What is up, everybody? Welcome into another episode
of Vision Pros Live. I've got James Collister
in the house. He's the founder and principal
of Wonderfish. He has an excellent background
working at the coveted, I would say, Forbes .com
as well. I mean, as an entrepreneur, that's like
one of the holy grails, in my opinion, of publicity
and him being behind the scenes at that venture
and also having built out. the power podcasting
circuit as well i mean there's there's so much
opportunity for us to lean in and learn from
james we're gonna be talking about why some businesses
scale faster and it's not what you think it is
either so we'll talk about that from a couple
different angles but again i've got somebody
who's a legend he's been behind the scenes at
forbes itself james welcome to vision pros man
hey jackson i'm so excited Well, me too. And
I hope the audience is excited. You guys get
ready for this. So let's dive right into that
and hit hard. Why is it that some businesses
scale faster? What are some of those secrets,
James? You give yours, I'll give mine, and we'll
just give everything we can to this wonderful
audience of visionaries. Absolutely. I think
it comes, I mean, obviously it comes down to
a lot of different things, but if I were to simplify
it, I actually created a four -part framework
for the way that I approach podcast guesting,
which I don't necessarily need to get into every
detail, but there's two of the details within
that framework that I think really answer the
question, which is having a good frame for how
you approach whatever problem you're solving
and whatever your mission is. Because that's
the number one thing that you need to clarify.
And before you can scale, you have to have that
figured out. And then the second word, believe
it or not, is feel. Because if you're able to
connect with individuals, with your target audience,
with... potential prospects, customers on an
emotional level, that really gives you such an
amplifying factor times, whatever you want to
say, times a thousand where I just feel this
is everything that I've studied the past handful
of years has pointed to this fact that while
we're driven in some regards by logic. we're
we're driven first by emotion and that part of
our brain is really what helps activate us and
that's that's there's a reason why all these
big brands whether it's nike or any car brand
you know we worked with all these brands when
i was at forbes there's a reason why you see
music and you see emotion and storytelling and
and they're advertising and and you could put
that you could infiltrate that into your whole
message and your content so that that's how i
would answer your question that's huge i have
the great blessing my friends of being the color
commentator um he gets to do all the hard work
when i ask the question i didn't get to add some
little pieces of silver lining i'm gonna add
a huge one right now um so problem problem problem
i do agree to an extent And then the mission
aspect, we're all about vision. We understand
you've got to have a clear vision. I just see
too many people falling in the trap though, of
trying to exacerbate the problem and the market's
used to it. And so they teach in cells that people
buy because of two reasons. And those of you
in cells are like, yeah, because of problem,
because of, because of pain and pleasure. And
you guys are right for the general population.
That is not how elites make their decision though.
And that is something that's critical for so
many businesses to understand. If you're going
to work with the elite market, if you're going
to work with high ticket, you have to understand
that people like LeBron James, you can't convince
him not to do his workouts no matter how much
pain it's in. In fact, it's going to drive him
away from you if you try to leverage pain to
convince him. In addition, if you try to get
him to change taco Tuesdays to taco every single
day, no, he is not going to listen to that. He
has disciplined himself to master his pleasures.
Why? If it's not pain and it's not pleasure,
purpose. Purpose is the third layer and level
of being able to attract and understand an audience.
So I'm not saying that you can't talk about pain
and that you can't talk about pleasure. We have
to get more sophisticated though. And so James
is right on track, but my friends, so many misinterpret
this and get it wrong. They end up using AI to
create something about pain and pleasure. And
it's just so gaudy and it's so awful. And it's
so manipulative that you're not actually going
to gain traction with that market. Anything you
mentioned about. pain or problem pleasure and
purpose has to be so authentically aligned with
where that person is at that if you miss that
you are going to end up creating really really
trashy garbage content that is not going to resonate
with people james further thoughts on that yeah
i mean there's definitely there's a lot of nuance
there and i and i agree with everything that
you said and the one of the words that stood
out to me was manipulate because i was on a sales
call with someone recently i'm not going to name
his name but he was going through the the motion
like the the sort of typical drive the pain you
know the how many leads are you getting how many
you're going through every single factor and
how much how much what would it mean to your
business if you did this and it was it was actually
uncomfortable and i and it's my natural reaction
i just kind of giggled a little bit and he looked
at me and he was like i don't think it's funny
that you're blah, blah, blah. And it was like,
he was like trying to make me feel bad. I was
trying to do the Grant Cardone thing. Yeah, so
I think there's a balance where you have to,
like people can read through whatever you're
trying to do, especially someone in the, I'm
in the marketing sales world, right? Right. So
people will, and I think that's why advertising
tends to get a bad rap where people see it as
advertising. That's why content tends to perform
better because people just read right through
it and say, oh, this is an ad. They're trying
to convince me to buy something or whatever.
But I think you're right. everything that you
said there well and it's awesome because it just
goes hand in hand right there's all these elements
uh business is not easy my friends it is hard
um just like doing 100 push -ups a day 100 sit
-ups and 10 000 steps do that you're gonna be
in pretty darn good shape um but getting somebody
to do that is another story and so we've got
to discipline ourselves to do it um two of my
other favorite elements my friends of being able
to scale businesses faster it's people you know
you gotta have a team and like well i have a
team There's a right team and a wrong team, right?
