M&R Episode 194: James Schramko talks about how he grew SuperFastBusiness.com.
In Episode 194 James Schramko and I talk about how he got into the online entrepreneurial space and started SuperFastBusiness.com. He elaborates on his ideal life and what wealth means to him. Enjoy!
Show notes: SuperFastBusiness.com, Work Less, Make More (Book), Ezra Firestone, Jay Abraham, Nam Baldwin, Support Misfits and Rejects on Patreon, Get a Misfits and Rejects T-shirt or Tank
Show Transcription
Episode 194 - James Schramko of superfastbusiness.com
James Schramko quit his $300K per year career to pursue a life of surfing and online business.
James Schramko, from superfastbusiness.com joined me on Episode 194. In the episode we discuss lifestyle design, his 3 day work week, surfing every day and running a successful business coaching business. James worked at Mercedes Benz as a sales Manager while building an affiliate business at night. He built his income to match his salary and quit his career to work full time for himself. He states that he has earned at least $100K per month since 2008 after he quit. James outlines the necessity of a recurring payment model in his business. He discusses how this looks in the different tiers of membership he offers on superfastbusiness.com and superfastresults.com.
His membership level starts at $10 per month and his high level membership is $5000 per month. He explained the different kinds of access a member gets at each level and he also outlines how his coaching clients sometimes become business partners.
He has clients worldwide and he works mornings and evenings on his work days, letting him surf, cook and care for his family during his down time.
James’ book ‘Work Less, Make More’ provides a framework to follow if your desire is to move away from the grind and design the life you dream of, all while creating an income that covers your lifestyle.
James puts mindset, being willing to start and releasing minimal viable products as key to success in business. He is a big believer in the medium of podcasting, he’s been doing it for 10 years.
The key takeaways from episode 194 with James Schramko are:
Wealth can be defined in many different ways to include health, relationships and freedom to design your perfect life.
Minimum viable products are ‘good enough’ to start. Don’t wait for perfection.
Mindset and the belief in yourself is key to success in life. Control your own mind and you are unstoppable
It is possible to have a life where you work 3 days per week, surf everyday and make $100K per month.
Get Work Less Make More - HERE
Check out superfastbusiness.com if you have a business already
Or superfastresults.com if you need help to start. (I highly recommend the mindset course provided there)
Check out the transcription of the interview below or listen in on your favourite podcast player. Don't forget to subscribe so you too can be inspired to create the life you crave!!
Would you like to be part of the Misfits and Rejects community? - CLICK HERE to receive a weekly newsletter helping you to design your different life.
Want more? Tell me what you want HERE - email chapin@misfitsandrejects.com
Episode 194 - James Schramko
Chapin 0:01
What if all you beautiful misfits and rejects out there. Thank you for joining me for Episode 194 of misfits and rejects. In today's episode I spoke with James Schramko from superfastbusiness.com, James is a business coach who helps businesses in that six figure range, make it past that seven figure range. That's his sweet spot, that's where he excels the best. He's definitely taken other businesses to a way higher level, but he finds himself achieving the most in that range. He also has the super fast business podcast, which is a wealth of information and he's someone who's been in the online space a long time and understands how to grow online businesses to levels that the business owners themselves might have needed to take quite a bit longer to get to without his help. I have no doubt you're gonna get a lot out of this episode, and you get to hear the steps he took in order to grow his empire to where it's at today how he perceives wealth and how he perceives lifestyle design. So please, if you're a first time listener, pull up that phone, hit subscribe on whatever podcast player you're listening to this on. If you like this episode James and I sure would appreciate it if you shared it with a friend, if you gave it a five star rating. And if you left the comment I will be happy to get right back to you. So thank you for joining us today. Please sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode with James Schramko Welcome to misfits and rejects, a podcast about the lifestyle design of expatriates travelers, entrepreneurs, and adventurers, I'm your host Jason.
Chapin 1:49
Welcome to another episode of misfits & rejects today I'm joined by James Schramko here from superfastbusiness.com. James Welcome to the show.
James Schramko 1:57
Thank you very much.
Chapin 1:58
Pleasure to have you thank you for taking the time man. How's your day going in Australia right now?
