Firing The Man
THANK YOU TO OUR 25,000+ LISTENERS! We are so thankful to be one of the TOP E-Commerce Podcasts delivering high-quality authentic content to you! Serial Entrepreneur’s David Schomer and Ken Wilson share tips, advice, and insider knowledge about all things Amazon FBA, Walmart WFS, and E-Commerce. Discover how you can create multiple income streams by selling physical products online so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love - whether that is spending more time with family or traveling the world. Ken and David have successfully created several six and seven figure online business ventures. During the journey, they have had major wins, losses, and lessons learned. This podcast will teach you about selling physical products online through platforms such as Fulfillment by Amazon, building a team, outsourcing, listing optimization, pay per click (PPC) advertising, driving traffic to your listings, and productivity tips / life hacks that will provide a path to be successful in building your online business. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from Ken and David you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Firing The Man
The Eight Critical Success Factors No Entrepreneur Can Ignore with Daryl Urbanski
What differentiates successful entrepreneurs from those who struggle or fail? According to Daryl Urbanski, it comes down to eight critical success factors he's identified after interviewing more than 600 high-performing business owners.
Daryl's own path reads like a masterclass in entrepreneurial evolution. From humble beginnings shoveling Canadian driveways, he transformed into a business growth specialist who helped NeuroGym generate $1.6 million in just six months (which expanded to $7.5 million within three years). His approach has always been evidence-based - investing over $50,000 in research to identify the patterns that consistently produce results.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Daryl breaks down the difference between simply "doing the work" and actually "running a business." Many entrepreneurs fail to recognize that delivering a service is only one component of running a successful operation. As he explains: "When you go to McDonald's, they never say the drive-thru's closed because Sally's got a cold." This illuminates why some technically skilled professionals struggle to scale beyond their own capacity.
Perhaps most valuable is Daryl's strategic blueprint for building a six-figure business in just 90 days. Rather than focusing on low-ticket, high-volume offerings, he advocates identifying high-value solutions you can genuinely deliver, proving the concept through pre-sales, and maximizing face-to-face interactions with potential clients. "It's easier to make income selling $10,000 items than $10 items," he notes, reminding us that the effort to make a sale often remains similar regardless of price point.
The episode culminates with profound insight into what truly sets successful entrepreneurs apart - their relationship with time. Daryl maintains strict discipline around time management, scheduling his day in 30-minute blocks and eliminating distractions that most people consider normal. His recitation of Arnold Bennett's poem on the finite nature of our daily 24 hours serves as both inspiration and warning: "We shall never have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is."
Ready to transform your business through automation and strategic growth? Connect with Daryl at bestbusinesscoach.ca or search for "The Best Business Podcast" wherever you listen.
How to connect with Daryl?
Website: https://members.bestbusinesscoach.ca/podcasts-homepage/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-business-podcast-with-daryl-urbanski/id953821164
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DarylUrbanski
Linkedin: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/darylurbanski
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skillsforsuccess/?hl=en
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DarylUrbanski
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRealDarylUrbanski/
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:David Shomer and Ken Wilson. Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, the show where we explore the journeys of entrepreneurs who have taken the leap to build their own successful ventures. Today, we are honored to have a distinguished guest whose expertise in business growth and automation has transformed countless enterprises. Daryl Urbanski is the founder and president of bestbusinesscoachca and the host of the Best Business Podcast, with a mission to create 200 new multi-millionaire business owners, daryl leverages over 17 years of experience in marketing and business strategy. His notable achievements include generating $1.6 million in under six months for NeuroGym, which grew to $7.5 million within three years under his strategic guidance.
Speaker 2:Daryl's approach is grounded in evidence-based strategies. Having conducted over 550 interviews and invested more than $50,000 in research to identify the eight critical business habits that drive success, his work focuses on helping entrepreneurs master lead generation, high performance habits and an automated sales system. In this episode, we'll delve into Daryl's insights on scaling businesses, the importance of automation and the habits that distinguish successful entrepreneurs. Whether you're looking to enhance your business operations or seeking inspiration to take your venture to the next level, this conversation with Daryl is packed with valuable takeaways. Daryl, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, it's an honor and a pleasure to be here, david. Hopefully we helped change some lives today, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. To give our audience a little bit of background, can you share your path in the entrepreneurial world?
Speaker 3:Sure, I mean we can go back as far as you want. I mean, when I was a kid, I grew up in Canada, kingston, ontario, canada. I shoveled driveways in the winter for money. I had a paper route. I did a lot of that stuff. I feel like my foray into marketing started. I did this program called Katimovic. I got to travel and work across Canada for nine months. I spent three months in BC, three months in Alberta, three months in Quebec. I lived with 10 other kids. We were all 17 to 21.