Look at any sports league. There are teams that
lose every year and then there are teams that
win and there are those that win consistently
year after year. Knowing how to create an infrastructure.
that attracts the right teams is a huge aspect
of this and we'll be talking about that a little
bit later as well so james before we cut for
a quick break um let's let's dive in a little
bit further into unpacking some of these hidden
drivers behind scalable businesses that you're
working with right now or with clients as well
and of course the hidden drivers that are helping
forbes scale their business because they've obviously
outpaced all of us yeah absolutely so Where would
you like me to start? Do you want me to just
get into kind of how I'm approaching my whole
mission and what I'm doing with Wonderfish? Well,
that or any hidden drivers that are driving Forbes
forward. I mean, you can go with this. We're
going to come back and talk about that stuff.
Yeah. So Forbes is an interesting model where
because I started at Forbes in 2014. And they
were about four years into this whole digital
transformation because as most people know, Forbes
started as a magazine, a print publication, right?
And that was gradually losing interest, particularly
from advertisers. I mean, readers were still
reading the magazine, but you saw the advertising
subscriptions or the advertising spending in
the magazine just going down, going down every
year, right? And I think it was around 2010,
Forbes decided to launch what? forbes called
the contributor model which is still around today
you can be a forbes contributor and i think forbes
was in a way very much a pioneer in that in that
space particularly in the business content model
when it came to opening up the platform because
previously you had to be a staff writer to write
for forbes right and there was this concept there
was this sort of um assumption that you had to
go to journalism journalism school to be a writer
for forbes and It was kind of a stigma of you
opening it up to these other outsiders. It got
a lot of bad press when it happened at first
because people thought it was going to diminish
the quality of the content. And to a certain
extent, sure, like it might not be as well written.
It doesn't read like, you know, Emerson wrote
it or something. the idea is that they did a
lot of things the publishing world did a ton
of things to screw up journalism so yeah you
might even cover that a little later too but
they opened it up and it it gave topic what we
call topic experts the ability to join the conversation
right and thanks for showing my website and that's
uh wonderfish .xyz and then the landing page
that i just launched this morning that you're
showing is for a webinar or workshop i'm doing
thursday if you go to go .wonderfish .xyz which
I could get into. But I think the idea was it
created more content. It created more conversations.
But that was the secret to Forbes scaling, believe
it or not, was opening it up because in that
day and age, as Google was taking shape and getting
bigger and bigger, and that was kind of the entry
point for a lot of people. And then social media,
it was allowing Forbes to have so many eyeballs
and so many impressions because the content just
kept growing and growing and growing. And then
eventually we opened it up. to what we called
forbes brand voice which allowed brands to join
the conversation it was just clearly labeled
as brand voice um there was a little bit of a
pushback in later years i think in the past maybe
maybe five years ago or or maybe four years ago
i'm not sure exactly where google actually changed
their algorithm and they penalized forbes content
writers that weren't staff and so i think i think
to this day yeah because for the longest time
Well, I can see why they did it. I'm going to
hit that hard because it's one of the things
that pisses me off. Every time I read an article
that is contributor, it's like, okay, what's
he selling? And you can see right through it.
It's like, obviously this person has a book.
Obviously this person has a program they're selling.
And so they unfortunately ruined the integrity
of that process. And I think in their defense
of your contributor, most of them aren't getting
paid. So they're using the platform to get their
message. And so I think, yeah, they probably
should have been smarter about the way. You have
to be smart. That was the way that we always
advise even clients that were using brand voice.
Don't make it salesy. We always said that. Don't
make it salesy. Make it relevant. Make it useful.
Add some sort of utility to people's lives. Interesting,
inspirational, entertaining, whatever it might
be. But the minute you start to sell, that's
where people turn away. Well, it kind of goes
back to using problems, right? And pleasure.
And it's not a matter of like they failed. It's
just there's an optimization at all levels, right?
So Forbes is the opportunity to optimize all
of us for our brands as we prepare to scale.
These are things that we can watch out for as
we're driving. It's like, okay, how do we make
this pay to play? But how do we make this as
authentic as possible? And how do we keep learning
as we go? So they're all really, really valuable
aspects. And it is neat to hear about. those,
that business model transitioning from traditional
to digital. Some people think that nobody's doing
that anymore. Like everybody's already arrived
and that's not true at all. I just helped a renovation
company who's never had any online leads whatsoever.
They started getting to SEO a couple months ago.
