Have you ever felt a gut feeling telling you it's time for a career change? In this enlightening episode of *Seek Go Create - The Leadership Journey*, host Tim Winders dives deep with Vincent Pugliese, a master in crafting profitable membership models, on recognizing the signs that it's time to pivot your professional path. Discover how Vincent's journey from sports photography to empowering others through memberships could inspire your next big move. Tune in to learn how structure, passion alignment, and genuine connections can lead to financial freedom and fulfilling work.

"Transitioning isn't about massive leaps; it's about subtle shifts replacing what you dislike with what brings you joy." - Vincent Pugliese

Access all show and episode resources HERE

About Our Guest:

Vincent Pugliese is an accomplished entrepreneur, award-winning sports photographer, and expert in building profitable membership models. With a rich career spanning several decades, Vincent has transitioned from photographing major sporting events to empowering individuals and businesses to achieve financial freedom through innovative membership strategies. He is celebrated for his dedication to personal growth, creating meaningful connections, and his talent for helping others pivot towards fulfilling careers. Through his engaging workshops and insightful coaching, Vincent has become a sought-after mentor for those looking to transform their professional lives.

Reasons to Listen:

1. **Career Transition Mastery:** Learn Vincent Pugliese's approach to recognizing when it’s time to pivot in your career through gut feelings and aligning with your passions.

2. **Successful Membership Models:** Discover Vincent’s insights on building profitable membership businesses, including unique examples like a high-demand murder mystery quilting membership.

3. **Real Conversations and Personal Growth:** Hear frank discussions on the value of deep, genuine connections in professional settings, and how Vincent’s personal journey shaped his path to fulfillment and financial freedom.

Episode Resources & Action Steps:

### Resources Mentioned

1. **Vincent Pugliese's Website:**

- MyMembershipFreedom.com (https://mymembershipfreedom.com)

- This is Vincent's website where you can learn more about building profitable membership models and achieving financial freedom.

2. **Social Media Platforms:**

- Vincent Pugliese on Facebook and LinkedIn

- These platforms provide daily content, insights, and additional resources for personal and professional growth.

### Action Steps

1. **Assess Your Career Alignment:**

- Take time to reflect on tasks and activities in your current job that bring you joy versus those that drain you. Begin to eliminate or delegate tasks that don't align with your passions and replace them with activities that do.

2. **Start Daily Creative Posting:**

- Implement the practice of daily posting on a social media platform like Facebook to structure your creative output. This consistency can lead to better connections and business growth.

3. **Build Genuine Connections:**

- Focus on building trust and offering value in your interactions before making any sales pitches. Approach new connections with curiosity and a genuine interest in understanding and solving their problems.

Resources for Leaders from Tim Winders & SGC:

🔹 Unlock Your Potential Today!

• 🎙 Coaching with Tim: Elevate your leadership and align your work with your faith. Learn More
• 📚 "Coach: A Story of Success Redefined": A transformative read that will challenge your views on success. Grab Your Copy
• 📝 Faith Driven Leader Quiz: Discover how well you're aligning faith and work with our quick quiz. Take the Quiz

Key Lessons:

1. **Trust Your Gut and Embrace Change**: Vincent emphasizes the importance of listening to gut feelings and making necessary pivots or transitions in your career. Recognizing tasks that don’t align with your passions is crucial for long-term fulfillment.

2. **Structure Fosters Creativity**: Daily posting on social platforms like Facebook can provide the structure necessary for consistent creative output. This discipline not only enhances creativity but also facilitates better connections and business growth.

3. **Prioritize Genuine Connections**: Building trust and offering value before pitching a sale are vital. Vincent highlights the significance of understanding potential clients' needs and solving their problems to establish meaningful and lasting relationships.

4. **Value and Flexibility Over Quick Fixes**: The episode touches upon the importance of foundational work and the dangers of quick-fix culture. Vincent’s emphasis on the long-term approach—dedicating years to writing, creating content, and making connections—underscores the value of steady, consistent growth.

5. **Niche Down for Success**: Whether it's creating tailored membership levels or planning unique events like "unconferences," Vincent illustrates the power of niching down. A focused approach can lead to better community engagement and business opportunities.

Episode Highlights:

00:33 Meet Vincent Pugliese: Membership Business Expert

01:38 The Art of Flexibility and Connection

02:28 Deep Dive into Entrepreneurial Conversations

03:50 The Value of Meaningful Discussions

05:29 Balancing Personal and Professional Interactions

11:59 The Role of Money in Building Relationships

19:57 Vincent's Journey: From Selfish to Selfless

25:01 Transitioning from Photography to Coaching

32:54 The Turning Point: Dave Ramsey Event

34:30 A Life-Changing Decision: Heading to New York

35:47 Building Connections and Foundations

36:25 The Journey to Coaching and Memberships

36:45 The Importance of Long-Term Thinking

52:30 The Power of Recurring Revenue

01:02:16 Final Thoughts and Reflections

Thank you for listening to Seek Go Create!

Our podcast is dedicated to empowering Christian leaders, entrepreneurs, and individuals looking to redefine success in their personal and professional lives. Through in-depth interviews, personal anecdotes, and expert advice, we offer valuable insights and actionable strategies for achieving your goals and living a life of purpose and fulfillment.

If you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, we encourage you to subscribe to or follow Seek Go Create on your favorite podcast platform, including Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode and can stay up-to-date on the latest insights and strategies for success.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Achieve Your Vision with Tim Winders' Executive Coaching

Dreaming of a leadership role that not only achieves goals but also truly inspires? Join Tim Winders, your SeekGoCreate host, on a journey to make those dreams a tangible reality. As an expert executive coach, Tim is dedicated to transforming your aspirations into lasting legacies. With a unique blend of faith-driven guidance and real-world experience, he helps align your professional goals with your deepest values for a fulfilling and successful journey. Ready to shape a path that's truly your own? Schedule a free Discovery Coaching Call with Tim now. Dive into a conversation that could turn your vision into reality. Let's embark on this transformative journey together.

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I'm always saying what's working and what's not working.

And they go, okay, we could add this.

It gives you flexibility.

It gives you the opportunity to add something that wasn't there before.

Okay.

As opposed to this is the way we always do it.

There is no, this is the way we always do it in our world.

There is we're starting over tomorrow, a little bit better than yesterday.

And we look around and we go, there's that.

How can creating a membership business transform your life

and grant you the freedom to control your time and location today on seat,

go create the leadership journey.

We're excited to host Vincent Pugliese, an expert in building profitable

membership models for the past seven years, he and his wife have not only

lived off their membership businesses, but have also empowered others To

create scalable businesses that offer both financial freedom and flexibility.

Vincent is passionate about teaching others to leverage their unique

skills and interests into successful membership platforms with the belief

that even the most obscure niche can generate substantial recurring revenue.

They have mastered the art of identifying and cultivating such opportunities.

Vincent, welcome to SeatGoCreate,

I'm so excited to be here.

Thanks for

man.

I'm excited that you're here too.

I, we've discussed your last name.

I pronounce it a little different every time just to keep us fresh.

And you, you haven't told me I'm totally wrong yet.

So I appreciate that.

With my name, both first and last name, you have to be flexible.

It was my first kind of thing in life.

I, what do you go by?

I go by every version of Vincent.

You can imagine every cause what am I gonna do?

Say, no, it's not bad.

It's this I'm like, whatever you want to say.

so you have to learn how to be flexible early in life with a name like mine.

You do, and, you, you've got the, the accent,

I'm guessing Italian, right?

