Hey, airport.
Gotta love that.
That PGA lounge that's in there.
Man, that was cool.
Yeah, oh, it's one of the top ranked in the nation.
Yep, that's right.
Yeah, makes sense.
Yep, I loved it.
I wish I had more time for Minneapolis itself.
I just had, I had an overnight
and I found my way into that lounge.
I was like, I'm totally cheating by getting in here
because it just seems so, I was like,
oh, this is for everybody.
Sweet.
Yeah, well, when you come here, come in the summer.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Yeah, I was in the winter.
So I'm glad it was the only one I lay over.
But yes, definitely need to do that.
So all right, you've got a software rainmaker
and LinkedIn is your specialty.
A lot of people that listen to the show
know the value of being promoted
and getting in front of others and lead generation
and some of the explored automation, some haven't.
I know how important these strategies are to do right.
I've seen so many businesses burn themselves to death
by doing the wrong thing with strategy.
Creating a rocket launch, for instance, a rocket
and you got 90% of it built and you launch.
That kills people.
Business owners, 96% are failing within 10 years.
You don't have to do things that way though.
You can switch.
So Colin and I are gonna talk about LinkedIn strategy
and I'm going to be an auditor
that most LinkedIn professionals would absolutely hate.
And he's agreed that we're gonna go ahead
and go through this.
So if you see us throw haymakers,
we're doing this at the industry and at certain practices.
And if we end up throwing haymakers at each other,
we're both lions, meaning we're both alphas,
we're gonna be just fine and y'all are gonna benefit
because we've got to have clarity around marketing
and strategy and how to build visions right.
Otherwise we're gonna lead all of you to the same demise
that the majority of the world constantly is headed
towards wondering why their results aren't different
than everybody else.
So, but that said, I'm setting a very hard standard
that I don't normally do on Vision Pros.
Colin, let's dive into that first.
Is my, is my, am I over the top?
Is my concern for business owners something that is like,
whoa, do you like chill out?
And if so, why?
I mean, what gives you the certainty that people are
all gonna win if that's how you feel.
And if not, again, it's a validation
between my scary perspective and reality.
Yeah, it's a great question.
I think there's a shared feeling between us
just around wanting businesses to succeed.
That's part of my kind of life's work really
is I wanna help as many entrepreneurs succeed as possible
because the world needs more entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship at its core is creative.
It builds opportunity and it pushes society forward.
And so that's something that is really near and dear
to my heart.
I can say being a founder, literally my entire life,
never having had to make a resume
and always own my own businesses,
that sitting in that sales or marketing seat,
when you're trying to grow a business,
you just desperately want to grow.
You wanna close deals, you wanna close sales,
you wanna hit your goals.
But I think businesses, especially on LinkedIn
are approaching it the wrong way.
And we can get into the details on that.
But I wholeheartedly agree with you
that I want businesses to succeed
and I want them using LinkedIn the right way.
Those of you listening in heard him say
what you know is true.
Or whatever, that people using LinkedIn
are using it the wrong way.
And almost all of you just said, but not me.
Uh-uh, don't exclude yourself from this.
You are likely, in all likelihood,
99% chance doing LinkedIn wrong.
And why is it so important to recognize?
I'm not trying to say don't use LinkedIn.
Please don't hear that.
I'm trying to say take a step back.
Talk to people who might see things a little bit differently
who have the experience of actual success.
I'll challenge one aspect,
something I used to believe that Colin said,
we need more entrepreneurs.
I would add the color comment,
we need more successful entrepreneurs.
And that distinction, 96% lose within 10 years,
4% barely survive, you wouldn't know that
because they act like they've made it.
But in reality, they're suffering with just as many loans.
They're suffering with just as,
they probably put more time into the office.
They've got all sorts of challenges going on.
So what's amazing though,
is we have one of the best economies in the world
with a success rate of less than 2%.
That's nuts.
Right, so if we shifted that,
if we shifted a few formulas,
if we got leaders to step up
in a little bit different capacity,
and we just took the economy to twice as many people,
2% more winning, it would be amazing.
What types of problems we can solve.
So entrepreneurship is 100% an amazing solution
for the world and we can't continue to act
like the get rich quick stuff is the way to figure it out.
And so Colin, thank you for being willing to address
the challenge.
And I think what I hope,
those of you still remaining listening to this here
is the hope, the reality that I'm not talking about,
about, oh my gosh, what was us, let's stop.
I'm saying, let's put our hope and faith
into tremendously great strategies
so that we stop putting ourselves in a position to fail.
And Colin and I are gonna tackle that
from a LinkedIn perspective today.
So I'm gonna give one little plug-in
for Rainmaker real quick,
before we dive into three resources
you recommend for visionary leaders.
And then before we cut for the break,
what is one of the big secrets
that people need to be doing with LinkedIn
in order to do it right?
I think the biggest thing you need to do
is change your mindset.
So nobody wants to be sold on LinkedIn,
but virtually everyone's willing to be educated on LinkedIn.
If you can just allow that to take hold
in how you approach LinkedIn,
I think anyone can be successful.