I mean, we're in 2026. and people are like wow
this doesn't happen oh yes it does um fonda san
miguel restaurant in austin it was 2012 when
i started working with them i mean our online
reservations and websites all that was really
off to the races and they were still using pen
and paper and you might you know y 'all might
laugh about that like didn't have a system to
run their rep no they were top 50 restaurant
in the world at that point with pen and paper
still so the transition continues it will continue
for decades and decades and decades and our opportunity
as visionaries is how do we leverage these scalable
factors go ahead james that's funny sorry it
made me think like i we have two doodles and
we take them to the to the uh to the groomer
which is a nightmare in terms of the cost it's
insane it's like over a hundred dollars these
dogs groomed but you have to do it because they
get all mad at it and stuff so i take them to
the groomer and the the the woman she's she's
brazilian and doesn't speak very good english
but um i'm trying to explain who i am she's trying
to look through the card it's all on paper yeah
oh this is who you this is what you did last
time i'm like i'm down in ecuador right now like
there's everything is done on paper done on paper
yeah i mean that's the old school way and i'm
just like you know you can put this into a computer
like put into a system Yeah. Yep. It is like
even the hotels down here. I mean, everything
is done on pen and paper still. You got 600 million
people down here that could use systems and structure
and learn from it. And there's such a great opportunity
for all of us to be able to contribute to that.
Abundance is huge visionaries. So being able
to see that there's opportunities outside of
our own little paradigms, right, and be able
to see what's behind the curtains, too, of other.
other different businesses. We're going to come
right back. We're going to dive in even further
on how to scale your businesses faster. But my
friends, how to do it responsibly, that is critical.
It's not talked about enough. All right. Welcome
in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Callum. I'm
your show host. We'll be doing interviews for
visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who
are building fantastic visions out there. What's
up, everybody? Welcome in again to Vision Pros
Live. I got James Collister with me today. He
has become a friend. We met through LinkedIn
comments, probably thanks to Alex Sanfilippo.
James, feel free to correct me right when we
come back. We'll bring you back on if it was
somebody else. We always want to give credit
where credit's due. And he's got this... this
podcast power circuit he's got his brand called
wonderfish he's worked for forbes that's what
we're really focused on as well in the initial
part of this conversation we're going to be talking
about everything that we can to help you scale
your visions out and i also want to of course
provide a few other resources that are super
important because i just i love to help my friends
these are not paid sponsors by the way these
are brands that i actually love and care about
and yes two of them happen to be clients but
They didn't become clients because of a transaction.
They became clients because of the transformational
relationship we built over time. Speaking of
that, Dr. Justin and Dr. Shannon Pierce of journeytowellnessplan
.com. I've known them for eight years. I met
them when I was speaking at a conference to help
chiropractors and holistic professionals in Plano,
Texas. Shannon was known as this miracle worker
with diseases and illnesses, symptoms that people,
their doctors were telling them like, hey, you
really don't have much you can do for this. And
what a hopeless situation to be in. So if you
know somebody who has health like that, especially
people who are women, she works in women's health
and does these miracles. And I shouldn't call
it that probably. It's not a magic wand approach.
She just understands how the testing works and
how to use the testing. She went through her
own health life crisis. So I've sent three people
to her over the last eight years and all three
people that met with Shannon and that I ended
up following up and say, how'd it go? every single
one of them within weeks and months said jackson
like i've never met anybody who's been able to
help me the way that she did and so she's my
go -to if i find somebody who's got something
that seems incurable i'm like hey go talk to
dr shannon she's amazing if you want to meet
her so if you want me to do an introduction just
let me know you can also go check out and see
what they're doing with their their six phase
webinar and their epstein -barr virus webinar
as well uh very very good information for those
who um who are in having health struggles then
there's excuse me practice makes permanent with
jennifer reed guys culture for us at vision pros
it's vision culture and leadership that drives
the marketing vision culture and leadership if
you get those things nailed down you're probably
going to do far better than if you kind of forget
or put that on the back burner put those front
and center that's why i really like promoting
jennifer reed she's a culture facilitator she
helps people understand how to tap into eq and
sq that's emotional intelligence and spiritual
intelligence when i'm looking to bring somebody
in to help me with these matters i don't really
care what piece of paper they have on their wall
I really don't care where you went to school.
I also don't care what certification you have
or who you studied with that much and maybe who
you studied with a little bit. But I want to
know what your experience is like. More importantly,
I want to know why it matters to you. My friends,
when you ask Jennifer why this matters to you.
Bring a tissue box. You're going to need it.
She has every reason in the world for wanting
to make sure that we all improve in terms of
our emotional intelligence and spiritual intelligence.
And the byproduct of leaning into that for any
of your brands is profitability, is cultures
where people want to belong and come to work,
is the opportunity to create more holistic relationships,
which creates more holistic abundance with your
wealth as well. And we're going to go to the
water project. The water project I'm not associated
with. I just support it. We give a little bit
to it every single month. One of my old colleagues
convinced me to take a look at it. And honestly,
I didn't really care. I didn't know to care.
I had never been thirsty in my life. And so why
would this matter to me? And then I saw pictures
like this where this kid's getting water out
of who knows where. And that's probably the water
they're going to drink or the water that they're
going to boil and drink. At least I found out
here in Ecuador, by the way, when you boil water
and drink it, it still doesn't do the trick here.
You've got to do other things. And it's like,
wow, that's kind of scary. And so these. Parents,
imagine them having to leave work to go find
a source of water for their kids or their kids
having to leave school to go find it. There are
millions of people who don't have access to one
of the resources we take for granted most. And
so my hope isn't that one. I don't want to shame
us. I don't want to make you feel bad. I do want
to inspire you to at least talk to friends and
family members about this project because it's
so uplifting to get to see these pictures, this
picture of these next kids. They're celebrating
water more than my kids celebrate Christmas Day
and my kids freaking love Christmas Day. But
can you imagine how humbling it would be to be
that grateful for the water that we have? Perhaps
it would do some good for our lives as well.
well. So if you can contribute to it, great.
