The Focus Cast
On The Focus Cast, our mission is to help you reduce distractions and increase focus so you can live a life with intention. We are both entrepreneurs and share our habits and tactics to increase focus so we can accomplish our goals.
The Focus Cast
#54 7 Figure Guest Episode w. TJ Shedd, CEO of Hit Network
Welcome to the FocusCast, today our guest is TJ SHEDD, Owner and CEO of Hit Network. We will hear how he leads a team that manages multiple content brands, earns millions in revenue and his systems of habits of focus. Let's welcome our guest…
00:00 Intro to Interview w. TJ Shedd
00:20 Intro to Podcast
01:00 Rapid Fire w. CEO TJ Shedd
09:30 What it takes to get to 1 million subscribers on Youtube
11:11 Top 3 metrics
12:30 Why live is the best
16:30 Time blocking
19:00 Always more content
21:00 Accountability in business
22:10 Accountability in life
SHOW NOTES:
ABOUT TJ & HIT NETWORK RAPID FIRE
Q’S ABOUT THE COMPANY
What is the name of your company? Hit Network
What is your title? Owner/CEO
When did you and your business partner launch? 9/1/20
What was your 2022 revenue? $4M
How many employees do you have? 34
Who is your target customer? Individuals with a desire to learn about digital assets.
What problem are they trying to solve? Understanding a new & complex technology and market (Crypto)
How are you solving that problem? We provide free content and education around Crypto and Web3 tech.
I heard free, how the hell do you make money?
Q’S ABOUT MANAGING A CONTENT BRAND
How many "channels/brands" does Hit Network manage?
How many total subscribers do you have across all channels?
What main channels do you use to engage your audience?
What channel generates the most revenue?
What are your top three metrics you track on a weekly basis?
What trends do you see for 2023 as it relates to your business?
What would be the top pieces of advice you would have for someone starting a content brand?
That was great… a lot of people desire to run a successful business or even be youtube famous.. So let’s get into some habits that help you focus.
PERSONAL FOCUS HABITS
What systems/habits do you maintain to stay focused?
Time Blocking (Episode #12)
Routine
Reflection (Episode #47)
Accountability Group
Goal setting (Episode #11)
Journaling
What systems/habits do you maintain to keep your company focused on company goals?
Trello
Slack
Goals
EOS
Everyone responsible for numbers
Regular check in on progress
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#focus #dream #selfactualization
Welcome to the Focus Cast. Today is our guest, TJ Shed
Speaker 2:Owner and c e o of HIT Network.
Speaker 1:We will hear how he leads a team that manages multiple content brands,
Speaker 2:Earns millions in revenue, and we'll get to hear about his systems and habits for focus.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Let's welcome our guests.
Speaker 2:Aha. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Hi.
Speaker 1:Live in front of a studio audience. Yeah, right.
Speaker 4:I can get these headphones off. All right, let's go.
Speaker 2:Awesome. I'm
Speaker 1:Jonathan Noel. And I'm Brian Noel. And
Speaker 4:I'm TJ
Speaker 1:Shed. And this is the Focus cast
Speaker 2:Drop focus guides for solopreneurs inside hustlers
Speaker 1:With a six figure goal. So let's get focused as funk Boy<laugh>. All right. So before we understand how you manage your day, we're gonna do a bit of a rapid fire. All
Speaker 2:Right? Yeah. So people can get a little context.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Who is Rapid?
Speaker 4:I like Rapid. That's the way I live. So
Speaker 1:Let's do it. Who is this guy? So we're gonna ask TJ some questions about his company, about who they serve and all that kind of stuff, but we're just gonna go, you ready, bro? I'm ready. I'm ready. Ready. TJ<laugh>.
Speaker 4:I
Speaker 1:Didn't know, bro. We are brothers. Listen.
Speaker 4:Oh, I noticed that on the email. The bro, bro. Media. I was gonna say, that's pretty, that's
Speaker 1:Pretty cool. I get, you
Speaker 2:Know, we're really embracing the brother.
Speaker 1:Yes, we are brothers.
Speaker 4:And I'm glad I didn't get the memo on the gray shirt, but, you know, I fit right perfectly in the middle. It's like a reverse Oreo
Speaker 1:Guy. It really is. Perfect. All right. So here we go. What is the name of the company?
Speaker 4:Uh, hit Network.
Speaker 2:All right. What is your title?
Speaker 4:Uh, owner slash ceo
Speaker 1:O. When did you and your
Speaker 4:Co-owner slash ceo,
Speaker 1:When did you and your business partner launch?
Speaker 4:Uh, September, 2020.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:What was your 2022 revenue?
Speaker 4:2022 revenue, approximately 4 million.
Speaker 1:How many employees do you have?
Speaker 4:Uh, approximately, well, 34 W two.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:All right. What is your target customer?