My goodness.
So all we have to do is change our assets
to where it looks like we're educating people
and we can then succumb people into buying from us.
Is that what you said, Colin?
Do you mind repeating that in words
that somebody who heard it like I just did,
might be able to open up a little more?
What does that mean?
Yeah, so I mean, for me,
when I think about you as the entrepreneur,
you as the person that sits in the sales and marketing seat,
you have an insane amount of knowledge in your industry
and what your business does.
And what I think you need to do
is you need to figure out what are the pains
and the barriers that your prospects are trying to overcome?
What is it that they wanna be educated on?
And the most important thing is,
what is it that they want to learn from you?
What can you teach?
And if you're able to do that,
I think anybody can be successful on LinkedIn.
But how do I sell them, Colin?
That we can get into the specifics of that,
but first you have to build a relationship.
First they have to see you as a trusted resource,
someone they see as a thought leader,
someone that they see as someone
that they're gaining valuable knowledge from.
Many times people buy from where they get educated.
And that's a truth whether you're on LinkedIn or not.
Well, I get that that's all good
and I certainly wanna help people,
but I really want the people to buy from me now.
And I wanna prove that because,
how do I justify investing in LinkedIn
if I'm just gonna educate the whole world for free?
Well, you use the word get rich quick, right?
That's not how it works.
Isn't that correct?
Visionaries, we love to skirt around, get rich quick
and act like our attitudes are not a reflection
of get rich quick, wake up.
All of us need to wake up.
We have to be willing to actually care
about the education process.
We have to be willing to help nurture people forward.
We all go to, if you ever been to Sam's Club,
you ever been to Costco, you walk in
and there's that table of technology gurus or geeks
and all that actually sell sharks right there.
We all avoid them like the plague.
We all try to go around them.
Nobody wants to be sold to.
Yet we all go through Sam's Club in Costco
and we come out with our shopping carts full of things
that we weren't prepared to buy in the first place.
But we love to buy in LinkedIn.
I'm glad for all of you by the way
that are actually kind of destroying the LinkedIn experience
because when they find companies like mine,
they get really excited and they're like,
oh my gosh, this person cares about me.
It is a jungle of spam on LinkedIn.
And all of that benefits those of us
who are actually taking a step back and saying,
hey, why don't we just care about these people?
So Colin, thank you as a founder of a company
who's helping people drive success on LinkedIn.
It sounds like you've not fallen victim
of what most of the companies that I've seen fall victim to,
which is how do we create these nasty,
quick conversion campaigns as fast as possible
in order to give entrepreneurs the cocaine,
I mean the conversions that they're so desperate for
that only creates an unsustainable business model.
So I just want to thank you and praise you for that
because again, I meet a lot of founders
that are trying to do good, but you know what?
The pathway to hell is filled with great intentions.
I mean, we've got to actually do the good.
So I feel like you started off really strong with that.
What are three resources, Colin,
that have opened your mindset to looking at the world
in terms of like, let's actually help people
and have helped you become a great,
an even better visionary and leader.
Yeah, no, that's a great question.
So I love the book, The Go-Giver.
It's all about giving, it's all about helping
and it's done in a story format that makes it very relatable
and you see the benefit through the story
of how that Go-Giver attitude really benefits
this salesperson.
Huge.
The second one is ladders of wealth creation
and that's all about entrepreneurs
looking at their business across these four ladders.
The first ladder is working for someone else.
The second ladder is a service-based business.
The third ladder is productized services
and the fourth ladder is actual products
and there's multiple rungs on each ladder
and really the whole premise of this article,
which was written by, I believe, Nathan Berry,
the founder of Convert Click back in like 2019.
So if you just Google ladders of wealth creation,
but what it does is it's really just helping you
as the entrepreneur understand how to move across ladders
and how to move up the rungs
and each ladder and each rung is more difficult to get to
but they're also more profitable
and more scalable businesses
as you move across the ladders and up the rungs.
So I really.
I need that article.
I've never heard of that and I love it.
Keep going, sorry.
Yep, it's fantastic.
So the fourth ladder at the top rung are businesses
like eBay, Facebook, Amazon.
So the difficulty and success rate
of getting something like that is very small,
but if you can achieve it,
it's massive growth and insane profitability.
But for most of us, we're gonna be lower on the rungs,
but we can still reach that fourth ladder
if that's where we wanna get to.
And some people are perfectly fine
on those specific ladders, but for.
Here's what's neat.
It's actually not harder.
I disagree with that concept.
It's not harder.
And it goes back to that principle of 10x is easier
than 2x.
It is almost impossible, for instance,
to control a drop of water.
It is very, very hard.
That's physics.
Physics relates like parallels perfectly with great business.
Great businesses should parallel what they do with physics
if they want it to win.
So I can have a very hard time trying to get
that stupid water drop out in my eye, right?
Yet I can take a cup full of water
and transfer it into another cup easily, right?
And back and forth between the two cups.
So the question is, what are we doing
to try to control the water?
Right?
We can make it hard,
but I fully believe 10x is far easier
than the 2x processes that are out there.