You can select a project like one of these projects
right here. If you end up clicking on them, you
get to see what they're building, how they're
building it, when they'll build it by how many
people it's helping. And then when you donate
to it, the company actually shows you that that
project's coming to fruition and what it is they're
doing. I think it's one of the most transparent,
coolest causes I've ever seen. So my friends,
we got a billion people to help in this world
and there's causes outside of this. If you know
a cause. that you'd like to see me talk about
on the show or look at and perhaps even donate
to myself, just drop the link. I promise I will
take a look at any of those causes that you put
out there and I'll do my best to try to help
out with the process. Let's go back to helping
all of you though. James Kalistra, thanks again
for being here on Vision Pros Live. Let's keep
diving into scale. Awesome. And just to correct
you on one thing. Well, I love Alex from PodMatch.
The guy that connected us just through chance,
through a comment, because he was on your show,
was John from Footleads. John Jaramillo. Jaramillo,
for the Americans, Jaramillo, for those down
in Ecuador. That guy. He did the best podcast
episode interview of me that I've ever been on.
John is incredible. So I'm really glad you brought
that up. And one of my clients is going on his
show next week. So I'm excited about that. Scott
Abbott has a book. So he's going on that show
to talk. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. John is a champion.
So I'm really glad you brought that up. My friends,
those of you who don't know, when people like
us are name dropping. write the names down, go
look them up, go connect with these people. Like
it's time to live bigger and you want to build
a great vision, find great people to build with
you. That's another huge aspect of making sure
you find the right teams and skills. So let's
go into why many great strategies fail to deliver
the results leaders expect. And before you answer
that, James. My friends, you're not alone. Like
I've launched so many projects in my life where
we've half baked it or where we thought that
this was going to be the magic cure and help
us grow and scale. And it just fell flat and
didn't didn't get to where we wanted it to. So,
James, what are some of those reasons, the big
reasons why people end up launching something
that feels so awesome and it just does not hit
home the way that they're hoping? Well, I would
say number one is not having a really clear call
to action. I think we have so much, there's so
much noise out there. There's so much going on,
whether it's advertising messages or there's
a million decisions we're all making. If you
could find a way to decrease the cognitive load
on your audience and just make it super simple,
like this is what you need to do and why, that's
it, right? And that's one of the things that
I help people with when they're going on podcasts
is having a really, really strong call to action.
My framework, because they're all F words, I
call it the F word framework. And for the call
to action, the F word is fetch. And I told it
to someone recently and she goes, stop trying
to make fetch happen. Remember the mean girl?
That's right. You know it. But fetch is basically
like give someone an incentive, give them something
to do. Where do they go? Why? You know, another
word for it is lead magnet, but in the marketing
world, but just make it super clear what you
need them to do. Absolutely. And so we've got
Wonderfish pulled up. This is your website. Tell
us about Wonderfish and what you're doing with
it. And we'll talk about how, for instance, on
here, there's a form. It's pretty easy to know
what to do with the form. You get a call to action.
This is book a call. Very easy to understand.
So the call to actions, I agree. That's a very
important element of making sure that people
know what action they can take with our brands.
And you just clicked the other one that I was
going to mention is the authority index, which
I designed this just to give people. Yeah. I
got a team. That's your team is key for me behind
the scenes. I need to add more stuff to my blog,
by the way. That's really a spare right now,
but you mean it's on point and clear. Exactly.
So the authority index gives you the ability
to get a score based off where you stand when
it comes to your authority in the space and how
much trust you're able to deliver. earn so it's
a really good starting point and then what i
help people with that kind of gets to my mission
is i help typically founders and really any experts
i help them find their voice and gain more visibility
and we do that a number of different ways but
podcast guesting is right now the number one
thing that i've been focused on and eventually
i am going to expand to i know event speaking
is the next area that i'm starting to open up
to some of my clients i've done some digital
sort of just regular article pr stuff but what
i've done with podcast guesting is create a really
efficient and effective system that leverages
you know we do let leverage ai all along the
way but the idea is to create a seamless experience
for my clients so my clients like i said they're
founders they're ceos they're people that have
a lot of expertise and and and they want to get
it out to the world. And so I give them that
opportunity, but make it a super seamless experience
where they literally just show up and they don't
have to do a lot of work. I give them right before
the show, they get a preparation document. I
know you do that for your guests, but not every
show does that, right? Oh my gosh, no. Their
shows are awful, freaking awful. And that failure,
it's like, okay, if we don't take the time to
think through customer journey mapping. What
does the experience look like from start to finish?
