to figure it out on their own. You know, my team? No, I did that to them. And other times, you got to move into coach mode. Yeah, right coach mode, which is like, Well, okay, what have you thought about even though in your head, you’re like, This is exactly what I would do to fix it. You gotta pause and you gotta go. Okay, so what are you thinking? What’s your approach? What are you going to do? You got to stop yourself from telling them what to do, because you’ve got to help them learn. And then absolutely, like now when I’m working with my operations manager on those obstacles, when she comes to me with here’s the problem 99% of the time, it’s mentorship, it’s like, here’s how I’d tackle it, but it kind of going like it’s your core, what do you want to do? Only occasionally would it be like, consult, this is what I need you to do this. So I hadn’t thought about it in that way. But what I love in particular, the reframing of going, whether you’re a mentor or a coach or consultant, it’s not about an identity of who you are. It’s a modality that you engage in. That’s powerful for those that are hearing that and can truly hear that message that’s a powerful shift that could unlock a lot for you, if you’ve previously identified as a consultant or a coach or whatever.
James Kemp 30:21
Yeah, I found it very freeing for people who are having, have injected learned helplessness into their client base. Because they are stuck in that telling mode. And essentially, they’ve injected learned helplessness and their client or customer base, and often their team. And they feel like they’re in the middle of everything. Because they’ve put themselves in the middle of everything. And when they can wear the different hats and different modalities and evolve to a mentor, they’re comfortable with not giving people the answer all the time. And they’re also comfortable with the frustration that that does, you know, initially bring other people, in my experience, parents have a much easier job with us. Because parents, after a little while, understand that you can tell your kids anything. Yeah. But they only listened to a fraction of it. But when you show them and demonstrate and let and allow them to model from you, then they’re learning, you know, takes off in terms of that. So parenting is the ultimate kind of test of whether you’re a good mentor or not, can you be a good model or quote unquote, role model for the people around you. Because if you evolved from just telling everybody what to do all the time, you’ll always be the person who tells people want to do, but if you show and demonstrate and do those things for yourself, which is a pretty natural human thing, then you’ll find that people will model you and both the positive and the negative piece itself and find utility and modelling as well.
Carl Taylor 31:37
Yeah, I love that. And I love how you’ve been able to bring that back to parenting, to, because it all comes down to being a leader, in my view, right? Like a true leader will bring about whatever skills they need, a true leader. Some people think a leader is a dictator, who’s telling everyone what to do. And there are times in place that that is true. But that’s not sometimes, you know, sometimes the leaders job is to stand back and just guide put a bit of boundaries here and there mentor support, but actually get out of the way like it is truly I’d never really thought about it truly is kind of a mix of these, these three modalities as you say that a true leader will sit in, and leader not only he’s doing that for other people around them, their family, you know, as a man, I believe that our role, if you want to step into the identity, I talked about becoming the king, you know, you’re the owner of your business, rather than the operator, you’re the leader of your family, rather than, you know, the passive passenger, you’re the protector, rather than the risk taker, you’ve got to lead your family, you got to lead your business. But to do all of those other things, you have to be leading yourself, yes, 100%.
James Kemp 32:27
And owning it. So I always say there’s another step beyond leadership. And that’s ownership of leadership, right? Because a lot of people have our leaders but deny it, right, because they have shame about leadership, because they’re unconfident and their boundaries. They’re not confident when they are in the different modes of doing it. And they have shame around it, because that maybe the models that they had before them, often their parents and these things, you know, were reluctant leaders as well, especially males, often have a bit of trouble owning the leadership piece to say, you are a leader, you are a leader, whether you like it or not, because people are seeking leadership from you. And but without ownership of that, then you’re a very, very weak leader.
