How to Make Money Without Abandoning Balance with Josh Lee

Co-Founder of Stand Out Authority – Josh Lee

Is business and balance a myth? Or can we have both? Today on the show I have millionaire and good friend Josh Lee. He’s been making money online for over a decade. We talk about website monetization, morning routines and how even some of the most intelligent entrepreneurs end up business wealthy but life poor. Josh tells us how we can get the bucks? without abandoning all the balance.

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• Entrepreneur Clarified
• Hidden Profit Path
• Maverick1000

Go to StandOutAuthority.com for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript: Download

Announcer: Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire podcast - with your host, Jaime Tardy. Real talk and real advice from real millionaires, with a sharp focus on you - the Eventual Millionaire.

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and today on the show I am in the home office of Joshua Lee, a very good friend of mine. He is a serial entrepreneur, he has got a ton of different companies. His newest one is called Standout Authority and he's going to be launching a podcast ASAP and we'll give you all the information on that. Thank you so much for having me over to your house.

Josh: I'm glad you came over as well. It's been a crazy day outside, with a little bit of rain here in Austin.

Jaime: It's insane. It took me a while to drive, it's the first time I've ever been to your house - it's awesome, by the way. Not that I'll show you around but it's really cool.

Josh: See all of this in the background?

Jaime: I know, you have super cool knives too. I care about the knives, of course. I say serial entrepreneur because he has so many companies I can't keep track of them all so can you go through some of the companies you started so that everybody can understand your background.

Josh: Of course. Over the last decade I started off in the online advertising world and I was lucky enough to roll from that into an opportunity where I was working for an advertising firm, the owner tried to come in and that's where I saw little things too, he could really come in as a business owner and run the company. Well that doesn't always work very well so the company shut down pretty quickly after that. I ended up hiring most of the staff back and created my own company which at that time was Leads and Feeds. I ended up rolling Leads and Feeds into LF Media, which is my corporation, and started developing a lot of companies from that in the different parts of advertising. So I work in the advertising space, in search and display and e-mail marketing, lead generation, those are just a couple of the ones where I actually have a lot of businesses that still run in that space. At a certain point I realized that I couldn't effect as much change as I wanted to in the online advertising world so I started looking at how I could truly effect more change in the world and because I had built these companies up and I really enjoyed trying to change the industry I looked at where I could go outside of the industry so I started venturing out. One of the first people I helped was my wife - I started Caltech Swim Co with her, her own swimming and personal training company, so that was fun. From there I started venturing out, we started doing a website building company. I recently started Standout Authority, which is an authority building company, and I've got a couple of different products that we're working on. Currently, right now, I am involved in ten different companies.

Jaime: No wonder I get confused! I was like "Josh, wait until we get on camera and then you can explain it all and that way I will understand all your companies," because he gave me a list of names and I'm like "I haven't heard of all of these." I've known you for years and I still haven't heard of all of them. So can you give me a timeline on when you very first started and how long it's been?

Josh: When I first started, I started selling candy out of my locker in middle school.

Jaime: Oh yeah!

Josh: That's where I first started my entrepreneurial ways. It was like "Oh, this is awesome! I can buy a whole bunch of candy for this price and sell it for this much and I make money!"

Jaime: Cha-ching! It all starts there.

Josh: My parents would say "Josh went as big as he could go," and if I failed, I would fail but I would get myself back up and try again. I did that in a couple of ways - I was in the mortgage industry before this, I was actually running a branch here in Austin, the lenders asked me to move it up to California and I saw the writing on the wall there because people were buying their homes for $200,000 and by the time they got to me, to refinance with my team, they had about $700,000 on their homes or more. It was crazy, they were living on the refinance, they were basically taking out the money, the equity on their house, and that's how they were surviving and making more money doing that than at their homes. Thus the fall of the economy very soon after. So I saw that and I was like "I have got to get out of this - I can't be involved in this anymore."

Jaime: How old were you?

Josh: When I was doing the mortgage?

Jaime: Yeah.

Josh: I'm 36 now? I have to think about this! I was in the mortgage industry right and I was 25 when I left so I was 26 when I started my first company.

Jaime: Nice.

Josh: So I've been doing it for a decade now.

Jaime: Ten companies, ten years!

Josh: Most of them came towards the end. For the longest time Leads and Feeds was my main company and what that was, when I first started that and people were like "What's Leads and Feeds?" They were assuming it was a lead generating company.

Jaime: That's what it sounds like.

Josh: Well, in the online advertising search world we deal with what's called XML feeds - that's how we syndicate advertisers, through an XML feed. When you search through Google you see Google results - these are usually provided by XML feeds. I know you know a little bit about that.

Jaime: I do.

Josh: I don't know if most people know how techy you are.

Jaime: Yeah.