And, in Vinny, I think when you and I chatted a couple of weeks ago,

we got off on this, My Cousin Vinny thing, which I love that movie.

It's so cool, but,

Terrible year of my life when that came out, I got to

Oh boy.

we may go down to that road in just a little bit, but for right now.

if you're out and about, I know you're in Florida now, you were in Pittsburgh for a

while, you've moved some, but, if you are on a plane or you bump into somebody, and

I know you're always connecting, that's the theme I believe of this conversation.

If you bump into somebody that they don't have a clue what you do, maybe

you're not even a business connection and they ask you what you do, what do

you tell somebody when they ask you that?

I it's funny you asked because with a lot of

us entrepreneurs, you could have a lot of things you could say.

And I've come on this one line where I say I have a membership for memberships.

And I always get that sideways look that a dog gives you when you

say something to them because they go, I don't know what that means.

And I love that because it actually brings up conversation as opposed

to saying, the typical, I do this to help this person to do that.

I'm like, I have a membership for memberships.

And they go, and if you're not in the entrepreneurial space.

They're like, I have no clue what you're talking about.

And if they are at it, they're like, tell me more.

And then we, it leads to almost every single time.

It leads to a more meaningful discussion, which is better for me than a one liner

Do.

Do you prefer, does it matter to you?

If they are in the entrepreneurial space and it lets you go down your path of

what you really do, or let's just say it's, I don't know, grandma Margaret on a

plane and she looks at you and membership means nothing to her, but yet she's

still intrigued and wants to talk to you.

Do you prefer one over the other?

Does it matter to you?

Are they just people that you could connect with?

it's interesting conversation.

Cause I usually like to ask the questions and I've found that.

Most people aren't really kind of, um, versed in that.

I find the world to be not very curious and I think it needs to be more.

So I always lean on the fact that I don't really want to talk about myself.

I want to talk about you.

So I'll generally ask the questions.

I'll I've had tons of conversations where it's like.

Long time.

And they only asked one question and, after a while, it's not going

to be a friend of mine, because if you're totally not that curious,

we're not going to go very far, but I can totally do the interview.

If somebody is very kind of shy.

Or they're not curious.

Cause I'm just, I love meeting people.

I love learning what makes people tick.

And then as the conversation goes on and they go, what do you do?

And then once I explain it, it, almost solidifies it where they go, Oh, I can

see why you would do that while you'd be good at that simply by the way that

I asked the questions to begin with.

So it's generally not people asking me, I don't know if you experienced that.

Maybe it's just my face, but people just aren't asking me.

I generally ask them more than they asked me.

it's the same way with me.

and my followup to that is, Do you enjoy a situation like this where for the next

55, 60 minutes, I'm really asking the questions, which I love to do, by the

way, and that's why I love this format and you're, just responding to the

questions and we've chitchatted before.

So you know maybe where we're going.

I don't know.

Maybe you don't.

Does it, I don't want to say, are you uncomfortable, but when someone else

is asking the questions like I am.

What kind of role do you feel like you're in at that point?

Okay.

It's twofold in this setting, completely comfortable when it's a screen.

I could see you and you could see me and I know what we're doing here.

I'm completely fine with it.

Cause I know that we're helping people out and we're talking to people.

But in a personal setting, I'm not comfortable.

I try to turn the tides.

I'm like, all right, you I'm not here.

I'm not interested in talking about myself.

I know about myself.

I know who I am, right?

I'm interested in learning.

I find out so much by asking curious questions and by asking follow

up questions that I'm really not interested in telling my story.

I'll tell it here because I know the benefit all around of it, but

in real life, no, I, you can go years with me connected and I won't

really talk that much about myself.

I'll generally talk about you unless you're, we're in a conversation

and get deeper beyond it.

so this is fascinating.

I had not planned on talking about this, but I think there's some value

in this because I think there's some people that are wired similar, and I'm

not saying that you and I are wired the same, but there's a lot of commonalities.

I'm just genuinely curious.

I want to know as much as I can, like one of the drawbacks to that, just

Every superpower has a kryptonite is that I'm addicted to information.

And I've realized that I need to cut back on all that I try to consume because I

don't need to know all that stuff that as much as, that comes up, but I do, I

am at times, and maybe this is maturity.

Concern that I might be controlling and dominating conversations and situations.

I'll give you a quick example where we're parked here in the Black Hills

and we've got a great little sitting area in the back with our fire pit.

And the other night we had some of our neighbors come over and say,

Hey, you mind if we sit with you?

Which.

That's like dog on a bone for me.

I love that stuff.

I'm usually going out and about and she's got a background in medical.

He's got a background in the air force, retired.

It was great.

They've been traveling in their RV for a while.

All that's really cool conversation.

But one of the things I am trying to be more aware of is in a situation where

there was five of us sitting around here, our grown son was with us also.

I didn't want to be the guy dominating that conversation.

it was social.

Mostly, but is that thought ever crossed your mind like

where you're in a situation?

Maybe it's networking.

Maybe it's business Maybe it's at a conference.

We're going to talk later And you walk away going man I know I

ask all the questions and I'm the curious one, but I dominate that.

I'm becoming more aware of that.

Does that ever cross your mind?

The dominating part doesn't worry me like

it used to, cause it did.

The more self awareness you get as you get older, the more you realize, Oh, shut up.

they're looking around, they're looking at their watch and they're looking, they're

looking over their shoulder or Oh crap.

I'm telling a, I'm telling a 14 minute story and I'm six minutes into it.

And they don't care at all.

Like I've had those moments in the past.

my concern now is not the dominating part.

It is, I am.

I'm an extroverted introvert, right?

So I don't love, I don't like networking.

I don't like large crowds of small talk.

Just don't, I don't like, Oh, what do you do?

What do you do?

Okay.

Okay.

I'll talk to somebody else.

I'm like, no, I would rather pull you aside and let's just

have a real conversation, right?

Let's talk about real stuff.

I don't need the niceties.

I don't need, so my problem is this.

I can get too deep too quickly.

With the curiosity and then even in terms of the conversation, I've had

people say, Oh my goodness, 10 minutes in, and this is like intense because

I'm like, because it's so real.

And I have to realize sometimes I'm completely ready for it.

Cause I love it.

And they've been having maybe a lot of more thin conversations that don't

go there and they're not ready for it.

That's my awareness.

Now it's not dominating.

Cause generally they do more talking than I do.

I, as.

but in terms of the questions and the follow up, it can get real,

but that's where I've learned everything about everybody.

It's so valuable, but I don't think everybody's always ready for it.

I, same thing here.

I'm looking at my timestamp.

We're at the nine minute mark we've been talking and we're already going into

some like deep personality type things.

And this is exact, this is the same thing I do when I'm talking to people.

I mean, it's like, oh, how long can you talk about the weather or even I'm.

I'm starting to get bored talking about sports and politics and all that stuff.

And some people dig it.

I'm not, that's fine, but I think you can only talk about, a game coming up or a

game that happened so much, just live the game and we're going to go into, I know

your background in sports photography.

So I'm going to, I'm going to dig in that just a little while, but I'm the

same way I'm getting extremely bored.

I would rather spend some time just by myself with a book or, my wife

or something like that than idle.

And I think I heard the same thing from you.

So similar.

So

100 percent I, the, just that boring kind of, I hate to say

it, like the cocktail hour conversations just get me out, it's loud, it's noisy.

it's impersonal.

Everybody's, maybe everybody's pitching their stuff or they're

giving you a business call.

Hey, can we just, you know, go over there and have a real conversation?

Do we need to do any of this?