Speaker 4:Target customer is, uh, generally speaking, somebody who's looking to learn and educate themselves about the future of digital assets and where the economy is going.
Speaker 1:Nice. And what problem do they have?
Speaker 4:Uh, they have the problem of hyper or not. They have the problem of inflation and not enough money to, uh, you know, buy groceries.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. That is very true.
Speaker 2:<laugh>, that is a problem.<laugh>. And how are you, how are you helping solve the problem?
Speaker 4:Well, uh, the majority of the brands that we operate are in the Bitcoin and digital asset space. So we teach people about, uh, Bitcoin and how it works as an inflation hedge and helps people kind of change their financial futures.
Speaker 1:Oh, man. Very nice. Well, uh, what type of content do you provide?
Speaker 4:Uh, I mean, als when it, when you mean like YouTube versus audio versus
Speaker 1:Do you have to pay for it?
Speaker 4:Uh, no. Oh, free. Yeah. We do tons of, tons of free content. No, like we, it's all u mostly YouTube based.
Speaker 1:All right. So for<laugh>, so for those of us who are listening, I think, I think someone may have just remembered the$4 million and now we're hearing free. Yeah. So how the hell do you make money?
Speaker 4:That's, uh, that's the million dollar question. Uh, all sorts of different ways. Uh, I'm a big, uh, if you guys out there have heard of Gary v I'm a big Gary V. Guy, uh, on the attention thesis, I think attention is one of the most valuable resources that exists today. And if you can learn to harness and har harness attention, then you can direct it in a lot of different ways to make money. So, obviously, I mean, a lot of people when they hear about YouTube, they think about accent. Oh, they think, oh, oh, you make all of your money from the YouTube, you know, add, you know, revenue and we make some money from it. But that's not the majority. We make a lot from affiliate sales, you know, like we're in a, we do have an audience that's, uh, high net worth. They've got disposable income and they're looking to put it somewhere. Okay. And that's far and away the most valuable audience to advertisers. They've got money, they're trying to spend it. Yeah. And so they'll pay very high CPMs, very high commissions, very high affiliate deals in order to land those customers.
Speaker 1:Ah, well that makes a ton of sense. Yeah. There you go. So now, uh, bro, we need to find people who are trying to be focused, but very wealthy.<laugh>. Yeah.
Speaker 2:There we go. Hey, the best customer to have is one who actually has money. Right?<laugh>. Well,
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 4:Think you're on the right track there. Cuz if you think about who needs to focus the most business owners, that's
Speaker 1:True.
Speaker 2:You can't slip, you know? Yeah. When you've got employees, you got people counting on you. I mean, that's right. You got,
Speaker 1:You
Speaker 4:Gotta you gotta have
Speaker 2:It together. It's not just you when things are falling apart, it's, you know, multiple people's lives. Anyway. That's true.
Speaker 4:So thanks for reminding me.
Speaker 1:<laugh>.<laugh>.
Speaker 2:All right. Um, so managing multiple content brands, how many channels, brands does hit network manage? Whew,
Speaker 4:That's, uh, I'd say we have about nine active YouTube channels of our own. We've got, wow. We've got a few shelves right now. Three or four. But generally speaking, uh, nine of our own, we have worked with other brands to manage their content as well. Hmm. Uh, that was something we did in a lot this past year. We still do it, if it makes sense. Yeah. Uh, but generally speaking, we like to manage our own brands. And I'd say that's about nine YouTube channels right now. Oh my gosh. Just YouTube. And then we put all of our content on almost every platform that we can. So it, there's, it's a
Speaker 1:Lot. Gotcha. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's
Speaker 1:<laugh>. Mm mm So how many total subscribers would you guess across all, I would guess
Speaker 4:Channels about 1.6 to 1.7 on YouTube. Okay. You know, that's across all the different channels, most of them being on the Bit Boy Crypto. Yeah. Which is about 1.457. Uh, you know, to be specific. But,
Speaker 1:Uh,
Speaker 4:We also of course have, you know, I think Bit Boy has half a million on Instagram. You know, we've got a million on Twitter, so I'm not rolling any of those in. But YouTube specific, I'm gonna keep most of this focused around YouTube, cuz if we go into all the numbers for all of them, it'll, it'll we'll go all over the
Speaker 1:Place, but, gotcha.