Josh: So I was working as a middleman so I would take people that were advertisers and I would take people who had traffic and I would marry the two together. So, again, I just made money on margin. If I was getting paid $1 per click over here I could turn around and sell it for 60c and make 40c every time someone clicked on one of the ads and I didn't have to worry about working with the advertisers or where the traffic came from. That was great - we did tremendous amounts of money at the time, we were like MySpace, we were doing lots of money back in the day. But at a certain point, where I had a change in a lot of my background, if you don't control the traffic, you don't control the advertisers, you don't control your own destiny. So that was the one thing that I realized and I started to change - I wanted to start owning my own proprieties and generating my own traffic and start building a true advertising firm.

Jaime: Nice. So what did it lead to?

Josh: Leads and Feeds rolled up into LF Media and at that time Adfirmative was born.

Jaime: Cool name. What did that one do?

Josh: Adfirmative was my true advertising hub and it still is. We basically brought the advertisers in and we built a true advertising firm where we syndicated them out either via search, display, e-mail or lead generation.

Jaime: So give me an example of how you work with clients.

Josh: A client comes to me, let's say they have a website, and they want to learn how to monetize the traffic on their site. We will either provide them a search box or a search feed or display ads on their site to be able to monetize the visitors that are coming to their site. Or, at the same time, if an advertiser is looking to get traffic to their site - there are so many different ways. You have people who are just looking for audience building traffic that's getting time on site and page views going to their site, advertisers looking to sell a product so you're looking at conversion ratios - how many clicks can we send to your site and how well does it have to convert before they actually buy on the site? So there are lots of different metrics that are involved and every advertiser is different and that's where I started getting my separation from that industry, because it's a multi-billion dollar industry but truly in the online advertising world we only receive maybe 20-30% of all advertising budgets in an industry where you can actually track the ROI down to a penny. You know exactly what you're spending and what comes back so you would think we would have more of the advertising budget but we don't because it's black boxed. Google and a lot of companies made it that way because you're buying traffic and you have kind of an outside view of where that traffic kind of comes from but you truly don't have any clue where it comes from. These companies have been around for years and years and years and you have these CFOs that are in charge, controlling these budgets, and they want to touch it, view it, see it. So they're used to TV, radio and print and even though you can't always track, there are ways to do tracking slightly there, but it's not as advanced as in the online advertising world and until we just give it an open view and say "Look, this is where it comes from, this is how it works, this is the whole shebang," we're never going to be able to do that. I think we're still at least two generations of CFOs out.

Jaime: Really?

Josh: Yeah.

Jaime: Okay, so do you think that there's still a ton of opportunity in that?

Josh: There's a huge opportunity. Again, if we're only receiving 20%, it's still in its infancy. It's a multi-billion dollar industry so there's so much more opportunity and it will still continue to grow.

Jaime: It's funny, you think of Google way back when and everyone's like "Oh, you get Google AdWords," and now I don't know if people are doing all that much with it.

Josh: Because they've made so many different rules and regulations and they're not clear about how everything is done and it scares people off - they're just turning off like that.

Jaime: Yeah, YouTube shut me down!

Josh: There are a lot of reasons. I knew a lot of people that made a lot of money from fraud and most people don't know how much money Google does make off of fraud, even though they do have fraud protection. There's a reason that they have a black box - there's a tremendous amount of online fraud out there. You have people who pay for click farms to be able to click on ads, to be able to view websites, to do auto form fillers - there are tons of amazing people out there who make a lot of money, but not as much as they used to. We made a lot of money - we were going back and forth, it was called arbitrage, and arbitrage, as you know, is buying low, selling high. It got a bad name because everyone was like "Oh, wow, it's like they're printing money over there. What's going on?" and an advertiser would see it as well - even though you had high conversion rates you would, basically, if you buy traffic from a tier 2 network - kind of what we run these days - at, let's say, a penny, two pennies, 5c, whatever it might be per click, you send it to another site that has either Google or Yahoo!, or at that point in time it was Overture - most people don't even remember that Yahoo! was another company - and those ads would pay anything from 50c to $1.

Jaime: That's crazy.

Josh: As long as you knew your metrics - and there were certain keywords that would pay $50 per click or higher. It got to a point where those were no-no words, you just didn't touch those words anymore. If you running your campaigns, buying traffic, it was just better because you stayed off the radar.

Jaime: So let's try to put it tangibly for people who are listening. I think this is really interesting but if there was a site like mine, so there are a lot of people listening who have online brands or small businesses and they're like "My website does not get enough traffic," or they want to start getting more money from visitors than they already have - what do they do?