So yeah, my style of conversation, what I love doing doesn't

lend itself to the small

then here's the, I want to throw a little gas on this fire because

I think this kind of fits in money.

We'll often start creeping into conversations that some people have.

If I think back into my career when I was hardcore networking, cause I thought

that's what I was supposed to do.

I would look at Vincent right now when I'm talking to you, even though

we're 11 plus minutes in, and I would have done this at the 32nd mark.

And I would have seen dollar signs on your head, even though I would have had

some compassion and I would have been curious and all that kind of stuff.

I would have been trying to manufacture what's the transaction

that you and I may participate in.

And it may not be just me transacting, getting money from you.

It might be, what can I do to help you do something?

It was not entirely self.

And maybe it wasn't whatever Tell me a little more about your view of money

maybe today and if you could contrast it if you had a different view of money in

this arena of communication connection blah blah blah, 20 years ago or whatever,

almost like motive of type of

yeah.

whatever, however you want to take it.

I just want to throw money into the equation here.

Yeah.

It's funny because you, the more you do this, the more you see it, the more you

go, like it's, you equate it very simply.

I think everybody can relate to this.

You go to LinkedIn.

You get a friend request, you accept it and then comes the pitch, right?

Boom.

And it's typed out and it's got emojis to it.

It's got and literally I'm, my personality, did you

just friend me and pitch me?

Did you really just do that?

And.

and then there's a quick block almost all the time, but like view

that in the personal space, right?

Okay.

That's so easy for so many scammers to do online, but there's a lot of people

that kind of equate that to, like you said, okay, dollar signs right away.

And, everybody's trying to build a business and at least

in our, in a lot of our space.

So the business side comes into it.

It really does come into it because you're looking for the right people are,

you're trying to help the right people.

What I viewed as this, and it's been probably the game changer for me is

any good relationship that I get into a conversation with the transaction wise.

I think this something great is going to happen between us

within the next three years.

Next three years, something great one way or the other, meaning two

years and 10 months from now, I might make a referral to you and

say, you got to work with him, right?

Or, contrast, I might talk to you and you go, I'm looking for a cool event and all

these events are awful that I'm going to.

And I'd be like, I'll tell you something.

We're creating something that's a little bit different and maybe you should go.

If it, if you have awareness of what's going on, who the person

is and how the relationship is and how the trust is being built.

I say it all the time.

Content leads to connection leads to content.

And when those merge at the right point, make an offer, but it doesn't

mean connect with somebody on LinkedIn and then try to pitch them something

or meet somebody in person and say, you should buy my life insurance.

no, you haven't earned trust there yet.

I don't believe in you yet.

You don't believe in me yet.

And it's just so presumptuous.

So when you go into it, and the other thing is when you can add so much value to

somebody's life with what you do, meaning I'm, I'm in the membership space and I'll

talk to somebody had one yesterday and we just had a phone call because we met

at a conference a year ago and I asked how it's going and she's totally stressed

out, has a successful business, right?

But I know right away from my space, I bet you she's very

heavy into client Has to be.

She's not in my space cause she doesn't really have too much time freedom.

She's got a good business, but it's tons of client work.

And I asked her that, are you heavy?

And she said, yeah, we started talking within a half an hour when I explained

what we do and how we do it and what my schedule is like and what is it.

She, we, she had to go, but she's I want to talk to you more about memberships.

Now, what was that?

That was a conversation.

That's me using my expertise to hopefully help her.

But if the things align.

And I can help them with what I have, as opposed to me trying to make a sale.

I don't ever think of it in sales.

I think of it like in terms of offers, what make an offer when you've built

trust and they need what you do.

I'm not trying to sell anybody.

I'm trying to make an offer.

So there's a collaboration if it's right.

So that, that, and, but again, coupled with what I said in the very beginning,

never have any rush with any of it.

People screw up because they're desperate and they want

Yeah.

They come across as

you think of it,

they come across as super desperate on those LinkedIn posts.

And the thing I love about what you said is that to me, your value

is you're helping someone solve a problem, but you don't know that

problem until you get to know them.

See some, so many people are attempting to go straight for the jugular.

I've got them in LinkedIn right now.

I could guarantee you when you have.

Podcasts and that you're a coach and different things like that.

that everybody wants to show me how to become an 8 million, eight

figure coach when they're probably a zero figure appointment setter.

So I don't even know.

I'm same thing, but the thing I wanted to slow down on is that you

are taking the time to bring value.

My, my observation, you tell me if this is right or wrong by solving a problem.

If they've got one, they may not have one, but most people have problems, right?

So you're just communicating to find out what that might be, correct?

it comes down to curiosity, right?

Let's say we meet and I go, and we talk about career and

you go, things are awesome.

Like, and you tell me all this stuff, traveled, my family business

is booming, blah, blah, blah.

I'm doing this and doing that.

We're helping these people.

My mindset goes to, Oh, who can I connect to them that needs what they're doing?

Because they obvious obviously had us locked in.

But if I said, you need my mastermind.

what are you talking about?

Like, why would I even ask that they're not asking about it?

They're not in need of it.

They're not curious about it, but I'm going into it in terms of what I need.

It's immediately Hey, how can I help in one way or the other?

How can I add value?

A friend of mine, I don't know if you know who Laura Portier is.

She was a guest on one of our calls in our community.

She's a Facebook ads expert and she built this amazing business.

And she told me one time, she goes, every time I get on a call, Like a discovery

call, whatever you want to call it.

She goes, I just act like they paid me 500 bucks.

So what she did was I'm going to add massive value without leading

into the pitch without, Oh, let me give you a step or two, but you

need to come pay me for the rest.

She just let it all out.

By the end of the conversation, they're all like, how do I work with you?

Cause you're so good.

So we enacted that, a year ago where I'm just going to add

value on one of those calls.

And what I learned is.

By the end of the call, when you've added 500, 000, 1, 500 value in terms

of what they can do, and you blew their mind a little bit and add stuff, they

realize when that phone hangs up, I don't have access to this person anymore.

And that was really valuable.

They wind up asking me beyond, I'm being totally honest, they wind

up asking me about what I do way more than I say, this is what I do.

Because if you can rock their world for 45 minutes in a space

that you're an expert in, and then they say Oh, I need more of this.

Is this what you do?

I didn't talk about it very much, but I proved to you by helping you, I do this.

So that's the approach we take.

and if they leave there and they go great, and they don't call me again

for a year until they told me they did the work and I'm like, Fantastic.

Let's talk again.

That was, I'm thrilled.

It's not about, nothing's about short term and that's where I

think so many people get hurt.

Nothing is about needing anything now or this year, and then it

makes three years so much better.

and at the end of the day, because you've approached it

in what I would call a genuine way, you lay your head on the pillow.

You don't feel like you need to go bathe off.

Any of the, crappy manipulative Marketing

funnel stuff that it's all out there and it's not really all bad Is I

think it's just when people attempt to use it in a we'll just call it non

genuine Way i've get here's a question that's just jumped in my head vincent.

So let's go here for just a minute And the question is this, have you

always had this type of energy around?

I'm using a big word connection because I think connection is like the umbrella that

seems to be most of what you're doing now.

It all fits in, the unconference we're going to talk about a little while,

the membership, total freedom that you did a while back, your book, the wealth

of connection, all of that seems to fit Under that connection umbrella.

But if we were to go back 15, 20, how old are you?

How old are you?

I'm 52.

You had to think about that for a second.

Didn't you?

We're at that.

So you're 52.

So go back 30 years.

your early twenties or even your teens, what was Vincent like then?

were you sort of a connector?

