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The $100 MBA Show
MBA2704 Extended Interview: Dale Beaumont - How to Run a Multi-Million Dollar Company and Go on Holiday 6 Months a Year
02:06:00
Some entrepreneurs build massive businesses. A few manage to do it while taking month-long holidays several times a year. If that sounds impossible, this episode might change your mind.
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- [00:00]
Omar Zenholm
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- [00:42]
Dale Beaumont
AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed.
- [00:48]
Co-host / Interviewer
But agents make mistakes.
- [00:51]
Dale Beaumont
Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation@rubrik.com that's R U B R I K.com today we have.
- [01:14]
Omar Zenholm
A very special extended interview with Dale Beaumont, an award winning technology entrepreneur, an international speaker and author of 19 best selling books and a very dear friend of mine. Welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host Omar Zenholm where I deliver practical Business Less three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business real quick. If these episodes help you in any way, hit the Follow button on this podcast app. It helps us to keep bringing you practical business insights three times a week for free.
- [01:53]
Co-host / Interviewer
Thanks.
- [01:55]
Omar Zenholm
Dale's like one of my closest friends here in Australia. Absolutely love this guy to death and I'm so glad I got to go to his office, go to his studio. We had a great time shooting this whole conversation but we get into a lot of things in this conversation that I think you're absolutely love. His origin story, how he struggled to even get out of debt and get on his feet. And then how he was able to build 1, 2, 3 several multimillion dollar businesses and build this incredible empire of businesses. But best of all, how he is able to also go on holiday like six times a year with you know, a month each time like over a month. Every time he goes on holiday, him and his wife Catherine and his two kids have been to over 85. So I sat down, I wanted to sit down with him and find out how does he do this? How is he able to build these incredible businesses, run them, not lose his mind and go on holiday. So Often, but we get into a lot more behind the scenes of what Dale has built, why he built it, how he built it, as well as what's on the horizon. So we're going to jump right into that conversation. But before we do that, just let you know that we're going to be back to wrap up the episode. I'll tell you what your next steps are so you can know how you can continue your learning. But for now, we're going to jump into that conversation in Dale Beaumont's office and studio. Let's get into it. Dale Beaumont.
- [03:16]
Co-host / Interviewer
Dale, thank you so much for having us here in your studio, in your office. This is my first time here and we've known each other for a very long time. I consider a close friend here in Australia. So thanks for having us.
- [03:26]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, it's. It's fun space, big studio downstairs, office upstairs.
- [03:30]
Co-host / Interviewer
So it's.
- [03:30]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, yeah, we like it here.
- [03:31]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah. I want to start with a little secret. My secret to you is when I mention you to people that haven't met you yet.
- [03:38]
Dale Beaumont
Yes.
- [03:39]
Co-host / Interviewer
I say Dale Beaumont, he's like the Tony Robbins of Australia. Australia. That's what I say. Maybe Tony Robbins is the Dale Bullman of America. But I say that because when I go to your events, they're incredible spectacles of an event. And you've impacted so many people here in Australia, helped build their businesses, change their lives. But you actually started with a personal development program for young people, teenagers called Empower your. And that was kind of your first venture into business. But because I know you well, I want you to tell me a little bit about, you know, that journey and how it didn't kind of pan out so perfectly in the beginning.
- [04:13]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. So that was the first business that I started. When I was 19, I left school, I lasted six months in a job before deciding that I was going to start my own business. It wasn't that I necessarily had huge grand plans to be like a big time entrepreneur. It was just that I saw a gap in the market. Saw like kind of an opportunity. I had this kind of realization and thought, why isn't anyone doing this? And basically what it was is when I was 17, and I can tell you why I did did this later on, if you like. But I went along to some personal development courses and I was like, where has this been my whole life? Like, I went to courses with people like Jim Rohn and then later on Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar. Basically any American guru that would come to town and would run an event, I would Kind of be there in the front road. It was like $49 a ticket or something like that. And you'd just go there for a day. They normally sell like tapes and cassette tapes and CDs and stuff like that. But I was just like a sponge taking this all in. And then I thought to myself, why didn't learn like any of this at school? Like, I think about how much we spend doing, you know, kind of maths and English and science and all these kind of subjects, but like this concept of personal development, of mindset, of understanding your beliefs about how to innovate, think creatively, how to manage your time, all of these amazing skills. I thought, wouldn't it be cool if this was taught in schools? And I had a. I tried for a few weeks to speak to someone from the education department about teaching personal development in schools, but they're so like, set in their ways. I realized I was never going to change the education system.
- [05:44]
Co-host / Interviewer
Like try to infiltrate the schools.
- [05:46]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, exactly. So I thought the only way this is going to happen is we do it sort of like outside of schools. And so we originally started with like a one. First of all, it was like a one hour workshop that we did.
- [05:57]
Co-host / Interviewer
And when you say we.
- [05:58]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, it was me. And also a guy that I went to school with, I actually roped him into it. His name's Brent. And we started Empower you together. It was kind of my idea to begin with, but I'm like, hey, I'm thinking about running this kind of like personal development program for teenagers. So that was the whole idea behind the business. Imagine if people. Because most of the people that was going along to these courses were in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. And many of them were coming up to me saying, wow, you're so young. You're so lucky. If only I had the opportunity to learn this when I was your age, I wonder where I'd be today. And so I convinced a friend that I went to school with to say, hey, I'm kind of thinking about starting this program. Do you want to come join me? And he's like, hell yeah, I'll be in that. So we did a bunch of different courses and we thought, how do we make it fun and exciting and interesting for young people? So we decided to teach personal development, but also to play movie clips, to have like a dj, Like a smoke machine. Yeah, to make it fun. Make it fun, exciting, interesting, like a big party. But it's also educational at the same time. So we started off as a one hour that then Grew to like four hour, then grew to a whole day and then eventually became like a weekend course called Empower your. And we run it across Australia and also New Zealand. And we did end up licensing the program into Asia, but before that we were running programs in Singapore and Malaysia.
- [07:14]
Co-host / Interviewer
Right.
