Prepare to Sell Your Business with Chris Dufey

[00:00:00] So if you’ve ever thought about selling and exiting your construction business, you’re going to love today’s podcast. We’re talking to Chris Dufay who’s managed to build and exit his business. It’s not an easy thing to do. And Chris tells us the exact things he had to do and the steps he put in place in order to sell his business for a significant sum.

We also talk about how you can

Greg: make sure you’re aligned in your personal life and knowing when to close a chapter on a certain period of your life and move on to something else. So maybe you’re feeling like that now. Maybe you’ve been in your construction business for a while and maybe you want to move into property developing or something else, or Chris talks us through how you navigate those chapters and move on to the next step.

So I think you’re really going to enjoy this. I certainly did. Let’s jump in.

Chris Dufay, awesome to have you on the show. I appreciate you joining us today. Thank you so much, Greg. I appreciate you having me, brother. So you’ve just been away, I understand.

How was your trip? It was incredible. It was really good. I had a couple of weeks away just by my lonesome solitude self, just [00:01:00] plowing away with work as I launched a new company eight, nine weeks ago, something along those lines. And it was incredible. It was really good. I, I have a strong hermit side of me.

So me kind of

just like being in a cave, literally working, training, sleeping was actually really fun. Yeah, it’s awesome. I know for me, when I get away, that’s the best time for me, just having a bit of time to really think about things and sitting on the sunbed, all the ideas start really flowing. So I think, I think for most people, it’s probably like that, isn’t it?

You just, you just need time away from the day to day business, don’t you, to be your best self and be your most creative self. Yeah, I think there’s really a strong

element and a learning point of number one, the power of immersion, like truly immersing yourself in something and taking away distractions.

And I have four daughters, a wife, a dog, didn’t mean under this roof. And it’s incredible. Like I love family life as well, but [00:02:00] also what I really appreciate is my wife and I are really on the same page where I need to have that solitude and that time away to be able to do things. I’m also doing this Sunday, I’m about to fly out to the U S I go on a hunting trip for a week and then I come back.

So it, for me, it’s a, I’m finding harmony between being the father and husband that I love to be in showing up for them. And also myself being on mission and doing the things that, I mean, best liven me up and have me share my gift to the world. Yeah, I love that. So Chris, we’re going to dive into your background of, you know, Where you’ve come from and how you’ve got to the stage you’re at now.

Obviously you’re talking about going away and having a few holidays and whatever else life’s changed for you, hasn’t it? And business has changed for you, I guess, since you’ve exited your business. And it’s great to have you on the podcast to talk to someone who’s actually [00:03:00] built a nice big company, managed to exit the company.

Cause that’s the bit that most people aren’t able to do. How have things changed for you since you’ve been, been able to do that? And then, and then we’ll maybe dive into what that business was and what you managed, how you managed to do it. Yeah, since exiting the company, life has been incredible.

It’s been really good. It, I clearly was running that business for longer than I should have because I had evolved past it which was obviously the main reason why I sold it. Like I came to this epiphany one day where it was, I don’t want to be more. Oh, sorry. I don’t want to have more. I want to be more.

And I was like, I don’t want to have more. I want to be more. And it was just me wanting to be more, to evolve more, to go on and do different things. I just didn’t want to continue to do the same thing. And it was even [00:04:00] in the negotiations of the sale. The guy was like, if you held onto this, Company for a little bit longer, like you’d make millions more.

And I was like, I don’t care. I’m not in it to try and squeeze every single dollar out of this. And I had this inkling and it’s exactly what has happened. If I could

be perfectly honest, which was since selling and knowing I got out of it, like what some people said earlier, and there was like, there was money on the table.

I’ve earned shit tons more. Yeah. Yeah. This new company that started, I mean, eight, nine weeks ago, we have rocketed from the absolute beginning and we haven’t even turned down turned on our main marketing channels, which is what my strength is. So it’s just been really interesting how, There’s, I don’t know how woowoo you want to get into it, but like the energetics of it and just kind of like the alignment for me, it just feels aligned.

If, [00:05:00] if somebody isn’t truly aligned with what they’re doing and what their work is and how they’re having to show up, there creates friction and that friction means you’re not going to be producing your best work. And there’s going to be a, a rougher patch that you need to go through as well. So to get back to actually answering your question, Greg, it was sin selling the company.

Thank you. Like it was amazing. And for me, I, I’m very much the fall in love with the process. Yes. We need a North star. Yes. We want a goal, a target, a clear intention to be able to work towards, but it’s the process that I love. And I’ve been very clear. It’s like, this is what I love. So like, I remember very clearly.

The last zoom call being on the company and it was pretty much kicking me out of like all of the passwords and platforms and then saying the last goodbyes and that it, and I sat there, [00:06:00] finished everything off cheerio. Thank you so much, closed the zoom call and. That was it. It was a hundred percent out of the company, completely wrapped and done.

