Michael Hudson: Introspection For a Better Business with Big Idea Guru (Sensitive Topic Warning)
Do you need help making your story known?
Growing a business is never easy, but it is especially hard when you’re not understood in the way you intended. With the right message advertised, you can quickly increase your business' impact.
To get the reaction you want, you need to start planning and preparing what you need for the high-stake situations you face every day.
Michael Hudson has discovered that there is a way to prepare for these specific high-stake situations. He calls it the Message Mastery Method™. It makes it easier to craft and share messages that will produce the desired results. This is what Michael shares with his clients to help them attract the right publicity, better advertise their business, and equip others to share their stories.
“Communication is one of the most commonly identified “problems” in business and it’s an easy target in a world overflowing with input from every angle.” – Michael
Learn more about how Big Idea Guru can help you make the right choices to better your business by listening to this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur above and don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – Spotify –Google Play –Castbox – TuneIn – RSS.
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UpMyInfluence is an Influence Agency dedicated to turning thoughtful entrepreneurs into media celebrities increasing their authority, influence and revenue. To learn how we can help YOU check out Josh’s free webinar.
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0:01
Welcome to the thoughtful entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, founder and CEO of up my influence.com, where we turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. So we believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. Even you stick around to the end of this show, where I'll share info on how you could be our next guest, three times a week, five to 15 minutes each learn from successful business owners and professionals. It's time to get inspired. Let's go. All right, Michael Hudson, you're the founder of principle of big idea guru and you are on the web at Michael Hudson.com. Thank you so much for joining us.
0:49
It's an honor and a privilege. Yes. Thank you.
0:52
So Michael, you're a coach. You're speaker consultant. You're a podcaster for someone who's listening to a podcast right now. You can start And your favorite podcast directory, get your message heard is the name of your show. What do you talk about on the podcast?
1:08
And I should be clear Josh right at this moment to podcast is on a brief hiatus while I'm re rejiggering things a little bit. Um, podcast started, there's there's 104 episodes there, the first 50 to 70 episodes, were really about how to get your expert business started, how to get the message you have unlocked to turn it into a business, and how to get yourself off the random revenue roller coaster. The interview phase really shifted more towards let's look at what people have done, how they've gotten here. And what desires is really to unlock that, you know, that really underlying story that people don't always talk about? So it's a lot of those kind of interviews and conversations.
1:44
Yeah. And Michael, what is the impact that you have in the world so I know that one thing that you're you're really, really big on is, is helping people and it feels like you know, kind of be integrity with the impact that they really want to make and The audience that they want to serve, is that rights or can you kind of further define that for me?
2:06
Josh, I think that's a great characterization of it. You know, the thing that I kept discovering, I've been doing this for 35 years, right. And when you're working with speakers, coaches, consultants, and, you know, leaders of entrepreneurial businesses that are sort of at that scale upstage, you know, kind of hit the 5 million mark, and now they want to go further. A lot of times they're struggling with what do they say, to get the right clients, and having the guts to say, I'm going to say what I believe and repel the wrong ones. And so, you know, the fundamental change that that makes in their business is they grow faster, they have less stress, they have more time because they're not serving the wrong clients. And they get much more aligned with their purpose in their vision of what they wanted to create, as opposed to what sometimes they've ended up creating accidentally.
2:52
Now, you take people you take people through a process in order to discover that and what does that process look like? I mean, what what do you exactly what do you Asking or what are some questions that maybe we could even ask ourselves to begin, you know, kind of begin that journey to say, Hey, wait a minute, something, it's, you know, it's like, you know, the entrepreneur or the business professional. It's like, man, something just feels a little bit off. Like, how can we be introspective enough to discover that? And how can we begin that, that shift to kind of write the ship to get more in alignment with what we really want to do? That's a lot of the questions I put in there.
3:32
Like you to 12 second answer.
3:36
Josh, I think it's it starts by asking yourself this question. And I'm going to refer people encourage them to read Michael been gay stain years book, do more great work. And what Michael describes in the book is there's good work, bad work and great work. You know, bad work is abbreviated warm bath because it's a waste of money, bandwidth and time. Good work is the work you're good at. If you don't do it, it doesn't get done. But great work is the work you're really on this planet today. Do so the first my first step in making my pivot and really sort of owning what I'm doing now was making a list of all my clients and putting in more of those three columns. Is this bad work for me? Is this good work? Or is this great work and when I did it Josh and made a pie chart of it, I was 65%, bad work 5% good work and the rest in the middle. So this isn't acceptable. So I made the gutsy choice and fired 65% of my clients, the following Monday morning, made a commitment to double the business. And you know, the question in my mind was, how do you do that? Like, well, what have you learned on your journey? You know, all the things you've learned on your journey that you're not sharing are often the things that opened the door to the right clients raising their hands. And so in my you know, so when you look at the simplest so you my framework is, you know, you you draw a timeline, you know, and identify what's happened, then you look at what are the pivotal moments in that journey you've traveled, and what outcomes that those moments produce. You put those two those three things together and that reveals the lessons that only You can deliver. And as I shared with you, I believe you're here to deliver to a certain audience who needs to get them from you and who will be brought into your world somewhere along the lines. those lessons then allow you to create the framework that you can then use to replicate what you have done through other people and help them leverage your lessons. That make sense.