If we don't make sure that every single component
of what people touch is on point, we're going
to look like every other brand that's out there
in the market, which means that we're going to
struggle and fail because 96 % fail within 10
years and 4 % survive the 10 -year mark. My friends,
visionaries, you've got to move from creating
things that to you feel clear, but to your audience
aren't clear at all. all we have to move towards
clarity so i'll i'll add a little stack on this
so when it comes to why many growth strategies
fail to deliver the results leaders expect i
want to hit on this in an angle that i don't
think anybody else ever would and that would
be it's because of what you expect as a leader
Expectations, my friends, are a vice. And we
have fallen victim of that for years with quarterly
expectations. Expectations aligns with the word
entitlement. Entitlement is a word that ultimately
puts us in a pretentious category. And now we
end up condescending. We feel disappointed. Shakespeare
said it hundreds of years ago. He said, expectation
is the root of all heartache. So what's the opposite,
but the virtuous component of still like caring
and wanting things? Aspirations, hope. Hope,
now we've destroyed that word too, my friend.
We say, oh, I hope he doesn't screw that out.
But no, the idea of hope back in the day was
a sure belief that something was going to come
to pass that is good without feeling entitled,
without being self -righteous and say, I deserve
having this. And so if we can let go of our expectations
and put less pressure on our teams, but put more
support into helping them fulfill things and
realize that, you know what? Maybe if I launch
this campaign, I shouldn't do as well as Forbes
.com. Why? Because I'm just Jackson and my brand
is just Vision Pros Live and my brand is first
class business with a few thousand followers,
not millions and millions of followers worldwide.
So I think sometimes we get so addicted to what
it is that we feel entitled to have that we end
up setting a bar for ourselves that we can't
possibly achieve. So you can lower your expectations
without lowering your output, without disappointing
yourself by diving into what's called. Use AI,
look it up, see how it might be able to bless
your life. So that's one other angle that we'd
add there. I'm going to put another subject out
there for us, James. So why is it that some companies
accelerate while others end up stalling out in
their process of growth? I think that there's
one of the words I'll throw in there is system.
I know this is something that you talk about
a lot is having a really good system, right?
And so I learned that the hard way because I'm
a very creative person. I never really had good
systems in place in my job. I would just show
up and our job on the marketing side was to come
up with ideas for our clients to give. Brother,
that's why I talk about it so much. I got my
butt kicked for years screwing up my systems.
I use a worse word for it. I use infrastructure.
Infrastructure, yeah, exactly. But yes, I'm with
you. It's like I don't want people to go through
the same path I went through. Yeah. And then
I moved into a management role and I realized
that things were slipping through the cracks
because we were working on RFPs where clients
would come to us and they would say, you know,
we want to give you this RFP. And there's there's
a whole process that needs to happen. So anytime
you have something that's like a repeatable process,
that's like that's the perfect time to put a
system in place. So I spent a whole bunch of
time and this was not a skill that I had intuitively
or just was born with. But I. at that point in
time this was a handful of years ago i started
working with a company called smartsheet and
there there's a million other project management
asanas i've i've worked with asana as well they're
all they're all great but the idea is you have
a a single source of truth where you put the
information once it comes in and then you could
sync it along the lines with other sync it with
slack you could sync it with salesforce or crm
or whatever it might be right and So I kind of
learned that at Forbes. And now in my business
at Wonderfish, I, from the beginning, have been
making sure that I have a really good system
in place. Because at the end of the day, while
I am a service -based company and providing a
service as far as getting people on podcasts,
I'm also kind of a data company where I have
to have the infrastructure, like you said, in
place so that I have a repeatable mechanism to...
deliver this ideal service, right? And so I use
HubSpot and I've actually automated a lot of
the process. I've been working with a certified
automation partner to help automate a lot of
the processes. And that's helped out a lot. And
I'm also just making sure that everything is
put into HubSpot as far as all the data about
the shows. And now that I'm expanding to other
platforms like live events. So I actually created...
in hubspot it's like custom objects so instead
of a company i have custom objects for each of
all the podcasts all there's all the events all
the websites so i'm creating a system on a process
and i'm kind of in a way becoming like a data
company if you will with like my own first party
data information on these different shows and
things like that but i think it's very important
to have a really good uh system and infrastructure
in place Oh, it's critical. We will stall out
if we don't have those aspects in place, my friends.
And systems and infrastructure is a big part.
The neat thing is most of us have been some type
of intrapreneur where we've gotten to work within
brands and you've gotten to put your own business
owner style hat on. So I can always look back
on my life and say, OK, how did Sonic drive in?
do this um you know okay what about it lifetime
fitness um what was their onboarding experience
like for their clients and what can i model out
of those and so if you have the ability to just
ask yourself those questions and your own experiences
the neat thing is you get better and better and
then you can start to see from the outside like
i've never worked at slack but i can study their
brand and see like okay how are they doing their
onboarding experience let me go through it again
it's been six months and i can go and see and
pick up little tricks so there's lots of things
you can do for yourself but more importantly
you can also train your team members on. And
now James brought up something that's interesting.