Carl Taylor 33:11
Let’s talk about men for a moment with that, do you find that that’s true of their view of themselves as a leader in business or more as a leader in areas outside of business, like at the home and other areas? I’m curious your experience, when you point to that
James Kemp 33:24
I’m not a believer in the way you do one thing as the way you do everything, because I’ve seen enough contradiction and edge cases and around that to make it not a heuristic that I buy.
Carl Taylor 33:35
And yeah, it’s a nice saying, and people can connect with it. But it’s not, it’s not the whole pitch. I agree with you there.
James Kemp 33:43
I found that people are just, tend to be quite extreme. So I found that people will be like, the nice guy at home, but the dictator at work, or vice versa. So I found that people are either integrated, where they have similar behaviours across the board where their leadership is consistent, and across places, they’re good at setting boundaries, they’re an open communicator, etc. They tell people what they need, clearly and concisely. And, you know, they use the clear as kind of mantra rather than that’s nice. So they’re integrated, or they’re at one extreme, where they’re a dictator in the business and a nice guy at home or, or vice versa.
Carl Taylor 34:18
That was my experience. It was my journey. There isn’t much I haven’t seen
James Kemp 34:21
many other examples apart from the integrated or the
Carl Taylor 34:22
So that’s kind of why I asked because that was the first thing I thought about is like, my experience with men that I’ve spoken to is typically the entrepreneurial man has no problem stepping into being the leader of their business to be like, yep, it’s my business. I call the shots boom, boom, boom, boom, you get it home. They are suffering from, you know, nice guy syndrome, right like it for those I think I mentioned on previous episodes, you know, more Mr. Nice guys by Donald Glover or Robert Glover, or whatever his name is. Robert, I think it’s Robert. I think it’s Robert Clark. He does a really good way of describing what that nice guy syndrome ultimately is. I think that most people suffer from nice guy syndrome. I haven’t thoroughly tested this, but we did a recent episode about attachment theory, I believe they probably more, lean to the anxious attachment style. Because that’s true of me. But I was that guy like I was no problem being the leader strong in business. And yet in the home, I would shrink away, I just wanted to be the nice guy wouldn’t necessarily say what I truly wanted. I felt like it was not okay. Because society that I grew up in, and my parents in particular, I had this worldview that it was not safe, it was not okay, as a man to be like that. In a relationship, it took a lot of peeling back and work on my part. And also my partner lives as part for us to work through that dynamic. And I wouldn’t say I’m cured, I would always say I’m a recovering nice guy. But it’s again, going to that, you know, in a previous episode we talked about your mess is often your message or you’re talking to your previous version of yourself. I recently got the distinction that my avatar, my ideal client for the dead printer program is a nice guy, dead printer, that they fall into that space.
James Kemp 36:01
Yeah, it’s very, very common. I think, especially. And many people have had only this, the beginning of awakening of that, usually at the end of a relationship, they’ve come through a relationship that they’ve entered a new one. And they understand that if they continue the models that they had before, then they’re going to be looking for another relationship
Carl Taylor 36:21
Starting all over again. Yeah, I can relate to that.
James Kemp 36:26
It often needs an awakening, you know, and I’ve had a couple, but often needs an awakening and a proper kick, for people to actually seek and admit those facts that then behaving and consistently across different domains.
Carl Taylor 36:39
It’s funny, you say that I’ve just been thinking about my dad, our clients, and they’re either divorced or cut, like, they’ve probably had that big kick somewhere in their journey. I never put that together. That’s really interesting.
James Kemp 36:53
Really interesting. Yeah, cuz it’s, it’s funny for me, like, you know, I, at the end of the day, sell time compression to my clients, you know, and the people I work with, it’s like, Listen, I’ll help you avoid the pitfalls, and potholes and all the things that I’ve experienced along the journey and compress time. And I always say, like, my best clients are going to be successful without me. Yeah, I just give them a shorter route and do it with a bit more ease at the end of the day. But for me, it’s like, nothing matches experience, until you’re in it. And until you’ve done it, or you’ve suffered in it, then I don’t think anyone can ever fully embody it. You know, and I will admit, I occasionally let clients do things that I know, won’t be great for them, but won’t be catastrophic. To prove to them, that it might not be the thing they want to do, and to have a real experience of it. Rather than just say, Don’t do that. It won’t work how you think it will or won’t work how you want it to, it’s, again, it’s
Carl Taylor 37:52
Kind of goes back to his parenting thing. We you can’t if you try to save your child.