And so, but it does take changing our mindset
in order to see that.
So thank you for the article,
because that's one of those things
that I've probably reinvented the wheel.
When if I just had that article,
I wouldn't have had to figure out the long way
how to go towards that.
So that's fantastic.
What's the third one?
I didn't mean to interrupt,
I just got excited.
The third one is, you know, more just around,
you know, it's a big book, Atlas Shrugged.
It's just a fantastic book.
And I think it helps you as a entrepreneur,
you know, kind of see the demons that are possible
in society be able to, you know,
identify those through, you know, a story format again.
And, you know, just be aware of what it is
to be an entrepreneur and to live in a culture
and, you know, what all the different manifestations
of that look like.
That's awesome.
So from Colin Herdman to one of the greatest
SaaS coaches out there, Dan Martell,
to all sorts of other, just look up and see
who talks about mindset.
Almost every successful person in this world,
when it comes to strategy, first talks about mindset
and the value and the importance of mindset,
as you're getting ready to build whatever how
or what you want, I couldn't agree more.
You've got to work on the mindset
and how you're perceiving things in order to benefit
from the instruments that you're trying to use
to scale your growth.
We'll come right back, we'll dive in further.
We will dive into some tactical as well
in terms of LinkedIn strategy
and we'll hopefully inspire you in the process
of building out your own visions.
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Callum, I'm your show host.
We will be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
What's up everybody, welcome in to another episode
of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host Jackson Callum,
founder and CEO of First Class Business.
And I'm super excited to have Colin Herdman on today.
This brings me to an announcement that only my team knows
about, I announced it on another podcast,
but that doesn't come out for a couple of months.
We are launching a brand new show to Vision Pros Live.
It's going to be called Be Your Best.
The Be Your Best show is going to be an environment
where I can hit really, really hard with my questions.
And that's where I get most excited
because that's where most of the growth is going to come from.
Colin has gotten to see that I will not pull punches
in this interview with him.
And that's a big reason why I'm launching the next level.
This program, Vision Pros is designed to be able to inspire
and help people come and safely share their visions
of the world.
And even if they're not quite there yet,
be able to do so without the scrutiny
of super difficult questions.
It's meant to nurture people towards accepting
and embracing their opportunity to be visionaries.
The Be Your Best show podcast will be all about
exploring things at a hyper-vigilant level.
And I am only going to want the best of the best.
Entrepreneurs on there, the ones who can take the heat
of difficult questions at another level.
So I want to honor Colin and point out that I'm seeing a man
who's able and willing to do that.
And that is what to me,
the world of entrepreneurship needs is marketers, leaders,
people in growth, talking about the hard truths,
the things that it really takes
in order to build strong.
So I need to spend more time on that.
I'm excited for you guys to check it out.
We just bought the domain, The Be Your Best show.com.
And I look forward to seeing your support.
In addition, real quick, before I bring Colin back on,
a couple of other resources we're hot on and big into.
We've got hardtokill.org with Dave Morrow.
He's helping 100,000 veterans lose 2 million pounds
collectively.
He's opened Hard to Kill to the civilian community as well.
And it has helped me get back on track with my health.
I've been successfully avoiding workout people
and personal trainers and getting around all of their wisdom
to try to get me to be healthy for a very long time.
I don't know how he did it.
All I know is Dave's energy and his leadership and his love
allowed me to start working out again
and start really taking care of my health.
And I've been able to achieve certain personal milestones
that I literally thought would never be possible
after my back surgery.
So you might want to take a look and see what Dave is up to
with the Hard to Kill podcast and community.
And in addition, we've got opportunities
for work for Latinos.
That's Oprodena y Settarajo para Latinos.
This program is homegrown.
We've also got the Indian version of this.
And we've got the Filipino version of this already
established.
What we're doing is, yes, we are providing virtual assistance
or VA's and digital ambassadors, as we call them,
to the marketplace.
And we're giving them free training
so they can learn how to get in that market.
Keep in mind, my friends, the people who aren't listening
to this, the people that we're fighting for this,
they're people who don't even know LinkedIn exists.
These are individuals who don't know about Rich Dad, Portad.
They've never heard of Think and Go Rich.
They haven't been given an opportunity.
We're bridging the economic gap between North America,
South America, and the rest of the world.
That's what I stand for.
That's what I want to bring to fruition.
They've got their own podcast now as well.
So if you know of a Latino leader
or you're a Latino leader yourself,
please apply to be on that show.
We get a whole world of people to inspire.
We'd love to have you on there.
We just hosted Keke Anglaise,
900,000 subscribers on YouTube on that show.
They're taking off like a rocket ship
because of how great they are at what they do.
I will end on this.
I am so sick of seeing VA relationships.
What is that?
I am sick of seeing virtual abuse.
We need to take care of the people
who help us build our brands.
We have a responsibility to do that as leaders.
And the beautiful thing is,
when you shift your mind mentality regarding that,
and you really start to pay attention
to what the people who are working with you need
and want and desire,
they will produce excellent results for your brands as well.
Then there's the water project.
The water project is not something of ours.
It is something that we do support though.