Josh: One of the biggest things is I think they have to go to Google or Yahoo! It's hard for a small business to even compete because Google really does believe in big business and Big Brother. Again, the more money you have for SEO or paid advertising, you're always going to be at the top of the list and you're always going to be competing. We consider the Yahoo!s and the Googles tier 1 networks. There are tier 2 networks where you can go in and as long as you have good communication - because that is key. I don't care what you do, you can't automate, you can't go in and go "I'm going to buy traffic," because if I have Site A and Site B selling the exact same product and I'm sending the exact same traffic and Site A, just the way the site is done and put together, could convert really highly and Site B, because it wasn't done very well, even though it's selling the exact same product, could not convert as well. So that exact same traffic could do amazing over here but not over here, based on what's going on, and if we don't have that communication, and that's where a lot of networks don't take the time to really communicate with their advertisers that are buying this traffic and that's why we now only work with people who, right out of the gate, we're like "Okay, you want to work with us, that's fine, but we need to make sure that we have crystal clear communication that happens often, because that is the only way we're going to achieve your goals." I mean that's the bottom line - if the advertisers are not making their goals, why are they going to keep on paying you?

Jaime: Exactly. So doesn't that mean you have to start with a foundational piece? So it's like "Okay, great, now I need to figure out, before I even try traffic, I need to get my website optimized."

Josh: You need to make sure your website is optimized correctly. There are so many different ways to optimize your site - if you have a site, you can put display ads on it. People don't really even get phased by it any more. You can put a search bar.

Jaime: I don't have a search box.

Josh: I know you don't.

Jaime: I know, you looked at my site and noticed I didn't.

Josh: That's one of the easiest ways you can do it. Why allow someone to go in and leave your site, "I want to go somewhere else," and they type in Google. If you have a search box on your site you're going to get the exit traffic and you're going to get paid for them to leave your site, even if you get a couple of pennies they add up after a while. My networks deal with billions of impressions a day - pennies add up really quickly.

Jaime: A little. I didn't know you could get traffic for pennies though. Can a small website like mine get traffic for pennies?

Josh: Of course. It's all about the keywords - you really want to know about your audience, your avatar, so to speak. You see this more in the social marketing side as well. We really haven't ventured in that side, there's a lot of them that do it really well, but it got a bad name because there were too many people on the paid advertising side in general that were taking advantage of different situations and they really weren't doing communication, they were just taking the money, but really, if you go through and you get a good quirk in the longer tail keywords that you can put together, I mean you put together "Jaime Tardy" and "Austin, Texas", "podcast". Try to make it as long as possible - people don't just search for "cars", they're looking for something specific and the more that you can target in that audience, you're not going to get a wide breadth of audience that you're going to get immediately but you will get the ones that convert well and that's what matters.

Jaime: I tried some of this stuff, especially at the very beginning. I am doing some Facebook ads and other things where we don't pay as much attention to keywords specifically.

Josh: It's people first.

Jaime: Yeah, the keyword "millionaire" is sort of a pain in the butt. It's "how to be a millionaire" and everyone is looking for the get rich quick scheme and I don't want to convert them, I don't want them, so it's really difficult - how do you find keywords that work? Does your company help people do that too?

Josh: We do. We can go through and look at the different aspects if you're going for a specific vertical. You're not trying to catch a huge net - you want to cast a line that's specific for that target audience that you're going for. You can grow from there. Go to the tier 2 networks that are out there - there are a ton of us out there.

Jaime: You would work with a small?

Josh: I only like to work with small.

Jaime: Yay!

Josh: They're better because they understand, they're actually trying to accomplish something and they understand their goal and they're more open to communication. Big companies, they come in and I'll be honest, a lot of the times they're a big hassle. If you're not going through and waiting on them and giving them everything they want they turn around and go "It didn't work, I'm out," and they don't understand that it's a process. Nothing is a knockout punch these days, it's always a combination.

Jaime: I like that.

Josh: I wish I could say it was myself. Jesse Elder, a friend of ours, has said that to me before and I was like "I like that."

Jaime: That's great. That's a really huge distinction, though, because a lot of people are like "Oh, send me traffic, and then my site is going to explode," and that's not necessarily the thing.

Josh: If you just want traffic, I can do that all day. We can send traffic all day long but what is that going to do for you? That's what the end goal is - what are you trying to accomplish on your site? And if you don't communicate to the people that you're buying the traffic from about what that goal is then how are they supposed to help you accomplish that goal?

Jaime: I want to ask you a couple more questions on this - we talked about balance and life and all of that stuff and we're going to talk about that too - but going in, so if somebody is brand new, a similar situation to me or something like that, a very similar website, if that is step one, what's step two and step three so that way you can grow exponentially?

Josh: To start your website?

Jaime: No, let's say you have a website, it converts okay, we don't know exactly how good, we don't know exactly what keywords - give us a step by step, whether it's through your company or somewhere else, going through the steps that we need to do.

Josh: The first step is you really have to be able to understand your target audience. Once you understand your target audience, you start looking at the different advertising networks that are out there. What are you trying to accomplish? So let's say you're looking at the social side. Let's balance - because, again, we help people, with Standout Authority, to gain an audience and one of the first things we do is not advertising, we're actually brand building.

Jaime: What's the difference between advertising and brand building?