James Kemp 37:56
You can tell them not to touch the hot element, because it’s, I know it’s pretty unread. But it will burn you. But one day, they’re going to touch the hot element. And they’ll believe you that it’s hot when you’re not there. And then No, no. And it’s the same with you know, we don’t outgrow any of that.
Carl Taylor 38:11
We’re just big kids wrapped in older outsides. But the insides. We’re still just honestly, Harry, we’re just Yeah, yeah, for sure. And we’re lying to ourselves, trying to convince ourselves that we’re not still those innocent little children that are perhaps throwing a tantrum because life’s not going the way their parents not giving them whatever they thought they wanted, or whatever is happening. So I think we’ve gone in some really interesting places. And I yeah, there’s so much popping from this. I want to remind people that if you’re lacking some of this stuff, the first point of leverage that I think makes sense, if you like the idea of a sovereign consultant, and I’ll be honest, even if you don’t want to be a sovereign consultant, because I had a realisation, I don’t want to be a sovereign consultant. Yeah, the offer code that James offers is still going to be relevant to you no matter where you’re at in business, so it could be still worthwhile checking out the offer code.co member that’ll be in the show notes. So you can check that out. Where else would you like to take this conversation? James, I don’t normally ask this. But I’m curious, like, you’ve got a broad range of places, where do you think would be a nice place to go from here?
James Kemp 39:09
Ah, I think the word sovereignty is gonna be pretty interesting and pretty relevant. I mean, it has been for me, and I think it’s for an increasing number of people. You know, I live in here, in Bali. I live a pretty international life. I’ve got a company set up overseas. I’m a citizen of more than a couple of countries. You know, I’ve got four driver’s licences in my wallet here. And I think as people are, I don’t want to say waking up because I think it implies some grand conspiracy is, you know, someone puppet masters and listen to pulling the strings behind it. I wish I don’t necessarily believe but I think people are understanding that they can build a kingdom here on earth and lives life on their terms. And I think it’s also important to acknowledge that doesn’t need to look like anybody else’s. You know, I have a ton of people who come to me and are like, I just want to model your life. I’ve had a, people work with me and move to Bali with their family and work online and do you know, and go to the same gyms as me and stuff like that, and I’m like, kind of produced many, many clones, you know, kind of thing. But also, I’ve worked with a ton of people who stayed in the family home that dad passed down to them, you know, 30 years ago. And they operated with more leverage, and they were in a happy place, because they’re spending more time with their family, and they could do, you know, their hobbies and those things. And I think it’s time for people to really decide what life they want, and what they want their life to look like. And understand that you can design a business to feed that, because entrepreneurship got really flippin cool about a decade ago, right, everybody wanted to be an entrepreneur and a scraper and the word has been, the semantics are kind of almost ridiculous. But that’s not, a lot have spoken about why people get into business, not a lot have spoken about what a business can do for your life. Because lots of people, especially males, sacrifice a lot in the course of building a business and sacrifice their life in the process. And so I’m a huge believer that if you design your life first, then there’s so many options, whatever your skill level, whatever your desire, whatever your earning capacity, whatever your goals are, there are so many options to make that work. Right. You know, and I found, like working with clients over a decade, that if we start with their life, and then design the business and build the business around that, we get significantly better results. And if we build the business and try and fit their life around, not significantly better results just for their business, but significantly better results for their business, and their life and the people that they care about. So I’m a big proponent, you know, we’re here for a reason. We’re here to build businesses and make money and all these great things, but they enable a life. And anyone can choose what their version of sovereignty is. And I think they’re talking about the two different paths with you know, solopreneur ship and teams and these things we were party to a conversation while I was in the conversation about someone who’s building a business just like mine with 36 people and I’m building one virtual assistant and and both it wasn’t that one was better or worse than the other. But both of them are good for our lives and good for the things that mattered to us. So we made both of them work in that context. Absolutely.