Speaker 3:You'd have a project leader that would kind of be the supervisor, making sure you weren't just, you know, doing drugs, partying and having sex with each other. They would find you full-time jobs in that town. So we had full-time but we didn't we got. It was like a government funded program. So we had a like, a like, an allowance of $21 a week, but we had a budget for the house, for food and all that Like. Rent was covered, food was covered. So our role was to work our volunteer full-time job every day and after work, evenings and evenings and weekends, we were instantly signed up to volunteer for whatever was happening in the community. I did soup kitchens, we built floats for parades. We did 101 things that you wouldn't have ever thought of. And then every two, every three month, like phase, you would spend two weeks living with the local family. The project manager would find a family for you to billet with, and when I came back from that, it really opened up my eyes, changed my life and I wanted to go back out to BC.
Speaker 3:I wanted to go live in the Okanagan Valley, but I was 18 years old at the time. I had a thousand bucks to my name, so what I ended up doing is I ended up putting a box of stuff on a bus to ship it out there. Actually, first I found this lady on this People won't know, because the internet this is early days of the internet Like found classified ad with some lady that listed a room for rent. I called her. We talked for an hour. I basically said, hey, I'm going to hitchhike out there, hold the room for me, put my stuff on a bus, shipped it out across Canada to her. And then I my mom convinced me last minute take a bus to get past Toronto. She's like just get past Toronto then. And I went and I hitchhiked across Canada to get there and before I left.
Speaker 3:I wanted to have some job interviews lined up for when I got out there. So what I did is I went to the local chamber of commerce website and I scraped all the business emails and I had no idea. I like I didn't go to school for marketing any of this stuff. I had a three-step email campaign, and the first one was the cover letter in my resume, like why you should hire me. The second one was a PowerPoint presentation and it was kind of like a song and dance, like to get to know my personality and all that. And the third one was a final notice like hey, I'm hitting the road, jack, if you want to set something up, I'm coming. So and it worked. I ended up working at one of the places that I emailed, and so that was my, you could say, my first foray into online marketing way back in the day, and I can keep talking if you want. I don't know if you want to know something specific after that.
Speaker 2:No, I love that background and that journey and I learned about you by listening to your podcast and I think that's a really it's a unique lens to view the world through. As somebody who's interviewed in the intro, I said 550,. You had mentioned 600. As somebody who's interviewed in the intro, I said 550. You had mentioned 600. Share with me a little bit about your experiences there. What's the podcast been?
Speaker 3:like and what have been some of your biggest takeaways from talking to successful entrepreneurs? Well, yeah, so you mentioned the Neurogym before. It was called Praxis Now LLC, I think, before they changed the name to Neurogym, and at the time I you know. So we fast forward a bunch.
Speaker 3:I lived in Japan for three years. I worked as a freelance. I taught English when I was there, but I also worked as a freelance consultant. I did coaching with Shinsei Bank, johnson Johnson, tokyo Electron, and in Japan there's always a bit of English teaching mixed in, because English isn't a primary language there. So sometimes you meet people and you're like today's vocabulary is, and then you get into, like whatever you're doing. But we did team building stuff. We took people to go play paintball and I thought it was great. I was getting paid 60 bucks an hour to shoot Sony executives with a paintball gun. I'm like this is great, I love my job, you know, and it was. It was team building, so I did sort of that stuff. Um, I think there was a company, a UK mind gym. We did some of their curriculum anyway.
Speaker 3:So, uh, I came back from Japan and then I started martial arts school in Canada and I grew up to six figures. And then I was helping my friends with their businesses. And then, uh, my third year. The first year I got us to six figures. The second year I automated everything I could automate and the third year I was kind of bored because I was in a university town and every summer everyone disappears and even though I'm on a membership so I still get paid but everyone's kind of gone for two months. So I planned this thing called TravelTrainJapancom. You might still be able to find the promo video on YouTube at TravelTrainJapancom. But it was go to Japan. It was like high-end martial arts tourism let's go to Japan for 30 days, do my favorite stuff from the three years I lived there let's climb Mount Fuji, let's do all this cool stuff. And I sold a handful of tickets for that.
Speaker 3:And right before I left, a guy that I'd been helping. He was running a satellite office in Kingston above my martial arts school and we'd meet up, locking up at night and just kind of became buds. And I was reinvesting all this money going to conferences and for coaching and to learn, you know, and to grow my business. I was giving him ideas. And two days before I was leaving for Japan, corey called me and he said, daryl, I'm moving to Ottawa. And I said, corey, that's great. He says, no, I've been promoted to be CEO. And I'm like, corey, that's amazing. He's like, no, you don't understand. I've never been a retainer. I need you to be there like a call a week, listen to board meetings. And I said, corey, I'm leaving in two days for a month. I'm going to Japan, bro, I'll have to talk when I get back.
Speaker 3:And on the flight to Japan I was thinking about what I love most about the martial arts school and it was the testimonials was having a tangible impact on someone's life. And Corey's company served a thousand businesses. They were like a yellow pages, like a local directory. They were like a yellow pages type business and I realized that with a thousand businesses, if I held Corey, I could have an exponential impact on the world. Every business represents a few hundred, if not a few thousand people between staff, customers, vendors, customer, everyone, the owner, their family and everyone's families.