Josh: Well, advertising you're paying, you're putting ads in front of people's faces, and brand building and authority building, what we're trying to do is build a story, because the more you wear your story on your sleeve these days, the better people communicate and align with you and they don't just see another company, you're being authentic, you're sharing your story and it's about getting value adds out there because the more value you give to people, especially in a free scenario where you've giving them tips and tricks, the more you're getting past the door and the next thing you know you're sitting on the couch, hanging out, like "Check this out!" and they're like "Well, it's been so awesome getting to know you and all the things that you've given me, I will check that out."

Jaime: "You're pretty cool, maybe I'll give you some money,"

Josh: Yeah, "You've given me so much for free, how much would I get if I actually paid for something this person has?" So that's what it's about - building that soapbox that you can stand on with authority building and everything else kind of funnels out from there. So when we look at that, when we look at LinkedIn versus Facebook, I'm going to ask "Who's your target audience? What are they looking at?" because on Facebook the average income is about $35,000.

Jaime: I should be on LinkedIn, what the heck?

Josh: Your average on LinkedIn is $107,000 per year.

Jaime: Insane!

Josh: So that's the first part right there, if you're looking just in that, I mean we're not even going to talk about the advertising side, let's go really deep in the online paid advertising side, that's an easy way for people to go, that's why I spend a lot more of my time on authority and helping people because we'll go in and craft stories, we have writers who'll go through that, and we'll have them posted because you can get so much of an audience on LinkedIn without paying anything.

Jaime: Really? Tell me about that.

Josh: Everyone has a story, everyone is unique.

Jaime: I do have a story.

Josh: That's where my coaching side, I work with people and I let them understand, especially for your audience, that everyone has gotten to where they are for a reason, they have a story behind that and they are unique in that sense, and there are people that wish they were where they are and if you were able to take that story and tell someone else how you got there, people will pay for that, even if you get the smallest percentage of a population, half of half of a percent, if you got everyone to pay you a dollar, you'd be pretty rich.

Jaime: That's if you have the traffic side, because otherwise people are just sitting there going "Nobody's coming to my website!"

Josh: But that's where it's about using LinkedIn and Facebook to be able to have these posts, build groups out there and get so much value out there and you're sharing your story and what you do and how you've accomplished that with them without spending, because that's 09the biggest thing, "Do I have the budget to be able to start everything out and bring more people?" Well, use your audience better, use the social sites that allow you to tell your story out there and post and then you have people that you can follow. I assume you use retargeting a little bit in your Facebook ads?

Jaime: Yeah.

Josh: It's very similar to that - the same thing with LinkedIn, you can go out there and be able to use that, get your audience. Once you've built your audience you start LinkedIn groups.

Jaime: Okay, so give me some tactics.

Josh: Of course. Once you get those people that are liking you, the depth you can go with LinkedIn I like because let's say you have 500 connections. Each one of those 500 connections has another 500 connections. When you post a story or anything on LinkedIn it goes to the third level.

Jaime: Oh, it does?

Josh: Yeah, exactly, so friends of friends get to see that. Now, I have almost 10,000 connections but whenever I post I can get up to, I think it's over 20 million people who can receive my post for free.

Jaime: What?

Josh: Yes.

Jaime: You're going to have to help me with this later.

Josh: That's what people don't understand. When I say these are your third level connections, that's who you can reach.

Jaime: I had no idea.

Josh: Most people don't get that. So we help people be able to build that audience and you put that information out there and these value adds, these golden nuggets of information that you feel will be able to affect change and then you start going "Well, hey, I'm going to start a group, let me do that," and groups are free as well, and the good thing that I like about LinkedIn versus Facebook is that Facebook doesn't limit you on groups, LinkedIn does. So if someone chooses to join your LinkedIn group - you're only allowed 50. It might seem like a lot, but I have to drop groups a lot or have new LinkedIn profiles.

Jaime: Really? Cloning yourself!

Josh: So I can follow what's going on.

Jaime: Did you like how that stopped, by the way? Because my battery died in my GoPro. Thankfully Josh had a GoPro right behind us and we stole his battery so we can finish this interview.it was charged, I don't know what happened. So what I want to do now is sort of switch gears a little bit because we started talking about how not only is building companies important and all of that fun stuff but the rest of your life is really important too. Sometimes, when we're new entrepreneurs, it's all about the business and we chug and chug and chug and the rest of life sort of falls by the wayside, especially for people with corporate jobs who are trying to quit and they're trying to do both because it's ridiculous. So how do we manage?

Josh: You have to have balance. When I work with my coaching clients or even with my group as well, at which you were at recently, Monstapreneurs, it's about a balance between, I think, their spirituality, relationships, like physical, nutritional, taking care of your body, and then your business. Again, if you don't have these in equal alignment, one is always going to fall to the wayside. Usually so many people are business wealthy but life poor. I mean, why bother?