Carl Taylor 42:20
I think about that, that example of automation agency wouldn’t fully work well, in my head wouldn’t fully work if I was the one doing the work yet. I also know graphic designers who will follow a similar model to automation entities offering unlimited design service, and they are the designer. Right? Now I hallucinate that they probably don’t have good constraints around ensuring that their weeks aren’t just gobbled up. But if they took a leaf out of your book, and they took that same approach and offered it more exclusively, and they set days that maybe they were available, it wasn’t available every day, there’s no reason someone couldn’t take a similar model to automate NC be the person doing the fulfilment, and still have a lot more freedom and time getting away from the 5060 hour weeks that sadly, way too many entrepreneurs seem to get stuck in like I just, you know, I was there a long time ago in my IT business, but it sucks that they will get there and they get stuck. And especially if you’ve got a family, you know, you as you said, you’re kind of sacrificing the life. And I know that many men, they hide in their work, they hide in their business, because the other form of us Yeah, it’s an addiction, it’s an escapism, because if you know, they’d rather be in the chaos and the leadership that feels good in their business, then go and deal with the mess that’s going on back home, either with their kids or their wife or all the above, you got to face into that because otherwise you’re just escaping and you’re gonna get to, I believe you’re gonna get to your deathbed and go Oh, that wasn’t the life I wanted. I love this whole design your life first.
James Kemp 43:48
100 percent. I’ve had a client recently that achieved some spectacular results and then unravelled, right? He went from 16 sales calls a week, which was taking up, you know, approximately 16 hours a week to none, because my methodology doesn’t use any sales calls, who’s selling via sending a document as the people will find when they download that template? And also from nine one to one clients to seven group clients. Yeah, right. So rather than serve his clients on nine hours, of course a week and more because he had, you know, open communication and other process of finding over 25 hours a week back with knowing impact on his income, its effective hourly rate, you know, is 10 times what it was, he found that he was there all the time with him. And he found that he had all this time and he found the old wherever I go there I am thing and it went through a period of huge struggle because he was using the work to avoid the things that he was avoiding. And there were issues in his life that he knew that the work distracted him from etc. And it put them back into the fire so it created chaos and another, the area of his life because it was an injury. Yes. Right. And people know this. And I make the distinction between knowledge and knowing, you know, knowledge is like, I’ve got it all up here. But knowing is like, yeah, I don’t if I don’t do something about my health soon, it’s gonna be really bad. If I don’t have a conversation with my wife soon, then this is going, you know where it goes. So it has changed, even for the better has consequences if things are in people’s lives that are unaddressed.