James Schramko 2:02
It's been good. I started early today. It's my last work day of the week. And I had a I usually deal with the East Coast USA market. First thing, and then I work my way back across to this side of the world, and finish out the evening so I think it's going to be a good day, got a little bit of a surf scheduled. I'll cook some food and spend some family time. I like to chunk my work blocks in the morning and then evening and have most of the day off. That's great.
Chapin 2:31
Yeah, I mean that's kind of the whole ethos of what you do as a super fast business founder is trying to help people understand that you can have online business, make good money without having to work, you know, the 14 hour days as a lot of these entrepreneurs who are successful described like 14 hour days drives me crazy because I don't have the focus for that like I'm a four to six hour a day kind of guy, you know, can you talk us a little bit more about you know superfast business and what you do.
James Schramko 2:57
Yeah, well you know just to that point, I can easily work a 14 hour day. I had to put limits on myself, because I wanted to redefine what success means. And for me, working 14 hours a day and having a lot of money. Doesn't mean success anymore, but it might have meant that 10 or 20 years ago. So I think that's really important to think about what success actually means and I had one mentor used to really sort of drum this into me he's like What does wealth mean. And, of course, a lot of people just think about money. Some people think fame and and you know they want a lot of followers and a big audience. For me I want health. I want surfing and family relationships, I still want money. But I want to get it in a more leveraged way, and I'm happy to not get as much money, but to have a lot more surf. For example, if I couldn't surf every day. Then, I wouldn't be any, you know, I'd be less happy than if I made an extra $2 million a year. Wouldn't it wouldn't make me. That wouldn't make me the person I am. Because as you know, surfing is not something you do, it's who you are. and it becomes ingrained into your culture so we're super fast business that has had so many iterations since I started that in 2009. It's one of the few online communities that's been around before Facebook groups. So I've seen a lot of things come and go. In that time, I've seen you know everyone's got groups and communities now, it was a bit rarer in 2009. Originally it started as a support group for people who bought a high level affiliate marketing program. And I wanted to take people through the course they bought and make sure they got results for it. Because I knew they would spend $2,000 on a course, and not understand most of it, because the guy that was selling the course was making $100,000 a day doing high level CPA marketing. So I made it the bonus. They bought the course for me, then I would look after them in this community, and I had 78 people purchase the course, and I got my affiliate commission. So that funded their first 60 days. I invited them to stay on if they want to. And most of them did. And in the years past that I started speaking on stage, talking about building your own website, having your own online business. And back in my workshops, then there is the bring along the laptop, and I teach them how to buy a domain. Choose a market, join an affiliate offer, build their website, and then start promoting it all in a two day workshop. It was crazy. And then from there we started going to, you know, more mature businesses who were offering services like search engine optimization website developments a lot about agencies. So just a few super affiliates and a few agencies. These days, we have a mix, mostly people with info products or agencies service type businesses make up my membership. I definitely help them think about what success might look like for them. I definitely help them find leverage. There's a few points that I work on in particular that keep coming up if you want me
Chapin 6:18
Cover those absolutely by all means.
James Schramko 6:22
So the thing that I used to be really good at from my old job as a general manager, running a business was, I was quite good with strategy and pricing and and products because we learned a lot about that from Mercedes Benz, and in a retail automotive dealership it's super competitive, you've got those like seven people that the customer could buy from within a 20 minute drive the exact same product. And that's not even thinking about all the other products they could buy like all their competitors who are literally next door to us. They could buy seven different types of products within walking distance to a super commoditized hardcore old established industry. So learn a lot about pricing products, strategies, learn a lot about selling. I learned a lot about building a team, hiring, training and recruiting. And then the last part was optimizing myself like how to be a high performer. When there's 10 salespeople, how can you be the top performer, and you know the other ones are just average so personal optimization. So these are the things that keep cropping up in my world. And that's what I bring to the table for the entrepreneurs who I work with.
Chapin 7:34
That's really interesting and how did you decide to transition all that knowledge into an online enterprise. I mean, when you started the online game was still I think kind of budding for most of the population around the world. A handful of people saw and took advantage of you being one of them like, how did you see that angle and how did you know it was a good time to apply what you had learned through Mercedes, I believe you said, and help other people with it.