Speaker 2:Okay. Yeah. You mentioned Bit Boy Crypto, so what is the main channels that you use to engage your audience? That's probably one of the
Speaker 4:Yeah. Our primary channels. Uh, bit boy on Bit Boy Crypto is our main, you know, uh, the mission for that is freedom through digital assets. Mm-hmm. Uh, and help, that's where we do give tons of free education on how to, you know, engage with digital assets, how to trade them, how to pick winners, how to stay away from losers. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about the four year cycle, which, you know, I won't get into it today, but if you guys, if you guys wanna learn about that, check out Big Boy Crypto. We spend a lot of time, Bitcoin is very cyclical and there's a lot of opportunity if you understand those cycles. So we spend a lot of time training people on that. Uh, secondly, we've got, uh, a channel called Frankie Candles, which is a pure trading channel. He teaches setups and indicators and candlestick patterns and all that sort of stuff. Uh, another one, Bitlab Academy is where people can go and get one-on-one training that's more of a, a premium product where they pay to join a Discord, you know,$30 a month, but you're gonna get one-on-one coaching. We, we made it extremely affordable. That's where we've got all of our courses, you know, cause some people we do a lot for free and we put it all out there for free. So almost you can learn anything you want for free. But we also do video, tons of videos a day on the Bit Boy Crypto channel. Yeah. And some people want it organized. Yeah. I wanna go step by step. I want forces, I want to train. And, and if you want that, we've organized it in a way, here you go 30 bucks a month. Mm. You can get all that education and, and you get the community and coaching that, you know, will help you, you know, take step by step processes through
Speaker 2:It. Like you said, that's a lot of information to sift through. So some people, they just want it, you know, they're willing to pay for Yeah. A neat package, which makes sense, you know.
Speaker 4:But those are the first, those are the first three. Uh, then we've got Hit Network, which is obviously the parent brand. And we run a 24 7 streaming channel on the Hit Network where we aggregate all of our content together. Oh. And keep that into a concurrent stream. So that's, the Hit Network channel has about 112,000 subscribers. Uh, and then you run down, we've got a gaming channel. We've got something called Blockchain Basement that we just started, you know, and it just kind of filters down from there.
Speaker 1:Uh, do they film that downstairs? They do
Speaker 4:The basement
Speaker 2:<laugh>.
Speaker 4:You guys have
Speaker 2:To come blockchain upstairs. Yeah.
Speaker 4:That one's a fun one. That's kind of like this in the basement.
Speaker 1:Nice. So, uh, so my specific question, uh, you know, so when you said, uh, or when did Bit Boy Crypto first launch on YouTube?
Speaker 4:It would be, uh, Q1 2018. Probably late January, early February, 2018.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. So from when, when did you, if you remember, um, you know, how long did it take to, to really after con producing content week after week for a year and then, and then starting to realize to collect that and, and how long did it take to get to the point to where you have this, this catalog of content you're selling courses, you know, what, two years, three years?
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's funny, uh, well, let me, I'll go back. The, my business partner started Bit Boy Crypto in, uh, January. His name's Ben Armstrong. Uh, it took, it was a slow growth through 20 18, 20 19. We were together the whole, or we were friends the whole time. We kind of collaborated on a handful of different things. Didn't formalize it until 2020. But our favorite fact, when you're looking at success on YouTube is we love to ask people, how long do you think it takes to get to a hundred thousand subscribers? So I'll, I'm gonna flip it on you<laugh>. I'm gonna ask you guys, how long do you think it takes to get to a hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube?
Speaker 2:I'm gonna guess that takes two years. And then to go from a hundred thousand to a million takes six months.<laugh>.
Speaker 4:And what do you
Speaker 1:Think? I mean, I think that's pretty accurate. I don't know if I'm gonna be off that too much. Well,
Speaker 4:It's funny, we do this at a lot of our meetups. You're, you're, it's a great guess. Everybody goes to time and it's not time, it's videos.
Speaker 1:Oh. Oh. Well,
Speaker 4:Most people get too honest. Yes. Like when you do the math, and this is straight from YouTube, it takes about 1500 videos to get to a hundred thousand
Speaker 1:Subscribers. Wow. And
Speaker 4:So, 1500 on average,
Speaker 1:Mind blown.
Speaker 4:And then it takes about 3000 to get to a million. So it does kind of work out two years mm-hmm.<affirmative>, you know, and then that next six months you can grow very, very quickly. Yeah. But if you, if you start thinking about it in uploads rather than time, because there's a big difference between somebody who does a video once a week and somebody does a video every day. Oh, yeah. And so that, that, that will change the way you look at the time it takes to succeed.
Speaker 2:Well,
Speaker 1:Well, that was, that was worth the invite.<laugh>. There go, there's a lot more. But that was, that was a nugget. I didn't know. Golly.
Speaker 4:Well. Yeah. Well, there's a, there's a lot when it
Speaker 1:Comes to social media stuff.<laugh>
Speaker 4:More
Speaker 1:Is more. Yes. More is more, uh, what channel or what brand generates the most revenue?
Speaker 4:Uh, bi boy Crypto.
Speaker 1:And why is that?
Speaker 4:Uh, it's been around the longest. Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Oh, well, the legacy the most uploaded content. Exactly.
Speaker 4:It's got the most, he's got the most subscribers, the most attention, the strongest community. And really, we use, really all of the success can be con attributed back to that channel because we've used it to launch the other channels.