Carl Taylor 45:32
You know, just a quick story from my own life. When automations he first got to the point where it didn’t need me anymore. I was at a certain level of income, we had financial freedom. So I first realised I had financial freedom outside of automation and see automation. And he didn’t really need a lot of me, it wasn’t it actually needed more of me than now, to be honest, but it didn’t need a lot of me. It left me sitting at home a lot, realising that I wasn’t fully happy in my relationship and thinking about all these other things going on. And I know that that relationship came to an end. Not totally because of that, but it put me in a space where I had to start dealing with me, I then was still avoiding things in that relationship, that eventually it was forced to ahead. And that thing is what cracked me open. Funnily enough, though, because it cracked me open. Some people listening might know this story. I couldn’t cope. It was a huge emotional trigger. For me, I’ve all of a sudden all my wounds of being abandoned as a child, here it was this woman abandoning me, I know, potentially you can relate to some of this dude, I can. And all of a sudden, I just I was like, I can’t deal team I’m disappearing for a bit don’t know how long for I’m just I went to Thailand, I’m going to Thailand, a good friend there, I’m going to my coach happened to be there at the time as well, like I’m going to Thailand. I don’t know how long I’m going to be there for. I wasn’t in Thailand for that long. But then I went on a road trip with my dad, like I just disappeared from the business, no slack, no calls, nothing. Eight months, eight months disappear from the business. So a big fact that I can now run automations on four hours a month is because of the gift of that stepping away for eight months, it’s like if I can stay away for eight months? Well, I definitely don’t need to be that involved. As much as I was trying to be involved before that happened. Because it was an escapism. And I was able to think I was able to start dealing with some of the crap was going on. And secondly, I think for many men, not just men, any business owner who’s often stuck in the day to day who’s got a bit of a team, the biggest thing that I usually have to give someone whether they’re paying me or not, is permission to step the fuck out of the day to day like to just give it up and go get over your own ego and actually give it up. That’s often what’s needed.
James Kemp 47:30
Yeah, fully. Yeah, I was in a very similar situation where, you know, someone left my scenarios with the children more with me. And the responsibility of that, thankfully, my biggest desire was to lean into it, which was actually a surprise for me. Right? It was actually a surprise for me is like, I love being a dad, and I want to be here on them with me and those things. So I wanted to curl up in a ball. I wanted to, you know, pretend hope the world would just pass me by, and then I’d wake up and everything will be fine. But I had to go back into the fire. You know, I had to go through, like, unravel the past, you know, and the stories and all the things and the idealism of family and what I thought I was going to have in a family until the day I died, and go through it. Luckily, that’s my nature. Whereas I am relatively aggressive personality, and fighting, and getting a bit angry, and getting those things as in, you know, as I’ve got older there and more wires, they’re an easy energy transfer to me in terms of into motion and action. So I’m good at turning those things into turning anxiety into an anger and those things into motion and action. So I had to go through. So luckily, that was my default state, Well, luckily, but also, the responsibilities I had around me when I had to get going, it was an easy step for me. And that’s not that’s not easy for everyone, some people just need to stop, take stock, take the time, like you did recalibrate and then you know, build back on the journey that they want to be on themselves. And
Carl Taylor 49:26
You know, from a personal point of view, dude, like seeing your journey, like I knew a little bit of what was going on, when it was going a little bit as it was going on. Like you’ve given me a little bit I didn’t know all the ins and outs and I’ve learned more since. But it shows in the shift of the James that I see and how you show up in business in life. The messaging the stuff you talk about, like you going back into the fire forged you into the man you are today, which is that stronger leader, King energy that is so needed in this world. So you know, I think, as with all these things, strategy of which business strategy, you go the solopreneur route and trying to get lots of leverage, like you’ve done or you go down my route of you build a big, doesn’t have to be that big, but you build a business that doesn’t rely on you so that you just truly own the money and you do other things if you want to. It’s the same, same outcome, different paths. And the same thing if you’re listening and you’re currently going through a challenge over relationship breakdown, empathy for you, it’s not great. And you’ve got two paths you can do, you can do my path where I just couldn’t deal, I need to run away, but in a way it was, I was running away from the stuff that I was distracting myself with. And I was ran towards exactly that I was gonna get to like, I ran towards myself, like you move.
James Kemp 50:18
Yeah, movement is required. Right,
Carl Taylor 50:22
I ran away. But I ran, I ran into me. And that’s, sometimes that’s what you need to do. And then similarly for you, you ran into the fire, which forged meant you had to face all the same kind of things that I was working through over those eight months, you had to face it just in a different energy in a different space. Whereas I was like, I’m out. I’m just working on me.