I've never been thirsty in my life.
Like not truly.
Never had a look for water.
I've always had it available.
So when I saw what the water project was up to,
it did take a concerted effort to realize, you know what?
This may be a bigger problem than I've ever thought about.
There's millions of people
who don't have access to clean drinking water.
And rather than sit back and cry about it,
my question, my invitation to you
is maybe do something about it.
Maybe help out.
You never know how many people you'll be able to help.
And if you don't have the financial capacity to help,
then share this with a friend.
Talk about it over dinner with somebody.
Give people the chance to help build
one of these sandams or borehole wells.
I love the transparency the water project provides.
And I love seeing this picture of these kids
because these kids celebrate water more enthusiastically
than my kids even celebrate Christmas day.
And that's what we have the opportunity to give back.
And accomplish together.
So if you have another cause you'd rather see supported,
please drop that in the comments as well.
Because I'm always looking for new opportunities,
new things to talk about, new ways to bless the world.
We've got 8 billion people to help.
So right now we're going to get back to helping each one of you
with Colin Herdman's vision of how to help with LinkedIn
strategy and how he's showing up in the world as a leader.
Colin, thanks for joining us on Vision Pro's Life.
Thanks again, Jackson.
Really appreciate it.
And yeah, kudos on the water project, phenomenal organization.
100% man.
Absolutely.
Thanks for drawing a little bit of extra buzz to it with that.
So diving in, I think it's easy for leaders like myself
to assume that if you work with LinkedIn, well, then
everybody on LinkedIn is your target market or who you help.
But there's all sorts of people on LinkedIn.
Who is it that you're well-prepared to serve Colin?
And how is it that you help them?
What's your vision for their lives?
Yeah.
So with Rainmaker, I'm really focused on helping out
anyone that sits in a sales and marketing seat.
And really what I want for them is
to feel confident in using LinkedIn.
Also feel confident in the ways that we're approaching it,
again, through authenticity and education.
And that the way that we're doing it
is not only helping them save time,
but that they're also able to start generating real
conversations that they're, for most B2Bs,
getting booked meetings is the lifeblood of your business.
People aren't going to buy from you until they talk to you
or until they talk to a sales rep.
And so using LinkedIn in a way that
is adding to the LinkedIn ecosystem through education,
but then on the back end is allowing my clients
to close deals with people that they've
built relationships with.
That's what I want.
That's my vision.
And I want to see these companies succeed.
That's awesome.
You've talked about it as one brand.
I believe you have multiple brands.
You mind shedding light?
And what else you do?
Yeah, so back in 2007, I started Monkey Island Ventures,
which is a holding company that I started
with two buddies of mine.
We've all known each other since we were about five years old.
And Monkey Island's named after a park we used to play at
when we were kids.
And we've developed a bunch of different SaaS products
over the years, many of which failed.
We have a digital marketing company and a software development
company employ about 40 people between those two,
and then also have Rainmaker.
But I think for us, I can't recommend
enough going into business with people
that you innately trust and really love.
And I feel so lucky to have them as my business partners
and really establish the core values from day one
around freedom, finance, friendship, family, and fun.
Those are our five Fs, and we've lived by those every day
since we started together in 2007.
Do you mind gifting me those five Fs again?
I like them.
Yeah, yeah.
Freedom, finance, family, friendship, and fun.
Yep, I am definitely adopting this friendship and fun.
It parallel really, really well with our core values.
And we don't have the F thing down, by the way.
Love, patience, persistence, consistency, and reliability.
Love's a cheat code, in my opinion.
It kind of encompasses everything.
But that is the point, right, is to empower the freedom,
empower the financial strength that we can have,
empower the family time, empower the friendships,
and enjoy it, right?
To be able to have fun with it.
So I really, really like that.
It's also interesting, right, how as you play the game
of entrepreneurship, right, and you
seem like a pretty balanced dude.
I'm sure you have your days where you work really hard, too.
There's seasons for everything.
But it's amazing how one life's designed to be hard.
I'm not going to escape that.
I don't want to paint anything rosy for people out there.
They get enough of that online.
But once you start cracking certain business codes,
you begin to see the parallels right of how they overlap.
And so you've cracked a code way early, way younger
than most of us, of you had a couple of core friends that
created a healthy and safe space for you guys
to be able to build something awesome.
We can find that later.
If you don't have that right now, start to seek and find that.
That's easier said than done.
But it's still worth doing, even if it's hard.
So I'm going to stay by your principle on that, too.
I have a feeling that your venture with Rainmaker
is also simultaneously the byproduct
of creating such a great product that helps
sales and marketing people is that people
are becoming to get more qualified to take
interest in Monkey Island Ventures.
Am I wrong about that?
Yeah, no, that's right.
I mean, I think to some degree, Monkey Island Ventures
is a hidden entity.
We're not out there promoting that.
But when I'm talking to clients and prospects
and they learn more about me and what we're working on,
yeah, just like you did.
Your face lights up when you hear the story.
It's wonderful.
And it's something that my first business,
I was more of a solopreneur.
I had employees and all that, but I was kind of riding
the highs and lows by myself.