- [07:14]
Dale Beaumont
And Indonesia. And yeah, that was my, my first kind of business. I threw myself into it pretty much for seven years before I then started to do some other entrepreneurial things. But we sucked at the beginning, like with most businesses, for a few reasons. One is we were 19, so we had a lack of credibility. I remember calling up someone and I went through my whole spiel and part of the spiel was like, you know, I'm 19 and we're doing this blah, blah, blah. And they would. So I finished my spill and they said, how old did you say you were again? I said, I'm 19 years of age. They said, what makes you think you know anything? And hung up. And so that was a real rake up call to realize we don't have really much credibility. There's two ways to get credibility. One is to do what you do for the next like, you know, 20 years and then all of a sudden you have credibility. Or you can manufacture credibility. And there was, this is before the days of social media. So the only way to manufacture credibility back then was to two things. One is to get media exposure and publicity. And secondly was to write a book. And so what we decided to do was to write a book which was called the World at yout Feet, which was a personal development book for teenagers, kind of like by youth for youth type thing. And then we leveraged that to get media exposure and publicity. And then we were able to get credibility through that. And, and that's sort of what launched that, that business. But where we struggled at the beginning, we struggled with lack of credibility. So how do you go from being unknown to being kind of known? And so we can chat about that. We just didn't. We just thought that, you know, there's that movie from, with Kevin Costner, you know, called the Field of Dreams. And there's this classic light in there, Build it and they Will Come. Which doesn't work in business, in Build it and they will not come. It's like Build it and you have to market it. And so I learned that very quickly. You can have the greatest product or service in the world, but if no one knows about it, then you're like, I remember at school learning my zero times tables. And basically the moral of the story is whatever number no Matter what, whatever it is, times by zero is still zero. So you can have the greatest like people. On a scale of 1 to 100, your product might be 100, but if your marketing sucks, then your business sucks, then it's zero. And so I learned you got to get good at marketing. Just having a good product or service is not enough. So we learned marketing, we learned sales, and then all of a sudden we started to make some money, which is kind of good.
- [09:35]
Co-host / Interviewer
How long did that take to make money? To live?
- [09:38]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, I think that like for maybe the first six months we were kind of going backwards and we were putting in like whatever savings we could and borrowing money from our parents and living kind of at home and, and working in my parents garage. So we, yeah, basically were, were going backwards. However, after about six months time, we started to kind of like break even. And I think after 18 months we started to go, okay, this is at least working, not making money, but at least we can see like a future and we can see how this could work. And then after about three years then we started to feel like we were on a bit of a roll. But I, that people need to go in there. It's like anything like, like telling talking to my, my kids around that they learned to ski when they were young, but they were crossing over to snowboarding. I'm like, you've got to be prepared to suck for a whole week if you want to move from snowboarding to skiing or even starting to ski from like you've got to be prepared to suck and fall on your face.
- [10:29]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah.
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Dale Beaumont
And same for with the business. Unless you're prepared to suck for 18 months, don't even bother starting, you know.
- [10:35]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah.
- [10:35]
Dale Beaumont
Because it's kind of going to take somewhere between 12 to 18 months to kind of like, you know, get your.
- [10:41]
Co-host / Interviewer
Figure out what you don't know.
- [10:42]
Dale Beaumont
Figure out what you don't know. Yeah. And run a bunch of experiments and fail at a few things and ride that kind of roller coaster of going, this is going to work. And then this didn't work. And then, you know, and all of that stuff and just keep falling down, getting back up. And once you've done that enough times, then you go, okay, finally it's kind of working.
- [10:59]
Co-host / Interviewer
I got a couple questions just off what you just said. The first one was, you know, you said you worked for six months and then you quit to start your own business. What was the catalyst? Why did you think you could do this? Like, there's so many people who are watching or listening to this episode. Right now and thinking, I want to do that. But like, I got bills, I got. I don't know if I'll do well. I know I'm good at my job. You know, all these things that are going through their head. What was going through your head when you thought, well, I can do something for myself?
- [11:26]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. So what was going through? Maybe just being young and naive and sort of just like assuming, like, why, why not sort of like do this? Exactly. So maybe it's not the best advice for someone that might be in their 30th, 30s and 40s, that have kids and have bills. And we've, we've been through that cycle of building another business with kids. And so we can talk about that later on there definitely had challenges, but you just start with what you have with wherever you are. And if it's, you know, an hour a day, two hours a day, we just start there and turn off Netflix for a few months and just go, okay, I'm going to just focus on this other thing. And then eventually, once you start getting a little bit of traction or product market fit, basically, you know, the thing that you've got to do in businesses, build something that people will want to buy. And so we can talk about that later. But once it's kind of then working, then it's just a transition of going, can I then go from five days a week to four days a week and maybe renegotiate my salary a little bit? Then I've got a whole day where I could kind of work on it. You know, people talk about that. Yeah, the 9 to 5 is what you do in the job. But then also the five to nine, like, what do you do for that three, four hours after work each day? Or go to bed if you're exhausted at night? People go, I'm so tired at night. Well, go to bed at 8 o' clock or 8:30, get up at 5 o' clock and you've got like another two hours, three hours in the morning where you can be super productive. And now, especially with tools like ChatGPT and other tools that are out there, like I did probably over the weekend, it's a cheat code. Yeah, I did like a week's worth of work in like four hours of writing email copies. So you can do things at such speed now that were never possible before. I looked at the work that I did and that would have taken me a month to do, and you can do it in four or five hours. And so I think it's never been easier to start a Business and just start with what you have. And I remember someone saying to me once, you can make money or you can make excuses. You can't make both.
- [13:18]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah.
- [13:19]
Dale Beaumont
And so if you want to make, there's a hundred excuses that you can come up with about why you can't. I'm too old. I'm too young. I'm. I was born here. I was not born here. You know, all that stuff. Or you can just go, okay, someone else has had a. Because I've seen all the different types of people, people that were young, people that were old, people that couldn't even speak English, and they've become super successful. So it's really not about your circumstances. It's about your mindset, you know, and you can either see it as, like, a weakness or you can see it as kind of like a strength. And someone can go, I've got kids. I can't do this. But I've seen lots of moms, lots of dads with kids that have built amazing businesses, and they're. Rather than using it as their excuse, they use it as their reason. Because I've got kids, I've got to be super efficient. Or because I've got kids, I've got to ask for help. Or because I've got.
- [14:07]
Co-host / Interviewer
I got a big why.
- [14:08]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, exactly.
- [14:09]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah.
- [14:10]
Dale Beaumont
So there's always a way to reframe your situation. Instead of, this is the worst of times, how is this the best of times? And instead of, this is so hard. You know, look at all the reasons why it's so much easier. Because business has never been easier. There are definitely challenges, but it's never been easier as well. Like to. If you go back 20 years ago, even to set up a bank account was like a week's. A week's process to actually get payments, to take credit card payments. That would be another month of waiting for your application. Now I can go on app, and within 10 minutes, I can be taking payment. And so it's never been easy to start a business.