Speaker 1:God makes perfect sense. Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 2:All right. What are your top three metrics you track on a weekly basis?
Speaker 4:Top three metrics, uh, uh, are, I would say, uh, views and watch time. And if you need a third one, watch time, click through rate subscribers don't count. It doesn't matter. And that's a, that's a big thing that a lot of people don't realize. It's a vanity metric, especially if you're in the advertising world. We have brands with 35,000 subscribers that have as many views and watch time as channels with 200,000
Speaker 1:Subscribers. Ah,
Speaker 2:Okay. So if they're not watching, like you said, you gotta look at the click time or the watch times. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 4:And, and really, what the reason we focus on those numbers, that's what YouTube focuses on. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, YouTube judges channels by watch time and views. Cuz if you think about it, if you're the, the platform, what do you care about? Who's views and how long do they stay? Yeah.
Speaker 2:No one cares about if your videos only watched for four seconds and they leave.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:So we, and actually, yeah, we, uh, we look at those and, and it's pretty easy. If you look at the YouTube app, they put that stuff in front of you. Yeah. Very, very well. That's what they want you to focus on. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So why reinvent the wheel? Just focus on what they
Speaker 1:Tell you to. Well, then that makes me wanna ask this question. Um, I'm sure there's quite a few things. Uh, but if you could say one or two things that has been successful, specific to your content to keep people watching, what would that be?
Speaker 4:Uh, live streaming far and away. When we started doing the daily livestream or Monday through Friday livestream, uh, we saw exponential growth across the board. And if anybody, now it's not easy. Yeah. It's, it's
Speaker 2:Being every day.
Speaker 4:Well, every day. But even just live content in general. Yeah. It takes practice, you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:No doubt. The first time you do it, it's a little clunky. Uh, but I would highly encourage everybody to get into live streaming, because again, that's what YouTube is pushing. Yeah. And a lot of times, knowing what the, the, the new features on content platforms, they're always gonna be pushing them. So if you can jump on them early Yeah. And implement'em, it's great. Uh, but far and away live streaming, uh, is a great way to do it for multiple reasons. Uh, and I don't know how much is this still the lightning around? I don't know how much detail you want, but coming, going back to the Gary V stuff, he's a big believer in the pillar of content mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And so if you can nail that daily live stream, then you've got your pillar and you can make tons of micro eclipse from there.
Speaker 1:Hmm. Yes. Okay. Man. That's why, uh, uh, for those who don't know, uh, we office at Hit Network. Yeah. That's where the studio is. And, uh, when I hear you guys back on the livestream back there, I'm just like, man, they're, they're going. They're crushing it. Like it's nonstop. Like it's insane. I could see where that takes some time to build out those skill sets,<laugh>.
Speaker 4:Well, and, but I would encourage people to just start. Yeah. Just do it. You know, because it doesn't hurt. And the more you do it, just like when you're uploading to YouTube, the reason it takes 1500 videos is because your, your quality goes up dramatically the more you do it. Mm-hmm. Cause you're learning, you're learning how to edit. Yeah. You're learning what people respond to. You're learning about your audience, you're reading the comments. Mm-hmm. And again, I mean, we do, we do multiple live streams a day at this point, you know, on the Bit Boy Crypto channel, we used to, we do a morning live stream, we did an evening live stream, and we just moved it to its own channel around the blockchain. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So we do, in this building, we have live streams going on almost all day,
Speaker 2:Man. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 4:<laugh>. And it took us a long time. We've, we've, I'm a big believer in, uh, 1% improvement. Yes.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. Progress. I love that.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Uh, and we've been doing, we've been growing every single day into more and more streams, more and more content for two years now. So.
Speaker 1:Well, that's, I think that's a good segue. What I, what I love is, uh, for anyone who's, uh, uh, tried to launch a piece of content or a consistent piece of content, whether it be a podcast or video, or even just, uh, social campaigns for their business, you know, every small business I talk to is, is they're still just, they struggle with telling their story over and over again, consistently through social. Yeah. So let's get into, um, you know, a lot of people obviously wanna have a successful business. Sure. They, they want to be in this place where they're making millions of dollars. Some people wanna be YouTube famous. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, you know,
Speaker 4:Hey, that's actually the number one. Uh, if you pull kids today, you know, when we were kids, what number one job everybody wanted professional. A I wanna be a ball, I wanna be a
Speaker 1:Football player, astronaut,
Speaker 4:Basketball player, astronaut. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Rock and roll star,<laugh>, you pull
Speaker 4:Kids today. 86% of kids want to be, they would say YouTuber next on the list. Professional gamer, which is still kind of content creator.