And when I went into business with these two,
being able to ride the highs and lows with people
that you can share that with is something
that I would recommend for every entrepreneur.
That's the way that I really enjoy living my entrepreneurial
life.
I love it.
And I'm going to hit a strike accord with some people
listening in on this.
I hate the way we use the term solopreneur in the world
because it's a lie.
Solo means alone, period.
Done.
And I think what happens is a lot of people,
a lot of good-meaning people who won't twist the truth on that
and you didn't.
You exposed.
You had people that were there, but you
were living a solopreneur-esque.
We've learned to justify that word.
But what it does, it leaves all of the true solopreneurs
in the dark of, well, wait a second.
They said they were alone, so I should be able to do it alone.
And reality, the ones who I've ever
seen succeed with the solopreneur title,
they are very good at stepping on the heads, the shoulders,
and the hearts of everybody that has helped get them
to where they are, or they're just flat out lying.
And they've got lots of followers,
but no depth of business.
So those of you listening in, if you gravitate
towards hanging onto that solopreneur title,
God bless you.
Good luck.
But you're deceiving the rest of the people,
the young guns out there, who think they can then do it alone.
I have never seen a solopreneur be successful,
to truly have success when I've dug in behind the scenes.
And I couldn't do it, to put it in college words,
like I could not do it.
I had to find team members.
I had to find humility and work with others in order to build.
And so I do love too, you've revealed something
huge for the audience.
The byproduct of Rainmaker Building and Monkey Event,
Monkey Island Ventures kind of come in,
that wasn't the plan or the idea.
It just is the consequence of having created greatness
and having those two greatness have a synergy.
I'm a little bit more pointed with that,
was first class business.
It's on the show, almost nobody sees it.
That's OK.
We don't need them to see it.
Even the guests will be like, wait,
so what's this first class business thing?
And I'm like, oh my gosh.
I'm like, you didn't do any research.
That's all right.
But it's what happened when opportunities and first class
business and passion pro and vision pros.
I mean, I thought I was going delusional for a little bit.
My mom said it too.
Love you, mom.
I'm so mad I said that.
But she called me out a couple of years ago
and she's like, you're delusional.
And so I immediately, I could finally
start out of the things.
I was like, maybe I am.
And maybe this is crazy.
And it wasn't until January of 2023
when my team made a final move with some of our assets
where I was like, oh my gosh.
This stuff all goes together.
I just couldn't see it while I was building the puzzle.
But every piece had its contribution
to bring the entities together in a way that
allows us to serve people better.
Can you speak to that?
Yeah.
I mean, when I think about entrepreneurship
and I think about life and I look at the realization of how
companies are built.
And regardless of whether you're Tim Cook at Apple
or whether it's us right now, I have
the saying which is everybody is making up everything
all the time.
True.
And that is that's it.
And but that is how you are successful
is by continuing to push, by continuing to create,
by meandering and going this way and that,
you end up generally finding your way.
Perseverance to me is one of the top factors
in being a successful entrepreneur.
Because as you alluded to through our conversation,
entrepreneurship is hard.
Most people fail at it.
And I have tons and tons of failures.
But I take those failures.
I try and learn as much as I can from each.
And then I try and apply them as best I can.
And just continue to show up every day
and do the hard work of building,
of really trying to understand my audience, my prospects,
the pains, the issues, the things that they're encountering,
and then try and create value around that.
But when I talk about, especially aspiring entrepreneurs,
when I give that line that everybody's making up
everything all the time, it's like, then join.
What's holding you back?
You know everyone else is making it up.
So get in the game and start to participate,
because you can do it too.
I think it's that mindset thing.
And I love that you lead with this,
because I need more of that in my life too.
You can't be the holy fool who's freaked out,
panicked, and entrapped.
So my mindset is actually quite free and open
with the reality of the challenges that exist.
It's a psychology play.
Psychology teaches you, plan your worst case scenarios
out.
And if you can embrace those and recognize
that those are safe and OK, then you can also
have an easier time going towards the greatest opportunities.
So that freaks a lot of people out.
And we're like, oh my gosh, I don't
really want to look at the word, well, don't.
I mean, it's your choice.
But those around me, I will look at the worst case scenarios
before I jump off a cliff.
It's not going to happen.
That's a safety measure for me.
So you're talking about this hope and this ability,
well, everybody's making it up.
But I think some people, I think the world has a tendency
to hear what you said irresponsibly.
And that hurts me.
That hurts me for the world, because it's like, all right.
Grant Cardone has been successfully doing that to people
for many, many, many years.
And I actually really love him as a person.
I can't stand his methods.
And there's word choices that we use as leaders.
You didn't tell somebody they have to do it,
but he's willing to.
Other people say you should do this.
And they take control over other visionary leaders.
So let's talk about that, because I
know a lot of visionary leaders will
benefit tremendously from this.
How do you balance the art of inspiring people
to make bold moves, lean in towards the hard work that's
going to build strengths with the celebration
and the fears that exist, but also the joys of what's
possible?