- [14:48]
Co-host / Interviewer
I don't know about you, but I know when I look back at, you know, what I call, like, the dark ages of Nicole and I's journey of building business and things like that. I actually. Those times, I look back at with so much pride. It's almost like this nostalgic love for the struggle. Almost like my favorite part of the movie is the training montage in Rocky, you know, like. Like, I don't know about you, but. But I look back at those times and I think, yes, it's great to Succeed and to make money and to have an audience and to build a great product that people want. But it's that resilience moments in life that really, I feel are nostalgic to me. What about you?
- [15:24]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. Like, I look back on all of those really hard times and, you know, they're the things. I've been married now for over 20 years, and we took. My wife and I talk about all of these times. Do you remember when, you know, we, like, we talked about instant gratitude? Yeah, exactly.
- [15:40]
Co-host / Interviewer
Like, oh, man, thank God we're on that time now.
- [15:42]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. And one of the other things I did after I set up my first business, which was the personal development company for teenagers, Empower your. I then wrote a series of books where I interviewed successful people. I called it the Secrets Exposed series, and that became quite successful. 20 books, right? Yeah, we did 19. We did 15 in the space of two and a half years. And. But the. The assumption that I had going into those books was that people that were successful were somehow successful because they had an easy path or they came from good circumstances, or they just had a smooth ride, or they didn't quite, you know, kind of like get tripped up like other people, and therefore they kind of got all green lights, basically, and they just had a smooth ride. What I realized was the people. When I was in doing these interviews and spending time with these successful people, I couldn't believe the amount of stuff that they went through and the struggles and how much time that their, you know, accountant kind of like ripped them off and stole all their money, or their times whereby there's one guy who literally was. Had just spent over two and a half million dollars building a factory. And then a few weeks later, there was a fire and the whole factory was burnt to the ground. And someone said to him, what are you going to do now? He goes, I better start looking for a new factory. But the moral there was, what I realized was the people that had achieved the most amount of success, had been through the most amount of stuff and come through the other side. And it's almost like the bigger. A lot of people want to go from the kind of, like, they want to skip the struggle. They want to go from the dream to, like, the reward, you know, but there's the greater the dream, the bigger kind of the struggle, and the bigger the reward. And so struggle, challenge, setbacks is all a part of the journey.
- [17:29]
Co-host / Interviewer
I mean, I definitely agree with that. I mean, I think the struggle is what makes them who they are. To be able to be successful like the tough times, teach them lessons, all that kind of stuff. Just the other day, I think it was yesterday, I saw this meme on social media where I think Oprah was being interviewed. And the article was like, one step to be happy in life. And then the number one comment was like, step one, have a billion dollars. Right. So they're all, like, making a joke out of it. Right. And it's like, anybody knows anything about Oprah's story. She came from next to nothing.
- [17:58]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah.
- [17:59]
Co-host / Interviewer
And like, she earned every dollar she, a black woman in America in the 70s and 80s trying to get TV time, trying to be a reporter. Like, nowhere near any kind of privilege. You know, I think a lot of people just kind of default to, like, oh, this person's successful because they have something I don't. Right. And I. I love this idea. We all start from zero. We all start with zero followers, zero email subscribers, zero sales. You know, it's all about, what do you do with that opportunity? What do you do with that situation?
- [18:29]
Omar Zenholm
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- [19:20]
Co-host / Interviewer
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- [19:21]
Omar Zenholm
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- [19:46]
Co-host / Interviewer
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- [19:47]
Omar Zenholm
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- [20:37]
Co-host / Interviewer
I want to jump just real back to empower you. How much did you attribute the success of that or getting some traction after six months or so to the business model itself? Meaning that, that you didn't have a tremendous amount of fixed costs because you're running events and you only kind of pay for the event when it happens or when you have customers. And how much thought and consideration should somebody who's consuming this episode right now think about their business model? Like how much margins they make, how much money they make, how much fixed costs they have, how much money they have to put up front in order for them to start the thing in the first place. A lot of people think about physical businesses, physical products like E commerce, when they think of online business, business. How much of the business model helped you get some traction?
- [21:21]
Dale Beaumont
I would say, like the answer I'd like to give is none of it. Because I think if you overanalyze those things, you'll end up overthinking it and then doing nothing and talk yourself in and out of things. That's why sometimes, I know this is going to be a bit controversial, but sometimes intelligent, really, really smart people, they never build successful businesses because they overanalyze everything. And yes, you want to think about your numbers and look at your fixed costs and look at your margins and all those type of things. But then the person that's just out there taking massive action, making a bunch of mistakes, screwing up, losing money. Like, you know, I remember when I was helping my, my son start a business and he sent out an invoice, but he kind of like didn't charge like he under quoted. And I said to him, that's great. I'm so glad that you did that. Like you got a whole career ahead of you and you only have to send the invoice out once and undercharge and then go, I'm never going to do that again. To have that feeling of making that mistake and running an event at a loss or having to borrow, go to your parents and have going cap in hand, having to borrow money because I made a dumb mistake. It's that type of mindset that I think goes better than someone that is too intelligent, overanalyzes, looks at too many different things. Because the stress of then all of those things, then you talk yourself out of it and you end up not taking action.
- [22:44]
Co-host / Interviewer
That's great advice because when you gave that answer, he was like, he's actually right. Because when you're starting out, you don't know. You don't know. Like this is something that I would do now because I've built so many businesses and, and I've had all these experiences that you know, like okay Ray, I mean think about, you know, my CAC and my LTV and all this stuff, all these metrics that I was following for years, all the different businesses that matter. But when you're starting out, you just need to make a buck. You have a customer, you have that validation. You need to just get some momentum, have some wins under your belt.
- [23:10]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, yeah.
- [23:11]
Co-host / Interviewer
So that's such good advice because I think I was kind of thinking in my own thinking rather than when somebody's starting out. When I was starting out, you know, I was just happy to have my first customer and just say, okay, wow, I made money outside my paycheck. Which is a miracle feeling. Yeah, I love that feeling.
- [23:26]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. Because a lot of people would, you know, think that it's got to be right from the start, but at the beginning it's very scrappy and at the, you know, sometimes you're going to do things that are going to work and other times you're going to do things that, where you're going to actually lose money like on it. But yeah, you just got to take action, keep going, keep kind of learning, keep doing. It's the person that does like nothing, they're the person that's going to lose.