Speaker 1:Wow. Mm mm mm. So for those of us who are building out these habits, let's get into some focus and, uh, some systems and habits that you have personally and professionally Yeah. To maintain this beast.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It takes a lot, I mean, in social media, uh, obviously your constant notifications, constant messaging, apps, constant, uh, inputs. Right? Yeah. And I, I would, I tell people a lot, just like you're learning to improve your outputs. Mm-hmm. With content, you slowly build the habits to improve your inputs, you know, and because you have to intake a lot, if you're gonna be creating a lot, you have to read, you have to respond. You have, you know, I can't tell you how many messaging platforms I'm on between Slack and Telegram and, you know, text message and Discord and Twitter, you know, like I so many communication platforms. So for me, you know, I police my phone pretty well with notifications. There's very few apps that actually can push Yes. Notifications through to me all the time. Uh, but one of, you know, habit wise, it's time blocking. I'm a big, big time blocker, and I'm a big routine person where I, you know, I live and die by Google Calendar. Yes. Um, I, and that, and I even include time blocking, um, white space, you know? Yeah. Time to think, time to, you know, prep myself, time to read in the morning. So generally speaking, and that's part of where doing things daily helps. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, you know, we've got that, our bit boy live stream every day from 1130 to about one, you know, might end a little bit early. It's an hour to an hour and a half depending. So, uh, I do that. Then I've got basement, blockchain basement stream from one 15 to two 30. I hit gym from three to four. You know, I've got mornings, you know, between, you know, eight and 11 to kind of prep and read. I've got afternoons to set up for future stuff. So, but I, I, I keep it extremely regimented. Uh, and then I try to keep some time on the weekends for rest, you know, but<laugh>, you gotta do fun stuff too.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's such a good, uh, principle. You know, we've talked about time blocking. We talked about this in episode 12. Um, but you know, in talking to a lot of business owners, a lot of times they let their emails and their clients dictate their schedule. And Yeah. A lot of times, if, if you are, uh, if you're still in that under a hundred thousand dollars mark, you know, you're, you're trying to make money to survive. Right. So you're still taking on probably some bad toxic clients. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Yeah. And one thing that toxic clients do is they, they, they take too much time. Yeah. They take too much time. They encroach on your, uh, desire mm-hmm.<affirmative>, um, to manage your life. And, um, so I think that's a really good principle in just blocking that out and stand
Speaker 4:Focus. Yeah. That's what we learned in 2022, even as a large, as a mid-size company, when we started to try to take on, you know, client work, social media, client work for other people, it was such a drain and a time suck. Mm. And it created, uh, needs for reporting and middle management and stuff that was like, not what we were good at. Mm. What we were good at is being quick and executing well and responding to our audience and, and trial and error. Ab b testing on social, when you have to explain everything to somebody else and justify it and get it approved, it just slows it down. The two most important factors are speed and volume. And you don't want it to be slow when you're in the social game.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's interesting. Oh, that's cool. Got in, got out. So
Speaker 2:There you go. No, uh, client work is what you're saying.
Speaker 4:<laugh>, uh, I mean, pretty much we cut, we fired a lot of clients at the beginning of this year, and it allowed us, when we did that, we learned, okay, you know, we need to be moving this channel over here. Like we, we've seen our business grow, uh, exponentially just in the two months when we cut these other clients that weren't appreciating our help. We got our really talented people back focused on our stuff. That is our core business. And, you know, again, I thought we were gonna have, I wanted to have a very conservative approach for growth next year. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I just finished, uh, our kind of vision meeting and we're looking at 50% growth going into 2023. Um, you know, which is pretty exciting for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Nothing to scoff at. It's
Speaker 4:Very exciting. No, we're pumped. We're
Speaker 1:Pumped. So I would assume that part of that growth trajectory is more content
Speaker 4:Always, always more content. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We're,
Speaker 4:Uh, it never stops. You know, I mentioned Bitlab Academy at the beginning. We're starting daily streams for that channel. It's more content, more channels. Uh, Twitter spaces is a big focus for us going into 2023. Uh, interesting. For those of you that haven't, if you're not familiar with Twitter spaces, you might have heard of Clubhouse when it blew up back in the day. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, it's audio-based platform. Uh, Twitter immediately just replicated that model. Clubhouse, I'm sure is still somewhat viable, but was interesting to me about that. Just like TikTok added, it was new because sounds could go viral for the first time ever. Uh, what, what spaces and Clubhouse brings that's new to social media is it's the first social media you can consume passively. Mm. Everything else is very active. You have to scroll
Speaker 1:And you have to look, oh, yeah, I got you.
Speaker 4:Audio based things. You can be driving, you can be working. And so it's the first passively consumed social media platform, which is something that's interesting to me as we move forward.
Speaker 1:Huh. That's pretty good. I'm digging that. And I've been on through,
Speaker 2:I didn't even know that existed, to be honest.