Speaker 3:So when I came back, I accepted Corey's offer and I wrote two books. I self-published two books on Amazon. I call them business books for busy people and one of them started to take off Ancient Secrets of Lead Generation, your Primitive Business Guide to Better Leads with Less Effort. So practicing what I preach. I got it to hit number one on Amazon for the top 100 in marketing and sales, number seven for the business category. Overall. That got me on the TV, radio print local stuff, nothing, national, but I was still just sort of a guy. And then I started getting all these offers and people messaging me and I ended up getting headhunted connected through friends to go work with John Asaroff down in Rancho, santa Fe, california. He made me an offer I couldn't refuse. He offered me a $35,000 signing bonus, $100,000 US as a base salary and 2.5% of everything I helped them make.
Speaker 3:And I was stuck in small town, like the hometown that I grew up in. You know what I mean. Like I got this six figure business. It was a great, highly automated lifestyle business. But I'm in my hometown. It's a hundred small town, a hundred thousand people.
Speaker 3:And then John's got this. You know it's John Asher from the movie the secret and he's built all these multimillion dollar businesses and I was like, right, like I'm a. That's how I ended up going to Japan. I met a pretty girl and I was like stay in my hometown, follow pretty girl in Japan, I don't know and so I went to Japan, um, so I I use a 35,000 to pay off any contracts that I owed. The lease was already almost set to renew, so I just didn't renew, um, and I went down to San, to San Diego, and, uh, about a month later I regretted it because I had left a highly automated, very comfortable lifestyle business that I was doing, you know, doing six figures, uh, and John was in a nosedive tailspin, headed for bankruptcy, if you know, I mean don't get me wrong and most I mean you look at Donald Trump, I think he's already filed, I think he's filed for bankruptcy before. I mean, all these successful entrepreneurs have up and down. So I'm not trying to throw shade on John in any way. I'm very grateful for the experience, but when I met him, it was at a time where things were like in a bad situation and so the fear of God and a fire lit under my ass.
Speaker 3:I work evenings and weekends and, uh, I basically put together an automated webinar for his online course it was a thousand dollar course and we managed to do a JV launch and we did about, I think about, $600,000 in sales with a JV launch. And then I took the lookalike and this is the early early days of Facebook ads. I took the buyer's list and I uploaded it to Facebook and then we started with a budget of 500 bucks and the lookalike had a scale bar how, how tight you want it? And I was like I want it super tight and we use that lookalike audience. Until we were doing like 90, a hundred grand a week in automated sales. It was a six hour webinar. We ran it every Saturday and um John was singing my praises to everybody because we just had this.
Speaker 3:You know, I mean to be profitable. I think we were paying. I think we were paying around $10 a lead at one point, after things kind of flatlined a bit, but we were no, no, yeah, we were paying 10, $12 a lead and I think we were making $22 per lead. So we were almost doubling our money. And that's like I spent 500 bucks and then I got a $1,500. And this was like some kid project, like okay, kid, here's your $500 allowance, you can go spend on what you want. So this is something that I like. I said like the launch was something already in the marketing calendar, but I was like I'm not, I'm not going to like I was, I'm going to make something of this. So it was my idea to automate an evergreen it. And they were like hey, here you go, here you go, kid, whatever you want. And they were already focused on the next pro, next thing and then all of a sudden, what's? What's happening here? And then that fed the company for the next five years.
Speaker 3:Essentially, um, I had moved on a result, but I was still sort of a guy. I didn't do a book tour. You know, I'm not into Lamborghinis, I'm not into the fame, I want the money. I want the money. I don't want the fame, I don't want to go places and not be you know and be wrecked. I, you know, um, so I was just sort of a guy like I didn't have a following. But now I'm being invited to speak at conferences in phoenix and, uh, you know, in la and going all over um, being asked to do interviews like this, being invited to mastermind groups and like godfathered membership into them.
Speaker 3:Um, like ty lopez, before he did his whole here, my garage fame. I got invited to a party at his house and I actually didn't get a chance to talk to him. There were so many people there and there was some movie director that was there and there was a lineup of like 50 people trying to shake this talk to this director and I had to go at some point and I never got to meet Ty and I'm in his house having a party. And I went, found Ty. I was like hey Ty, hey man, sorry we didn't get to talk. Man, great party, great house, appreciate you, you know, take care, sorry, maybe next time. And like I left and not even five minutes later I'm like hey, daryl, who are you? And I answered questions and then he set up a call and then he offered me a million dollars.
Speaker 3:He's like I want to invest in what you're doing with John. And we didn't need money at the time. At this time we had just had like a money printer, essentially Right and. And so I was meeting people like this and I wanted to be of value to them and I felt like I had nothing to contribute. I was just like a guy, like sure, I had a book, but, like I said, I wasn't like an established author or none of that. So I just started the podcast saying can I interview you? Right, like, hey, people might know your company. They might know your book, but they don't know your story. Can I interview you?
Speaker 3:So the podcast has has always been biographical in nature and then originally I'd say, even now, maybe it's really just a way to build relationships. I've gotten clients from it. I've had guests become clients. I've had clients stay with me because the people that I've interviewed and they know that I have certain knowledge, like it's demonstrated knowledge type thing. Um, you know, but I mean, you asked me to wax poetic a bit.