How do you balance that as a leader,
knowing that some people are going to take it wrong,
and it's going to crush their life,
and other people might hear you the right way,
and it's going to be the greatest thing they ever did?
And so is that question geared toward people
that would be employees of mine?
Or are you saying like this is a million listeners?
And anybody listening to this?
We don't have a million listeners.
For all of you, like three people listening right now.
All of the 30,000 that might find me
might have 300 million someday.
I'm like Alex Hermosi, and that I believe in building
for 10 years, and then we'll assess.
We just build, and we just provide as much value as possible.
So we have no idea how many people will hear this and who.
But every time we speak as a leader,
we get off the hook.
In the legal space, there's a bar.
You screw up what you say, I screw up what I say,
we lose the ability to practice law.
As a doctor, we have malpractice.
If we say something wrong and give the wrong instructions,
you can lose your license.
In the world of marketing and business,
we can say almost whatever the heck we want,
and the FCC will probably never find us.
That's a travesty.
We need to be more responsible what we say,
but on the same token, I hear the virtue
of how you're sharing what you're sharing, Colin.
I share the real mind.
Yes, Colin is saying the right thing,
and things that I truly believe,
and why am I the one who always makes
the disclaimers in life?
You know, it's like, so how do you go about balancing that?
Because you do seem to have that empathetic nature
of you want people to win.
Yeah, oh, absolutely.
I think for me, more than anything,
it's not everybody's meant to be an entrepreneur,
and there's plenty of people out there
that they're happy to be an employee,
to get a paycheck, and to just do what they do,
and that's fine.
I think, and the other thing is,
what you say, as we know, especially with social media,
no matter what you say, there's gonna be people
that are gonna push back against it.
They're not gonna agree.
They're gonna think you're wrong, right?
And so I think, I'm just not so worried about that,
if I feel like what I'm saying comes from a place
of authenticity, where an experience is heartfelt,
then I'm just not really worried about it.
I remember listening to Guy Kawasaki, probably 25 years ago,
and he says, don't listen to the bozos.
And so, that was from an entrepreneurial standpoint of like,
if you're an entrepreneur and you really believe in something,
don't listen to the bozos.
Go and give it a shot, right?
And so, I think for me, I've always used the specter
of death as something to push me forward.
And I use it in two ways, like one, when I'm alive,
and hopefully I live to a ripe old age of 90 years old
or something, and I wanna be able to look back on my life
and be able to say that I lived a life worth living,
that I took risks, that I took chance.
You said life is meant to be hard.
It is hard, and it's hard for everyone.
Every human being has a hard life.
And, but what are you doing through the course of your life
where when you look back on it, you can be proud,
that you can say that you took these risks.
And if 70% of the risks you took, you failed at,
and the other 30% you succeeded at,
and you're able to live a life and provide jobs and create,
well, then that's a success in my mind.
And yeah, and then of course, someday we're not gonna be,
be here anymore.
And so, that is also a driver where that reduces risk
in my mind, like, you know what?
Someday I'm gonna be dead.
I'm not gonna be here anymore.
I can recover from most mistakes.
Most mistakes aren't catastrophic.
And-
That leads me into a topic, I'm gonna hit hard.
And I'm excited to explore this with you.
I'll reveal mine as well.
Yeah.
Colin, did you grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth?
So what would you consider a silver spoon?
That's for you to decide, it's your question.
Yeah.
Well, I would say yes and no.
I, you know, my family didn't have a lot of money,
did not come from money.
You know, we, you know, received, you know,
welfare at certain times,
especially when I was really, really young.
But both my parents got very educated.
So my dad got his PhD.
My mom got her master's degree, both in psychology.
We grew up in a nice part of St. Paul,
which was when we started,
it was very blue collar, white collar-ish.
Now that neighborhood is completely white collar.
I went to public city schools.
So yeah, I don't know if you'd consider that silver spoon.
I mean, I don't feel like I was wanting for anything,
but I certainly wasn't rich by any means.
I think that's the key on these audience questions, right?
Is, so I'll answer my side as well.
On one token, I could easily paint a picture
that I grew up with no silver spoon.
It would not be hard at all, right?
To paint that.
At the other time, at the same time,
I grew up in America for having sick, you know?
And so I was born on a silver spoon.
And I also didn't have,
I had half of a family kind of fighting against me
and everything I wanted to become,
but another half of a family working really hard
to help me become everything that I could, right?
So we all have these challenges to an extent,
but as Colin said,
there are people who are not cut out
for entrepreneurship, period.
There are people who have far more difficult circumstances
than Colin and I can probably even imagine.
And I think that that's where my heart goes
in these conversations is there's a context
behind the mindset of, okay, if we're telling you,
like if we're giving the guidance to go and get into it,
go, please know who you are
and whether you are safe doing that or not,
because we do, Colin and I both,
have certain silver spoons from our life
that have given us an upper hand
where no, you might not be safe
doing what it is we're talking about.
So I appreciate you being willing to explore that
and see that it does exist and it doesn't.
I'm with you too, life's hard, whether you're 400 pounds
or whether you're 2% body fat, life's still going to be hard.