Speaker 4:Well, this, this is perfect. You guys could have a Twitter account and this space, right? This right here. You could turn into a Twitter space. It's an audio-based thing. Mm. You could even pull people up on the stage. It would be, you know, a lot of people are doubling spaces and video kind of like this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Gosh. All right. So we got time blocking. Yep. Obviously you're very routined. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Extremely. Yeah. So how do you, uh, how do you hold yourself accountable to all this? What is your accountability look like?
Speaker 4:Well, I, I go to a, uh, a group called C 12. It's, uh, it's for kind of a, it's a Christian leadership group where all of the members are either owners or CEOs of seven figure plus companies. And we, you know, from all sorts of different niches and industries and things like that. So I go to that once a month. It's an all day thing. Mm.
Speaker 1:All day. Once a month,
Speaker 4:All day. Yeah. And it's, it's a lot. It's a big commitment. I gotta, I drive about an hour to go. Mm. But I don't miss it for the world because what it gives is so much perspective. It's, they call it a board, you know? Yeah. And we bounce all sorts of ideas off of each other. And I, I value it a lot because there's so much more experience. You know, we've been doing this a lot, or we've had a lot of success, but I've only been doing this a couple years. And the men in that room that have seen multiple recessions, maybe it's a second generation company mm-hmm.<affirmative>, uh, there's some that manage 300 plus employees. There's some that are multinational. And the, the challenges those guys have to solve for, uh, brings me so much value and just the focus and the camaraderie and all that sort of stuff. So that's, that's definitely one thing I use on a business level. On a personal level, it's kind of a somewhat of a reflection. I try to, I don't, I'm supposed to do it every day. I didn't do it today, but<laugh>, uh, I've tried to, every single day, or every single work day, write out, uh, picture my life 10 years into the future, write out five things I'm grateful for and 10 dreams. Now, I didn't make this up. If you guys know Grant Cardone, he's pretty, uh, big kind of guru guy. Uh, I don't, I haven't consumed a lot of this up, but I did read 10 x. Yeah. It's a book of his, and this is where that concept comes from. Mm-hmm. I've found it to be extremely helpful with clarifying where you want to go for the future. You're supposed to picture your life 10 years from now, and you're supposed to write those dreams out every single day. And as you do it, you start to discover what's really important to you. Gotcha. You know, it'll, you do it 30 days in a row and then, you know, you only get 10, you know. And so you start like, ah, you know, I don't know if this is the most important. I'm gonna drop this one for that one and I'm gonna switch this one for that. And then by the time you've done it for about two months, you pretty much know what you want your life to look like. 10 years down the line. Makes
Speaker 1:Sense. Got
Speaker 4:You. And if you're writing that out every single day, you, it puts you in the frame at the beginning of your day. Hopefully it puts you in the frame of mind at like, what am I going to do? Does it line up with these 10 things that I'm trying to, you know, focus my life towards?
Speaker 1:How specific, give us one example of the 10,
Speaker 4:Uh, ex. Uh, so my, um, the one of mine is I want my passive income to exceed my expenses. Yep. I want freedom to explore. I want to be the ideal husband and father. I want to be in the best shape of my life in parentheses pain free. Cuz I've got, that's part of my goal for this year is to get more flexible. I got neck and back pain. So I think I'm close into my best shape, but I'm not limber, I'm not, you know, some of that kind. So those are some examples. Gotcha. You go all the way. I try to keep some, you know, mental, relational, uh, financial, spiritual. So I've got, you know, some in all sorts of different categories. Absolutely. On a personal level. Um, you know, and then you touch some business stuff. But again, if you check out 10 x, he kind of explains the framework there and you want'em all to kind of work together. Uh, I wanna be worth a hundred million dollars, you know, but part of that is like, because I want to be able to donate X to my church, you know? Right. And so if you want'em to, to feed each other. Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Definitely.
Speaker 2:We did a, for one of our episodes, Brian, remember we read that Harvard study where they interviewed 400 like business people. Oh yeah. And what they reflected on. Yes. And it sounds like TJ is pretty much living example of exactly what that study found<laugh>. Interesting. You know, so, um,
Speaker 1:Oh man, this is so good. So to recap, before we go into some business stuff, we've got time blocking. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, we've got, uh, some time to reflect, uh, ensuring that as you're reflecting, uh, you're doing some good goal setting, which you're using the 10 x framework mm-hmm.<affirmative>, uh, you have accountability group, uh, professionally, but I'm sure that that crosses over personally and professionally. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. And, um, and then, oh, the last one before we move off, you're a journaler.
Speaker 4:Uh, well, journaling is really what I, I call that, that writing I do in the morning. Oh,
Speaker 1:Nice. So I don't really use the 10 x framework
Speaker 4:To journal. Yeah. I should journal more, but, and I've always thought about it, but I've really, that's, that's my start. It's writing, I guess is what it Yeah. What it is. So
Speaker 1:I don't understand why they don't have, I mean, you know, you can like, like there's just a memo, but like, no one's like translated, uh, audio journaling. Like there should just be an app where you can just tells the day and you just talk into it for 10 minutes on the way to work and then like 40 years down the road, you can go, that's gotta exist.