Did, can you see glimpses of that personality at that time?

I can't.

What was Vincent like?

He was a jerk.

He was a selfish jerk.

That's the best way I can say what I was like from 16 to 22.

There's just really no other way to respond.

I was, it was completely about me, what I wanted, what I

needed and what I needed to get.

There's just no doubt about it.

I had humor and I had some wit so I can make people laugh and I

can, have fun and do dumb things.

But yeah, it was all about me.

It was not about, it was nothing about connection in a genuine

helpful form, not at all.

but.

But

you had some gifts and talents that led you into some things that we could talk

maybe now about, I think, photography and things like that, So when did, can

you pinpoint something that occurred or a timeframe that you began moving

away from, all about self to then connecting and thinking about others?

Cause I can in my life, there's a few situations where I say that, God got my

attention with a two by four to the head and said, okay, now I'm going to use

these skills that I gave you for good.

Is there anything like that, that you can pinpoint along the way?

100%.

So when I was 22, after screwing around for six years at a really

deep comp, not a very short, but deep conversation with my dad, because

I wasn't going anywhere in life.

It was the first time I paid attention to it.

So I don't know what I'm doing.

It was middle of the night, just stressed out.

and he said to me, he goes, you love sports.

You like travel and you like taking pictures.

Why don't you become a sports photographer?

He went upstairs with a glass of water, two 30 in the morning.

I'm like, what is that even a job?

I'm like.

Nobody in school told me you can, that would be my dream job.

Why did anybody tell me this?

And so then the next day I look at the newspaper and I see a picture on

the back page, I'm like, how did I not notice there's a name underneath that?

Somebody took that picture and they got paid for that.

I went out and bought a camera and a lens that day.

And my uncle, who's an amateur photographer is you idiot.

Why don't you talk to me?

there's auto focus now.

I bought a manual focus camera in 1994.

Like I didn't know what I was doing.

I just wanted to get started and I would sneak and I would buy the

cheapest tickets to games that was in New York, Yankee games and Mets

games at Yankee stadium, Shea stadium.

And I learned how to sneak down to the front row by watching the security guards.

I'd watch security guards, and they would walk down to the dugout in between

innings, and I would follow behind them, and I would sit down in an empty seat.

And they'd walk past me when the innings start, and then as soon as they got past

me, I would walk down to the front row.

So every game, I was in the first or second row with my camera.

And then I figured out how to sit next to the professional photographers.

So I would every night ask them questions.

What kind of film do you use?

And what kind of camera who do you work for?

How much do you get paid?

But that was my first real school that I paid attention to and wound up getting

internship with the national hockey league, a subsidiary of the NHL, and then

being published in magazines and hockey cards and, getting internship at news

it, Building onto where I eventually won international sports photographer of the

year for a newspaper that I worked for.

and that built out in this business that started after that,

when our first son was born.

But to answer your question, I did that for 20 something years.

I did everything you can imagine.

Superbowls world series traveled everywhere to do it, but at some

point along, and I think it was the first NHL finals that I covered.

before I actually photographed them actually winning something.

I was there and I was almost emotionally empty.

This was my dream assignment.

This was my dream assignment.

The thing I've been wanting forever.

I'm credentialed.

I got on ice credentials in case they win everything you can imagine.

And I was like, I don't care.

I don't care anymore.

And here's why I finally said to myself, I was doing this all either for me.

Or for the attention I was getting from it, because I finally did something

that people thought was cool, right?

I would show up at a party and I was the guy that was with Tom

Brady the day before, right?

I'm next to LeBron James on the sidelines, right?

Listening to him call the winning play.

Of a game and taking notes on that, that became my identity and without it,

who was I, so I had friends that would talk to me all sports and then there

was, when there was nothing sports to talk about, it was empty and I felt

empty and I'm like a circus clown.

I'm here for the show.

To either impress people or for them to impress their friends.

That's what would happen.

But what was I contributing?

And that's when I finally realized it was all about my own selfish goals.

I wasn't helping anybody with the work I was doing, at least from my perspective,

I was helping me and that was the.

Holy crap.

I hit the pinnacle of what I wanted to do and I'm completely empty.

Now you'll hear billionaires talk about that in terms of money.

I didn't get the billionaire status, but I got the career status where I was

like, more of this is not helping me.

it's not what I wanted.

So I eventually within a year, I declared I'm not doing this anymore.

And what happened was this was the change I was shooting a wedding

because weddings made good money.

Sports didn't always make good money, but weddings did.

And I was photographing a wedding with one of the best DJs in town, but he was great

at art and he was terrible at business.

That's almost every artist.

Every creative artist is great at art, terrible business.

You'll talk to podcasters who will obsess over everything.

They don't know how to do business.

So while we ate dinner, I coached him for an hour on his business.

I'm like, I've been watching you.

What about this?

Why don't you try that?

Don't do all the stuff by the end of it.

He's you just changed my business.

And I was like, cool.

And then he went up to turn the music on for the reception.

And I remember thinking, I don't want to go out there.

I want to talk to him some more.

And then that same night, some drunk guy in the dance floor is like,

Hey, cameraman, take my picture.

I'm like, I went home and I told my wife who was in bed, I said, I'm done.

I'm done with this.

And she's what do you mean?

I don't want to do this anymore.

And it was making really good money.

It was a strong six figures, but it didn't require that much time.

And I was like, I'm done.

And not that I'm going to quit tomorrow.

We have three kids and, but I said, she said, what do you want to do?

And I said to her, I said that conversation I had with that DJ,

if I could find a way to do that for a living in some form, I

Would be the greatest thing ever.

Cause I felt so good that I helped him with an expertise that I had.

So there were a lot of moments within those 20 years in between

where it started getting in there.

But that was the moment where it was like, it's not about me.

And I'll tell you, I'm so thrilled for like literally whole different

life from that moment on.

So Vincent, one thing that, is.

Interesting.

we have this subtitle, the leadership journey, just because journey

to me is what fascinates me.

I love to learn from people's journeys and one of the things I

think this also fascinating is how many people out there would have

reached that place that you did.

and would have convinced themselves that they need to keep doing it.

Either they had so much invested in it or either social capital or

real capital or whatever, and they would have just kept going along.

And so there's a couple of things that I heard.

I'm going to mention them and then you could respond to whatever you want to.

number one, you recognized it.

you had a situation where, something sparked in you and all of a sudden

you're coaching someone when you're really, your eyes were off yourself.

That's exactly the way I perceive it.

Your eyes were on yourself before you talked to that DJ,

when you talked to that DJ, bam.

But there was probably stuff building up along the way there.

And then the second thing, and I'm going to bring this up here

because I think it's important and you talk to your wife about it.

And she didn't, I think her name's Elizabeth.

I've seen, I see her name on all your stuff.

And so I think y'all are a team.

She didn't say, listen, big guy, you bring the money in here.

Don't you think about doing anything different and changing our lifestyle?

there's a whole factor of who your partner is and stuff like that.

Anything I just brought up there, whatever you want to respond to, just

to talk about that transition before we move along to the next phase of

your story, because I think wives,

spouses are important.

Oh, you just highlight how lucky I got by the person I married.

Um, from the funny side of it.

She knows that if it was just about money, I'd be miserable and she wouldn't

wanna live with me if I have to.

It is it's like me in school.

If I have to continue doing something that I don't wanna do, I don't care

how much money it is, I can't pretend.

I can't go into the office every day with the briefcase until I retire.