Speaker 3:I'm running a. I think it's a high. We mentioned this, I think, before we hit record. I got interviews. I did in 2015. I still get, uh, downloads from and I think it's great.
Speaker 3:And even like my, my wife was saying if something ever happened to me, my kids would have a library that they could go through and get to know who their father was. Yeah, so I'm really into that. I'm really into high leverage, high impact things. I'm into substance, you know, and I to me. That's that's why I think podcasting is a great platform and especially with all the censorship we went through during COVID and that I think unedited long form content is is just more, you know, more important than ever. Sure, people want the sizzle reel. But then you know it's always you have to go for primary sources first principles. You know, in today's day and age you can do this right now. Someone could do a test. They can search for something in Google and go to Yahoo, do the same search and what Yahoo gives you is a list of potential answers, places to find answers, almost like here's the results. When you go to Google, you get a pre-digested opinion. You know what I mean. And so in today's day and age, I'm just like here's the data.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Here's the data. Do with it what you will.
Speaker 2:Absolutely no. It's definitely an awesome media forum and that's a really good story as we're getting to know each other. One thing that I read on your website that I'd like to ask you about it is that your mission is to help create 200 new multimillionaire businesses. So what inspired that goal and what do you see as the biggest roadblock for people that are on the path to building their own multimillion dollar business?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question. What inspired me was to try to have a big, hairy, audacious goal, something that would force me I mean, this is a Jim Rohn thing you should set a goal to make a million dollars, not for the money but because of who you need to become to do that and you can give the money away and who you become is what matters most. So I want my life to have meaning and significance. I wanted to have impact. That's why I got into the business coaching thing. Originally I wanted to have like I said I could have. I could keep running my martial arts school, which was fine. I liked it. There was pros and cons to everything, but I liked the idea of having an exponential impact, even though it was the idea of I will be planting trees whose shade I shall not see. So the 200, I didn't know if it was possible or not, I didn't know how I track it, I didn't know any of that stuff, but I just felt like man, what an accomplishment If I had that sort of an impact on that many people's lives. Why not? Why not? Yeah, absolutely. It all comes into sort of what drove my career in the early days.
Speaker 3:I worked at a call center as a teen and we were calling to sell circus tickets to fundraise for a police department. It was like injured police officers, something like that. I forget. But I remember I showed up to work one day and I showed up and I was like everybody was packing everything up and I said, hey, what happened? They go. Oh, we got closed down, we're moving. And I felt like I was the last one to find out. And at that, like I was the last one to find out and at that point I said I never want to be the person at the end of the trough. I want to be where the water's coming out of the spring. From that point forward and that's the other part of that is I wanted to know. Because I want to know what's happening, I trust myself to treat people with fairness more than I trust other people to treat me fairly, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does, yeah, it does. So one of the things that you've touched on a couple of different times is automation, and so my question is what's one area of business that owners overlook when it comes to?
Speaker 3:automating their operations Right. Well, you know, whether you do it or somebody else does it, things must get done. So, and we're all guilty of this you know, I've spent about a year, year and a half, working with Michael Gerber, the author of the E-Myth. I helped rebuild a bunch of systems for him. Things need to get done and so first you got to figure out how to provide the result ultimately at the end of the day and this is really tough, and the harder the result you deliver, typically the higher the price point that you can charge. That's the whole income earning ladder. So at the bottom of the income earning ladder you have generalists, let's say a dentist. The dentist earns what any dentist can earn, sort of right and, generally speaking, broad strokes. Earning ladder you have generalists, let's say a dentist. The dentist earns what any dentist can earn sort of right and, generally speaking, broad strokes. But then you have a specialist. A specialist would be like an orthodontist. An orthodontist does what a dentist does, but they've got specialized training. The dentist might be able to figure it out, but you don't want to be the guinea pig. So you pay more money to get the specialist because you have a higher likelihood of the result you want. And then the trainers of specialists earn more than the specialists, because if I hire a trainer of a specialist they may not be best in class, but, man, I better get industry average. They're the trainer. So again, it's higher confidence in the likelihood of the, in the quality of the result, right, and also the trainers can also have the extra income of training. The other people that's another income source and at the top of the pyramid are celebrities because of the laws of supply and demand. Dr Phil may not be the world's greatest, whatever he is, but because if he auctioned off an hour and he's got a TV show with millions of listeners that could get jacked up, the value of that hour could be jacked up real fast. So that's sort of the income earning ladder.
Speaker 3:Now, when people have a business, often they want to do something because they don't want to be under someone else's thumb or they feel like you know I'll let you use simple examples like maybe a commercial cleaning company. You know, somebody does the janitorial services for an office, right, it's a respectable job, somebody's got to do it. It's the backbone keeps the wheels turning, and someone does that and maybe they don't feel like they get treated well enough right, either by the company they work for or even the staff for the office, and they go hey, you know what I do all the work, I'm just going to go out for business on my own and they think that the doing of the thing is the business. But it's almost like you know, I'm sure when you have clients, there's the there's almost like three, four jobs, like doing the work for your clients is not the full thing, doing the work for my clients as part. But then I got to report to them what I did, otherwise they don't really realize what I did. You know what I mean. And then I got to check if what I did is working and continues to work. And I got to find more people and I got to see if I can do it for them. It's there's like five shades of gray on this thing and so it's not just showing up to do the job, you know.