It was only five weeks before that we signed the first LOI as well. So it only took me five weeks to then go to a complete exit. I closed the Zoom call got up, walked out of the office. We’re in Bali at the time. My wife went and met me at this cafe on the beach that we love going to. I sat there, I drank a sparkling water.

We were there for about half an hour and I was like, I’m going back to work. Do you mean like, I was like, I’m going back into it right now. So for me, I had a lot of people as well say to me, like, take six months off, take 12 months off, take longer off. But I was like, no, I know what I want to do next, do you mean?

And like, I spent a year doing like, like what many would call like high end consulting so I did a [00:07:00] year of doing that, which was amazing, which then, cause I was very clear. I was like. I know what I want to do, which was

like this high end consulting thing because it’s an easy next step for me. I was clear that my intention was I want to become the best person at growing online coaching businesses in the world.

And for me to do that, I had to put the reps in. And this was the way I was going to put the reps in. And I clocked a lot of hours up having to do it. And it was great. And I earned great money during that year as well. But then I had the epiphany of like, Oh, Now I want to build this new company. This is the next thing that I want to create and which turned into what now is the Rainmakers.

And so anyway, yeah, it’s just been an interesting transition coming through this. Yeah, fantastic. We’ll dive into your new business as we go through the call, but just coming back to the first business that you built, just to let the audience know what type of business that was. And one question I’ve got on that is, did you feel aligned with that business when you started out?

And did you build that [00:08:00] business to sell? Like how did you transition into saying, actually, I now want to exit this? All right. So to properly answer that, let me go probably a couple steps even before that then. So I was a personal trainer in Sydney. I ran a successful personal training business that kind of turned into like this agency model that I ran inside of Fitness Firsts and they hated it because I was doing something that like no one had ever done before because I had other trainers working for me in other gyms.

My wife fell pregnant with our first child. I then had an opportunity to move to Dubai to start a fitness business. I went, did that, lived in Dubai for two years whilst like starting this family together, burnt out again, running that personal training business in Dubai. Then we moved to Bali because I was like, I’m gonna build an online fitness business.

Like this was back in 2014. [00:09:00] And then. I was building an online personal training business, and I had a lot of trainers then coming to me being like, I saw you’re in Sydney, then you’re in Dubai, now you’re living in Bali, and you’re running an online fitness business, like, how did you do it? And I just, I started helping some trainers and I’m just like giving some advice that went on to, I was then running some workshops.

throughout Australia that kind of led onto that, which then I fell more in love with business than I did with fitness. And then I, at the time like a mutual friend, it was actually a conversation I had with Taki Moore ages ago. And at the time I was running three businesses. I had a supplement business.

I had supplements getting sold in retail in Australia. I was running the online fitness business, and I was starting to coach. Personal trainers to get their business online. And Taka was like, dude, choose one, like three thing. Like, you know what I mean? You chase multiple rabbits. You’re not going to catch any of them.

[00:10:00] And I was most in love with the business side of things. So that’s why I then go, all right, I shafted the online fitness business and the supplement business. I effectively just like burned them down and turn them off and went all in on then coaching. Personal trainers to run their business online, which was the business that then turned into what I eventually sold.

I did not start it thinking I was going to sell it. That was never anything that was in my mind that I was ever capable of doing. And then after a couple of years, I ran that business. I think it was about four, four and a half years or something like that, that, that I had that business going for. And I don’t know exactly know when Greg, it really came to me, but I had the thought where it was like, I want to sell this business.

And honestly, the first thought was because I wanted to have that notch on my belt. I wanted to have that in my resume. I wanted to have the ego was like, I want to have built and sold a [00:11:00] company. Like, do you mean like, I’m not a true entrepreneur. I’m not a true businessman until I’ve done that. And I think that was the driving force.

It didn’t take long to unravel that then I was just evolving past the business. Like I was like, all right, I just don’t want to do just this thing. There’s more that I want to do. There’s more that I want to learn. There’s more that I want to master. There’s more that I want to become. And a lot of people at the start were like, you can’t sell a coaching business.

Like one, you’re the face of it. Like you’re what I call now the dancing bear. And two is like, Who sells coaching businesses? Like these aren’t to mean like people just weren’t doing it. So there were a lot of people that said no. And I was like, no, like I can, I can, I can make this happen. Like I can do this.

Like I was really kind of just like gun ho on it. And so I went through that process of. Getting myself out of departments at certain [00:12:00] times. I said, I set a plan out and it was like, all right, I need to get out of sales. So I have a sales team fully in there. I need to get out delivery. So I have a coaching team in there.

And then I was like more in the position of a true kind of like doing CEO of the actual business. And then I had to get out of, The face of it, I had to stop shooting the content. And I remember this really clearly. I had someone else actually asked me just the other day. So I remember really clearly I was in Bali.

And I was about to shoot videos for ads specifically. And I was on the bike riding to this cafe. There was this really nice cafe that we would shoot videos from. And they were really happy if we bought breakfast and some coffees, they were more than happy for us to sit there for like an hour and shoot some videos.