He said RFP. For those of you who are newer visionaries,
we're talking about the ability to create a request
for proposal process. And I went through this
when we wanted to get the master's tournament
of Augusta on board at Restaurant Connect. We
went through that and we did. And we went through
this when we went to Pebble Beach to pitch them
on having our restaurant software. We didn't
win them. And we did the same thing for Kiwa
Island Golf Resort. We had to fill out their
RFPs. We had to have our white paper presentations
in place. We also had to fly out and win. These
are things that are super important for you as
you move towards the scale. But I'll simplify
that. For me, infrastructure attracts either
bad team members or great team members. And if
great team members, if you're meeting people
who are not impressed with your systems and where
they're at, that is one of the greatest gifts
to help you realize like, dang, maybe I need
to improve. what's going on internally rather
than feel like, well, they think they're better
than me. No, they don't. They just want to work
in an environment where they know they can be
successful and they can't be successful if you
don't have a good. infrastructure so i'm gonna
i'm gonna highlight something about this because
today we have tools that can allow you to actually
uh use r d as my great friend howie nestel of
sharkmatic advertising talks about r d stands
for rip off and duplicate just kidding research
and development but you're welcome to rip off
and duplicate what i've created at first class
business with is you won't get the whole nuts
and bolts but the other thing you can do is bring
team members on that help so we have what's called
a preferred vendor program And in this preferred
vendor program, we literally have people request,
submit a request for proposal to work with us.
They have to learn about our guidelines and how
we're client centric and the flexibility of our
framework and consistent quality standards and
collaborative growth. And you're probably thinking,
wow, Jackson, most people would just leave this
page and not want to work with you. Exactly.
I don't need lazy people to pitch me all day.
The only people that I want to work with are
the ones who'd qualify. And guess what? If Gary
Vaynerchuk came along and was like, hey, Jackson,
let's work together, he wouldn't have to go through
this program. I would fly out and meet Gary Vaynerchuk
in a heartbeat. But this is to drive away the
people who are constantly trying to sell me something.
And I want them to potentially work with me,
but they need to go through the entire process
of helping us recognize that they've actually
done their due diligence to figure out who we
are, how they fit into the system. And that helps
us streamline the process of honoring the potential
strategic partners who could help us scale and
grow. I never have to sell somebody. Don't sell
me. I never have to tell somebody, you know,
oh, why do I get all these LinkedIn spam messages?
You know why we get those, my friends? Because
you're actually becoming notable in the market.
It's a good thing. Tony Robbins doesn't complain
about the 10 ,000 pitches he gets per day. He
creates a system to be able to handle it. And
most of those people end up buying from him because
he ended up creating a system that showed people
that he's got more value than they do. We can
do that at scale these days so much faster thanks
to AI, thanks to integrators, thanks to people
who know how to do that. And James is one of
those people who was able to help us do that
on the podcasting side. Moving to the hidden
leverage points that provide sustainable growth.
What are some hidden leverage points, James?
other visionaries can lean into to drive sustainable
growth yeah before i answer that i just want
to add because one of the things that came to
my mind is a lot of times people don't want to
invest in systems because of the the high expense
of you know the cost or whatever of that infrastructure
but one of the things you got to remember is
the the larger you get the more expensive it's
going to get Absolutely. It's a mindset issue.
What's the least amount of water I can give my
plants and still grow a garden? That's the opposite
of what we have to do to grow. Exactly. So you're
better off starting building at a, in a spot
where you can building the scale essentially,
right? Where you might not need this, this huge
system or this, you know, the ability to have
this amount of compute power data or whatever,
but at some point you're going to want to get
there and you're not going to want to have to
redo your system. My friends go to a free AI
right now. instead of being hurt by this comment
go to it and say um ai how can i shift my mindset
and why would it be valuable to shift my mindset
if i tell myself i can't afford that What's going
on in my mind? Just ask AI. Let it dig with you
a little bit. And then come and talk to people
like us too, because we're here to nurture and
help overcome these realities. That is not a
truth. That is a problem -oriented mentality.
And you can find solutions to help yourself.
Every great visionary on the planet has learned
how to shift their mindset to realize that those
limiting beliefs do not help us with growth.
I'm really glad you brought it up, James. We
can lean in better. So with that. That's one
of the hidden leverage points of driving sustainable
growth is not telling ourselves that we can't
do something and telling us that we can't afford
something. So you revealed one, even though you
didn't mean to. What else, James? So you're asking
for hidden leverage points to drive scale and
growth? Yep. So to drive sustainable growth,
what's something that people or visionaries are
overlooking? And this is one of the things that
I think. Some people are overlooking. A lot of
people are starting to realize how important
it is. But it's not just about the brand identity
of your company or your corporation. It's about
the identity of the individual that's driving
it. And the reason I say that is because we know
how important it is to drive trust and even likability.
Trust and likability are two of the biggest factors
that... people are taking into consideration
particularly in the b2b space when they're deciding
who they want to work with because there's so
many options out there anyone can build a sass
now anybody can start a company right so you
really have to have a personal brand you know
i hate i hate that term because it just it's
kind of a wishy -washy thing personal brain i
don't know i guess i don't hate it but it's just
sometimes people just think of like oh you have
to be an influencer or you have to you know no
it's not necessarily about that but it is about
influence it is about driving trust and and there's
a lot of ways which we can get into to do that
because like stay stay authentic and genuine
as you do it right exactly stay authentic and
genuine and be human i think it's such a competitive
moat right now i think we talked about this the
last time because in this age of ai We are all
competing with AI and being a human and having
lived experiences is our competitive advantage.