James Kemp 50:43
Yeah, yeah. And they’re both equally valid paths, and someone’s there at the end. Exactly. And it’s you. So it’s the responsibility of the individual to make sure that’s the most, you know, the most innate real version of you attend,
Carl Taylor 50:54
if my experience and some of my friends, experience happens to you. So if you’re listening, and you’re currently going through or just been through this divorce, or long term relationship, breakdown, whatever it may be, you might get to a point where you feel like you’re really good, you’re like, I’m solid, I know who I am. And then you get into a new relationship, it’s kind of, highlight some of those things that maybe you thought you’d sorted out, that you haven’t sorted out. And that’s the beautiful thing of a relationship, in my opinion, in business, you’ve got to deal with so much stuff, your own stuff, and in relationship, I believe you can get to a certain level of solidarity, I don’t always I’m looking for solidity in yourself, by yourself. But until you then get into the world of relating, and the triggers, and the traumas and the childhood stuff that will start to come up in that you don’t really is my experience speaking from my own experiences? And so I’m projecting a little bit here, but it’s a worthwhile thing is what I will say. And if you’re in that journey, good, best of luck to you.
James Kemp 51:48
Yeah, I think, to the people who are about to be on that journey, but no, no, they are. When, you know, I remember 18 months ago, you know, lying there on a Saturday and making great money and my hour, I was laying on my lounger next to my pool and Bali, and their kids playing around. And you know, there were things that weren’t easy. And me, I couldn’t put my finger on what was off. And I kind of had a suspicion that I didn’t admit, you know, and I was staring at the sky going is this that. And I talked about knowing, and I knew, but I didn’t want it to be true. And I made a lot of people are in that stage of they know that if they’re questioning, like, I’ve got all the things I wanted, I’ve got doing all the things I said I was gonna do, I’ve got this, I’ve got the money, I’ve got the thing, we’ve got the family, but it’s off, or something’s off, you know, and it’s only no one’s coming to save you from that only you can lean into it richer.
Carl Taylor 52:52
So true. It’s getting very spiritual now, but it’s like the answer is in you, right? Like, that’s the only thing and peeling back the layers and understanding at all and how you choose to show up? I’m just thinking of Yeah,
James Kemp 53:13
I think the same sentiments do come up in business as well. Yeah. People know that, you know, they’re in the wrong vehicle, maybe drove them to the destination they want but they’re on the wrong vehicle. You know, and I work with a lot of people who are in that stage of like, golden handcuffs. I’m making a million bucks a year. But I feel like I’m a prisoner in my own, you know, world because I’m singing and dancing on the internet telling everyone everything’s great. But actually, I hate what I do underneath. And I hate the people are in it. And I hate, I don’t want to burn it down. And eventually they do so but there are much more constructive ways to honour the skills and the experience of built up unnecessarily burning it down and, and transitioning to new vehicles these days, it’s never been easier.
Carl Taylor 53:52
100%. Absolutely agree to that. So if you are sitting there going, I hate my business, you got multiple routes out of that, you can sell the business, you can transition to something else you can remove yourself like I have from automation, and see, like, there are lots of parts of automation that I didn’t enjoy doing, hence why I got out of doing those things. So there are so many parts. And that’s just a couple of them, I think wouldn’t be really cool James if we to wrap things up. If you were to distil your three biggest obviously, you’ve gone through a lot of growth in the last 18 odd months right? or longer if you were to distil the three biggest pieces of advice or ways of thinking. To sum everything up for someone listening, no matter where they’re at, in their journey. What would you come down to as the three big things you want people to hear and take away.