So I was riding the motorbike to the cafe and I just had the thought because my main sales guy was heading there at the same time, we’re going to kind of like shoot them together.[00:13:00]

Nope, you’re frozen, Chris. Everything was going great. And then I remember sitting there, sitting down, drinking a coffee, watching the videographer, and then watching the videos get shot. And I was kind of like, just directing. I was like, Oh, I actually say it this way. And like, I was just sitting back, kind of like giving my two cents and going, Oh my God, like.

I’m not, I’m not in this. This is incredible. And then later on, once like fully peeling myself out, I remember the day when I realized that leads were coming in, sales were happening, coaching was happening, and no one knew who Chris was. Didn’t mean like no one had any participation of me in there. And so that was, [00:14:00] that was the genesis of being able to go through that process and then, and really thankfully went through with it and it was great.

I love that. That’s fantastic. So what I hear from a lot from, especially construction business owners that are looking to sell their business normally is because they absolutely hate it. And by that point, things are starting to go wrong in the company. So if. If someone was looking to get out of the industry because they felt like you, felt like they’ve outgrown it, want to do different things, don’t feel truly aligned, what advice would you start giving them on how, how you start teeing that up?

Because sometimes I think people leave it too late, don’t they? And then they think actually I’ve had enough of this business and it’s all starting to collapse around them at that point. Yeah. Okay. So this is a great question. I do get asked this a lot. There’s nuances to it, but in broad strokes, the first thing I would say is, ensure you’ve got the self awareness to try and [00:15:00] catch yourself before you get to the point of, I just hate this business.

I did not have that self awareness. For me, the epiphany came when it was, 9pm and I’m on the couch crying to my wife being like, I just can’t fucking do this anymore. Like I felt so out of alignment. I felt so broken and I just knew something had to happen. And it was my wife being like, Like, what are you doing, Chris?

Like, do you, like, you, you’ve got to make changes, like stop running into a wall. And the problem was I, I built my persona on someone that could just like, I know that I have a high pain tolerance stimuli. I was like, I can, I can run through walls. I can make hard shit happen. Like I had the discipline. I can do the hard work and outwork people, but that is not.

A, always the smart choice. That is not always the wisest decision to make. So one, have the self awareness to be, okay, [00:16:00] where are you and are you actually enjoying the business? Right? Because typically, if you are at the point where you’re like, you know what, I’m really not enjoying this. It’s very likely that you’ve just been underperforming and causing more problems than actually solving problems for quite some while.

So you need to start to unravel that as well. So you save yourself a lot of headaches. Being able to catch that early, at least the next is then figuring out, okay, I want to sell it. Quite literally, it’s a case of do a time audit upon yourself and literally start auditing. What is it that you do?

Like on a minute detail level, what are you doing every single day? Do it for seven days. And literally have a list of every task you do, how long each task took, how much task switching you’re actually doing, how much time are you in tactical, how much time in strategical, how much time are you like [00:17:00] actually leading your team, like all of these other things, because then you have quite literally this like very pragmatic, practical list in front of you where you can say, okay, now I literally need to get everything off my plate.

Yeah. Right. Because otherwise it’s not truly a sellable asset, if you’re there doing the things, because if you go to a seller, this, the, sorry, if you go to a buyer, the buyer is really simply going to say, well, okay, well, you’ve got to come with me now. I, I’ve helped a lot of people go through selling their businesses as well recently.

And so when it comes to like the negotiations, there’s really two things you’re negotiating, the price and the terms. Okay. So typically most people are just thinking about the price. Like I just want 10 million sale. I want to walk away

10 million in my bank. Thanks for coming. And then, I’m off to Croatia to get a [00:18:00] suntan.

The terms is very important. So it’s getting clear on, yes, be clear on how much money you want to walk away with from it, but to be clear on the terms of the sale, because for me, I wanted to walk away a hundred percent. It wasn’t an earn out. It wasn’t, I 12 months or anything like that. It was, I closed that zoom call.

I’m. Done. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And it’s ran to, there’s a lot of different, you’ve done, you’ve done well to negotiate that. ’cause that’s not easy to, to get, is it? You know, a lot of businesses will want to, to stay there and see the transition through. But so thi this goes into it. The, the, the, the lesson of that, the teaching point of that, the thing to actually pick up is if somebody’s like, oh, I just wanna completely walk away from it.

It has to be something you can completely walk away from and it does not disturb. Anything to do with the business, like effectively you want no one to even notice. Do you know what I mean? Like prospects don’t notice. Customers [00:19:00] don’t notice. Your team doesn’t notice. Like, do you know what I mean? Like it’s barely a, Oh yeah, Chris was here, but Chris is gone.

Like they forget about you immediately. So to do that. Again, on the practical level, it’s do a time order on yourself. So then, you know, the things that you need to start getting off your list. And it’s simply a who, not how, so it’s like, who needs to do this task rather than how now on a super like detailed level, it’s then creating the SOPs so that everything is systemized.