Like anything, but, and she married me knowing that, So it wasn't a big,

I wasn't stunned by her response because she knows that the more

excited I am with the work that I'm doing, the better I am at home and the

more money we will eventually make.

But we're also both very.

about couples and relationships, you know, you hear, listen to Dave

Ramsey and say, there's one side,

one person's a spender, one person to save her almost every relationship.

We're both on the saver side.

We neither one of us need very much.

we have much more than we need as it is.

And it's something where it's like money never really drove us.

And we'd never made decisions based on money.

So even when I quit my job.

To become a full time, entrepreneur, it was like, okay, it's going to be a

rough year, but we'll make it happen.

And we can do with a lot less.

And how much do we really need?

And what do we really eat?

And what do the kids need?

The kids they're happy with dirt.

come on, let's not make our life dependent on the need for money.

But I will see a lot of people that will tell me.

I cannot start that thing because I need to replace my income.

And I say, how much is your income?

Like about 160 grand.

And my wife makes 50 doing this.

I'm like, so you can't do what you want to do because you have to replace that.

How about you save a little bit of money for a couple of months and do what you

love doing, but you don't need people.

Tim, give me that answer.

I got to replace my income.

I want to be in a situation where money makes no difference in terms

of the work that I do and the less that I need, the easier that is.

That's a really hard thing to convince to America.

it just really is for this country to see that, that you don't need that much, but.

You know, get into finances when the average car payment, 700, when everybody's

in gymnastics and all these different Taekwondo and they're paying for all this

stuff and there's a country, there's all this different stuff involved when we

need three vacations a year, enjoy the job that you're going to have for the next 20

years because you trapped yourself into it and you won't do anything to change it.

We, we both are, we'd be fine with so much less.

Which allows me to fire a client.

That's a pain in the butt and we've done, we fired high price

clients because they just weren't fun to work with, can't do that.

If you always need as much money as possible and you're in debt

and your budget's that high.

So that's why, and she's wonderful to, she's the best

thing that ever happened to me.

I think the cool thing about that, which what I hear you say too

is whatev, whatever people are making, they need to be spending less than that.

There was a time in my life where we weren't, and I know you recognize

this, but you're talking to a guy that he and his wife live in an RV

motor coach that's, 15 years old.

We travel around and when I tell people what our quote unquote overhead is,

when I tell them that my biggest bill.

Is my cell phone bill, they go.

I, you're talking about flexibility and we haven't always had that.

And I think, when we talk about things like, total freedom and all

that's part of the equation it is.

cause I don't care what people do to bring in revenue.

And I, this is the way I thought like nineties into the two thousands,

I'm just going to out earn it.

I'm just going to out earn.

I'm just going to make more.

I'm going to, I had a membership during the two thousands in the

real estate investing space.

in oh eight.

I had no margin and bam, that was

ugly.

So I think that's a great transition.

I'd love to ask more about the sports photography and all that.

But truthfully, I want to talk about the more fun stuff because I know that you

did so many cool things and all that.

We'll let somebody check all that out and on some other way you transitioned.

And I know it probably wasn't, just snap the finger and you

did, but you made the decision.

Give me some of the timeframes from there to when you looked around and went, okay,

I am an entrepreneur in a different space.

Photography's behind me and I'm moving in a new direction.

Give me rough timeframes, when that was, that kind of stuff.

years?

Years and how long?

some people think, you wake up one morning, Friday, you shut it down.

And then Monday, you're like in something new.

I'm guessing there was transition.

And if you want to give the years, that's cool, too.

yeah.

So around 2013 is when it really started to hit me.

I went to, here's where it happened.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you the origin of it.

I was slated to photograph a Pittsburgh pirates playoff game.

And if anybody's familiar with the Pittsburgh pirates playoff

games with the pirates are very rare, so they're very special.

Especially a home game, very rare.

It wasn't the, we went to the first game that they had in 20 years.

This was the next year.

So they were having another wild card game, second playoff

game in Pittsburgh in 21 years.

I'm credentialed to shoot that game, which is going to be a mad house and

so much fun in your dream assignment.

At the same time, my wife and I were hired by Dave Ramsey to

photograph one of his events.

In Pittsburgh a week before that.

So they found us and they hired us and we were doing, I don't know

what big event they were doing.

So backstage we're photographing Dave and his daughter, Rachel, and a bunch

of people and Chris Medford was their director of live events at that point.

Chris introduced himself to us and we're talking about the event, what to do.

And he goes, yeah, we're stressed out.

We're, we're planning a big event in New York next week, and it's

just taking up all our time.

And I said, and the event was, it's called business gets personal,

which is a great title, right?

To start this with.

And it was Dave, Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk all co headlining it.

There's only the three of them.

And it was at the Rose theater in New York city.

And I'd wanted to go and the tickets were not cheap.

It was a thousand dollars a ticket.

Um, the problem was that event was the day after the pirates playoff game.

So there's no way I can shoot a game transmit one o'clock in

the morning and get to New York.

And eight hours without any sleep.

And I actually planned it.

I thought, can I get there with no sleep and have a lot?

I tried to figure it all out.

You know what?

You can't do that.

I'm not going to work.

I'm going to be, I literally looked at it.

How do I take, so it didn't happen.

So I see Chris and he says, we're doing this event.

and I said to him, yeah, I'd love to go.

I'd want to go, but then he cut me off.

He didn't hear the second part.

I said, but I can't, cause I have an assignment.

And he looked at me and said, do you want to go?

And I'm like, is that a sign?

Cause he asked me, even though I said that, I said, yeah, I want to go.

And he looks at me, he goes, I'll have my assistant get you tickets.

I was like, okay.

So we went and shot the thing and this was my crossroads.

What do I do?

I've got the credential for this career that I've been doing for 20 years that

I've loved, but I know I'm starting to fade and I've got this event I

go to where I can meet these people.

It's a VIP pass.

I'm going to be having dinner with Gary and Seth and Dave.

And it's in the space that I want to go into, which I'm not, I'm an

entrepreneur, but I'm not in that space.

I'm in the service based entrepreneur photographer thing.

This is a space I want to go into content creation.

What do I do?

I got a decision to make here.

And I talked to Elizabeth and what do I do?

And she said to me, You got to go to New York.

So you got to go.

And I get emotional thinking about it.

Cause it would be very easy to be like, you go to New York, you know what that

means you're checking out of a career.

Like I knew if I didn't take that credential, that game I'm on my way out.

I knew, I know myself.

And I'm like, if I don't go to that game, I can't keep putting my effort in.

So I went to New York and I met Gary and I met Dave and I met Seth and I met a

good friend called named Ken Carfagno, who we started masterminding the next week

on our business is what we're building.

We did that every week and he took notes and he is still a part of our group today.

One of my closest friends.

and I met him at that event.

That was the moment and it took three years of writing and creating content and

doing a blog that nobody read and then.

Meeting people and making connections and connecting with podcasters and

then going to podcast movement and not even having anything, but starting

to get interviewed on podcasts when I'm writing a book and that's what,

that's where it all took shape.

So when we started coaching and then getting into the membership

space in 2017, there was four years.

Of foundational work and connection that happened before we even

started doing anything with it.

cause I didn't have the confidence.

What am I going to do?

And so that was, and then, but once 2016, 2017 happened, it

just started shooting upwards.

So the cool thing about this word journey is that it, there really

are, if someone considers it a journey.

And you've already said you're not thinking short term.

It's not like you're in 2013 saying, okay, I'm going to this event.

I need to sell something the following week to really

prove that this is worthwhile.

People think that way.

We know they do.