James Kemp 54:44
The first is always put your own mask on first. You know, you’re everybody’s a leader to some degree and everybody signed up for something whether that’s in a relationship with children or business or anything or just the self, your primary way to grow is to put your own mask on first and give yourself and listen to your own needs. If you’re ignoring those right now, you will fail on whatever you’re going to do and it’s just a matter of time. Secondly, you are the cliche if you are the product of the five people you spend the most time with has never been more true in a world that wants you to be lots of things you don’t necessarily want to be. So you know choosing your environment carefully and choosing the people that are around you very, very carefully, is absolutely crucial. And choosing your allies and your enemies carefully, is essential as well. The world wants you to be something, other people want you to be something. And if that’s not aligned with who you want to be, then you need to cut them out. Thirdly, as we are all suffering, we can choose the life, you may think you don’t have any choices whatsoever. But you know, we are all sovereign and we will get to choose what our life looks like. It might not be available to you next week, or next month or next year, it might be a decade away, you know, to have the ultimate life that you imagined that you can do. But we’re all sovereign and we’ve got to build it, we’ve got to take responsibility for it and advocate for ourselves about what it what we want. And if you do that, you will get there and it will be inevitable. You know, I’m on the path back to running a multimillion dollar consultancy business, you know, I’ve set a goal to have $5 million profit and a consulting business. Every day, I get up and I act like I’m running a $5 million consultancy, I set the standards of that, I live like that, I make decisions like that I invest like that. And I pursue that. And then I know that if I do that it will become because I’ve been there before. I know that if I act as if my goals have been achieved, not and that doesn’t mean you know, I’m going to fly first class, you know, when the credit cards, you know, at its maximum limit and spending like one, but I’m acting and taking the standards and embodying. And if you want to be sovereign on this earth, then you need to act to the standards, that of the person you desire to be. And if you do that, then the person you desire to be will become inevitably
Carl Taylor 56:29
That old chestnut of the personal development world b times DU equals have when you be the then do, and then you’ll have and you can reverse it. I want to have these things, people who have that need to do this. To do those things. I need to be this. So yeah, I love that. That’s really great wisdom, some amazing pearls there and really appreciate you know, opening up across various areas on this episode. And it’s always a pleasure to chat, man. Apart from the offer code.co Is there anywhere else you would recommend people best find you learn more about sovereign consultant or just you in general? Yeah,
James Kemp 57:06
If you follow me on Facebook or find me on Facebook, then you get to hear me talk about my hatred for both goals and my disdain for atomic habits.
Carl Taylor 57:15
A lot of it yet I will test James’s posts on Facebook, or one of the few that I actually enjoy reading, sometimes I don’t love them. But most of the time I do. Yeah, there’s you know, there’s only a handful of people, I would say that that’s true. I’ve enjoying reading their posts on Facebook. So recommend that. Thank you, dude, thank you so much for being on the show. And dear listener, if you’ve been enjoying this episode, as well as checking out James’s stuff, you can also like, follow, leave a recommendation on this podcast and you know what would be even more helpful to the world. And it will help me too, is if while listening to this episode, someone came to mind could have been a friend, could have been a team member, could have been a relative, someone came to mind that you’re like, hi, they should hear this. The best gift that you could give them and me is to grab the link wherever the share link is on the tool. You’re listening to this if you’re on YouTube watching this great and share it with just go hey, I was watching this, listen to this and you came to mind you should check this out a couple of things one is going to help them because there’s some content here that you clearly thought was relevant to them. And it’s going to expose someone new to this podcast and I deeply appreciate that because it helps spread the message and help. I know James is gonna appreciate that people hearing his episode as well. So if that happened to you, please share this episode with that one person that came to mind. It’ll be a great gift that you give them and me at the same time. As always, if you haven’t left a review, and you’ve been listening for a long time, appreciate those reviews on your favourite podcast platform of choice. Until next time, keep up the journey you’ll find all the show notes, everything you need at rising dot show rising dot show. Till next time you’ve been listening to Entrepreneurs Rising. Thank you, dear listener, for tuning in. I appreciate your time and look forward to connecting in future episodes if you would like show notes or any resources from today’s episode, you can find them at rising dot show. Rising duck show you can find a show notes for this episode and all other episodes as well as links to socials and the ability to reach out and connect with me, make your suggestions for future episodes. Until next time, keep up the journey.
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