We still get to, but when we do get to choose what we want
and where we're going with it,
we can maximize the opportunities that we do have.
Before we wrap up, I'd like to,
and again, get into a little bit of LinkedIn strategy.
Ooh, I wanna get to my favorite question though,
because it's probably the best step that you could give us.
So forgive me guys, if we don't get to LinkedIn strategy,
I think this is gonna be a far greater blessing to you.
Colin, if this was the last chance you had
to share something with an audience,
what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn
from your experience?
Yeah, I think be honest with yourself,
know your strengths and weaknesses
and as it pertains to being an entrepreneur with a vision,
focus on what you do well,
but then surround yourself with people
that can fill in the gaps,
the people that are good at the things
that you don't want to do.
And ideally, you're also hiring people
that are smarter than you.
And that's an easy thing for me to do.
But like you said earlier, you can't-
I agree with that part, I love everything else you said,
but I caution for all those listening in
because a lot of people listening are gonna go,
holy crap, if this guy is not smart, what am I?
You're pretty brilliant man.
Well, I appreciate you saying that, but yeah,
I mean, we all have our, like I said,
we all have our strengths and weaknesses,
I certainly have mine,
but I think that's probably the thing
that I've even been coming to terms with even a lot more,
you know, in the last X amount of years is like,
what am I actually really good at?
If I really look at my innate skills
and the things that I'm good at
and the things that I enjoy doing,
and then surround myself with people
that can fill in the gaps
and allow them to be their best selves.
Correct.
And self-deprecation is not humility, right?
Which is why I call it out.
And there's the flaw in the man, right?
All you listen in, you know, like,
why is Jackson giving him a hard time?
This guy's like, perfect, that's the point.
Is, you know, you are kind of like that.
And I'm not, everybody that has tremendous strengths,
thank you, Dr. Peter Drucker, my mousepad.
Always tremendous weaknesses, right?
So Collins not immune to having those,
I'm not calling them out in a negative way.
I'm excited for all of you,
because you don't have to be the smartest person in the room.
But if you're listening to this podcast,
please don't tell people you're not smart.
People don't listen to this type of stuff
if they're not already,
at least in tune with emotional intelligence.
So, you know, honor those around you
by having confidence in the value that you do provide.
And yes, when we hire people who are,
have different perspectives than we do,
it certainly helps us with our growth.
It's very important for entrepreneurs.
Diving back into LinkedIn strategy a little bit.
No, I don't wanna steamroll what you just shared
because I loved it.
To be honest with yourself part,
we gotta have great friends.
Colin, I'm super happy for you, man.
I'm like incredibly happy.
They had some great friends as a child
who were able to sustain, you had parents, you know,
to help perhaps guide you as well in that process.
Maybe they give a good example or a bad example.
I don't know.
But the way you've honored these friends
says a lot about your appreciation of healthy relationships.
And I think a lot of people
try to do the visionary experience
without having that intact.
I'm also projecting on you audience.
That was one of my dilemmas.
I was not good at healthy relationships for a long time.
And it wasn't until my early 30s
where I started to realize just how unhealthy I was
with relationships.
That became a catalyst to help me move things forward
to a different capacity that I hope all of you
entrepreneurs, visionaries, leaders,
get to benefit from as well
by taking statements like what Colin said,
putting it into chat, GPT and saying,
how do I learn this?
Right, going to YouTube and say, how do I do this?
Right, you do that every single day.
You can build new muscles and strengths.
In fact, last thing, you inspired me on this, Colin.
I wouldn't have found this without our conversation today.
As you talked about moving forward and doing hard things
and entrepreneurship is hard,
it brought to my attention weightlifting.
And I realized, I don't think there's anything we can do
in life without failing.
That's meaningful and successful.
Our strength.
We have to do the reps until our body is failing
so that we get the muscles that we want.
We have to put in the mental exercises until
our brain is reaching new territories and capacities
for our brain and our mind and our energy,
our knowledge to expand.
So failure is a gift that so often times,
we don't treat like a gift.
We hide it.
We act like it shouldn't be there.
We act like it's a bad thing.
But I don't know.
Again, I need to look that up.
But scripture wise, that's my go-to for universal knowledge.
But to me, I can now see how every single failure
that I've ever had has been part of the strength
and building process to help me then do bigger and better things.
It absolutely hardens you.
There's no doubt.
And if you learn from it,
then you can apply it in really beneficial ways.
There's no growth in the comfort zone.
And I think that's something that has been something
that I've realized really throughout the course of my life.
And yeah, I think what you're talking about
and doing those reps and being,
you're doing the reps, you're in the game.
And to me, that's so important.
Those life lessons that can be taught every day.
And that's, I think, something that
entrepreneurs should give you.
Huge.
Thank you for that.
If we were to rattle off some LinkedIn strategy concepts,
those of you listening, be careful.
We're talking about tools in a mechanic shop
and operating in a car that you're probably not
qualified to operate on.
Get a team.
Go to the right people.
Ask mechanics to do this stuff for you.
But I did promise we would do it.
Can you throw down with me real quick, Colin?