5:19
Any couple?
5:20
Yeah, give me a couple of before and after examples. That would indicate you might want to take what I'm talking about pretty seriously. Let me demonstrate why. Let me tell you a story about selling so
5:35
and Josh, I'm gonna let me tell you my story real quickly. When I did that, good work, bad work, great work exercise. You know, my business was in let's just call it level x. In the in the under quarter million range, and that's where I wanted, right? My business is a lifestyle business for me. And when I fired those clients, got clear on the messaging started sharing it, guess what happened within 45 to 90 days. Yeah, I doubled the business. And all of a sudden they started showing up like magic. And you can imagine the conversation when you come home and tell your wife I'm firing 65% of the clients on Monday to go I was I really want to work with is not an easy conversation. And that trust factor, they'll show up but they do they just start to show up. So you know, you take another person in you I've worked with where their business was in a situation where they were riding the random revenue roller coaster, they would get lots of clients to fulfill their targets and their their targets were, you know, low six figure range. And which is which tends to be the sweet spot, right? A lot of people I work with, they're making a transition and just getting started from something they did before. Like maybe they were an FBI agent, one of my current coaching clients as a former FBI agent, for example. And this person was tired of the fact that when you they felt like they never had any money. They were working their tail off, you know, they were some of the work, you know, so we map the timeline of their revenue during the year. Guess what happened? There were cycles and you know, the cycles, we all know the cycles, there was a time when you were so busy serving clients, you weren't attracting new ones, and then you didn't have any clients to serve and then you were had no money. So in this particular case, getting clear on what the real message was focused them and I, you know, I think we undervalue the power of focus, the power of not spending our time doing things that aren't productive, not infusing activity with accomplishment, but always doing the right stuff. So we reduced the amount of hours the person was working, because now they got clear instead of having 10 conversations to cover one client, you know now they're having 10 conversations converting six or seven clients because they're not talking to the ones that don't fit and getting them clear on you know, the the path of here's what you're here to say this is what you know, letting them throw out because you know, a lot of people particularly in that transition phase are just looking for the revenues logo take anything like the wheel now.
7:57
Yeah, I think I think see a lot of that with early agencies or freelancers, who say, I technically know how to do that. So I want money. Okay, I'll do that. And I said that last for a while, and then you're like, oh, what am I doing? And Michael, Mike, my, my question is, how often does this seem to follow a pattern of going from general being a generalist to becoming more specific? So one thing that I've seen us do quite a bit is yes, technically, my team and I, there's some things that we could do, we just don't do that anymore. We were happy to refer that business out. But, you know, it's, it's so satisfying when I think when we stay in our zone of genius, you know, like, for example, like media placements, like we can get our clients five to 10 Media placements every single month, and we do it in a very specific way. There are 10s of thousands of PR agencies. That can get media doing more kind of a proactive push kind of, you know, where they're just pitching their clients. I don't like that model, and we don't do it and you know, you go work with them. That's not what we do. So I've noticed I've very much in my conversations, like when people ask, you know, can I do a certain thing? You know, saying, No, I like we could, but we don't do that. Why don't philosophically I don't believe in in that model, I can send you to other people, they'd be happy to take your money. Um, I just, you know, I'm looking at my crystal ball. And I'm like, I believe what I believe. Is that kind of, am I kind of getting warm with your philosophy?