- [23:49]
Co-host / Interviewer
And I think sometimes when you don't think too far ahead, you allow yourself to have opportunities. Just share my own experience. When Nicole I moved to New York, I had a business consulting firm. When I first business was a service based business where I built websites. WordPress websites. I knew how to build websites with WordPress. I'm nowhere near as good as the experts, but I was good enough to build a blog for somebody who's a blogger. I just didn't know how to get customers. Right. I didn't think about, oh wait a minute, I need a way to have a pipeline of customers. I don't know how to advertise. I don't know how to do any of that stuff. But Nicole and I were low on funds. We were still spending as if we had a paycheck, but we didn't. And we would go to these free cheese and wine events in New York. New York has all these different free events, art galleries and meetups and things like that. I met this guy, Justin Beaumont, and he was a writer. He had this company called ProseMedia that wrote blog posts just because I was just fresh and new and trying to figure things out and willing to talk to people. He was like, wait a minute, you create websites? I get people all the time coming to me like, hey, write me five blog posts. And like, okay, great, where's your blog? And they're like, like, oh, I don't have one yet. And I'll be like, I need somebody to create a blog from. I don't create blogs. I was like, oh, awesome. Like, and he was just seeing it as a value add for his customers. No kickback, no nothing. I got a free pipeline of customers. I mean, it got me going.
- [25:10]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah.
- [25:10]
Co-host / Interviewer
But the fact that I had my eyes open because this is the next problem I have. I have no customers. How do I get customers? Well, I'll figure it out. I'll talk to people, blah, blah, Rather than trying to over strategizing it and just being like, okay, I'm going to get customers through Google AdWords and Da Da, da, da da. And then when I meet, meet Justin, I'm not receptive to that idea. I'm just kind of like, no, no, this is my plan, you know, kind of thing. So I think that's really good advice is just like, tackle one problem at a time, learn as you go. And I think that's, that's part of the fun of the journey.
- [25:40]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. And you touched on, like, partnerships, which I think is one of the best ways to grow kind of like any business. I think we might have done an interview around marketing partnerships a number of years ago, so people can maybe go back and, and search for that in the archive of your episodes.
- [25:57]
Co-host / Interviewer
You did a guest episode.
- [25:58]
Dale Beaumont
You did a guest teacher episode that's right around partnerships. But it's one of my favorite ways to grow any business because it's basically who can refer customers to you and they're not gonna do it just to help you, they're doing it to help themselves. Like you said, this guy was actually, ah, thank you for doing this. Cause then I can sell more of my stuff because you can do Your thing as well. So you gotta ask yourself, who is your customer for you? Who is your customer after you? And there's a series of other questions to really find out how you can do these partnerships. One of the best ways to grow any business, because it's free and you've got to think about it at the beginning, you know, we didn't have a huge amount of funds to kind of advertise. So you got to get creative around generating leads 100%.
- [26:38]
Co-host / Interviewer
So how do you go from helping teenagers to helping adults with their businesses with business blueprint?
- [26:45]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. So there was a transition business that sort of sat in the middle between the first company, which was was personal development programs for teenagers. And then the company that I have now is a business education company for business owners for adults. Basically, I was sort of 25, 26, and I'd been running this program for young people. And it was. Was really fantastic and I loved it and was really passionate about the work. However, my life circumstances kind of changed. When I was also 19, I met a girl, and then by the age of 23, I was married. A couple of years later I was 26 and I became a father, which, you know, is not that young, like to compare to my parents. But I suppose maybe a little bit like to get married at 23 now and to be a father at 26 is a little bit unusual. But basically I had to grow up really fast. And for the empower you business, even though it was awesome, we had two business partners. By the time we took our kind of like profits and we split them, there was, you know, a decent salary for one person, but there really wasn't really a decent salary for kind of like two people. And I kind of realized if I'm going to, you know, be able to buy a house and raise our kids and do it, I needed to become kind of like, more entrepreneurial. So I came up with this idea to write a series of books. And I was inspired by Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield, who wrote this series called the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. And I went along to an event that they were running about book publishing. And they said, don't be book, think book, think book series. So I decided to come up with this series of books where I was interviewing successful people in different topics, gathering up their information and putting together in a book. Because one of the pieces of advice that I'd always give these young people was there's two ways to do anything in life. One's through trial and error, trying to figure it all out. The problem with that, it takes you 20 years to get any decent results, or you can find someone else that already has a track record of success, has already done what you want to do, essentially, and has a formula or program, a recipe to come kind of follow so you can avoid all those mistakes. And so I would say this to young people all the time, but then they say, I don't know, you know, who I can talk to or what questions that I should ask. And I thought, what about if I go out there and do these interviews and put it together in a book? That would be really kind of cool. So I came up with this series of books and what I kind of go through, how we kind of did this. But the first year, actually the first like, eight months, it was just like zero results. Like, just working, working, working. And then after that, we released two books in the next year, then we released another two books. And then in the third year, we did 11 books all in one year, which is really about the power of sort of like scaling and getting the systems kind of like, in place and then being able to scale rapidly. So in that one year, we published 11 books in one year.
- [29:28]
Co-host / Interviewer
So what was your goal with writing these books? Was it a marketing play? Was it actually made you money? Was it a passion project? Like, what was the goal?
- [29:36]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, it was a bit of everything. It was part of wanted to transition away from just working with young people to starting to work with people of all ages. So part of it was a bit of repositioning. The other part of it was about my passion for wanting to share education and inspirational stories and also to meet lots of successful people and expand my network. But the other reason was I had when I was 19 and I was going for all these personal development programs, my brother was kind of like, knocking me, like, a little bit around, going to all these kind of programs. And I said, you wait and see. I'm going to make a million dollars by the age of 25. That was kind of like my goal to make a million dollars by the age of 25. And I realized I wasn't going to achieve that goal working with young people. And I needed to actually build something that I could kind of scale. So I didn't achieve it by 25, but I did achieve it by the age of 26. So by the age of 26, we'd made a million dollars by selling these books. We sold a quarter of a million books in the space of three years, and that generated over a million dollars worth of revenue. So that was kind of really my breakout business from running this youth program, which is. Was amazing and I loved it. But I, after those six, seven years, I handed it over to my business partner and I said, look, I don't want anything from, in terms of payment. I just want this work to continue. I'm going to find other ways to make money. Just keep going. And I'm so happy that that arrangement worked because that business is still running 25 years later. Now that business is still running. We're about to have our 25th anniversary of the Empower U program and there's about 40,000 young people that have been through that course that we created. Even my two sons have also been through that course as well. So that's a big part of my life. Even though I no longer receive any financial benefit from it, it's still very much part of who I am and probably one of my greatest achievements Then the books were really about lots of things, but really about sort of like creating something that was going to be a commercial success because I wanted to have a house for my kind of family and I wanted to provide. And I thought, how am I going to make, you know, kind of like money by leveraging like an idea, coming up with something. And so that was the idea behind that. And then the transition to business blueprint was because I was building these books and I figured out how to build a website and how to sell books online and then had like a, a CRM system and doing like sending emails out on a regular basis. YouTube had just sort of started then. So I was creating YouTube videos and sending them out and giving people links and stuff and SMSing. People were like, how are you doing all of this? I'm like, what do you mean? Like, how are you doing all this online marketing stuff? The idea of online marketing, Internet marketing, this is 2006, 2007, was just starting to really take on off. People realized the fact that, that the world was changing. Everything was kind of going more online. And the old ways of marketing, such as putting it out in the yellow pages or doing those type of things, were not really working and they had to transition to this new way of operating. So I was getting people that were, when, when you know that people are coming to you for can I take you out for lunch or can I pick your brains or can I ask you a few questions or can you help me with this problem? You kind of know, okay, there's something kind of there. So I had about a dozen of those meetings where people were just like can I take you out for lunch? And most of these people were entrepreneurs. I was 26, 27 at the time. And most of these people in their 40s, 50s and 60s, which were successful entrepreneurs that were coming to a 26 year old asking them for business advice. And I was like, okay, this is something interesting. So then what I decided to do was run an event which was called the New Rules of Business. And it was why the yellow pages in is dead and what to do instead.