They show up and, they show up at conferences.

they buy a pitch or a package or something like that, thinking they're

going to make money the next week.

We dealt with this in our organization that we had with real estate investors.

They thought it was a.

Okay.

Quick thing and all that kind of stuff.

so here's what I listed out.

When I was just checking out Vincent here in the last couple of days And

it started progressing it went, I had growing up which we talked about that

photography And then I wrote total freedom membership freedom unconference

And then I kind of wrote that kind of did this thing that connection was something

that kind of fit all that together.

Did I miss anything along the way?

Were there, are those kind of some of the big, brands and all that, because

there's been some shifts, that total free room was bigger and now you've niched

it down more to memberships within that.

And I listened to a podcast where you had just spent like two months in your

pool thinking about what you About that

transition.

So what else about transition pivot?

Because some people will think this is our theme here a little bit, that if

they're doing something, they need to just keep doing it the rest of their lives.

That's not what we're talking about here.

We're talking about

listening yourself.

If you're a faith person, listening to it, that divine voice, listen to

your inner voice, whatever it is.

So give me a couple of those transitions and what Someone listening can learn

from, I don't even like the word pivot.

Truthfully pivot, I think has been a little bit overused, but if you want

to use it, you're welcome to use pivot.

it's the problem is it's the right word.

It just is the right, it's a con to me.

It's a constant pivot with consistent growth.

We're always paying attention to what the next step is.

So it's almost like you're starting fresh the next day with a little bit

of an advantage over the day before.

And I just want to keep playing the game.

So the game does not have to be total life freedom.

It did not have to be my book.

We do this for a while.

We learn how to run memberships.

We had a membership on photography for a while.

And then I realized what's working and what's not working.

I'm always saying what's working and what's not working.

And they go, okay, we could add this.

It gives you flexibility.

It gives you the opportunity to add something that wasn't there before.

Okay.

As opposed to this is the way we always do it.

There is no, this is the way we always do it in our world.

There is we're starting over tomorrow, a little bit better than yesterday.

And we look around and we go, there's that.

So that's what happened with us.

We had the total life freedom membership for five years and reiterate the story.

I was feeling.

What are we doing here?

It's going well.

It's very profitable, literally for the membership required a couple of hours

a week for me, it would be the dream scenario for a lot of people, just

like I guess the sports photography career would have been for other

people, but I'm like, it's not right.

Something's not right.

And it's not that I'm always negative.

I'm not, I'm just assessing where where is that spot?

And it's always there.

So I sat in the pool for a couple of weeks, like a hobo, right?

Just sitting on a float thinking, I'm like, something's not right here.

And then it finally hit me.

I said, memberships.

We have a call every month within our membership, helping

people build memberships.

About a third of our membership was building them already with our guidance.

Why don't we niche down?

Cause memberships gave us the freedom.

We were able to move from Pennsylvania, Florida on a dime during COVID because

we have recurring online revenue and we don't have to be any one place

and it's all the incomes all there.

So getting everything was easy when everybody else was struggling.

If we can create a sister adjacent membership for memberships, where

that's what we talk about specifically, and everybody there is on the same

path and we have a roadmap for them.

It was so much more clear.

Then what we were doing before, which was cool in a great group, but at times,

God, like, what are we doing here?

That's what was my question.

So that we, so I did a lot of market research.

This is what I teach.

And most people don't do get on the phone and talk to people and don't sell them.

ask them real questions.

Give me feedback, shoot holes in this.

Tell me what the price point sound.

You're not looking to make money off of it.

You're looking for information.

And the overwhelming response was, this is amazing.

60 people from those phone calls joined the founding membership

without me offering it.

It was wild.

And then we went and grew from there and, and who knows, I can't tell

you, I'll be doing it in four years because in three years I might start

being like, Where are we going here?

How do we make this a little bit better?

And I think that freedom of being able to pivot and planning in advance, step

by step, instead of making a big shift, like I equate it to go into the eye

doctor and people laugh when I say this, when you go to the eye doctor and you

get in between that machine and they're going up and down there and you're

looking at a chart and they go, which one's clear that the left or the right.

Oh, the right one's a little bit sharper.

Okay.

What about this one?

The less little sharper.

That's how I go about business on a consistent basis.

What's just a little bit sharper that takes us there.

It's no big shift.

We're not pulling our eyes out and put a new eye in.

We're just making it a little bit clearer every day.

That's where we got where we are.

and it just gets better without any major shift.

That's what I did from 2013, 2016.

It was a lot of.

What am I talking about?

What have I done?

How can I help people?

It was not a rush.

And I think a lot of people do want that quick fix and I

am not in the quick fix world.

So I'll tell people.

I had a conversation last night with a guy about memberships.

He goes, but I don't think I could do this quickly.

I'm like, you're not going to do it quickly.

And if you want to, I'm not the person to talk to you.

I'm going to say three years to launch three years to freedom.

If you can't accept that, you're not going to like work with

Yeah, that doesn't fit well with a lot of our, quick

fix, get rich, quick type culture society, which has always been around.

It's just got, it's hyper now just because of social and things like that.

First of all, I do want to say laying in your pool, And hobo,

like a hobo, didn't fit together.

I don't, that's not a good, that didn't register in my mind.

you're

laying in

you.

saw me at night.

if you saw

Did you look like a hobo?

I hadn't showered.

My wife would agree with me on that one.

Yeah, you did look like

Somebody, somebody told me that, Oh, you live in an RV or

are you like, are you like a hobo?

I went, hobo is not the word I'd use in a 40 foot, motor coach,

maybe more like a pirate or a

nomad or something like that.

But so one thing you mentioned though, you said.

That you both situations that you pivoted or transitioned you said

you were making good money So so the indicator is not money But you said

something wasn't quite right when you were going from that total To membership

when you're going from photography to also member the general thing you're

doing What are some other indicators and I and I want to know is it almost?

Always Vincent's got this feeling cause that's the two things that I heard, or

are there some other gauges that you can learn from and pick up on that we

all can learn from that you go, you know what, this isn't quite right.

It's might be heading in a direction that's losing momentum or whatever.

What are some other, prescriptions or some indicators that we can learn from

when you've made this specifically transition from total to membership.

That's a great question because I'm not sure if I ever

thought about in terms of what were the things like a lot of it's gut, but And

I think gut maybe is undervaluing it because I think about this a lot, right?

I have freedom, like literally, you look at my schedule, you go, okay, he built it.

Doesn't mean my mind's not always going about it.

So I have much more, like I said, I spent half my time dreaming.

Half my time dreaming and thinking when you have time to do that,

you're going to notice things like, what don't I like doing?

So I think that's where it comes down to me when I coach other people.

I'm like, we make these subtle, almost surgical changes of what

don't you want to be doing in this?

And they'll say, there's one aspect of it that I hate.

Okay.

Let's work to eliminate that when you can cut that little bit of cancer

out, all of a sudden, the entire thing doesn't need to be destroyed.

You've gotten rid of, okay, now let's replace that with something good.

It's a joke that I said to my wife this morning, I said, I don't know how he did

it, but there's a line from a stick song.

If you're old enough to remember the band sticks and the line was, I got

nothing to do and all day to do it.

And it's one of my favorite lines.

Cause I'm like, we built that.

And so meaning if you can build freedom in your life, you eliminate all the

things you don't want to do piece by piece surgically, and then replace

them with the things you do want to do.

And I'll give you the perfect example.

I started doing coaching.

That's how this business started one to one coaching,

but that got stressful for me.

Because I'm waiting on everybody.

It got emotional at times.

It filled up my schedule.