Speaker 3:An easy example is when you go to McDonald's they never go. Oh, drive-thru's closed because Sally's got a cold Like they've got. This is the service we provide to the community. We are here to serve a group of people and we need to have a team and figure out the terms and conditions of this team so we can always be here 24 seven to provide this service for people. So for a lot of business owners small business owners we are we wear all the hats right and in the beginning you have to do that because there's not enough cash to go around and you and often we're all figuring out what it is that we're actually doing.
Speaker 3:But that's really it. You need to figure out and you need to get in. Not enough people lean into the numbers, myself included. You really need, like now, when I try to look at business opportunities, I always try to make sure that there's at least a million dollars into it, because otherwise you could be trying to build a Lamborghini on a dead end street, like, great, I got this amazing Lamborghini, but I got nowhere to run. Like I'm, I've got like a quarter mile of road, that's it. Like you need a long stretch of highway.
Speaker 3:So, and some people get into business because they're creative. I'm working with a company right now and the guy is one of the guys, is a creative genius, he's like he's brilliant. Uh, but the path to a million dollars is consistently selling a specific solution to a specific problem, to a specific type of person and this guy keeps hammering out like new products, new ideas. Oh, we'll put it on the palette. You mentioned amazon. He just did this thing. He's like, yeah, but the beautiful thing is, we can put it on the palette, we can just list, list it on Amazon. This is a big business and I'm like there's more than just making an Amazon account and putting up some photos, like there's a, there's a, like you got to market and sell it and do reviews and you got to play the game. So that's, you know, that's some of it you asked about. You know what makes or breaks success in business? So I'll give everyone because I love you all the eight critical success factors.
Speaker 3:I spent $50,000 to figure this out. I hired a team of research assistants. I talked to friends Originally it was because I was pissed off because some guy came. I did a workshop in Vietnam. I did two workshops in Vietnam. It was just sort of for shits and giggles. This guy was one of the Mindvalley's top copywriters. Mindvalley is like a hundred100 million company out of Malaysia and one of their top copywriters got connected with me to be on the podcast and then we just kind of hit it off. It turns out he was going to be in Hanoi and I was going to be in Hanoi and I don't know who came up with it 50 people, kathy, what are how many? Yeah, 30, 50 people to pay 50 bucks to spend some like four hours with us. And we just did a workshop and we recorded it and we thought, man, maybe we can make a course out of this, let's do it again. And we set up to do it again in Saigon and he had a personal emergency and couldn't do it and I figured, well, whatever, I'll show up and do it. And I did it. And when the offer was, if you weren't happy by the lunch break, let me know and I'll give you I mean, it's 50 bucks or whatever right, but I was. If you weren't happy on the lunch break, let me know and I'll give you a refund.
Speaker 3:And there was one guy that attended it that stayed through the lunch, stayed to the end, hung out, picking my wife's brain for 40 minutes because she was making six figures, doing a four hour work week and something he couldn't even pay his own bills with. And he was just like flabbergasted that he, she, like what? How are you doing this? And after all of that, this dude hits me up and asked me for a refund. I'm like, bro, you ate my food. You came to. I didn't say, but in my mind I'm like, bro, you ate my food. Like we provided lunch. Like you came you, you you kept me and my wife and our like little kid that was a year and a half. Like you know, kids want to go right Like stand back, cause this guy. And now you're hitting me up with this and um, and I didn't beat him up over it, I was like, okay, whatever, man, uh, here you go. And then two months later I saw him posting on Facebook his manifest, the business of your dreams workshop. And I was livid because this dude had told me like I'm not going to make my rent this month if you don't give me that 50 bucks back. And now, two months later, he's posted. So I was livid.
Speaker 3:So originally I did a preprint called the fake guru solution. What I wanted to do is find a way to third party validate coaching programs and even agencies to. If they say they're going to approve something for someone, does that actually make a difference? You know, like when people say I'm a, I do leadership training. What is leadership Like? Define that for me, right, like we're going through so much nonsense. So to be able to do that, we had to figure out how to define things. So, anyways, I'm getting into the weeds here.
Speaker 3:The eight critical success factors we identified was self-efficacy, market intelligence, strategic planning, marketing strategy, sales strategy and skills, money management, business operations and business intelligence. These were the eight big umbrella categories that everything fit under. Cybersecurity, legal hiring they all fit under those big eight umbrellas. Cybersecurity, legal hiring they all fit under those big eight umbrellas. And for a lot of people I've realized that leadership is well, leadership skills. So then we drilled into each one. We had these categories and then we started looking at studies and we looked at we did like a systemic review of meta-analyses for this and then we broke down each and so I actually have the spreadsheet already up.