Jaime: Yeah, who wants that? I want it all!

Josh: You want to be able to have it all. A lot of entrepreneurs, when they're getting starting, they forget why they're doing this and they're working themselves and they burn out. That's one reason why I started the group Monstapreneurs here in Austin, because it's all about the relax, reset and refocus, because that was something that I needed. I was going in and I was just working, when I was in the online world, most of my time was spent following the money and that's a rollercoaster ride - you have your ups, you have your downs and it's not a fun rollercoaster ride, let me tell you.

Jaime: Most entrepreneurs, new entrepreneurs, don't realize that it's like that most of the time, no matter how big you are, the rollercoaster bumps are just bigger.

Josh: But you can at least make it a little bit more fun, being able to allow yourself to have those equal adjustments because, again, if you're having that rollercoaster ride in business and you have nothing, the support system that you need at home or the physical mentality to keep on pushing forward, how are you supposed to keep in giving 100% every day? So that's a big thing, you can't concentrate and use 100% of yourself all the time in business and if you want to be 100% in business, if you don't have the support from your family, the relationships with your friends, and that's the big thing too - everyone wears different masks. You have your mask as a dad or as a business owner or as a brother, a sister, a mom, and these are all different things and you hold yourself on different pedestals on these different things and it's very difficult and a lot of times you will sell yourself out and you have to realize that you need those people in your life to support and that's about having a good peer system as well. That's what changed my life - when I joined Mavericks, that helped me realize that there are other people, businesses out there and business owners that were out there that were not just following the money but trying to effect positive change in the world and having fun at the same time. I was like "Whoa, okay," and that's where I started really opening up my other businesses and started going "Okay, I have built these other companies in the online world, I have the infrastructure, how can I actually take this and be able to help others?" and that's where I started making sure relationships. You have to have those peers because once I had peers that I felt I could stand up be myself as, we all have different friends, I love my friends who I grew up with but there's always a fine line between business and friends as well, because I had a lot of my friends work for me. They don't work with me anymore because I really did value our friendship more than the business aspect and that starts playing a role even when you're married - you allow that business to affect your marriage and the one thing that I learned, if I didn't tell my wife, I felt like I was protecting her from all of the stress that I was dealing with but I really wasn't, I was just causing more by not including her and letting her know what was going on in my life and there's where a lot of people make a mistake, they don't have those people that they can go and talk to. So that's one of the biggest things is having that peer group, the relationship side. Spiritual, I don't care how you look at it - I am born and raised Catholic but at the same time my spiritual side is meditation. I truly believe every day that using meditation allows me to push forward that much more.

Jaime: Let's dive into that - we actually just had Hal Elrod on the show and me and Josh just had dinner with Hal Elrod last week and he went over this whole thing on how important meditation is. It's been coming up over and over again in the shows, which is really interesting. People keep hearing it and nobody ever does it. So if you guys listened to the show with Hal that just came out, did you do anything? Because if you didn't, we're talking about it again, I don't know if you noticed. So why don't we dive a little bit into meditation and what you do?

Josh: People are scared of it. Meditation is anything. Like Hal will tell you, with his Miracle Morning, even just taking 10 minutes just to sit in totally silence and allow yourself to just take everything away, take all stresses out, and just concentrate on yourself, that's what's amazing. There are a lot of different ways - people are like -I don't know how to meditate, I don't know how to get into it." As long as you get into a state, like people are like "I can't clear my mind," you don't have to clear your mind. I started and I've adjusted my meditation again recently, going through Jesse's gamma - he has an amazing meditation phase that I've started adopting in mine and it's a four stage meditation where it goes through breathing and then you look at prepating, which is basically looking towards the future, where you've been, and what I do when I'm looking to prepate is I look for a focal point that I know will be consistent, so if I want to look at, let's say, within the next year, I'm going to start visualizing one of my kids at their next birthday part, so I know I can see that. Again, you don't want to see it in black and white, you want to make sure you taste it, feel it, see it in colors, sound, everything, and then you kind of work through it, "How do we get there? What's going on?" and then you work your way backwards. That's what I usually do, so when I go to meditate I'm like "Do I want to look a year ahead? Do I want to look five years? Do I want to look at when my kids are graduating high school, or college if they go to college?"

Jaime: Because maybe they should,

Josh: We could have a whole conversation about that too. Again, you have to be able to really decide that, for you, but that's what allows me, because again, people are going "I don't know how to visualize forward." Well, there's always something focal in their minds where they can go "This will happen with or without me." My child will have another birthday so I use that and I work my way back. Then you kind of move back and you kind of digest what you've actually learned and you look at where you are currently and the last piece is just kind of taking it all in. so it's a four stage meditation and by the end of it, immediately after, every time, I take my journal out and I start journaling.

Jaime: Really?