- [33:24]
Co-host / Interviewer
Oh beautiful. Who doesn't love alliteration?
- [33:27]
Dale Beaumont
And basically it was this event to teach entrepreneurs how to make the shift from the old world to the new world, how to go from the analog kind of realm to the digital realm. And it just took off. I ran this event.
- [33:41]
Co-host / Interviewer
This was like year 2000.
- [33:42]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, this was actually about 2000. So I started my first business in 2000.
- [33:47]
Omar Zenholm
Awesome.
- [33:47]
Dale Beaumont
This would have been about 2007, 2008. I just done these books. Social media was just kind of starting and YouTube and SEO and, and you know, email marketing, all of these kind of like new ways of doing business were just starting to kind of like emerge. And I found this kind of sweet spot where like my, my skills and my. Yeah, your knowledge, you know, you got the this and with commercial sort of stuff all kind of like it was this sweet spot. I ran this event and there was like 150 people showed up and a lot of them again were people in their 40s, 50s and 60s, successful entrepreneurs and so, and they were coming to me for like business advice. And so I then started running this program which is called Business Blueprint, which is a business education program and started with about 12 clients and now we work with about 500 clients. At any point in time we've had about four and a half thousand and people go through a 12 month transformation program that we have. This year we're celebrating our 16th year anniversary of Business Blueprint. And then along the way I've also diversified into about seven other companies that I now have partnerships in or invested in as well.
- [34:58]
Co-host / Interviewer
So that support your clients.
- [34:59]
Dale Beaumont
Exactly. So business Blueprint is kind of like the thing I'm most well known for. But then on the side I have another, a bunch of other businesses and then for the last decade have been investing in, in mainly property and also shares as well. And so yeah, being able to sort of like diversify from just business into other assets.
- [35:23]
Omar Zenholm
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- [36:54]
Co-host / Interviewer
I'm having my lunch.
- [36:55]
Omar Zenholm
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- [37:55]
Co-host / Interviewer
I had an interview recently with a guy named David Royce who has created a $500 million company in pest control, right? And his specialty was sales. And he was talking to me about like how important being likable is in sales. Yeah. Like, people actually just buy because this person's all right, you know, like, I'll give this person a try. For those who don't know, like, Dale and I are close friends. I spend a lot of time with him. Trips together. Shared a hotel room with you one time. Right. He's really a nice guy in real person, like, in real life. What you're seeing here is who he is as a real person. What I want to ask you is, like, how much has the success of Blueprint and getting people to join your program can be attributed to the fact that you're just a good person? Like, people want to buy from you.
- [38:38]
Dale Beaumont
I do think that likability is an important factor. I remember there was a moment that kind of just shifted for me when I was putting together this series of books that I was talking about before called the Secrets Exposed Series. I kind of wrote this initial proposal document that was written to successful people. And it was written in a tone that was like, you've been invited to become part of this book, and if you get selected, you'll be lucky enough to kind of like. And it was just like, I wrote this letter and I gave it to someone and they were like, this is so, like, not you. Like, your ego is kind of like thinking that you're way beyond where you actually are. You're talking to these super successful people that are going to be kind of like seeing straight through you because you're not yet successful yourself. And so maybe a more grounded, humble approach will kind of work a little bit better than trying to be someone that you're not. And in that moment, I just kind of changed into a different kind of gear around being grounded, being humble, being respectful. So the way that I see myself is that because sometimes people want to be their dominant person, the authority, and sort of like bully people into submission and stuff like that. And there's a lot of speakers that do that. There's a lot of salespeople that do that. And they're effective to a point. And a lot of the times they get short term success because they can kind of bully people into submission. And eventually they grind them down. They say, yes, but that person is no way telling any of their friends about you whatsoever because they're like, I don't want to subject any of my friends to that type of kind of like, treatment. So you basically stop at that point of growing your business. And so it's a difference between someone that plays a long game, which is basically Like, I want to still be effective, and I'm even happy to be less effective in the short term because I'm not going to be ultra aggressive, but I'm going to sell in a way that is respectful. Never see myself as above any other human being, even if I know more about the subject. Like, in God's eyes, we're all equal. Yes, I'm kind of here to help you, but I never see myself as being superior to anyone. But in the same token, I never see myself as being inferior to anyone. I see myself as being, like, an equal. And yes, I've got some knowledge and some skills are going to help you, but it's up to you whether you want to kind of buy or not. And I'm cool with either kind of, like, outcome. And so that kind of humility or that feeling of not being, like, pushed or manipulated then normally works out well. But then people go, ah, that was a nice experience. And I can feel comfortable in telling my friends about this guy because I know that they're where he's going to be respectful, he's going to take care of them, he's going to treat them well, et cetera. And one of the things that I'm. I know this is maybe going to sound a little bit kind of, like, weird, but what's great about my program is that over 50% of people that are in my program are women, which is very, very rare. You know, I went to an event just last week, and there was 25 people there. And it wasn't just a. An event for men. It didn't say that in the advertising, but every single person in the room was a man.
- [42:00]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah.
- [42:00]
Dale Beaumont
Not one female in the whole kind of, like, room.
- [42:02]
Co-host / Interviewer
I've noticed that.
- [42:03]
Omar Zenholm
Yeah.