James Schramko 8:01
Well, you know, 2005, when I started online. I thought I might be too late. Because it was already 10 years old when I had my first kid in 1995. I had my first computer, and I still look up things on the internet, when I was in his nursery, like back then it was good for looking up Loch Ness Monster theories UFOs Sasquatch, and spy shots of upcoming car models, and there was like games you could play online my civilization and stuff. So, I saw that, but it was a bit too early, I realized, you know, you know to dial up and it took forever and there were early versions of website calls my cousin was heavily into the internet and was in a tech company like computer associates I think it was called. He put me onto the internet. Then I. A few years later I didn't have a computer for a while, and then I was using them at work, and I could see some changes happening, and those customers started coming to the dealership and they knew all about the new models, and I remembered I you can look this stuff up online you can look up bulletin boards and stuff. And then, the state general manager used to talk about the internet and how he really wanted to push it away. In, and drop down at significance and dismiss it as a fad, and I thought, why is he putting so much attention on this and I'm skeptical. And the other thing is my parents were in the travel industry at this time. And people were booking their own tickets online, instead of coming to the travel agency. That was really impacting the way they do business. So I figured, you know what I'm good at selling I'm good at marketing. I would like to figure out how to build a website, because I think it's important to know this, I think there's something happening with this internet thing. And I think, you know, rather than just sell this one product in this local market area. What if I could sell any product to anyone, anywhere, anytime, like the scope of it just blew my mind and I was investigating online retailers, at its infancy in Australia we definitely lag the United States. There were some started and then got sold or stopped at one point I even owned the number plate, E tail. In, you know I can 2002 or something else really early with that, and I sold it. And also a few other things a competitor of mine one of my like one of my sort of enemies in the car industry. Like, we started on the exact same day at Mercedes Benz in 1997. And it was her versus me in the boss said listen one of you is gonna be a superstar I don't know which one it was like Game on. And she's to do direct response marketing. She used to send out gifts she used to do PR, she was like a marketing machine, and she had her own website her own name.com. So, I was like okay she's telling me what to do. So I went, I registered my own domain name.com, in 2005. I presented sales training for one of my clients, a financial planner. And I asked my boss is it okay if I deliver some sales training because this guy bought 13 cars from me and he said listen James, whatever you've been doing to me, can you teach my cut my sales team how to do that for our clients because they suck, and you're awesome at this sales stuff. I went to my boss and I said can I deliver a sales training presentation to his financial advisor. Second, non conflict I'll do it on my day off, he said yeah but make sure you charge plenty. So invoice this guy $4,000. And he paid me, and I used the whole 4000 to buy a Toshiba laptop. And so now it's back in the game. And I'd roll out this, like, I'd say it's 10 feet, worth of cord to the dial up, and every night watching TV I'd sit it on my lap and I'd figure out how to try and build a website. This is like 2005 early 2006. And I had a job at the time. But I just it was like this elusive challenge like can I build a website and, and I went through different iterations of that I first started with an internet service provider, they provided a free sort of web page. I inadvertently got hooked into an affiliate program on Clickbank because I was searching for a Jay Abraham book, and I got named Squeezed by Rich Schefren and Steven Pierce had a squeeze page. I didn't even know what copywriting was but hetal is like highlighted yellow words and bold and italicize things, it was very compelling. And they said if I give away these reports then I could get commission if people buy something from Clickbank. I joined it, and I put my links all over the page and I didn't sell a single thing that was my sort of foray into it.
Chapin 12:56
It's so interesting and thank you for being so articulate and how that kind of stuff fell into place for you because it sounds like there's a little bit of things falling into place the right time that your brain was able to conceptualize it and then act upon it and move in a direction that you sound intuitive enough that you kind of started moving in a direction that was natural for you, you know with the skills that you had. And then, the competitive nature that sounds like you also have was drive you to create what now is Superfast Business. I mean, do you consider yourself an intuitive person, are you making decisions off of that kind of gut feeling like okay this is right i mean you must be doing pretty well for yourself at Mercedes. I would imagine cutting that cord probably wasn't easy.