Josh: That's another thing too - you talk about meditation, it goes hand in hand with journaling, you can't just go and do it and assume it's going to change your life immediately but what it's going to do is allow you to relax, reset and refocus your mind and if you can find one idea each time you do it, or one thought process, and at least write it down, there's an opportunity there.

Jaime: I love coupling the two because I think that makes a really big difference. Instead of just journaling when you feel like it, journaling along with meditation, I thing that's really cool. Do you do it every single day?

Josh: Every day.

Jaime: Okay.

Josh: I wake up at 5:30 in the morning and I don't actually work or look at my phone unless it's an emergency phone call until 9 o'clock.

Jaime: Really?

Josh: Because I want to make sure my whole focus is on me.

Jaime: You sound like Hal! What the heck?

Josh: And on my family, because that's the most important part. When I read Hal's book I was like "Wow, I'm doing very similar things and what he's doing, I love it," so that was awesome.

Jaime: It's cool, it comes up over and over and over again - all of the successful people I've been interviewing, It's interesting to see what their routines already are and they're all saying similar things, which is funny.

Josh: The first thing most people are doing these days, which is so prevalent, is they wake up and they reach for their phone and they start checking Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, whatever social media, what's going on, their e-mails. At that point in time they've set precedents for the rest of the day that all of these external things are more important than them. So why do that? Are they more important? Well, that?s going to rule the rest of your day, and I really don?t believe that.

Jaime: But I want to know how many likes I got! I?m kidding.

Josh: Are those truly going to affect you?

Jaime: Exactly.

Josh: If they happened in the middle of the night is it really going to affect your life right then, that you have to know?

Jaime: You're like "Those likes matter!"

Josh: "Did anyone re-pin one of my Pinterests?" I use Pinterest a lot because I love to cook. You're going "Wait a minute, there's a guy talking about Pinterest." I'm sorry.

Jaime: I don't use Pinterest.

Josh: Again, I use Pinterest because I love to cook. So then again I'm very big in left brain, right brain mentality. A good friend of mine, Bill Donius, taught me that whole aspect of being able to do non-dominant hand writing, so while we're talking about journal I also do non-dominant hand writing.

Jaime: You do?

Josh: I do.

Jaime: Interesting - tell me more.

Josh: Non-dominant hand writing, the way I do it, I usually do it at the end of the day, at the end of the night before I go to bed, and I just try to clear my mind and I can't read what I write with my non-dominant hand but it's not about that, it's about awakening another part of your body and your mind because with your dominant side, usually we're looking at black and white - when you're looking at your business, you're looking at your life, you're looking at specifics that are going on. The non-dominant side of your brain will allow you to look at more things with a wider scope. Everything is a feeling - wealth is a feeling, success is a feeling, health is a feeling, these are all feelings that people have - so why not use them to guide your life as well? If you're going "Okay, I've got to be able to hit this number by two months from now, that's my goal in business. Well is that really the most important thing you need to focus on? Maybe there's something else." And as soon as you have that idea, change hands and write with your non-dominant hand. It's not about "I'm going to write this entire thing out and then I can't read it," it's all about trying to open up that side. So I do that in journaling. I was talking about cooking because, again, I cook every night - I love cooking, it's very creative - and I'm running businesses every day and I'm going in and cooking for my family and even my wife will be like "Josh, you've had a long day, you don't need to cook," but for me it's a release because I'm being creative, I'm actually changing mindsets and it's actually a happy place for me so that's why I cook every night and, again, having those equal assets, either non-dominant hand writing or finding something to be creative, while you're running your business, these are all big things that you have to incorporate in your life or you're not going to see your main purpose.

Jaime: Your main purpose - let's talk about that for just a second.

Josh: Again, not looking at things in black and white, like if you look at how your day went - if you're like "I've had a bad day," at the end of the day and you don't know why. I was in an elevator one time and a kid hit all of the buttons, it didn't really affect me that way but for some reason it through me off the rest of the day and when I was writing with my non-dominant hand writing it was like "I can't believe that kid did that," and I was like "Oh, wow." It didn't seem like it was that big of a thing at the time but for some reason it threw my path off slightly.

Jaime: And it came back up again.

Josh: Exactly. There are certain things, like when I was working with all of these different companies just in the advertising world, I realized that I wasn't affecting change. What I really enjoyed was when my friend or other colleagues were like "Hey, Josh, we've got some new systems coming on, would you take a look at it? What's your advice? We want to do this," and I enjoyed doing that, being able to help people be able to affect them and allow them to affect others and that's where a lot of my friends are like "Josh, you love working with people, why don't you do that more? Why don't you do more of the coaching side?" I started working that way, working with companies to be able to help them find someone who has amazing talents, use my abilities and bring them to a peak state to really move forward and only worry about what they do best and allow the infrastructure they've already built to support them and lift them up for success.

Jaime: I think what's so cool too is seeing how you want from having your own company and having a bunch of people working for you to an hour by hour thing just because you really like it. Because everybody is usually like "Let's systematize and work yourself out of the business."