And this is something I spent about nine months, like. Really going into, I had a good friend and mentor, Alec Sharf and helped me a lot when it came to this and I just had everything systemized. Like I had the business on a silver platter and was like, here, let it run. And it was funny. Actually, I, I’ve still got the video.

I’ve got, I’m going to shoot a video for the YouTube and the podcast, because I’ve got a video [00:20:00] of jaw of Josh that bought the business. Please. And the video is like four weeks after I completely left. And he was like, this thing’s amazing. Like, this is so good. Like it’s running it. And he was like, I’m barely doing anything.

Like, this is incredible. That was so good. Do you mean so? If you’re like, number one, I’m just not enjoying it. I do want to exit it. How much money do you want to walk away with it? What are the terms that you want to walk away

with? And how do you want to do that? How do you get yourself to stop being the dancing bear?

How do you checklist and systemize the entire business? So it is a completely sellable asset. And then you can start going out and shopping to people as well. Yeah, so I think what you’ve highlighted there, some great value and lessons in that, but what we’re really saying is it’s not an easy thing to go and sell a business and this is probably why so many people don’t manage to exit because they’re not willing to put that work in and there’s a lot of pre work that’s got to happen before you even think about going to that stage of selling it.

So, you know, that must have taken a long time, [00:21:00] a lot of hard work to get to that place where you could just hand it over. It was. The start of it was excruciating because it feels like you’re chewing on cardboard because so much of it is just this boring work, like literally creating SOPs. Like to this day, it was probably one of the best things I’ve done because my system for running a business now, like I have the entire IP Operating system for a coaching business.

I have the entire operating system for a coaching business to just run flawlessly. And it’s incredible because with my partners now I’m able to just be like, yo, I’ve got this, like, let’s, let’s start installing it. But for me as an operator and to be able to. Doing help grow businesses today. It’s comes from a case of I was really good at marketing and selling.

And I was always like, that’s, that’s my forte. That’s the thing I absolutely love, [00:22:00] but it’s actually being the operator as well and understanding and how to have that, which is really key and critical. But then once you go through it, like, God damn it. It’s worth it. Like it is worth building that skill set and actually having something to truly understand how it works.

And, and, and again, to me, that’s what a business is. My goal personally for me, and I say this to part as well, but for me, Is I want to be able to go on a sabbatical for one month every single year. And I mean dark, no phone, no tech, no calls. I’m completely off. And you still want your business to grow, right?

Mm-Hmm. So you wanna be away and you want it to grow. So how do you do that? And it’s a great. Pressure test as well. Like first you start with a week and then you can go to two weeks, and then once you’ve got that, but every time you do that, you pressure testing the business so that then you can [00:23:00] see where the flaws are.

You can let fires start to actually flame up so that when you come back, you put the fire out, then you create the system. So that’s never gonna be a problem as well. I’ve got a, I mean, a pretty. firm stance when it comes to, we only ever have two problems inside of a business. It’s either a people problem or a systems problem.

If it’s a systems problem, we just come in and re engineer the system so that that problem will never arise again. If it’s a people problem, I ask, well, did we recruit the right person? Have we best given them the support environment for them to be able to thrive? Do they have the systems and do they have the training and, you know, Doing all of that good stuff.

And if we say, yes, we have given that and it’s still a people problem. Well, they don’t deserve a jersey on the team and we replace them. And so that’s, I mean, people problem systems problem, and you can move through problems much faster. Yeah. Great to simplify it like that. [00:24:00]

So let’s just talk about now you, you said that you didn’t feel aligned with this business and you were outgrowing this business.

So just to explore that a little bit further, because obviously, you know, there might be some people listening and thinking, well, You know, you could have taken that business to eight, nine, whatever figures you wanted to potentially. So what did you mean by that? You wanted to outgrow it and move on to other things.

Why did you want to transition into something else? This

isn’t going to sound like a concrete answer. This is a bit more of a feeling. Like this is the feeling of I’m just, I’m out of alignment. [00:25:00] I want more. This isn’t right. It’s. It’s It’s your soul tapping you on the shoulder at the start. It whispers in your ear. It’s the thoughts that arise at 3 a. m.

that wake you up in the middle of the night. It’s these sorts of things that really start to come through and the problem is if you don’t listen to them when they’re whispers they will get louder and then like they turn into problems and it turns into a hammer to the head when, do you know what I mean?

I’m practically on my knees as a broken man being like, Fuck, why have I screwed this up? Why am I in this situation? Why do I feel so bad right now? And then having to think about the solution to that. So I think there are many reasons why there are a lot of people, I also, sorry, one [00:26:00] thing as well is I believe As a man, we go through chapters in our life.

Like there are just certain chapters that we go through in our life. And typically I think a chapter can last between let’s call it between five to 10 years. I think most probably is like seven to 10, but let’s just call it five to 10 years as a chapter of our life. This is the way I think about it very much.