- [42:04]
Dale Beaumont
And so I was like, isn't that interesting? And obviously it's reflection of the person's Persona and character and, and their marketing and how they come across. And. And so it's like, if you're that type of person, you're only going to attract half of the population.
- [42:20]
Co-host / Interviewer
You're doing a disservice to the group.
- [42:21]
Dale Beaumont
Exactly.
- [42:22]
Co-host / Interviewer
Adding a different dynamic to the discussion, to the. To the energy in the room.
- [42:26]
Dale Beaumont
Yes.
- [42:26]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah.
- [42:28]
Dale Beaumont
So I think being more grounded and more respectful in your kind of approach, if you call it likability, that would be another kind of, like, word for. It just means that you can open up to bigger market, both genders. And also you're going to get a lot more referrals as well. So you end up playing a kind of a long Game. And I got kind of a lot of people now that have just called me up and said, I want to join your program. Because someone that I really, really respect said that you're amazing, and you've been so consistent after so many years. And based on that endorsement, I want to join. What's the next step? Zero selling.
- [43:02]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah. I mean, we're going to talk about referrals in a moment, because I want to get into that big time. But my first experience of you on stage at a blueprint event. I was attending your event. I just moved to Australia. My initial reaction when I saw you on stage, presenting, talking to your audience was, this guy is brilliant. Like, I was just seeing it from a marketing positioning point of view. And I was saying, like, the way I phrase it is like, he's playing the reluctant hero, which is which. You're not playing it. You are. This is who you are. But that's how I perceived it when I first saw it. But first of all, it works really well. The idea of reluctant hero is just like this idea of like, hey, hey, I have something I stumbled upon. It worked for me. I just want to share. Hopefully it works for you, that kind of thing, you know, and it's a different approach. I think it works really well here in Australia because for those who don't know Australia, they eat humble pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Right? The tall poppy thing is a real thing, and it just doesn't come off effective if you go out and say, hey, you know, here are all my accolades and, you know, where's my YouTube plaque?
- [44:03]
Omar Zenholm
Bring it out.
- [44:04]
Co-host / Interviewer
It is bank statements and all that yellow highlighter stuff doesn't work here because people do feel like everybody's equal. They do feel like, hey, I want to learn from somebody who I can relate to. And you presented as somebody very relatable, like, oh, I can learn from this person. Because he's not saying, you know, I learned. I know this stuff because I'm brilliant. I know this stuff because I have so much experience, and I've done this a million times. Just trust me, you know, like, that wasn't the attitude. The attitude was, was, hey, I'm learning, just like you and I. You know, I think it was one of your segments where you share, you know, five new tech tips or something like that, and you're like, hey, I just found these new five things, and here, you should try this. Da, da, da, da. I'm still learning. If you learn something, pop it in the community. That kind of thing. And it was more Collaborative. And I felt that this approach was fantastic because one, the audience was leaning in because they want to learn from somebody that, that they respect, but also they were leaning in because they're like, hey, if this person is trying new things and doing things and it's working for them, I should try that too, you know, and I just thought that it was just a beautiful kind of first impression of you as a business person. Because, you know, I was living in the US Before I moved here, and you know, every event, any speaker, it was almost the opposite. It was this idea of, like, before I even teach you anything, let me teach you about who I am, am, and this is what I do. And this is, you know, these are all the awards I have and how much money I made. And. And they like, you're taught this in like, Internet marketing courses. Like, you have to like, earn the right, earn the right social proof, you know, all this stuff. And that doesn't work in a lot of markets, that doesn't work in Europe, it doesn't work in, you know, pan pack, you know, in Australia, New Zealand, all that kind of stuff. And I think it's working less and less in, in North America, you know, because people just kind of. Of tired of the influencer, the, the person. What I loved about your approach was, even though you weren't, you presented yourself as, I'm just a few steps ahead of you. Let me show you what I just experienced. So therefore you can do the same.
- [46:03]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah.
- [46:04]
Co-host / Interviewer
You know, obviously you, you've built blueprint to an incredible business. And, and one of your jobs is to try to get new members constantly, but you are also aware of the limitations of the market, you know, especially because there are physical events in Australia, things like that, that how much have you focused on retaining your customers? And because I've been to events, bike rides, all kinds of stuff. And there's people that have been blueprinted for 10, 15 years. Like what? Like, have been blueprint for paying annual for X amount of thousands of dollars every single time. And what I realized that you built a community. You built almost like a lifestyle club, you know, because it's not just events. You guys go on trips and you go to Fiji and you go to Europe and you have, you know, you went to Egypt as a group and da, da, da, da. So, like, how much of that is like, I need to work on retention because I can't constantly try to fill in the bucket and how much is this, like, I want to have fun in my business.
- [47:01]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. So retention pieces are really important. At the beginning I sucked at marketing, but then I got really good at marketing and bringing new people in. But sometimes that can actually be a trap because you're so good at getting new customers in. You don't worry about the customers that are just kind of delivering. Yeah. That are just leaving because you're like, oh, just, you know, go get. But then you kind of do that for three or four years and you go, wait a sec, I'm working really, really, really hard. And all I'm doing is just replacing that. I'm not growing, I'm just replacing the customers that I kind of lost out the back door. And then you realize, oh, okay, there's this whole other thing which is called, you know, retention. Or some people like, would label it like churn, which is people kind of like leaving. How do I have. Have more ongoing revenue? Repeat, repeat business. And it almost would kind of, I'd go so far as to say, now that's your really big obsession as a business owner is how do you actually get more repeat business? Because otherwise all you have is you just have a revolving door, you know, of just people coming in and people kind of like leaving. And every year you start at zero and that's hard work and it gets really exhausting. So you've got to become focused and obsessed about how do you, you look after the clients that you've got, how do you retain them? A few little tips. One is around fair pricing. I saw a lot of people in my industry that going like, you know, my program's 25k, my program's 50k, my program is 75k. And they're beating their chest about how much money that they're charging their clients. And every single one of those clients, after a year, they lose every single one of those like, like people. No one stays long term because if they feel like, okay, you've just taken all the fruit off this tree and then there's no more fruit left.
- [48:43]
Co-host / Interviewer
Also I have to deliver $35,000 worth of value in that year in that one year. If you don't. And that's kind of hard to do because they have to implement.