Josh: "Don't take your time for money."

Jaime: Exactly

Josh: But I do have those passive incomes as well because when I start these new companies that I do with my co-founders I'm helping them initially, yes, but once they get to a certain point they take over. The infrastructure is the same; we outsource a lot - at one point I had a lot of employees but we got rid of them because, again, outsourcing is a lot better. If I have a company that does accounting really well, why do I want to build an accounting team and make sure I'm building the entire place, doing the training and everything like that, that may or may not accomplish the goals that I set for them? When you outsource to an accounting firm, they get paid for accomplishing the goal you set out for them or they don't get paid if they don't - bottom line. The same with tech, the same with all these other things.

Jaime: How do you find these?

Josh: They're everywhere. Again, just look for others that have already been there. The same thing with coaches and mentors - with a mentor, you want to look for people that are ten years ahead, so reach out to people that you know, they might have these ideas, there are these different groups. Here in Austin, you can throw a rock and hit 10,000 meet up groups - it's that easy.

Jaime: Which is awesome. It makes me tired.

Josh: It's great. If you really want to find someone, go out there. People are going "Josh, I don't know how to find a job." You just send resumes in, go to these meet up groups, meet someone face to face, be yourself, get out there. You're not going to find something that you really want to do by the internet - you want to talk to someone, see how they react. This company I'm in right now - freaking awesome. If they're actually part of that company and you can see and really connect with that person, you're going to have it better, because it's all about the culture - if you can see a good culture in that company, that means they're moving the bar forward.

Jaime: Do you outsource overseas too or do you just do local?

Josh: I do.

Jaime: So how do you find those and is there a difference between the two?

Josh: We've been doing it for a little bit so it's a little bit different but Malaysia is a great area, there are so many different sites online to help you to reach out and be able to find these different companies that are out there and it's really about reaching out and just talking to someone or getting information and trying things out. You know, as an entrepreneur, you try it out, you fail, you learn, you try it out, you fail, you learn - as entrepreneurs, we will fail. People are like "You're an entrepreneur, a business owner, your life is easy." Well, we trip more times than we succeed but it's that one success that makes what we just went through okay.

Jaime: For sure.

Josh: It's the same thing when you're looking to do this outsourcing - you have to try these people out. When you're outsourcing, they accomplish the goal, they get paid, and if they don't, they don't get paid - bottom line. So you're protected to some extent at that point in time.

Jaime: Do you suggest going to a company? I know a lot of people who are newer are like "I'll just find someone on oDesk."

Josh: oDesk is great.

Jaime: Okay, so finding one person is okay?

Josh: You've got to have a starting point.

Jaime: For sure.

Josh: And you build your way up from there - don't try to take too much on. When you take on employees you're looking at a lot of overhead. If you don't need office space, don't buy office space.

Jaime: What?!

Josh: It's just one of those things.

Jaime: Barely anybody needs office space, it's crazy.

Josh: You really don't have to. As long as you find the right people to work with you or for you, everything can be accomplished and you can meet up and do everything you need to do - we have Skype, we have video.

Jaime: My assistant is in Austin so we could have a space together but we don't.

Josh: That's added overhead that you could put back into the company.

Jaime: Exactly, I agree 1,000%. I know we have to start wrapping up soon too, because we could talk forever. We're going to do another interview at some point because there are so many pieces that we could do and he lives really close so it works out well. "Hey, invite me over again!" So I want to ask the same last question that I ask always and it's what's one action that listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of $1 million?

Josh: I will tell you what I work with my clients on and I have all of my employees do because I think it's one of the easiest things that you can do that allow you to end your day with accomplishment - and that's what everyone wants, because whatever happens when you take this piece, from when you wake up to when you go to bed, you'll know you'll go to sleep feeling accomplished, because whatever happens in between, yeah, it might get crazy, but at least you're finishing the day. so what I have my employees and my clients do is everyone has a phone, you have a camera on your phone, you can take it out and you can look at it and it's good to be able to talk to people too, because if you can talk to yourself, it's amazing, so a piece here, and everyone has to do this, but whatever you write on a piece of paper, does the value of that piece of paper change based on what you wrote on it?

Jaime: Maybe.

Josh: Slightly, but it's still a piece of paper. That's why people are like "Ah, I'll get to it tomorrow," because it's still a piece of paper. You wrote some things down, yeah you want to get to it, but it's easy to disregard a piece of paper. But if you can wake up each morning, after you take your time to yourself,

Jaime: Without your phone.

Josh: Without your phone, what I have them do is think of five things they know they can accomplish that day. I don't care how easy they are, I don't care if they're personal or business - these are things that are so easy that you can accomplish them. Take your phone, look at it and say "Josh, today you're going to?" You have to talk to yourself.

Jaime: Really?