And like, actually when I was just away, I was really thinking about this. And so I was thinking about it. I was like, you know, what is the current chapter of my life right now? And what’s my intention? Like, what am I actually doing? And I got really clear. That was like. Three, four bullet points of like, what my intention of this chapter of my life is, what, what encapsulates to me between now and I kind of took it to when I turned 40 in three years time, I was like, all right, this is kind of like what’s going on here.

And I think we have a timeline with just projects as well. [00:27:00] Like, and for me, it’s, it was just like a case of. I know I don’t want to keep doing the same thing and I want to evolve. I want to challenge myself. I want to learn new things. I want to go and do different things, but that’s been the theme in my life.

Like since ever, do you know what I mean? Like I’ve always just gotten not tired of things, but I was just like, I wanted more. And I wanted to evolve. And so if I think of it, and this is just the way I myself answered that question that you asked me, Greg, which is, okay, what’s the chapter of my life right now?

How long do I have in this timeline of this thing that I’m actually doing and being okay with me, knowing that I’m going to get to a point, very likely that I’m going to want to go on and do the next thing. Like, I, I really sat down. I was like the next chapter of my life. I was like, you know what? I probably will just want to kind of be a author and I want to [00:28:00] write and I want to create and share.

Like, I still want to be doing deals and I still want to be involved in a business, but. Am I going to want to be the CEO and running this sort of stuff? Maybe not. Like maybe that’s that, that side of it is coming to the end. Maybe I’m more of like, I sit on boards and more of a chairman and I can do some deals, but I write and I spend more time, just, That’s the thing to me is I kind of opening up to those different options.

So I’m very much, I look at what other people are doing and the people that I admire, and I see what it is that they do, but then also very much just what feels

right to me. Yeah, I think that’s really valuable what you said about different chapters in life, because I really resonate with that. Me personally, I grew a construction business, quite large, and working for clients, and then that chapter closed.

In the end, I thought, I’m really not enjoying this, and had to move into property developing. That chapter closed, wanted to move into coaching. But I think some people you get, they, they’re just stuck, aren’t they? They, [00:29:00] they know that time’s run out, but maybe they don’t quite, they don’t take the action and don’t quite realize that this chapter is closed now.

I need to move on from this. And you know, there could be years doing something that they’re just not aligned with. So just coming back to when you finally sold the business and you’re sitting there. Having your glass of sparkling water. I would have had a champagne, but I know you’re into your fitness.

What, what was the next step for you? Like, where was your mind going of, right, this is what I really want to do now. Like, cause you’ve got a blank canvas now and you can do whatever. So where, where were you going from there? Yeah. See, I knew before that day, And obviously it was very cognizant for me going through the selling process of like, okay, like, what am I going to do next?

And I knew I didn’t want to just like have time off and do nothing and just sit there and twiddle my thumbs and hope that I was like, no, I want to become one of, if not the world’s [00:30:00] best at building a coaching business. I love this stuff. I’m really into it. I, and the, it was actually my wife. Lauren and she said to me, okay, so what actually happened was.

There was one day I had these two calls randomly with some other people and it was, they reached out to me like, Oh, I’ve got this problem with my business. Can we jump on a call, please? Do you mean help me solve it? I’m like, okay, cool. Like no dramas. I had these two calls and I just sat in the yard on my phone on zoom.

And I had the two calls and I finished them and my wife was in the background like doing something and Lauren goes, You’re really good at that. Like, that’s what you should be doing. And I’m like, I was like, Oh, like, what do you mean? Do you mean like, I was like the fish that didn’t know he was in water situation right then.

And [00:31:00] she was like, like, how do you feel? And I was like, I don’t know. I was really energized. Like I felt amazing. And so what I did was actually called the two people back up and I go, Hey, with what we just went through, like, was that actually good? And they’ll lie. That was incredible. Holy shit. You helped me so much.

Like you just solved a problem. Do you know what I mean? In half an hour that I’ve been stuck in for months and months, I’m going to make so much more money, like all this other stuff. And I got off the two calls. I was like, Oh, I think that’s what I should be doing. Like in this next little step. And I said to myself.

This is an experiment, right? I’m going to do this for a short period of time. I’m not going to build my next thing, like build the next company until I’m 100 percent clear. If I ever get clear that that’s the thing that I want to do. So I just gave myself this little bridge of an experiment to be like, all right, I know exactly what to do.

So that’s exactly what I jumped [00:32:00] into. And it’s been interesting because everything I’ve been able to like start and move into. So I, when I started the consulting, it took me 63 days to get to a million dollar run rate. And so I was just like, wow, that was super quick for me to be able to build this up.

And then starting this new company, it’s, it took us seven weeks to go from zero to 183K monthly recurring revenue. And I was just like, and so for me, I’m like, I enjoy the challenge of things like, I think it’s kind of like the athlete sportsman inside of me as well. It’s like, I want to break a record to me.