James Schramko 13:35
It was like this was a fascinating thing because yeah I'm very pragmatic, I'm innovative, read at least 3000 books, you know, from the time I was 12 I started reading books on selling. I, all the way through sales, sales management, I read everything I could find him. I'm an avid researcher. And then I incorporate it. But the thing that confounded me the most was just how hard it was to start an online business. I mean, it was brutal. I'm thinking, I don't get it. I make 300 grand a year as a general manager, and I've got this army of staff, 70 staff, but by night I'm like a one man business. I can't even build a freaking website. And I certainly can't make any sales. It took me nine months to make my first commission, and it was only by accident to myself through my wife's affiliate link. So, it was like it was exciting and then I let down when I discovered how it made it. But from there I started making little tiny sales and then like I'd be at soccer games with my kids, and talking to other parents and then I do like assisted sales that's, like, you know, you could build your own website if you had this software let me, let me show you I'd be like, at their house on their laptop trying to guide them to my site, make an affiliate sale like. It was like, super minimum viable product, unscalable, even with my first affiliate site I had my Skype number on the website and like if you want to Skype me and asked me about it just do that. And my bonus was like ridiculous value for people I could literally build their website for them for my $49 25 Commission. So I started off difficult. And I think some people want it to be too easy or they have this magical belief that they'll have some autopilot riches from the beginning it just doesn't work that way. And it was such a struggle. Over time, I had to basically replicate what I had as a general manager in my own business, and it took quantum leaps in mindset to scale up to that point. And yes quitting my job was extremely difficult. In one sense, but also one of the most emotionally liberating things I've ever done, where I took ultimate responsibility for my destiny is like cutting that umbilical cord was like being birthed. And now I have to stand on my own. I'm not getting that nutrient from the mothership. And I had to make a pact to myself that I will be responsible for my future. I will continue to innovate. I will do what needs to be done, because there's no turning back from this, I'm absolutely unemployable now. And there's no question about that.
Chapin 16:21
I love the commitment and you alluded to the $300,000AUD annually you're making. Did you have a goal set for yourself for when that umbilical cord could be cut like what was the number that you felt safe?
James Schramko
I had to replace my income.
Chapin
So you had to get to 300,000 before you're gonna quit?
James Schramko 16:37
Yeah, but there's a little problem with that one. The problem is, as you approach it, you're actually making quite a lot more. So, you know, up until six weeks before I quit my job, I was making about 150 grand a year online, and 360, or 300,000, with my regular job. So it's kind of making 450,000. And I had to, I had to bet that I could no more than make up for it, but within a month of leaving I was making $100,000 a month. And since July 2009 sorry July 2008. I've never made less than 100 grand a month in any month. Ever.
Chapin
Congratulations.
James Schramko
Thank you. Yeah, it's like, I'm very consistent and I built business models that have this sustainable repeatable reliable income like almost all of its recurring income. And I learned my lesson in that first six months because I had a little bit of a wobble, where I was making really good money as a super affiliate and then I sent a company broke. Because I sold so much of this stuff they couldn't fulfill and they had this backlash of cancellations and chargebacks, and, and basically they couldn't they just couldn't supply, and they burned themselves, and then they defaulted on the last commission checks of mine, and I got caught with the, the advertising payments. So sort of came into the end of the year at Christmas time, like, cash flow just like dropping right down so I did start different business models and it was just after that I started membership. And the whole time in the meantime though I had multiple ways that I was making the money thankfully I've never been single model dependent. So at that time I was doing CPA marketing. I was doing retainer services, as a digital marketing specialist. I had my info product, and I had affiliate income. You know, in addition, but since then I've had my memberships, and now I've got like four or five different levels of recurring income memberships that supplement my income and, and I still do affiliate marketing to this day I never stopped the whole time, which is good. I think it's an important part of the revenue stream for most businesses.
Chapin 19:05
Now when you talked about earlier you know your day to day and how you work from the East Coast back. You talked about membership so the audience understands you're talking about, you know, groups membership. Can you just talk about a membership and what that means for the people who are listening like different levels of what people pay you a monthly fee reoccurring to be a part of a membership group that then you jump in and help people with
James Schramko 19:26
Exactly that. But you can dial a mix. You can have business to consumer business to business. You can have people paying you monthly or annually, or other. You can be heavily involved or not too involved in terms of what you have to deliver. You can have high, high or low price points. You can be group or individual. So, so you can dial me so there's no rulebook on it so I'm currently writing a book on this exact topic, so it's top of mind. I have memberships that are is $10 a month. I've got a membership that starts at $5000 a month. I've got a membership that's $99 or $599 per month. And I've also got revenue share deals, which in my mind is kind of like a partnership or solid partner of someone's business for recurring performance fee. So that amount changes every single month. Depending on my ability to impact the revenue of that business,
Chapin 20:26
how do you regulate your value proposition at each price point. I mean, you seem like a guy is going to give it your all, no matter what they're paying. So you know somebody's paying $5000 a month versus the $5 month and it sounds like you're very active. You know daily with a lot of these people. I mean, what, how do you do that.