9:43
Yeah, you just nailed it. I mean, that's the thing. It's getting to what do you believe in what do you own and what is more important, you know, in my case, you know, my personal journey. And this is a heavy thing to drop on your audience without ever having met me or knowing me, but you know, I'm over it. It's fine. I'm okay. Yeah. Simply, but I was raped or molested when I was 10 for a year. Now as someone who verbally processes the world and understands the world through talking through ideas and solving problems, that silenced me because the person threatened to kill me I've ever told anyone. Well, that locked me down. And frankly, Josh, it locked me down far longer than I realized in other ways. In part because I didn't want to tell the story. The most powerful, impactful thing in my life I didn't want to share. So then I go to an event is actually Michael heights platform conference, and I hear a Ken Davis speak. And I sit there and I go, you know, all you've ever done is communication work. And you don't call it that. You call it other things. Why do you do that? And I realized, because you don't want to tell that story. You know what, I'm going to tell that story. Six months later, I'm at a client event during an all staff meeting, and I make I'm teaching them about story and I mentioned the same statement. I just made here on the podcast, meeting and we take a break. It's lunchtime. You know, 10 or 12. People come talk to me one stands over in the corner, she's got her arms crossed. And I know because I've worked with a company for a few years. And you can tell she's bothered. When the last person walks away, she comes over, puts her arms around me, Josh loves the stuff anatomy, and starts crying on my shoulder. And I don't mean crying, I mean, bawling. or five minutes later, she kind of calms down. I said, What's going on? She said, I had no idea you were ever afraid to speak in public? And she said, The thing is, that's my story. This happened to me. And she said, You know how I don't speak up in meetings, but I always talk to you privately. I said, Yeah, I noticed. That's what is I don't think my ideas have value. I don't think I have anything to share. Now the beauty of this story is six months later, seven months later, I go back and I'm working with the leadership team again, which this person is all there talking. She's speaking up the end of the day, she stands And she comes over and he says, I need to say thank you said, well appreciate that for what she says, well, because you had the guts to tell that story last November, I took a six month leave of absence went and dealt with what happened to me. So I now know what it means. And now I'm finally realizing I have value. And that was the day Josh, I said, You know what, I've got to help people do this because we can't down.
12:24
You know, I was just at, I was just in Social Media Marketing World, and I saw a presentation and it really was helpful for me. I for a long time, I was afraid to tell people that I've been through bankruptcy, I've lost two homes. You know, when I started savings Angel, I couldn't pay my heating bill. And I wouldn't tell that story because I felt like well, then people won't trust me as much because they'll see that I'm flawed, and I need to project this attractive character. And one thing that I learned is that you know, people will that they will check you out based on your experience, your wisdom, your authority, but they'll stick around and engage with you for your authenticity, your imperfections. And they'll say, Wow, this person is just like me. And so I think, you know, good litmus test I've seen is, if you have a good follower count, but nobody's engaging with you, I don't there might be a reliability issue. And I would invite you know, someone that's experiencing that to kind of take a look at, are you just broadcasting your perfection? Or, you know, maybe see what happens when you start getting real with people, but I suspect people are going to really start connecting with you. You know, we're in a social media world and, you know, for for entrepreneurial friends, I think that's pretty critical.
13:53
I think it completely changes the conversation, right? Because now if I'm that person, so let's say I see Josh, I'm impressed by him. See the work he's doing? But I'm afraid to talk to him because he seems too good when I see it, uh, I don't want to say chink in the armor, but that's an easy way to describe it. I really, maybe he's more like me, you know, and maybe there is something there and I think you open a door to a different conversation and you know, I'm not trying to push the make your pain your path button, because sometimes it's your game, that is your pill. and you know it Then the problem is we tend to not want to share the game because we feel like is braggadocio you know, for example, in my world for a long time after I left the academic world, I didn't ever say the reality that I built two programs at major universities that both were nationally recognized in the top 20 you know, and I didn't want to say that because I felt like it was braggadocio. But you know what's interesting? When I started sharing it, different people raised their hands and turns out they were the right people. Whereas those who didn't know that didn't have the context because it was a I was able to do it kind of because of the gift. I have I've seen what's possible where others don't see it. So, the point is that that story, that lesson that you learned and I use the phrase you earned from your journey is the door opener to attract the clients, you're here to serve to repel the ones you're not. And the sooner we get caught, and you know what you're not for me and that's a good thing. And then you said something in our pre conversation, it ties right into it. But let me tell you who I would refer you to that I think you should talk to as well more in this space. We tend to know the other people who are good for the people we're not good for. Yeah.
15:35
So Michael, you've got a free three part video series. It's called attract your clients. So person is listening to us, you can go to Michael hudson.com, slash attract. So series talks about pain problem, the path and how to attract your clients and of course, the ones that would fit and repel the ones that don't fit. And so I appreciate you for putting that together. And and and offering that. And so Michael, you are the founder of big idea guru since 1984. And of course you're on the web at Michael Hudson calm. Thank you so much for joining us.
16:18
It was a pleasure and a privilege. Josh, thank you very much and love the work you're doing and thank you for having this kind of podcast. I love the framework and the format and the content you can share.
16:32
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