I had to work more to make more money all the time.

And then we went towards the membership phase.

So I almost completely eliminated coaching until recently, except for hand, little

ones here and there within my membership until I started doing voice coaching.

Meaning I sit by the pool, right?

Or at the beach and I'll send voice memos and check in on people.

And then realizing this can be the coaching that I want to do.

So we started doing it.

Meaning you send me a question.

I give you an answer.

We don't need to schedule a zoom call surgically.

What's your problem.

Let's do it.

Let's fix it.

Come back next week and let's do it again.

So now we're rebuilding the coaching side because.

We cleared our schedule.

There's not that much now I want to do more of that stuff.

I didn't want to do it in the beginning.

I found a better way of doing it.

And now that's increasing in our business.

So when you can eliminate the things.

Piece by piece.

You don't want and figure out what it is that lights you up.

Cause I love helping people, but I don't necessarily want to be on for

zoom coaching calls a day, right?

Or phone calls like that.

Now, all of a sudden I'm feeling stressed.

Oh, if I could do it this way, you send me a message in the morning and I answer

you while I'm on a walk in the evening.

How do you build a life like that?

nobody told me that was possible in the past.

that's, so that's how we little by little take away anything we don't want.

And I can honestly say, there's nothing I do in my work that I don't like.

Because either we get rid of it.

I have a great wife that knows tech way better than I do.

So she takes care of all that crap that I hate.

Or we hire somebody else, but it's just her and I were the entire organization.

There's not a giant staff around it.

You don't need to have a huge team to do this.

And I think that's another thing that most people don't realize.

Yeah, we, I'm in an age where very similar, I've learned the things that

I am not going to do or don't want to do.

You and I are doing something that I rarely do today.

This is a Friday when we're recording.

And.

I rarely do anything on Fridays.

I've gotten where I rarely do anything on Mondays too, by the

way, but I'm trying to catch up.

I've got three weeks and I'm going to be off in a, in another week.

And and plus you and I were just going back and forth on schedule.

so I think part of it is recognizing what you don't know.

The cool thing is with technology, AI, all of that.

But You brought something up before I get too far down and I'm watching

my time to you said that you take time to think and you're not totally

packing things in your schedule.

Now, having said that, at one point you were doing daily podcast and I

also know that now you do a daily.

Post on, I think Facebook is where you, you do that.

And so I'm going to layer this question together and say, okay, I totally agree

that quiet, still thinking time is the most powerful thing that a leader

in any role can do corporations or ministries, or especially entrepreneurs.

They are packing things in.

But what is Vincent's time?

I know you.

Push that daily podcast out and I know that probably daily facebook.

You're probably in a rhythm that doesn't Take that long for you.

I'm not making light of it at all But anyway

talk about schedule and how important quiet time is to do what you're doing.

it's just what we talked about before.

I created a lot of time to where the mem, the mastermind needs two hours of my time,

the membership needs an hour of my time outside of content I create on my own

schedule and I was feeling unscheduled completely, which isn't a good thing.

I pretty much have free reign.

I write when I want to write or talk when I want.

What the daily post did to me was give me some structure that I needed.

I don't need that much, but I need a little bit.

So what happened was I started waking up and I don't know if you're like

me or anybody listening is like me.

My best ideas come soon as I wake up.

It's something that's ruminating, but in the past, I would

write it down to create later.

What I did was this wake up, here's the thought I'm going.

And I'm sitting down for about 15 minutes to a half an hour.

I'm writing about it and then I'm publishing it at nine o'clock.

That's what I'm doing.

That was the only, that's what I needed to do.

I need to get up and create, because if I batch all that, cause everybody's

telling me, Oh, just batch it all.

If I batch it all for 30 days and scheduled that a lot, I'm still in

the same spot of, I got no structure.

So that gave me the structure of get up, create, get it out of your head.

You might not publish it that day, but it gave me the bookend that

I needed to start the day in a creative mode that gets something

out there and then pushes forward.

It's just a little thing.

It's a little, but it's important because that's where I get a lot of response from.

from that, if you think about connection, all the people that

comment are like, it's very easy to be like, Hey, Tim, how's things going?

You want to chat?

Let's just have a conversation and then co brainstorm.

You tell me about what you're doing.

I tell you about what I'm doing.

You go, all my friend needs that content leads to connection,

connection leads to content, and both those together lead to offers.

Business is not that complicated and we make it seem so much more.

Yeah, that's good.

All right

Trying to think how to frame this question You have unique access to

some really Bright people that are in your groups and memberships because

these are people that are wanting to build and create Something and you've

narrowed it even down to people that want to do memberships so you're probably

now seeing a wide range of businesses and Mindsets and things like that are

wanting to be involved with memberships.

There are people I remember sitting in dan kennedy's basement back in

2003 2003 and he was saying you need to have people pay you for a

membership and then you could stretch Membership, all that kind of stuff.

So I've been exposed to it, but Vincent, there are a lot of people that don't quite

get membership, but they're bright and they probably should be leaning that way.

so here's what I'd love for you to do in the next couple of minutes.

And then we'll talk about the unconference and probably wrap up, talk to the person

that doesn't quite get memberships, but they're intrigued and peaked and maybe

pull in some of, All of this vast wisdom that you're getting from just hanging

around with some super bright people that you're accumulating together.

Does that make sense to take that and run with it?

Yeah.

for us, okay.

Selfish goals and generous goals, right?

I selfish goals for me.

Recurring what I call recurring remote revenue.

it is the most underrated part of business to me.

When you wake up and you look at your phone and there's eight payments that

came in before you get out of bed, while you're thinking of your Facebook post,

it changes the way you do business.

I don't need to go searching for clients.

I don't need to bug people for a sale.

I don't need to do any of it.

It is all I need to do to simplify it is over deliver for those people.

Meaning I have a weekly call that I prepare heavily for, and

I want to crush it for them.

And if they leave that call or watch that replay and go, this is super valuable.

I'm sticking around.

That's all you need to build it up to that.

That gives you financial freedom.

Whatever your number is, let's say it's 10, 000 a month.

You get to a hundred people at a hundred dollars a month,

whatever, 10, 000 a month.

Now you just need to maintain that for the rest of your life.

And you essentially have financial freedom.

One person leaves, you replace them, but you have you two people leave in a month.

You have the whole month to replace two people.

It's way different than starting from zero and having to get all

new clients over and over again.

And that's what people say to me.

I'm just tired of chasing clients.

I don't have to chase clients.

I get members.

And then I tried to over deliver for them.

That gives me freedom to where my schedule frees up when your schedule frees up.

You can exercise, you can spend time with your family.

You can think of new business ideas.

You can create different levels to it.

We came to this conclusion.

At one point, we have the membership it's 97 a month based level.

We had people that maybe couldn't afford it or couldn't get on the calls.

we created a membership with all the content.

Why don't we open that up?

For 57 a month for people that want the library and people

like, that's exactly what I did.

Now we create another level to it.

So we have from low ticket to very high ticket, everything in between

around this one thing, and it still all takes me the same amount of time.

That 57 level requires no time because the membership sites already been built.

We just put every call and every course into it.

When it's done, we were doing that for the community.

Anyway, it's almost like a donut hole.

We got this donut.

We stamp a hole in the middle of it.

What do we do with this extra dough?

Throw it out.

No, let's roll up in a ball, glaze it and sell it.

Make more money from the donut hole than we did from the donut.

We used to throw it out in the past.

There's excess that you can create for a different client base

and that increases your income.

And you can do that without expanding your time too much.