James Schramko 20:45
It does sound like that but I've really got it down to fine art now because you know you got to put the context so I've been doing this since 2007 I've had memberships since then. So, if you do something for over 10 years you get a routine of like, I like conversing with people and helping them solve their problems so that's good. I'm not a good typist so I tend to just dictate technology's really leaned into my corner for that. And because I now have a strong body of work it's easy for me to refer someone to an answer rather than have to create it each time the higher level ones they're going to get more access to me so they might get an individual call with me. They certainly get some group elements. And also they have homework to do. They've got things to do. So, you know, like that old story about the brewery that has a broken pipe and the guy comes out to fix it and gets $10,000. And the guy goes but you just hit it, hit the pipe with a hammer, he goes yeah but I knew which pipe to hit. So, your intellectual property can become quite valuable. I help people do the right things. I'm not getting paid on the time that I work I'm not getting paid on the quantity of gigabytes of downloads that I send people, I'm getting paid on the performance I can help them achieve that could be as simple as saying the right sentence, at times, but I do have a really strong gap analysis process so that it makes it pretty easy for me to help them, you know, fix the thing that are broken, we not only can I help them find what's broken, but I usually know the solution because I've seen the solution, many times and the average person in my high level program has a $3 million per year revenue. So I've got pretty good access to data points in terms of what's actually working.
Chapin 22:38
Now, did you help them achieve that $3 million a year or is that something that came in and you're helping them take it to, you know, an eight figure business.
James Schramko 22:48
8 figure businesses are rare. Only a handful I've done of those, my sweet spot is going from six to seven, you know, to come into that program these days I'm looking for someone to be doing at least half a million dollars a year. And whatever they're doing at that point, I can help them dramatically, because the more momentum they've got the easier it is for me. And the more results they get. That's like they come along to me with a Ferrari, and they only know there's three years, and I show them fourth fifth and sixth, and they're like, wow, and you know, all I have to teach him is how to push the clutch in and change it into this spot and let the clutch out and then hit the accelerator and the results blow us away. There have been a handful though I've seen from, from startup, I've done a few startups. It's not my sweet spot or my favorite thing to do. But guys like Ezra Firestone For example, He was probably making 100 and something thousand dollars a year, when we started, and he's, he's probably doing over $30 million a year in revenue, but he's businesses, more than likely where 60 $70 million. And we've seen that go from zero. So, you know, they're good accomplishments, had a few people go from a million dollars to $10 million. So the more they bring to the table, the more results I can get for them. But in my lower tier membership so I want them to be making 10 grand. Before we start, in that mid membership. And if they are, then we can easily get to hundreds of thousands in the fairly short term. And my newest membership, I don't have any minimum criteria. I mean it's 10 bucks a month. And yes, I do put my heart and soul into whatever I do, but that membership is a really minimal feature membership, it's like have you ever seen those push bikes that don't even have brakes, they called fixes. You know like really minimum, they've got pedals and two wheels, and they can get you from A to B. I've got a stripped down light version membership. That's only got one feature. And no, there's no courses, there's no calls, there's, it's not the only feature is it's a q&a membership, they can ask a question, and they'll get an answer, they can ask as many questions as they want. Every question will get an answer. And that works. And I found that that's creating success stories, and those people can then mature up into other levels of membership.
Chapin 25:13
Beautiful. When you talked about you know having dictation be part of your business model is how you wrote your book. Work Less,Make More (AFF LINK),
James Schramko 25:21
Yeah, I'm not a writer. So, to write a book you can either point people to existing trainings or podcasts episodes, or they ask you pointed questions, and then you can just talk. sighs I just use our phonic I hit record, I talk my answer. And then I send it off to my helper, my ghost writer slash editor slash genius. And she just knocks it all into shape, so it's my voice and my words and my IP, but it's been massaged into readable words by someone competent.