Like, I like let walk and like, let’s do it. Like I want to achieve a result, but I want to achieve a result with what I call enabling constraints. And so for me, it’s like, I want to build an amazing business, but I want to be in great physical health and shape. I want to have a great marriage. I want to be a great father to my [00:33:00] four daughters.

Like I want, I want just, I want to attain this thing, but I want to do it also in more of a holistic sense where I’m like, I’m doing good in the other areas of my life. And I’m not just one dimensional. Like that’s the thing for me. Does that answer the question? It does. Yeah. So just, just thinking about that.

Cause I know you’re big on having a fulfilling life and a fulfilling business life and mixing that in with. your marriage and your health and I know you’re big on

your health, things like that. So let’s, let’s just explore that a little bit further. Is it possible, is it really possible to have it all?

Because normally you see some people will really focus on the business side and they go all in on that and then something else is going to crash and burn in their personal life. So how do you, how do you navigate all of that to try and keep it all together? Okay, I’ll give you a fluffy answer and I’ll give you a more concrete answer.

The fluffy answer to start off with was I had [00:34:00] this kind of like, idea pop into my head one day and I laughed when I had it and it was, I want to be the guy that has it all. Someone has to be him. So I’ve decided that’s going to be me, right? Like that was the idea that came into me. I’ve always, I’ve always admired the people that were able to achieve and succeed in many areas of life.

I don’t, I do not see, or I do not look up to the people that let’s say have built an amazing business, have heaps of money, but they look like dog shit or they’re on their third marriage or they don’t have relationships with their kids. So the more practical side of this stuff was I got really clear with what my values and what I call my virtues are.

Right. So like I broke it down into [00:35:00] there’s really four things, which is wealth, wisdom, health, and relationships. Like they’re the four things that I only care about. They’re the four things I only spend money on. They’re the four things that fill up my day and my calendar. So for me, it’s like wealth, which is me for me, it’s like business building and then doing a sliver of investing and stuff like that.

It’s health, which is how do I look, feel, and perform on a daily level that is world class, it’s going to be wisdom, which is like, I’ve got to, I don’t know what it is, but I’m just really into philosophy, do you know what I mean? And for me, it’s being able to understand philosophy and those realms that can cover around that sort of stuff, whether it’s psychology or personal development and even spirituality, those things interest me highly.

But also I find it parlays into me just being a [00:36:00] better person, being a more fulfilled, at peace person. I don’t want to be happy, and I can go into that later if you want, but happiness is not something I’m like, that’s what I want to be. And then relationships, which is I want to have an incredible marriage with my wife.

I want to have great relationships with my four daughters and I want to have some really close friendships with some other guys in my life as well. So for me, it was a case of these are the four things that are most valuable to me. Therefore, anything else outside of that, I didn’t give a shit about.

Like I don’t put time and attention into. I don’t watch sports, for example, do you know what I mean? Like if you’re like, Oh, did you watch the cricket? Do you know what the footy score is? I was like, I have no idea. Like, I just know I don’t have any time or attention and I’m not interested in that sort of stuff.

Like news, politics, any of that stuff. I’m like, not wouldn’t [00:37:00] care about if like, if just any of that stuff. So if it’s outside of those four things, I don’t put time and attention into it. So I’m right in there. Really practically as well, like at the start of every day. So this is my journal. At the start of every day, I look at six areas of my life, which is I look at myself as a father, as a husband, as an entrepreneur, as a friend.

health and happiness. They’re the six areas. Every single day I write the intention of how I want to show up. That is for me to have a win for that for the day. Right? So I’ll give you a true example. So when I was away in Bali just for the couple of weeks, I was just by myself, just working, right? If I rank myself, which I do as an entrepreneur, 10 out of 10, I’m like, I’m showing up, I’m gunning, I’m doing really goddamn [00:38:00] well, I’m fully focused, you know what I mean?

As a father and as a husband, I’m a two out of ten, right? Why? Because I’m not actually at home for one, right? And the only things I can do is we send some voice notes to each other, we jump on a video call with each other and catch up when it’s like dinner time and stuff like that. Like, but I’m not being an amazing father and husband.

I’m away at that time. But for me, it’s not trying to be a 10 out of 10 at everything the entire time. Again, it’s seasons, it’s chapters, it’s cycles. So therefore when I come back now, Do you know what I mean? I toggle and I’m happy for my entrepreneur to drop, and I’m not going to be working around the clock.

I’m not going to be taking meetings at like whenever and, but I ramp up my time and attention and my effort as a husband, as a father, right? So to me, it’s being able to toggle between these different things and knowing that at the end of the day, I’m [00:39:00] not breaking any of those plates. Like if you think of the analogy, like we’re trying to spin plates, right?

I say, we’ve got these six plates that I’m trying to spin. I don’t ever want one of them to break. Okay. But I want to be able to know that I can walk away from one play. For a period of time and put my time and attention in really mastering one and then being able to come back to it. It’s not broken.