Speaker 3:But for those listening, we looked into self-efficacy. We looked at probably about 50 different meta-analysis or more and we found out for us, self-efficacy broken to three pieces personality traits, leadership skills and disciplines. So the personality traits were like locus of control, which means being a control freak about what you can control extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, conscientiousness and acceptance of criticism and feedback, that those are the personality traits attributed to successful entrepreneur and entrepreneurship. Leadership skills, based on our research, on what we found in the studies, were self-awareness skills, communication and cooperation skills, emotional intelligence skills and adaptability, which is counterintuitive, because some people are like you got to have a vision, not for your business. The vision comes from the market, intelligence and the strategic plan. What is the state of the union for the market and what is our strategy to deliver? Right, that's, that's the, where the vision comes from. Otherwise, you're like the first person trying to sell fax machines, like you. Like it's gonna catch on, I promise you know, like it's a tough, it can be a tough slog. Uh, I mean fax receipts took off. I don't know if it's a good example or not, but anyway. So I don't know if they answer the question, but those are the categories and business owners need to pay attention to all eight.
Speaker 3:You asked about what's the one ring to rule them all. I get that all the, and it's almost self-efficacy, because if you're not effective, you know business is very Shakespearean. I feel like even myself, we all fall victim to our greatest flaws Eventually everyone's. You know there's a look at the clap back to the COVID vaccines, right, enron? Enron posted I think they posted a hundred billion dollars. Was it a hundred billion? It was a billion, it was. It was a stupid amount of money one year before they filed for bankruptcy. What you have? A hundred billion dollars, and you can't make it past 12 months. So that's why all these things become the Achilles heel, but at the end of the day, it really comes down to being excellent at solving a problem for a specific type of person. You know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thing that I'd like to ask you and I think you're going to have a really interesting answer, because you have worked with so many different businesses If you had to start from scratch tomorrow no audience, no email list and you had 90 days to build a six-figure business what's that? 90 days look like.
Speaker 3:Well, I guess I have to ask do I already have an idea what I want to do yet, or no?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:So I need to figure out what I'm going to do. Yeah, I need to figure out what I'm going to do. I need to find a high enough price point. I need to find as high of a price point that I can honestly deliver on. I'm probably going to want to try to collect down payments and pre-orders, okay, and I'm going to have to pound the pavement, shake hands, kiss babies I probably want to.
Speaker 3:I mean, some of the best entrepreneurs got their start in direct sales, meaning that they were doing events like. There's no way to hide, like brand listen, there's, there's a need for everything. So there's definitely a need for branding, but a lot of brand marketers hide behind the fact you can't measure it and manage it. This color makes me feel this way. If you're an event, how many people paid? How many? You know how many empty seats were there at my event. The event came, it went. How many people came and showed up? If you're knocking on doors, I spent eight hours. If you're standing in a mall handing out flyers, did I get any bites today? Nothing. You really need to spend time with people and probably one of my biggest failings is the amount of time I've spent and money, oh, my goodness, I've spent pushing traffic to web pages to then look at heat maps, scroll maps, google analytics data, when, if I had to, just pushed everyone to a phone call, I would have found out in five minutes. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, if I would have got them on zoom and to just add the balls to try to get them to buy my thing. And it's not even necessarily about sales. There is a psychological process to it, but at the end of the day, I don't think it's about trying to sell you know, ice to Eskimos. I think it's about helping people identify a need and then you know do the pros and cons and then you do kind of need to apply a little urgency. But if I had 90 days and I had to start all over and I didn't know what I was going to do, I may look for someone else's thing to sell, because I probably wouldn't have enough time to make sure I could deliver on that. What I may want to do is focus on an industry first, and what that means is I might want to be an affiliate and I look for a portfolio of things that I can offer, that I trust, and now what I'm trying to do is just diagnose the problems of the market and build those relationships, and I would get as close to kneecap to kneecap aren't belly to belly as I could.
Speaker 3:I mean, one of my biggest challenges is moving to Southeast Asia. I had a golden ticket, I felt like at the time, because I, after helping John with the neuro gym, I helped two other clients add a million dollars to bottom lines. Now I'm like I have a waiting list of clients who want to work with me. And I came to Southeast Asia and I did like a trial here for three months and I worked. But I worked, graveyard. I worked. I stayed on my US Canada calendar went back. I was like I think I'm going to move there. And when I moved here, this was like six months, more than six months, later. But when I moved here, I said I'm not going to work. Graveyard, though, you know I've got a waiting list. People will work with me anytime I'm available. Uh no, they won't, you know. And so get in, get in person with people as much as you can.
Speaker 3:If I had 90 days, I'd want something big ticket. I'd want to make sure I could deliver on my promises. If I could, I want to pre-sell for proof of concept and I would try to get as much FaceTime with people. If it had to be Zoom, it would be Zoom If the more closer to in-person and like an event would be. You know, if there was a conference or an event, it's a great time and place to go. If all your customers are all going for a conference somewhere, oh my goodness, you better go there and be there. And that's probably what I would do in the beginning and I would work my ass off.