- [48:52]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. So I look at some of my 10 year clients, for example, that have paid sort of $10,000 a year for 10 years. It's $100,000 client. I'd much rather that over a longer period of time than, you know, 25, 50 grand or whatever and then it just goes to zero kind of the next year. You're thinking lifetime value, lifetime value of a Good. So making sure that people kind of feel like that, you know, you're looking after them. And you, of course, you've got to make a profit, and you've got to make sure that it's profitable, but you also don't want people to kind of like, feel like you're, you know, charging too much. Otherwise, people feel like, you know, I'm not really getting the value here. The moment you drop, you might be fine for the first year, but the moment you drop, it's like, it's not worth that. And then from straight away, they churn. The second thing is around realize. I realized the fact that the more that it was just me, then eventually, like, what? Like, familiarity breeds contempt. Like, if you're just listening to the same person over and over again. Like this guy again.
- [49:55]
Omar Zenholm
Yeah.
- [49:55]
Dale Beaumont
Like, you go from being, like, revered, you know, to like, imagine if you had Tony Robbins. He was in your office, he sat next to you every single day. He'd go from being Tony Robbins, you know, to like, think about every word that I'm saying to him to just, he's the guy down the street. And then, you know, and so you would just lose that aura and lose that respect, and you kind of run out of tricks after 18 months. It's like, I've heard all your stories. I know the next sentence that's coming out of your mouth because of. And so what I realized was I needed to introduce other characters. I needed to have. Have other people that were speakers, other experts. It can't just be the Dale Show. And so that was where I then started to think about more like, I'm the host. And this is another thing as well. Sometimes people think I have to be the expert. I have to be the guru. And guru model is good to kind of get you started. But if you want to sustain over a longer period of time, then you can't build a business just around the guru model, because then after 18 months, months, you know, clients will just all churn because, you know, you've kind of given. Revealed all your tricks and there's nothing more to kind of give. But if you space that out over five years or 10 years by introducing other characters, people will stay a lot longer for everyone else. And the third thing was what I realized was everyone joins for the content, but then what they stay for is the community. And we realized the fact that the value is not just in me or even in these other experts or in the fair pricing, which has got to be be all important. It's about when they're some of their best friends in the world in the program. And this is their, you know, excuse that every three or four times a year they get to catch up with their best friends, then why would they ever kind of like, leave? Because it's like, oh, what are we going to do in November? Like, I've got clients that are planning out where they're going to go for dinner during the conference, at the next conference, like, hanging out with each other. And it's there because they come from all over Australia and New Zealand up, and they catch up. They plan their social life around our events. And the common thing where they're all going to be together, it also creates fomo.
- [51:57]
Co-host / Interviewer
Like, oh, are you going to, you know, Croatia? He just opened up spots, you know, and it's like, oh, I'm not going. Maybe I should consider going, you know, because, you know, Nancy's going and. Yeah, that kind of thing is, like, really powerful.
- [52:08]
Dale Beaumont
Totally. And. And because you can go to Croatia, we've taken our clients to Egypt before, and we've been to Thailand. You can go there kind of anytime you want. Want to. But to go there with, like, 40, 50, 100amazing people that share this, your passion for, in this case, business, and.
- [52:25]
Co-host / Interviewer
Seeing it from a different perspective.
- [52:26]
Omar Zenholm
Yeah.
- [52:27]
Dale Beaumont
And every conversation that you have on the bus or, you know, kind of at the bar or while you're kind of, like, waiting for your tour is an interesting, stimulating conversation about subjects that you're passionate about that becomes, like, really seductive. And then they go, I'm not going to go on an ordinary holiday and be with, you know, 50 people that I got nothing in common with. I want to be. Yeah. With people that I love hanging out with. So that retention piece, adding more experiences has also been really important as well. And doing special things. We take them out for the movies. We kind of do, like, go to bowling. We've done, like, puzzle rooms. We've done, like, video arcade nights. We do parties a couple of times a year as well. So different experiences like that, where people. I remember one guy saying to me, who was in his 60s, joined my program. He's like, I feel like I'm 40. Like, I've, like, I just feel young again. Like, I just opened up, like, a whole new lease of life. New friends, new, like, you know, experiences. And that's kind of, if you think about what business one is. Someone once said to me, you know, go think about what business are you in? And then what business are you kind of like, really in? You know? And so we're in the business coaching business, but, you know, we're in the business really of transformation and helping people to get their spark back for business because oftentimes you get beaten up quite a lot and business can be really lonely and sometimes business is a lot of stuff that goes wrong and it can be very depressing, you know, and part of what we're in the business of just re. Inspiring people again and getting them to kind of like remotivated. And so that's really, really important. So, yeah, I love it.
- [54:07]
Co-host / Interviewer
Speaking of beating up, you know, we all get beaten up in our, in our, in our journey.
- [54:12]
Dale Beaumont
Yes.
- [54:13]
Co-host / Interviewer
There's a story that you shared one time with me that I hope that you would, you would be able to share with our audience, where you and Catherine, your wife, were just burnt out and you needed a holiday, but you couldn't afford going abroad or even going anywhere in Australia, and you guys decided to go to Bondi in a hostel.
- [54:37]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah.
- [54:38]
Co-host / Interviewer
Tell us a little bit that story.