What are some LinkedIn strategic aspects
that you had a checklist of things
that you wanted your team to do and others to do to win?
What would they be?
Yeah.
Number one, you want to continue to grow out your network.
So identify your ideal client profiles
and start building out first connections.
When you do that on LinkedIn, just
once you have that first connection made,
it opens up a plethora of options for you to choose from.
And we're not going to get into all those today.
But if there was one strategy that I would implore people
to try, it would be doing LinkedIn live streams.
And the beauty of LinkedIn live streams
is that as you're building out more first connections
and you identify the audiences and the topics
that you want to teach them on, you
can use the LinkedIn event invite function.
You can send them invites to attend your live stream
and come learn from you.
And when people click the attend button,
they're going to get, they're really
giving you a vote of confidence saying that I believe in you.
I want to learn from you.
And I trust you enough that I'm going to click the attend
button and let you know who I am.
And the magic of LinkedIn live streams
is really after the event is over.
They've attended.
You have taught them something.
And I follow up with all the attendees after the event
and say, hey, Jackson, thanks again for registering
for the LinkedIn live stream I led this morning.
Here's a link to the recording.
And then underneath that, I'll say,
if you ever want to chat LinkedIn strategy,
feel free to grab some time convenient for you here.
And I give them my calendar.
And that is done in a way where it doesn't feel salesy.
It doesn't feel pushy.
It doesn't feel icky in any way because they've opted in
to learn from you.
You're following up with a simple message
and inviting them to book a one-on-one
and to continue to learn from you.
And that's what's filling up your leads.
And that's what's helping you close deals.
Makes sense.
And I'll add one tiny adjustment to that perspective.
The, it says it doesn't feel icky in any way.
I disagree.
It feels icky to me.
But that's okay.
We don't control the feelings of others.
And it feels icky under certain circumstances.
If you've done the bright part of getting
the great education together and you've shown up
with the right tone and cadence and everything else first,
awesome.
But the amount of LinkedIn event invitations
that we get is absolutely insane.
And we know to stay away from most of them.
You know, we know not to waste our time on those,
on the individuals out there who are trying to do this
from a tactical standpoint,
without the underlying infrastructure
of the healthy relationships.
So my point is Collins process can work for those of you
who are willing to tie the tactics
to the great leadership that he also holds and has.
And that takes a lot of time
for most entrepreneurs to learn.
So like any tool, water can be used to drown people
and hurt people.
And it can be used for very good things too.
Fire can be used to burn people and to hurt things.
And it can be used for good things
like the electricity that we enjoy.
So I'll just add that caution in there
that you still have to develop and process
other elements of your leadership
in order to win in a way that really helps people.
So definitely if you feel ready to go and do that,
go and do it.
But I do recommend hiring teams,
bringing in people like Colin to help you catch
these blind spots that you might be overlooking
or coming and talking to our team
about what blind spots you might be overlooking.
If you go forward boldly without caring about
your blind spots and without people to protect you on those,
then I'll say it again, heaven help you.
You know, that's not a good way
to go about entrepreneurship.
Colin, feel free to readjust or combat anything
that I said before we get off.
Yeah, no, I mean, the only thing that I would say
is just based off of responses that I'm getting
and my clients are getting, again,
in a total in alignment with you that bringing,
being authentic and truly wanting to teach
and assist your prospects and helping them,
you know, with the pains and the barriers
that they're encountering and them learning from you.
You know, having the opportunity for them
to continue a conversation after learning from you
is really the natural next step
and that really is the perfect opportunity
for them to book a meeting.
Huge.
And I look forward to exploring the case studies.
We're actually gonna be diving in
and looking at Rainmaker as a potential system
for our solutions at first class business.
This is something where, again,
the point is to create the rocket ship that is holistic.
I would never, I see too many entrepreneurs out there
building Lamborghinis with accelerators
and forgetting they should put a break in place
and they're going to die.
Right, it is not going to win.
It sounds like y'all are pretty particular
about how you build based on your confidence
and the clients that you're serving.
So while it sounds nice, we'll look at case studies,
you know, we'll talk to referrals just like everybody
else should who blindly signs up for stuff like this
and entrepreneurs, visionaries that are out there
know that the whole process of this
is to both protect you.
While also helping you move towards success.
So feel free to follow up with me
with what our experience is like
with Colin and Rainmaker
and know that he's got an initial first check box,
like 20 boxes checked of I really like what just happened
and what I experienced with you as a founder, Colin.
So thanks so much for sharing with us.
Yeah, well, thank you, Jackson.
I really appreciate just the thoughtfulness
of the questions that you had.
I enjoy the pushbacks and, you know,
I enjoy just getting into deep conversations like this
and really appreciate again,
you doing this, having this available for your audience
and having people like me on it.
Thank you.
Absolutely, the action steps are below the video,
my friends, the resources will be below that.
There's a big old button in the top right corner
that says be our guest.
We'd love to see you come and share your vision
with us as well or apply to join me on the next show
that beyourbestshow.com.
We'll see you there.
Take care everybody, bye bye.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well
when I invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and become a better person.