Josh: It can't be "I want to," it's "Josh, today you are going to'" 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 really easy things. I have people go "I can't remember what I said in the morning," so maybe we need to work on what we're picking because it should be so easy that you remember them.

Jaime: You can video it, right?

Josh: Yeah, you're videoing it, you're looking at your camera, you're recording yourself - because if you tell yourself something, you're more apt to do that and hold yourself accountable, because at the end of the night,15 minutes before you go to bed, I have them watch it again, because that's the most important time, before you go to bed, because it replays in your mind more and more and if you feel positive going to bed it's that much more powerful to you. You watch it back, "Okay, I just told myself I'm going to do that, I watched it and hell yeah I did that!" It's that easy. It doesn't matter how much, but when you got up to when you went to bed at least you accomplished those five things so you go to bed feeling accomplished and you wake up energized for the next day because you're going to get a positive sleep, not going to bed thinking "Wow, I didn't do this or that."

Jaime: Sorry, I know that was the last question but I think this is really cool, so I'm trying to figure out whether I try to pick things that are easy so I know I can accomplish them in the day, and will I feel bad if I only do 2 out of 5?

Josh: You can level up as you're going. It's as easy as saying "I'm going to make sure I each a salad for lunch today," or "I'm going to go ahead and when I go to the store I'm going to park further away." Just certain easy things. "I'm going to make sure I say "I love you" to my wife," or "I'm going to make sure I take 10 minutes out and dedicate it 100% to my kids." Whatever it might be, I don't care if you say "I'm going to take a shower today." Maybe you don't take a shower every day! "I'm going to take a shower, I'm going to put on pants today." But, hey, you know what' At the end of the day, I dare you to say that and, at the end of the day, when you watch it, you're not going to smile and be happy. "Heck, yeah, I put on pants! I took a shower!" Right?

Jaime: Winner! That is funny, to be excited about it. "Yes, I put on pants!"

Josh: That's the thing - that's as easy as it can be. You feel accomplished and you feel happy. That's why it can be silly. I don't want you to say anything that you don't feel that you can do. If you have a doubt in your mind that you may or may not be able to do it, don't say it.

Jaime: So we're not like "Now I have my To Do list. I have to get to inbox zero today."

Josh: It's fun, exciting things that you would normally incorporate in your day or you would like to add that would be very easy for you to do. It's as easy as that and it truly does change. One of the guys I was working with here recently, last week, I saw him last night and he goes "Josh, I've got my wife doing it now, my 12 year old daughter is doing it," and he's like "It's awesome. We all love it."

Jaime: That's so awesome.

Josh: When people do interviews or if you're trying to push a video on Facebook, if you can talk to yourself, you can talk to anybody, so it helps in the business side as well, to be able to learn how to talk to a camera. Rather than looking at yourself, you look at the camera.

Jaime: Imagine that too, if you have video from every single day for months on end, seeing your progress and where things have gone.

Josh: Don't keep it on your phone because then your storage is gone.

Jaime: It's a good thing I have a 128gb iPhone 6 - I'll be set for a little while! That is really cool and I've never heard it before.

Josh: So that's something that's as easy as possible to be able to truly start affecting your day and start making changes in your life immediately.

Jaime: That is awesome. Thank you so much. I think that's really, really cool and if you guys do that, make sure you e-mail me and let me know some ideas and what worked and what didn't work because that's really, really cool. Thank you so much for coming on - where can we find out more about you? I forgot to mention it earlier but he has a podcast coming out so if you like this you should definitely subscribe and leave a review for his new podcast. So tell us where we can find it.

Josh: The new podcast is Entrepreneur Clarified, it's going to be on iTunes and we're releasing it daily. It's just five minutes of questions that I come across that I think I could help answer and give insight into that would help regular entrepreneurs. So they're just really quick, easy things and I just figured why not put those out there, I'm looking at those all the time because, again, we do a lot of posts in the different magazines and we're trying to get quotes because, again, that's the authority building side, so I was like if I'm already answering these questions why not record them and put them in a podcast.

Jaime: Distribution tactics.

Josh: Yeah, and along with that we also recently launched Hidden Profit Path, another podcast which I'm the producer of. If you want to find me you can look for Joshua Lee on LinkedIn, that's the easy one, but you can also go to StandoutAuthority.com. I like saying that, it's still fun to say, nobody ever says that. StandoutAuthority.com, that's one of the easiest websites, or MySearchNetwork.com as well.

Jaime: Nice, and we'll make sure to link everything up, especially the podcast, because you guys know if you like this podcast you'll almost definitely like Josh's podcast. Thank you so much for letting me into your home and letting me interview you. I really appreciate it.

Josh: I appreciate it.

Jaime: Take care.

Josh: Bye.

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Tags: Business Growth, business success, Family, Finance, Josh Lee, millionaire interview, morning routines, Motivation, Parenting, Relationship, website monetization, Work Life Balance

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews, Relationships, Visioning

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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