Speaker 4:Uh, whisper open ai, it'll convert it all to
Speaker 1:Textbook<laugh>. Yeah. There you go. There we go. Do you have to whisper? Sorry. Yes. You don't. Stupid stupid dad joke. God, me and my dad jokes.
Speaker 5:<laugh>. I want to, I wanna be successful today. I'm really mad.<laugh> gotta fight. Change the face.<laugh>.
Speaker 1:Oh, man. So, uh, real quick, I think, I think, uh, our audience, our audience is, is definitely gonna geek out about everything we just talked about more on the personal side, but, um, but we can just hit a highlight here. For the business side. Let's say, um, you know, what's one or two of the key frameworks for systems, uh, that you use to run this business?
Speaker 4:Uh, like software systems? Anything or just anything?
Speaker 1:Uh, what comes to mind?
Speaker 4:Uh, we use Trello for project management, slack for internal communication. I mean, there's a lot of, there's tons of different tools out there anybody can use for that. Uh, we're one, one of our goals for 2023, we're looking at a program called eos. It's basically operating system traction for your
Speaker 1:Business. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Traction. Oh yeah. Our whole, uh, leadership team's reading traction right now. Nice. Uh, that's something that's been motivated from C 12. Yeah. Several of those businesses have used it. We, I, you know, again, this is where it's great to watch. I watched somebody over the last two years implement it and take his business from 6 million to 12 million. Yep. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, you know, and it's like, okay, it worked. You know, and a lot of the people there have been doing that. And so it's, it's great. Really what it does is it focuses people. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, what it does is it gets everybody responsible for a number. So we're getting, we're getting there. We're not there yet, but we just did our, uh, our team, our kind of our year meeting with the whole company. And we do have at least a lot of our revenue goals. Each person. We do have res number responsible for each kind of individual all the way down. And it's been, it's been
Speaker 1:Great. Get A Grip is the book that they wrote, and it's the Traction model, but it's a storytelling book. I'm gonna write that down. So, for people who hate business books, but love a good storytelling book, get a Grip is literally the traction framework told in a story. Yeah. It's, it's fantastic. It's not audible. Uh, should be. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I'll check it out. I
Speaker 1:Love that. Yeah. Quick little nerdy moment there. So, my favorite, um, I've been part of EOS for a long time and help companies implement that. And, um, uh, an architect firm here, a mentor of mine, uh, Croft and Associates, it's a architectural and engineering firm, uh, rolled that out for like, it was a three year period. And, and they definitely say it's very beneficial for them, but in one of the systems, um, for us, you know, in talking about focus, a lot of times people struggle with focusing is because they're in their head. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, you know, they're thinking about some argument that they had, some issue that they're dealing with at work, some email that they got. And the traction model is you, uh, you write down your issues and there's no explaining the issue. There's no, um, trying to justify an issue. There's no politicing an issue. When you come to the leadership meeting, you just say, I did this, I did this, I didn't do this, and here's my three issues. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, and you come to the meeting with those issues articulated, you don't just show up and for an hour. Right.<laugh>. And you say, I have issue this. And, and by the time you process that and write that down, and then facilitating that, you put those issues on the board. And then as a leadership team, you say, which issue affects us all? Hmm. And then let's spend 30 minutes tackling this issue. And it's just that framework of busting down roadblocks, getting rid of these issues and moving forward is my favorite. So I can't wait to hear, uh, how your guys' sessions go. Cuz that fun.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I'm excited. What it really does too, what I'm excited about is it is it takes kind of, to your point, a lot of the emotion out of the issue. Yes. Like it, the issue is the issue. It's okay. Like, and it, and it makes it okay to have issues. Yes. And I think there's a lot of fear and, you know, around that sometimes. So I'm, yeah. It, it helps a lot for communication. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Gosh, that's good. Uh, what else, bro? What else we're gonna ask this man before he leaves.
Speaker 2:Well, we've hit, uh, most of the major points. What do we think? You mentioned the goal for the next three to six months with the months with the back pain. You have anything else in mind or?