It’s still spinning really well, might get a little wobbly, but I can fix it and then continue to move on from there. Yeah, that’s really interesting. I find it fascinating. The journaling practice is something that I’ve done and sort of fall out of the habit of every now and again. I think I need to get back to that, especially when I have podcasts with people like yourself.

It inspires me to get back into it again, but. Just thinking, because there’s different ways of doing this journaling. Now yours seems very intentional and you’ve got your, your six subjects that you’re ranking yourself on and writing about that. You get others that will just, whatever’s in their mind, they’re just going to blow it all [00:40:00] out on a bit of paper.

Do you do both or is it literally, no, this is my intention, I’m going to sit here for 10 minutes and map out the course of my week or my life? How do you do that in practice? Two different ways I do it. So one is highly intentional, highly structured. So at the start of the day, it’s highly intentional and structured, where there are definitely these main things that I go through.

So it’s like, I do write to me, what’s my intention for the year? What am I, what’s the one thing I’m grateful for? What’s going to make today a win. And I go through those six different areas. Do you know what I mean? So it’s very intentional about me just being clear on what that day needs to look like.

I also, at the end of the day, I will ask myself. How am I feeling? But I do it writing in this section. I learned this from Todd Herman. I do it writing in the third person, this last bit. So I write, Chris is feeling, and then I’ll answer it, right? So I write in the third person. [00:41:00] So I go, Chris is feeling, and then Chris needs to.

Those two things are the last two things that are right in the morning. So Chris is feeling, cause then I want to get kind of get in touch. Like, am I actually feeling good or am I just trying to be overly optimistic? Like, is there any, she actually anything that I might feel out of alignment? I might feel shit.

I didn’t show up yesterday as good as it’s still niggling me, that sort of stuff. And then the Chris needs to, well, what do I need to do to get back into alignment to make things right? Do I mean, so I know, okay, cool. I need to do

that today. And then there’s other times where I actually have a second journal and the second journal for me is just when I open up and I just have to ask the right questions and get to the answers of them, right?

So I could write down what is stressing me or causing friction in my life? And I’ll just start to list down the things that are coming up for me. And I go, great, now I need to solve those. So I have one journal that’s highly structured. I use the mornings, another one. So whenever I [00:42:00] travel, I’ve got these two with me.

And one of them, which is just like, what are the questions or things that I need to think about? Because for me, It’s the act of writing that just helps me think very clearly. If I just try to have the conversation in my head, it’s not concrete. But for me, I have got this bullshit meter between my head and the tip of my pen, and I know if I’m bullshitting myself.

And that’s the thing that I think is really important. Self deception, causes a lot of problems. So for me, it’s just being able to do it, call myself out and then get clear on what I need to be able to do. Like I’ve done a lot of psychotherapy and stuff like that before. And I, I swear a lot of the time as well, like yes, talking to someone, then talking to someone that knows how to listen and how to ask questions and see the stuff that you’re not seeing.

But a lot of the time, holy shit, dude, like for me, I’m just. If I journal I can clear some shit [00:43:00] up inside of myself and like stop self deceiving myself because I know I can be really goddamn good at that and just be able to fix my stuff. Love that, yeah. You’ve motivated me to start the practice up again, Chris, I’ve got to get back into that, get back into that bit of that for sure.

So, just want to explore for a second the, we spoke about alignment, now clearly you’re aligned in your personal life, you’ve got that, you know, you know where you’re going, but the numbers are perfect in it, but you’re going in the direction you want to go and you’re intentional about that. But you’re also now building businesses and you’re seeing a lot of businesses.

How do we transfer being aligned with what you’re doing in personal life to a business that’s aligned and having a vision and an off staff for the business because I guess those businesses, they’re not going to be so interested, are they? Is your personal life okay? How do you get the staff and everyone on board and going behind a vision?

Can you amalgamate the two? Is it two completely separate things? No, no, I do. I do [00:44:00] think you can. I think we, a lot of the time we don’t have business problems. We have personal problems that manifest inside of our business. A lot of the time it’s each individual, especially like, let’s say if we’re just talking to like the CEO, the founder, the leader, the head honcho of the business, the limiting factor to that business is them and their shit.

So if they have what I call distraction and noise in their personal life, that’s going to screw them over inside of their business. So a lot of the time where it comes down to, and this is where like I did hundreds of hours of these consulting, it’s actually me kind of being like, Ah, you know what?

Let’s actually poke and prod about what’s going on in life. And then that opens up into business stuff as well, because it’s how you’re showing up. It’s how you’re thinking about the problems inside of your business. And so I think too much of the time people are trying to like, Oh, no, that stuff doesn’t matter.