Speaker 3:I mean, it depends what kind of situation I'm in. But you might say that you just need to make sure you got roof and ramen covered and after that it's a game. As long as you got a roof over your head and you got hot noodles, so you're not going to die of starvation, at that point it becomes a game. But if you don't have that, my goodness, you gotta, I'm, I'm. You know you gotta grind to get to that. And then, once you're there, then you can kind of. So there's always uncomfortable moments, so you know a lot of people.
Speaker 3:The way you think about it is if you were, let's go back to pre-uber and grab and these app based businesses.
Speaker 3:But if you were, let's go back to pre Uber and grab and these app based businesses.
Speaker 3:But if you were just a taxi driver and you were going to start your own business first, you've got a car. You got to figure out where do I need to go, take people places, where are those people that want to pay to get driven places? So then you start learning airplane, the airport schedule, you start learning the train schedule. You start learning the train schedule. You start learning the school schedules. You start learning about the professional workers right, like Ta'ans, and start figuring out when are planes arriving, trains arriving, when are kids going to school? And you start knowing to be in certain places at certain times a day right, start getting some consistency. Now you're busy full-time, but you want to grow and you can't grow because you're too busy doing all the driving. So at some point you have to cut your income to hire someone to drive the car for you. Some of the time at least, you can focus on getting another car, getting another driver and keeping them busy full time and scaling up.
Speaker 2:Absolutely One of the things I want to highlight for the audience and I'm really glad that you included that.
Speaker 2:This was the proof of concept and you know whether that be pre-sales, but you had.
Speaker 2:There are so many people I meet that have an idea and they may go get a patent for it with zero revenue. They may just start their business and invest hundreds or maybe even thousands of hours into proving out or hoping that their idea, that other people like their idea as much as they do, other people like their idea as much as they do, and I've done that too. I certainly have done that, and so I think that's I'm really glad that you included that in your answer. And there is somebody listening right now and the reason I put a 90-day deadline on it is there is someone listening right now who is. They've had it with their employer, they're ready to fire the man, they cannot take it any longer and they're looking for a path out. And I think your, your business acumen and your experiences and and you know how you would do that your roadmap for the next 90 days, I think, is outstanding. So to all of our listeners, rewind and listen to that one again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it would be easier to make an income selling, you know, $10,000 items than $10, $10 items, because it's almost the same amount of work that it takes to get a sale.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 3:If you can sell up and then work your way down, and that's I mean. Even if you look, I'm a fan of Elon Musk. I think what he's done is commendable. I mean, we can people want to go in circles about his personal life, but as far as his career accomplishments, I think it's irrefutable. And listen, he made $300 million selling a car. He had no team to build and no factory to make. I mean, let's just, let's just slow that down again. He made $300 million selling a car. He built one prototype and then he got three orders and did $300 million. So if you've got your widget and you've got a minimum viable product and if you can't get any sales, it's probably not that good. And that's the harsh reality that all of us face. Like we get replaced a heck of a lot faster, as we hope to think we are. And you know we got to admit that and do our best to rise above it.
Speaker 2:And you know, yeah, yeah, totally, totally agree, and that's a great example with Elon Musk.
Speaker 3:So there was a gym in my hometown too. I first saw this. This gym was renovating a building by the mall and they were like coming soon and it was this gym I'm not going to say their name, but it was in Canada, canada, big Canadian brand and they had a trailer outside and they were signing up people for memberships. And this went on for two, three months and all of a sudden everything stopped, everything disappeared. And I talked to a buddy of mine that I I I wasn't a close friend but like an acquaintance that I knew that was working in the trailer they said, well, I haven't said, oh, we failed to meet our pre-launch recruitment goals, so they just shut down the project, they just backed out. They were already doing all the rentals in the building, everything. They just cut their losses and moved on enough demand in that market. And so I thought that was brilliant. I'm like, oh, so while they renovated the building it was like a six month project renovate the building, they started selling memberships and three months in they said we're not getting close to our membership requirement goals and they cut, they cut it off, they just packed up and and backed out. So that was a big eye opener for me. I'm like that's brilliant. They're not gonna open the gym until they're already profitable with memberships.
Speaker 3:Like how many people I? I knew a guy when I'm a martial arts school. Some of the flack I got was from a guy that was very well respected because he had been a hobbyist and trained and he had trained some guys that had some real mma fights and stuff. But I got flack because he had tried to launch a gym and it, you know, he did it in a location that was convenient for him. You know all this sort of stuff and he ended up going 120 grand in debt and then I launched my little thing and then I got to six figures profit, you know, in the first year and I this could be, it was an older guy and you know had these people that already had MF and I was like a nobody.
Speaker 2:Um. So yeah, Well, Daryl, this has been a really good interview. Before we wrap up, we have a series of four questions called the fire round. It's questions we ask every guest on the firing demand podcast. Are you ready for the fire round? Do it All right. What is your favorite book?
Speaker 3:Ooh think, fire around, do it all right, what's your favorite book?