Speaker 4:Um, I mean, like, yeah, I've got a lot of, a lot of personal goals. You know, I'm, you know, I'm moving things around and like I said, I've kind of got my list of 10, you know, and there's metrics, you know, but for the, the pain, like I want to hit, uh, stretch zone twice a week. I want to, you know, there's gym stuff, you know, I want to, I do kind of weight training three days a week. And then there's this thing called knees over toes twice
Speaker 2:A week. I've heard of knees over
Speaker 4:Toes. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm, I've, it's been working really, really well for me. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So I try to put, uh, success metrics with each one of those goals too. Uh, on the focus thing, I'm, I'm a big, you know, one of my, one of my favorite, uh, phrases to use in all of business is what you focus on expands. And it applies I think a lot to this. Yeah. I mean it, and if you can think about it in a framework of, you know, if you're looking at something and you're getting closer to it, it's gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if, oh,
Speaker 4:That's good. But if you're going after this and you're looking over there, the thing that's over there is gonna get bigger. So if you're, if you're focused on your fears, they get bigger. If you're focused on your goals and your solutions, you're gonna, you're more likely to get'em. So for us, it's a lot about just st and that's where staying focused on specific numbers helps. And when it comes to motivating, you know, kind of the team and everybody here, uh, we just had our 2023, uh, vision meeting where we kind of went over what we did in 2022, what we learned, what we're not gonna do in 2023, and all of our goals for the year. And then we break down, okay, Ben, you're responsible for this one for bit boy, crypto Frank, for Frankie Candles, Kelly for Bitlab Academy, me for blockchain basement, Brian for HIT network, Kelly for, and everybody knows they've got their num like you are focused on this number. Now it's my job to be focused on the overall number, right. And make sure we hit that 50% growth. But if I know everybody else is focused on theirs and those numbers are all expanding and growing, then we can all grow
Speaker 1:Together. I like that because, you know, in a, in a very, very, uh, professional context of business context, understanding those numbers, um, if we're talking about, uh, small business owners, solopreneurs, a bad client knocks you off your focus. Absolutely. A bad personal experience relationship knocks you off your focus. And to your point, you know, if you have that bad experience and all of a sudden you're, you're meditating, you're focusing on that bad experience, it grows and it gets bigger and bigger. And then, and then they quit and they do something else and they quit and do something else and quit and do something else. And I think a lot of people would be very successful if they just, they just got with it through that. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. Um, we'll see. Awesome.
Speaker 4:Anything
Speaker 1:Else? What do you think, bro? Should we post this? Are we gonna keep this episode? I think so. I think so.<laugh> TJ is a freaking rock star. Well,
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. We posted, cuz we're gonna have to listen to it three times or multiple times to,
Speaker 1:I's get the nuggets out.<laugh>.
Speaker 4:That's, that's the one thing I would tell anybody at home. If you're thinking about doing content, the number one advice I give most people is start. Yes. Make your first video and, uh, inconsistency. Stick with it. Like to what you were just saying, don't do it. And then see this shiny new thing over here and go chasing that. Or go chasing this stick with like, like it took Ben two years, you know, it took really to go from the first year from zero to 2000. Wow. Second year from 2000 to maybe 12 or 18. 18. And then boom, from 18 to 200,000, 200,000 to a million and a half. Yeah. You know, and it, gosh. And it snowballs.
Speaker 1:Wow. So that's encouraging. Yeah.<laugh>, Hey we, this is our 50, this will be our 54th episode. So last year was just us getting into the habit of pumping out content. And now that we have, um, um, last year I had to get my iPhone out and we had to set up the little chairs in the shed. Yep. And it was 20 degrees. We had to wear sweaters cuz it was cold as. Cause it wasn't climate controlled. So now that we get the studio set up, we can just turn the on and make content, which is so beautiful.
Speaker 4:<laugh>, that's what it's all about, is making it easy for yourself. And in, in the content space. There's so many places you could stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:You could stop with the camera, you could stop with the lighting, you could stop with the script, you could stop with the question. You could stop with the guest. You could stop with the edit. You could stop with the upload with the thumbnail, with the description, with the title. You know, like, so you really have to want it. Mm. And you really have to want to continue over time. And making it easy for yourself to not stop is part of why we built this building, you know? Yeah. Because there's so many,
Speaker 1:Everyone's
Speaker 4:Here. Yeah. And, and you've, and it, it's easy to, you can just sit down and record. Yeah. And then it's done. And then you create your system and your habit and you can slowly start getting more and more and more done. And that's, that's really what we've done.
Speaker 1:Make it easy. That's why we're here too. That's right.<laugh>. That's right. That's right. Make it easy to not stop. Right. There we go. That's good. All on that. Uh, yes. If you have any more questions for TJ specific to his work and his expertise, feel free to, uh, hit us up on the dms as well as go to the focus cast.com and we have a survey at the top of the page. You can fill that out. But check out all their, all their content. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yes. Yeah, if you guys wanna find us, you can go to, uh, hit network.com. Uh, obviously a lot of our brands are listed there. Big Boy Crypto, I, you've heard me mention most of'em in the past. So yeah, come check us out if you have any questions or if you wanna come visit the building. You know, we're here too.
Speaker 1:<laugh>, I think with that we should dance. Dance. That's it.
Speaker 6:Thank you for listening to the Focus Cast. Go to youtube.com/the focus cast and slap that subscribe button. Head to the focus cast.com, show what you wanna hear next. Go forth and be focused as Boy. Boy
Speaker 1:<laugh>.
Speaker 4:Great ending. That was.