Like, [00:45:00] no, no, no, no, no, no. It’s like, no, that does matter because. That’s coloring the lens in which you’re seeing your business. Do you mean? Like if you’re nervous systems, right? If you’ve just had, do you mean some blowups with your partner and you’re frustrated or you haven’t slept well, or you’re not hydrated and fed properly, like all of these other things, you’re not showing up to your business the way that you need to, you will not perform at the level that you need to, the best for your business to grow.

So there is a very strong correlation with this. So true. Okay. Do you need to be an absolute health nut kind of like to the level that I’m at? No, I do not believe that as well. I mean, I just enjoy that sort of stuff. And I’ve, I’ve come from the fitness world and I find it fun. So I think there’s very much a correlation, between what is happening with your personal life and yourself to how you show up in the actual business and with the alignment of like in a business.

I guess if I just talk to the case of like, [00:46:00] is the head honcho aligned with what’s happening inside of the business, there is that soul searching that needs to happen. And then being very clear on, okay, this is the vision that I have for this business. Am I communicating and articulating what I need to to the rest of my team members so they know what’s going on?

Does my team know exactly, exactly what, when and how and why they’re doing what they’re doing? Like, for example, I want every team member as a part of a business for them to know what they’re doing that exactly causes

changes in sales. Right. Even if it’s doing an administrator graphic designer, do they know that their work directly affects sales, right?

Does their work directly know how it affects also, the success and experience of customers and clients? Like they’re two things that I want alignment throughout the entire business with. [00:47:00] So many of the time it’s just not getting communicated and articulated properly from the head honcho. Right.

Yeah, yeah, really valuable advice that you’ve just given there, Chris. So tell us a little bit about, more about Rainmakers. What, what is this business now that you’re creating? What’s your vision for that business over the next few years? Yeah, so I just had the epiphany where, especially in the coaching and information space, there was a lot of people out there that were, talking about stuff that works, but not truly giving the solution to help coaches.

or service business owners be able to actually grow their business. And for me, it came to no, no, no. You know what? I want to be sleeves rolled up in the trenches building businesses. I personally didn’t want to be teaching, [00:48:00] business building. I wanted. To be business building. So I built the Rainmakers with me and my team where we come in and we partner.

There’s actually going to be two levels. Right now, there’s only one level. The main level is we come in, we partner with coaches to be able to grow their business. So we do the grunt work. We do the heavy lifting. We’re like, I’m the one putting the strategy together. We’re building out their funnels, their copy, the ads, doing all that stuff, like actually being there.

So effectively, we’re actually kind of like a fractional marketing department that comes in and does the, the grunt work to actually grow the bottom line at the end of the day. Plus we help with delivery and operations and all that stuff as well, because there needs to be that congruency for how everything to work.

The second level that we’re actually about to launch in probably about two weeks time is going to be something where I was like, okay, I have. Like it’s not cheap for us to be able to partner together. We work off a [00:49:00] retainer and profit share that’s based on performance. But I was like, Oh, I want to be able to give something to the marketplace that’s practical, highly useful and really potent.

Giving them what they need. And so I had this conversation the idea of it came in a sauna, like probably what all great ideas come from. I was in a sauna talking with this other coach, this young coach in his thirties, and he, he had a

remark about how much money he would pay me to go through my Google drive, like, and I was like, Like, why is that?

And he’s like, dude, you’ve got the funnels, the campaigns, the ads, the copy, like, you’ve got everything sitting there. And I was like, oh, yeah, I do. So anyway, what we’re about to launch is kind of access to our private collection of what’s best working with ads, copy campaigns, funnels. Emails, socials, all of that stuff.

And [00:50:00] just kind of like for a hundred bucks a week, you know what, you can have access to all of this stuff. So we’re not coaching or teaching. Like I very much was very, defined with what words we wanted to use. I was like, we’re not coaching and teaching. This is us just sharing. This is what’s working with our partner portfolio right now.

Right. And our partner portfolio will do. But now, but we’ll do over 32 million in annual revenue. And so we see a lot of data. We see we’re like where they’re doing it. So I think it was like, Holy shit, this is amazing. Like I can just share this stuff out to people. I’ll make it. Dirt check. I think 100, if someone’s not willing to pay 100 a week for it, they’re not willing to apply it.

So they’re not going to get actual use of it anyway. And so anyway, that, that was just kind of like my, Oh, I, I feel like I’m doing something good to the world. It’s fun. It adds another revenue stream to the business as well, but it’s [00:51:00] not like it’s the heavy hitter of our partners. Yeah, fantastic. Well, that sounds really exciting, Chris.

And I can’t wait to see as we, as I stay connected with you, how that journey goes with Rainmakers. And I know it’s going to be a big success going by your previous stuff. So really look forward to that. Chris, can I just say, thanks so much for the time on the show today. So much value there. And I think if anyone’s listened to this construction or otherwise that are looking to exit a business, and we spoke about alignment and lots of other things, different things there.

I think there’s going to be so much they’re going to be able to take away and unpack from that. So really appreciate your time, mate. No, I appreciate you. Great. Thank you for having me, brother. Take care.