And we have to lead into that and be able to
be human, make connections, go on shows like
this, go to networking events. And if you don't
do that, I feel like that's where you will be
left behind. And I'll upgrade that a little bit.
I don't mind the I think there is a room for
a doomsday aspect on this if we fight against.
And I think that's really the. the one challenge
that exists there. And so tribal leadership talks
about this, how people who are, I am great mindset,
think that you are not. And people who are, we
are great, think that they are not. You see it
all the time in advertising where they mudsling
and say, well, we're the number one. You just
told everybody else they suck. And like, it's
not the, it's not the messaging that I resonate
with because there's another level that they
discovered when they wrote the book called life
is great. And in life is great. There is no fighting.
We realize there's enough oxygen for everybody
on this planet. And so when with AI, I don't
compete against AI. AI is something that I can
compete with. And with that, I can also leverage
the opportunity. And so can all of you, which
is why we launched the AI marketplace. AI .firstquestbusiness
.io. You, my friend, the person listening right
now, you are. already an AI expert, but perhaps
nobody's taught you the words and taught you
where you actually use it. But if you've ever
curated a music list on Spotify or Pandora, you
have skills that should be on your resume that
help you realize how to translate what you do
to what you can do for a company. And if you
decide not to do that, then it's not AI who's
taking your job. It's you. who's deciding not
to become valuable in the new world economy.
And so I want to make sure that all of you know,
you can leverage these systems and you can also
take the audits that we have one for business
owners, where that helps you unlock your bottlenecks.
Where can I leverage AI right now in my business
to create the systems James is talking about,
which by the way. You want systems regarding
podcasting. That's something we're going to come
right back to is what James does for podcasting.
And then on the professional side, how do you
remake your resume and how do you go into conversations
for job interviews, whether it's your current
job, trying to get a salary upgrade? or you're
at your future job you have the chance to reposition
yourself as an ai expert and that's going to
carry you for decades to come you will not be
replaced in the economy if you learn how to leverage
the skills you already have within you it's like
me learning spanish i can't be effective in spanish
unless i learn the language you can't be effective
in ai unless you learn the language but it's
so much simpler than you think and it has nothing
to do with using bananas to create images online
all the hype that ai people are making you already
have it within you you don't have to overthink
it So James, thanks for letting me go off on
that a little bit. Back to some of the items
that we're talking about here. What leaders often,
I wanna make sure we deliver, we got a few minutes
left, so we gotta go on the fast mode. What leaders
often misunderstand about scaling and how to
move from effort -driven growth to... strategic
growth. Those are both pretty complex, but let's
try to do our best. I'll do my best to keep a
30 second pitch on it. You do the same thing.
So what leaders often misunderstand about scaling
and how to move from effort -driven growth to
strategic growth. Okay. And this one, how about
you go first and then I'll - Oh, I love it. Yes,
man. Way to reduce it. Perfect. Okay. So what
leaders often misunderstand about scaling. I
wrote down and thought through this, guys. I
see so many people who are busy and excited.
And they focus on the day -to -day and the week
-by -week. That's what 90 % of business owners
are doing versus Dr. Peter Drucker, who taught
us, don't measure based on days, weeks, and months.
Measure based on quarters. So turn from busy
and excited to productive and profitable. Is
what I'm doing producing a result? And is what
I'm doing leading to profitability? If not, I
should probably shelve it. But instead of putting
daily and weekly pressure on my team members,
how about I celebrate my team members every day?
I don't need to hype things up, but celebrate
with gratitude. my team members on a daily and
weekly basis and monthly basis and measure the
results based on quarters and true KPIs. Your
turn, James. And I think that's probably one
of the hardest things, you know, it's easier
said than done in a lot of ways, but it's obviously
critical and important because the ability to
zoom in and then to zoom in when needed and then
zoom out on a weekly or monthly basis to say,
okay, where are we? Where have we moved the needle?
And that's super important. i guess the only
thing that i would add is um the the ability
and this this kind of piggybacks on that a little
bit but it's it's it's a it's more about like
the ability to prioritize because you know there's
so many shiny objects out there like oh i want
to do this and um i i read a book um the signs
of scaling you may have you may i think you might
have heard of that it's pretty blanking on the
name i think uh blake something but hardy maybe
blake hardy uh but just one of the things he
says in the book is complex systems don't scale
which is obvious but one of the one of the problems
i find most entrepreneurs and i've run into this
is that when you're starting something new learning
is not scalable because you're new to something
so like i i decided that i wanted to do a webinar
and i started using StreamYard, but there's a
learning curve when you got to get up on, get
up on StreamYard. How do I, how am I going to
set up a registration link? Do I want to do registration
through HubSpot or do I want to do it through
Squarespace or StreamYard? So there's all these
like learning things that, and I'm sure there's
ways, you know, obviously we all talk to AI and
it helps us to sort of become our guide. And,
but I think that the biggest thing I will say
is just. So focus on like what exactly the problem
that you're solving. Go back to the mission,
back to the frame part of my framework, which
is if this little thing that I'm trying out,
whether it's the webinar, making YouTube channel,
whatever, if this isn't lining up to that and
it's not moving the needle, like you said, then
is it really worth my time? And because I feel
like the more things that you're doing and the
more things that you're adding, I think podcast
guesting is one of those things that it can be
extremely time consuming. doing it yourself where
you know you're doing all the research oh my
gosh i can never do it hours ever ever yeah yeah
so that's why a lot of the clients that i work
with they they like to say that um you know working
with someone like me basically it gives them
more leverage it takes because if you were to
add up all the hours that they were to put in
something like that yeah i think it's smart knowing
where to outsource yeah things like that but
That's a big one. I'm going to move to the next
one. We're going to do a 32nd one this time because
we're running out. Guys, I'm going to tie podcasting
right into that. I said something important.