Chapin 25:56
I see in your books like kind of half biography half like a step by step to success
James Schramko 26:02
On purpose we wanted to put some stories to make it easily relatable. So the metaphors are quite handy to explain what's happening but it's extremely actionable because every chapter has action steps. And so I like their stories. The easiest way to sell it's like why we learn our nursery rhymes and stuff and they have little songs for crossing the road safely and that sort of stuff. So putting the stories in makes it highly readable and digestible. Instead of being dry which would have been my natural tendency. So it's, you know the importance of pulling the stories out of maize come from elsewhere. and I'm now across that but 10 years ago I didn't really get it. I thought people just wanted to just give me the bullet points. That's how I operate, but people do like stories so I've actually worked hard on developing the ability to find my stories and share them because it makes it more compelling and people get the lesson. No, it's cool, man, I was,
Chapin 27:03
You came on my radar about a year and a half ago, because you host retreats like in desirable places with surf because I know you love to surf. Sounds like you should check out James Schramko you should reach out to that guy. It wasn't till recently that I finally was like yes I need to connect with you. You run retreat in the Maldives and Surfing is incorporated into the retreat. Is that correct or is that just an option for the guests who come?
James Schramko 27:28
We're on a boat. It's parked next to the surf break. If you like surfing, go for it, if you like scuba diving do that. It's like, what's included is food and accommodation, and once a day business chat and an in between then you just talk to whoever you want, sleep, read whatever wherever you want, bury yourself on a laptop, some trips I've been on, because I've done this for about five years, and I've spent two weeks a year three or four of those times. Some weeks. There are quite a few surfers, and then other times it's like free or the least I've had was two, which is great, like me and the other guy sir three times a day. And the other people do whatever the other people do. Everyone has a great time though. And some people love scuba diving. So to be surfers and scuba divers are the two core groups. Surfing is free and it's included. And it is a great surf spot, as you would Well no. So yeah, it originally started as a surfing trip. And then I rebranded it as a mastermind. And then I rebranded after that, as an experience. So I've learnt and adapted as I go. When I was branded a surfing trip, people who didn't surf wouldn't think about it because they thought it was only for surfers, when I branded it as a mastermind one guy, only one thought that this is like we're gonna sit in, in a classroom for eight hours a day talking business. And that would be a frickin nightmare to me. So, yes I talk about business the whole time I'm on the boat anyway but I like the unstructured informal nature of it. So we do have a one hour session with a structured format that is extremely successful because it provokes thought and stimulates ideas and it does provide a platform to cross pollinate, but it also gives you that space and the thing that's missing from most retreats in most workshops courses masterminds or presentation events is there's just not enough space, you go there and if you were to go over some of the bigger events, you'll see the bulk of activities people in the hallway or the coffee shop or the restaurant across the road, talking, so why not create, why not build that into the program.
Chapin 29:57
Absolutely. How long ago did you find surfing?
James Schramko 30:01
About seven or eight years ago when I was with Ezra, and we did a retreat on the North Shore. And we had, I think three or four students paid to come and we rented a house next to pipeline. And we did business. We did business discussions each day but we also did experiences we went and ate sushi we went stand up paddleboarding. We did yoga. We ate healthy things, and it was a great experience, we went we climbed up the top of the mountain and look at the sunset that sort of stuff was finished, Ezra and I were just at the hippie commune, where he went up, part time. That was a holiday house, and I was staying there. He grabbed the foamy and chucked it in the back and we drove down to, to, probably. It must be Rocky Point or somewhere like that. And he just took off his shirt and paddled out on fire me. I thought maybe this guy's gonna be lost and lost him forever. And he's, he was having a great time. And then we went around the chance reef. And it was him. His wife Carrie, and I, and we all paddled out on this one foamy that will with the one from me and he said when you fall, make sure you put your arms out wide and fall flat, and like why he goes oh cuz there's a razor sharp refund and I'm like, is this way you bring people learn to surf. And, you know, I think I pedaled for a wave and. And he pushed me onto it a bit. And I stood up for like a microsecond in those like wow that was kind of exhilarating but really hot. And when I got back to Sydney. He spoke to a friend of his who had a online surfboard supply shop. And this guy brought around a nine foot to funboard for me. And it just fit in my elevator I lived on the front row at Manly Beach. That just fit in the elevator. And I took it out every day and so taught myself to surf and I broke a rib I got smashed around like all my rib cage was sore. Got held under a few times, I broke the fiberglass where the leg rope was pulling on it. Jet gassed myself on the fin got stitches in my face from smacking the deck, but it was just absolutely brutal thing, shouldn't take up surfing when you're 42 years old. So my main tip there. but I just stuck with it and I pretty much surfed every day since and there's some traveling or whatever, or somewhere that I'm landlocked. And these days I'm really, really improving getting into the sweet spot where it's super enjoyable I'm having fast rides and and edging so close to getting barreled permits. You know I feel like I'm just, I'm probably about 15 years oldin Grom years. Maybe 14. That's, that's my frost level at the moment.