Now you can create more content, make more connections, build the next thing.

The unconference came from the.

What do I do next?

I'm a little bored.

I want to create the thing that I didn't have that I couldn't find.

Let's go make it.

I don't have the financial stress that I can turn down

the people that I don't want.

I could be a little bolder in terms of who it's for and who it's not

for, as opposed to buy my ticket.

It's actually an invite slash application only thing.

Cause there's people that I don't want going.

That shouldn't be there.

Can't do that.

If I need the money and I'm stressed out, that's what memberships gives you.

It gives you that predictable income, that recurring revenue, just take

the stress off, free up your time and allow you to build the next

things you want to build as well.

Is there a, one of the things I'm a business junkie, I love

seeing different businesses and all that.

Is there a business or two that.

When they decided they wanted to have a membership, I don't want to say that

you've scratched your head and say, I don't know, let's see how that works out.

Is there one that you would go like, someone wouldn't think that might

could be a membership, but yet they've created and built a membership around

that, anything pop in your head.

When I say that,

if I told you in your audience that somebody can

make a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year with a murder mystery

quilting membership, would you

wait, hold on, murder, mystery,

We're

quilting.

There's a woman, Debra, amazing Debra Moebs, and she's in Georgia.

And she was a guest in our group in January.

And I heard about this from my friend, Ben Colloy.

And I'm like, no.

So I looked her up.

I'm like, this is real.

So I talked to her, had a great conversation.

She was in that space.

She, I think she had a store where they sold yarn.

I can't remember what it was.

And she started realizing.

There's a whole bunch of people that like murder mystery in this space.

It's because it probably won't work, but let's put something together for them.

Maybe we make a quilt together for a year online and we build it.

And every year, every month, we give you a clue about this murder mystery story.

We put those together.

She has last I heard from her 3, 100 paying members paying

a hundred dollars a year.

So yeah, there's about, there's a lot of

you know what I love about that?

we're talking about niche here is that I automatically know

that group is not my group.

Yes,

not a murder mystery.

I'm not a quilter, none of that.

And, but it's so crystal clear because part of life sometimes is knowing where

you don't need to go hang out, right?

but here's the other part of it.

Here's the other part to think about it is so not for you, but I guarantee you,

if you meet somebody that it's for, you will tell them and she will get another

I actually know someone that's a podcaster

that has a quilting podcast.

And I don't know if she's into the murder mysteries.

I'm going, we might need to connect them.

You know what I mean?

I popped it in my head.

I, we can do it to, we can do it together or message me and

I'll do it because she'd be a great guest for the, but that's the whole thing.

The more you niche down when we went from total life freedom, which is a

great phrase, but very vague in terms of business to membership freedom.

I get a message almost every day saying you need to meet my friend, Judy.

She needs a membership.

You're the

guy that didn't happen before.

So we're so afraid of niching down, but niching down makes the murder

mystery quilting thing happen.

As opposed to her saying, I have a hobby membership and we do model airplanes and

we do tanks and we do a little quilt.

Okay.

But murder mystery quilting either in or out, somebody that

needs.

All right, real quick.

We only got a couple minutes here.

I, at one point was a conference junkie.

I loved going to them.

We ran them with all of our businesses and all heading into 08.

I spoke at quite a few and truthfully, the formula for conferences, it's good

for people that are extroverts and love to get out, but they kind of suck in that.

You're going to get pitched most often.

You're going to be around a boatload of people that you may

or may not want to hang out with.

And so sometime during your hobo time in the pool, you came out, came up with

this that you're calling an all in.

Unconference.

give me a quick 30 to 60 second.

you're not really a pitch, but give me, tell me why maybe I should consider it.

Maybe that's, let's do it that way.

Cause I'm a guy that doesn't like

conferences, but I love being around people.

So what's up.

I love conferences, but I hate them.

I love that they bring together all these amazing people.

And then we have to sit like we're in school, listening to speaker after

speaker, when I could just listen to their podcast and then in the hallway,

I have to brush by somebody to have a conversation or go to a club at 1130 at

night with DJs blasting to talk to them.

What, who created this?

I hate the format to it, but my closest friends I met there.

So I said, why don't we do the opposite?

We all hang out in the hallways.

Anybody experienced pays the money and hangs out in the hallways and talks.

Why don't we create an event?

That's the hallways.

And then I said, we have these intimate mastermind retreats that are so powerful.

What if we blended them together?

What if we created something that was the hallways of a conference colliding?

With an intimate mastermind retreat, we'll limit it to a hundred people.

So it's not too small, not too big.

It'll be invite application only, and there will be no speakers.

There will be no stages.

There will be no pitches.

There'll be no upsells.

There'll be no vendors, everything that I don't care about in these events.

I eliminate and just bring it down to the things that everybody says they

go there for, but they still have to sit through all this other crap.

So that was the idea.

And I started doing conversations and everybody said, I love the idea.

And we booked a place in Sarah.

We booked the embassy suites in Sarasota, Florida, February 3rd through

the fifth, and we're halfway sold out without promoting it and just talking

and having conversations about it.

this is a thing that will grow in years to come, but it will not grow in size.

Um, we will probably keep it at this size every single time we will just add events.

as they're needed.

How was that?

How was that

that was good.

It I think some of our audience may be a great fit.

So why don't we do this, Vincent?

we're right up against our time here.

Tell people how they could connect with you.

This is a time to give websites, socials, anything, or, you know, if it's the

unconference, I know you've got books and all the wealth of connection.

I've read portions of that just right now, tell them all that.

And then I've got another question too, before we wrap.

Yeah.

Real quick, our websites, my marriage, my membership, freedom.

com.

that's the website where it's all and on there, there's an application

for the unconference, if somebody's interested, there's, we also give away.

The audio for my book, the wealth of connection.

So you can get the audio for free, the full book.

It's not a chapter.

It's the full book.

Facebook and LinkedIn are the two.

there we go.

There we go.

Facebook and LinkedIn are the two, platforms I'm on the most.

And if you look at that again, show that again, I'm the only one.

I'm very unique in my book.

If you look at the bottom of it, I'm the only non bestselling

author, I think in the world.

Everybody else is the

Congratulations.

Congratulations.

you're the only

very easy to achieve.

It was very easy to achieve.

I'll tell you that one.

That one was easy.

I got so tired of that, unconference the same thing.

I get tired of all this stuff.

Everybody's a bestselling author.

I'm a non bestselling author, and people love that.

So yeah, that's where you can find me, my membership freedom or on

social or just send me an email.

I'll give you the email.

Totally

Sounds good.

We'll include all those links.

Vincent, we're Seek, Go, Create.

Those three words will let you, allow you, force you, whatever, to pick one of

those and why that just means more to you.

Seek, Go, Create.

Which one do you choose and why?

Last question.

I'd love them all.

Go means taking action.

Seek means you're looking for knowledge or connection, but I'm going to go

with create because I think when you create, Around what you're meant

to be doing that you love doing.

You will, then you will gain attention and trust.

You will then gain connection from the people who love what you do.

And that, that, to me, that's where it all starts.

So I'm going to, I'm going to go with

Awesome.

Vincent, I knew I'd love this conversation.

I knew I'd love the control of being able to ask you stuff so that I could dig in

a little bit more and hopefully, I don't think it was that uncomfortable for you

cause I know we're Sharing a message and we're looking For people that are thinking

non traditional thinking differently and I think this has been a great message for

you If you've been listening in thanks for listening in we've got new episodes

on both youtube And on all the podcast channels every monday So we appreciate

you being here until next time continue being all that you were created to be