I said I could never do that. I could never do
that and be profitable. You can do it, but good
luck being profitable. Don't go that route, my
friends. Make sure that you're working with teams.
How to move from effort -driven growth to strategic
-driven growth. This is so much easier, but it
goes against our human nature. And so the real
secret on this, if you're using AI or you're
working with team members, either one and both,
when somebody finishes talking, say the words,
tell me more about that. Tell me more. Dive deeper,
my friends. We've got to take interest in what
others are saying. If we're so busy with our
own agenda and we've got our own, as they say,
when you start selling hammers, everything looks
like a nail. We all want to fulfill our own needs.
And so we do a horrible job of actually diving
deeper. And then also when we tell me more about
that, we can say, all right, now AI or team,
we need to build the full scale project outline.
before we get started if we don't scale the outline
of what's the forecast what are the benchmarks
what components have to be built for this then
we're going to end up building something super
shoddy and yes we're going to put a bunch of
effort in But busy is broke. We've got to become
more strategic with what we're doing. Back to
podcasting and James. This is why Wonderfish
and companies like his are so important because
when it comes to PR and media, that's one of
the greatest things that you can do for your
brand is you get more and more exposure and awareness
of what you're doing. Of course, you need to
build the systems for scalability as well. And
you need to make sure your promises align with
what the market needs. And they need to be as
honest and authentic as possible and transparent,
much like Elon Musk was when he sold. 180 ,000
cars from stage. It wouldn't exist for two to
three years. He was super honest about how long
things are going to take. And so if you lean
into that with podcasting, go share your vision
on podcasts because the danger level is low.
If you share a vision on a massive stage and
you fall on your face, that's not going to be
helpful. Or you get a hundred phone calls and
you can only take two of them. You just make
a bunch of people upset that you can't fulfill
for. So if you can go on podcasts, get your feet
wet, fall on your face a little bit, learn how
to become better at what you do, and you will
find so many opportunities to realize, oh man,
my call to action wasn't very good. Like James
talked about, oh man, I didn't really know how
to talk about the problem or the pleasure or
the purpose. Use the podcast opportunities to
learn how to become graceful with your messaging.
And that will also be one way that you can help
yourself move to more strategic growth and be
prepared for it. James, your thoughts on moving
from effort -driven growth to strategic growth.
Yeah, it actually reminds me of something that
happened to me the other day when I was driving
my car and my cell phone charger fell in between
the seats. And I went to pull it out and the
bottom, the base of it where it plugs in got
stuck. And I'm sitting there, I'm... yanking
i'm yanking i can't get it out of my seat and
finally i just realized that like no matter how
hard i pull it wasn't coming out and all that
i had to do is literally move the the adjust
the little thing on the side of my seat and i
moved my seat back and it came right out and
i think it's kind of um a metaphor because i
feel like sometimes like the most obvious things
are just right in front of us it was like oh
you just had to do this you just like it's right
there like just and in my uh current situation
i've been Lucky enough, I came across someone
named Miriam Katz. She is an amazing public speaking
coach. And she's been helping me a little bit,
tell my story, find my voice. And she does everything
from voice exercises and things that I know that
I can improve, but also things that I can bring
to my clients. So that's why I'm doing a workshop
with her on Thursday. But I just had this aha
moment where I said, I can... introduce her to
my clients and basically embed her as like part
of my package where they come because i'm not
just selling getting on podcasts i'm selling
you know, a transformation, if you will, that
you could become someone who is more authoritative,
who's more trustworthy. And she's someone that
can help me do that. And I don't have to do it
all on my own. So no, absolutely. Collaboration's
huge. You pull people together, my friends, one
plus one equals 11. We have a compound effect
and we bring great people in. Disney probably
never turned people down who were willing to
come in and help him build his vision. We got
to find greater ways to collaborate. So Vision
Pros, if you'd like to be on this show, click
on the button. visionproslive .com. It says be
our guest. Book your time. Come and talk to us.
We'd love to have you and hear about what you're
up to. James Collister, you can find him on LinkedIn.
You can find him on Google as well. Wonderfish,
you can check that out, of course, on Thursday.
You can go check out and see what this webinar
looks like and what you might be able to benefit
from on it. So you can also get on podcast stages
and we will see you guys all on the next episode
of Vision Pros Live. 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 going to get more and more
fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll 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 becoming a vision pro yourself.