Chapin 32:53
That's rad dude I know we are short on time but I have a few more questions. Is there any relationship that you can draw from between surfing and business.
James Schramko
A million, so many It's ridiculous.
Chapin
Yeah, like can you just tell me one thing they
James Schramko 33:10
Think significant wave selection, like business selection choosing the right one.
yeah like to start with the, you know, once in a lifetime ideas come on every five seconds. If you're a competent market only online, dude. There's literally a million things you could do, like every wave we say I'll take that. But most of them are going to be closer, or you want your pedal for it and miss it, and burn up all your energy. If you can pick the right wave, you'll get the nice long ride with good shape. Without seven other people on it. That's a winner. So I think that's one of the most valuable lessons I've learned is picking the right opportunities like doing the right things is so critical. The other one is you can't abdicate responsibility when you're surfing, you have to do the work and you have to put yourself in the position. You're responsible for the outcome. You either get the ride of your life or get like a three wave hold down and belted around the bottom of the ocean floor.
Chapin 34:05
And you and only you are responsible and Mother Nature is like life, it's constantly changing. blows my mind that I can surf in similar spots all year and hardly ever get the same conditions. Beautifully said you could speak to one audience member who's listening who's been inspired by what you had to say and maybe thinking about starting their first business. Is there one thing you could say that might inspire them to take that first step if they're afraid?
James Schramko 34:31
Well it's normal to be afraid, like Nam Baldwin the mindset coach and coach to love the elite surface says he's got an acronym NEAT. It's Normal. Expected Accepted, and then Tidy up like just start, you will get beaten in the bludgeoned like there will be bruises and cuts, you will have mistakes and failures, but you can't start that process until you start. So just get into it. And, and be okay with change like this notion of having all your ducks in a row and everything lined up and everything's gonna be just right before you start. I think that holds people back. So that just starts. I still got minimum version of my products out there after years and years, because I just started I think I'm still updating the resources page for my book now which was out two years ago, I just published it like just get it out there. Make sure it's reasonable, like a minimum standard, and then start because whatever you start, what the way you finish and if you look back to the history we've talked about for my own business. It's changed so many times over the last decade, because it's a pretty dynamic marketplace. But one thing I've been consistent with is being cool with change, and paying attention to what the needs of my audience are and making sure that I can continue to
Chapin 35:54
be relevant for them. Beautifully said James Thank you. We appreciate you. Cool. Awesome James thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate your time. I love the story, just hearing that step by step process that you use to grow your business, the twists and turns, that it's taken you throughout the years of getting into the online business space. I always really really appreciate that the nuanced details of a personal story and how they actually had this one event happened that turned them in this direction, how they had like you spoke about that competition with a colleague, while you're selling cars like I love that detailed nuance it's really paints a beautiful picture of how this is actually accomplished with years of perseverance, and being willing to adapt and change. So thank you again so much, and for you the listener, please again if you liked this episode James and I would appreciate it if you shared it with somebody get something out of it somebody who maybe is interested in starting an online business, or just might need that little bit of extra hope brownout crazy time we're all living in with COVID where a lot of people don't know, and then can come in next online entrepreneurship is a very interesting viable way to make money, not easy for some of you, it's gonna be a longer road than others, but it's definitely worth taking a look at. So again, thanks for listening, please hit subscribe, we'd love a five star rating commenting is always wonderful. I think you all are so very beautiful, and look forward to seeing you in next week's episode at 9am. Take care. Ciao. Thank you for listening to misfits and rejects have helped us inspire you to think about your life.