Speaker 2:oh, think you grow rich, or richest man in babylon. Very, those are two great recommendations. Number two what are your hobbies?
Speaker 3:uh, working on living to be 300, spending time with my kids, those are probably those, I mean. I I love what I do every day. I had a mini retirement when I came to the. I know this was rapid fire when I, after working with John all them when I first came to Southeast Asia, I basically had a mini retirement and I had the money and the time to think. And then I'm involved right now in this company, oasisbiohomecom. Which is basically the offer in the States is no money down, beautiful, self-sufficient home you can build in 90 days and pay off in three to five years and be food, power, water self-sufficient. The no money down is only if you get the very smallest model, which is like a tiny, tiny home. But we've got, you know, we got 2000 square foot home that you can get and it's still cheaper than anything in the United States that you can get. Stick built comes with a solar kit. I mean, I'm passionate about that.
Speaker 3:My hobby is trying to make something meaningful in my life. You have life goals and then you have excuses and I, you know, work, life balance, like people like. But Daryl, what about you have kids? I'm like. Well, having a good relationship with my kids is part of my life goals. You know I part of my day. I take a break to go to the pool with my kids. You know I did that my daughter at a certain age. We're going to do that again. We've got a four month old when she's old enough. I'm going to book it in my day.
Speaker 3:So um but I don't, I'm not a golfer, I'm not, I don't know. You know, I did Brazilian jujitsu and then I made a business out of it, Like I just like yeah, sorry, I don't know if that's a good answer or not.
Speaker 2:It is, no, it absolutely is Number three. What is one thing that you do not miss about working for the man?
Speaker 3:Um commutes. Yeah, I don't miss commuting at all at all.
Speaker 2:I second that one. I second that one. And final question what do you think sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started?
Speaker 3:after a long break of not having, and I've just listened to Marcus Aurelius meditations twice and I'm working on the art of war with Sun Tzu, and so much of this is about working on ourselves and our habits and I and so much of it. You know, people are surprised Sometimes. This happened last night where we were somewhere I figured we were last night but I told someone I'm like we don't have a TV. I had a call. That was. I had a call with a guy in Hawaii, um, and he, he was surprised. He's like oh, do you know the show? I'm like I don't, I don't have a TV. He was like you don't have a TV.
Speaker 3:I was like every time I go somewhere I always get rid of it Cause it just, it's just not everything. The jungle kills you and eats you. Some things just attach to. You know, four hours a day watching TV, that's four hours a day. You could learn a language in that time. You could do also.
Speaker 3:I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not always productive, but my like my phone. I was at the gym and somehow came up my phone doesn't ring, it doesn't beep, it doesn't vibrate, it doesn't nothing. My phone is my tool to engage with the world. It's not a portal for someone to come and interrupt my life at any whim, and it's not there for the apps. I turn off all the notifications that I can because it's there. It's my tool. It's not there to control me, and so who's in control of who? And that's something I think a lot of people don't realize. I track my time. I try to schedule my time in 30 minute blocks every day, just help me keep focused. And then one of the things I do is I've got a list of things I read frequently, and this poem is one of my favorite things. I'm going to read it here.
Speaker 3:Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible, without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning and, lo, your purse is magically filled with 24 hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life. It is yours, it is the most precious of possessions. No one can take it from you. It is unstealable and no one receives either more or less than you receive. In the realm of time. There is no aristocracy of wealth and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is never rewarded by even an extra hour a day, and there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. It's impossible to go into debt. You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour it is kept for you.
Speaker 3:I've said the affair was a miracle, is it not? You have to live on this 24 hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spend health, pleasure, money, content, respect and the evolution of your immortal soul, its right use, its most effective use, is a matter of the highest urgency and of the most thrilling actuality. All depends on that. Your happiness, the elusive prize that you are all clutching for, my friends, depends on that. If one cannot arrange that an income of 24 hours a day shall exactly cover all proper items of expenditure, one does muddle one's whole life indefinitely. We shall never have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is. That's by Arnold Bennett how to Live on 24 Hours a Day.
Speaker 2:I love that. I really like that. Well, daryl, to wrap up the episode, if people are interested in getting in touch with you, checking out your podcast or potentially working with you, what's the best way?
Speaker 3:Yeah, just you can. First off, there's not a lot of Daryl Urbanski's out there. You are B-A-N-S-K-I. You also check out bestbusinesscoachca. You can look up the Best Business Podcast. I'm not trying to be facetious, it was because when I did the keyword research, everyone was looking for the Best Business Podcast. So that's what I named my show. But my name is basically where you'll find me in most that. You know we're everywhere. It's the internet, it's the age of the internet. I'm only a click away. I would say get on my email list. That's probably one of the smartest things to do, because then we'll be in touch and if you reply, it does get to me. Um, that's probably the best, best process, best method.
Speaker 2:Outstanding, and to all the listeners, I'll post links to that in the show notes. Daryl, thank you so much for being a guest on the Firing the man podcast and looking forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 3:Yeah, David, it's been an honor and a pleasure.