- [54:39]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. So we were, so we were 19 when we started our business, and we're also 19 when we met, you know, as well. So, you know, we started out kind of like just hanging out and we both had sort of some debts that we'd accumulated throughout, putting money into, first of all, doing courses to educate ourselves. So we kind of went backwards and, and, and Catherine also, you know, had her before we met. Her father passed away and she kind of was the oldest of the children, you know, paid for a lot of the medical expenses and paid for, you know, funeral costs and all those type of things as well. And so we both had kind of debts, not insane amount of money, but it did feel like a lot at the time. You know, it was about $70,000 that we were kind of like, negative and, and again, it's all relative, right? But for us, it felt like, you know, may as well been a million dollars, like a lot of pressure. And so we, but we were both working hard. We were kind of like burnt out and we were like. And then Catherine had this idea, we just need to, we just need to go away. And I'm like, we can't afford to go away. And she's like, no, pack your bags. We're going to be going away for two days. So I was like, okay. So we kind of got in the car and I was thinking, oh, maybe we're going to be going to the airport. How are we going to afford this? Where are we going to go? You know. But we ended up driving all of about 25 minutes. So we live in Sydney, this place called Gladesville to Bondi. If you go onto the map and you type in Gladesville Bondi, it's about 25 minutes away from each other. And we went checked into a backpackers, like a youth hostel, basically. I love it. And we just walked down to the beach kind of like, you know, every day and we'd go to a cafe or whatever and it was like this little staycation sort of type thing. And then at night we'd go back to the backpackers. And it didn't even have a ensuite. There was a communal toilet down the hall and a communal shower down the hall. And I can remember when we, you know, there was a bed that we sort of slept in, but the bed was kind of like, didn't really have much springs. And so we kind of ended up sleeping. Kind of like this intimacy. Yeah, exactly. But it was a really like, special moment where we, you know, we've been all around the world and been on amazing trips and traveled first class, blah, blah, blah. But we love like that experience, you know, because it was just that sort of point whereby we were able to take a little bit of a break. And I think it's important in business to take breaks. And it's not about, you know, expensive holidays. You know, you can go, so put up a tent somewhere, drive in your car for an hour, put up a tent somewhere, or check into a caravan park or a youth hostel or something just to recuperate and go for a walk in nature or go to the beach or the mountains, whatever kind of is going to help you to recharge because otherwise you can kind of be get burnt out. And it wasn't long after that we developed a plan to kind of pay off our debts. And we basically wrote down a list of all of the debts that we have had and looked at, okay, if we can save this amount of money per week from what we make and just go to debt clearing. And the way to do it is you just start with the smallest amount, whatever it is, don't start with the highest interest rate, because if you start with the highest interest rate, then it could take longer to actually pay off. So you start with the smallest amount and say that's a thousand dollars. You pay that off and then you take that thousand dollars that you and the money that you're saving and you use that to chunk into the next one. It kind of compounds pounds, sort of like pays off your debt faster. And so within about 18 months, I think it Was, and this is all Catherine. Catherine was very diligent around our budget and what we were kind of spending. We were able to pay off those debts and we were kind of like clear of that. And then we were able to, you know, move from a little one bedroom apartment to a two bedroom apartment, which felt like a massive kind of like upgrade. Then a few years later, we were then saving for our, like a house. And then we became parents. And then basically we ended up, you know, buying an apartment and then buying a house and then properties. But it all started from just making that decision to sort of say, okay, start with what you've got, and if you've got debts, start there, you know, and get those kind of like cleared. And then, you know, if your goal is to, to, to, to get a house or even an apartment, whatever you can kind of like afford or potentially the stock market or invest in a business, just kind of get started. And all success is it's just like effort compounded over time. And it's just like, that's really all it is. Like, people look at what I have today and go, wow. Like, you know, and again, not going to list my credentials, but we've done some amazing things. But it's just like, like 25 years I've been doing this. You know, I would be surprised if I hadn't got these results after 25 years of kind of like effort. Like, it's no magic. It's not like I had some lucky sort of thing or rich parents or whatever. It's like that one of my other favorite movies mentioned, Field of Dreams before the Shawshank Redemption, which is basically, how did this guy break out of prison? It was just like with this little, you know, spoon, you know, a big sheet of kind of concrete compounded over time. It's just like effort compounded over time equals success. And the main thing is you just got to not blow up along the way. And before you blow up, you're gonna need to take a few breaks and recuperate. So I recommend to entrepreneurs, you have four holidays a year, and the holidays could just be two days. Just like go away for two days and just shut off and recuperate. And then every year as you get more successful, you try to double it. So then you have, have four holiday four days four times a year. And then the next year you have four holidays eight days a year, and the next four holidays 16 days a year. And eventually, you know, where you can kind of like get to is four holidays and then basically four months every Single kind of year. So one of the things that we've been doing for 16 years now is two months on, one month off. So we do work for two months and then we take a month where we travel somewhere in the world. We've, I've mentioned became parents and now we've got two, not just little kids, but teenagers, young adults. We've got an almost 18 year old and a 15 year old as well. Finn and Callan, lovely guys. And yeah, we've traveled extensively with them. Two months on, one month off. But we started with that little two day staycation in Bondi and then we kind of grew from there.
- [61:09]
Co-host / Interviewer
How significant is Catherine to your success?
- [61:12]
Dale Beaumont
Look, massively, I think that's the most important decision that you'll ever make in your life is who chooses a life partner. And I chose someone that we shared some similar values. We were both, we both met at a personal development course. So that was like something where we had that shared. She would never have gone unless she had some ambition and she also had a desire to want to have a better life. And I was obviously there for the same reason as well. So we had that kind of like in common. We also had just the, the trainings that we'd had attended, you know, was around that, you know, you're responsible for your own, you know, success and, and around, you know. Yeah, communication is the response you get and a whole bunch of other kind of like things that we kind of learned that have been the foundation of our relationship. But we have also had challenges as well because we're both, both fairly like if you look at the personality profile, you got your D, your I, your S's and you sort of like C's, your disc profile, like I'm probably a D, but I can be a bit softer and I can be more adaptable. But Catherine is like a high D. So she's a very strong, very determined and I'm also very strong and very determined as well. So we kind of have fireworks when we spend, we can hang out together fine, but we can't really work together in the same sort of space. So she works at a home office, I go to an office. And we both have separate areas of the kind of the business. I kind of am almost the face of the business. I organize all the events and do the training. But Catherine does all the finance, all of the insurances, manages all the investment properties, does all of the behind the scenes stuff. And she does that brilliantly. And because of that we're kind of a really great team. We're both kind of, like, contributing. There's kind of, like, shared ownership of our success. And so, yeah, people kind of think that it's the Dale show, but it's really the Dale and Catherine Show. And she's been a big, big, big part of our success. And it's not just the business. At a certain point in time, time you've got your business, but then you've got your investments. And once you have enough investments, you end up making more money from your investments than what you do from your business. And so for a long time, you know, I would kind of like, you know, get in a moment of frustration when I'm angry. I'd say I'm the one that's out there making all the money. And now she's like, you know how much money I make? Last year I made more than you. And so, yeah, it's definitely been an amazing partnership. And, yeah, we've had our challenges in. I don't want to say it's this, like, perfect, you know, kind of like romance that we've had for 25 years that we've been together. There have definitely been challenging times. And the thing that I remember someone saying once is, you know, marriages, like, have four seasons, you know, and. And so, yes, you could be in a winter, you know, but you've just got to hang in there, because what eventually follows every winter is spring and then the summer, and then maybe, you know, autumn and things like that. And you can pull yourself out of those things as well. But to think that it's going to be, you know, amazing all of the time and you're not going to have any problems, and you look at other couples and go, oh, wow, they're flawless. They must never have fights and arguments and all that type of stuff. Like, you know, we have arguments all the time. Like, there is lots of. Of challenges in relationships. Yeah. But the main thing is, is that, you know, you. You kind of keep going and you've got to. That's why we lasted so long, is that we're kind of just like, I'm committed to. To growing and evolving and changing. And she's hopefully, you know, prepared to grow, involve in a change. And if you. As long as two people are always doing that and you're learning and growing together, then you can get through anything. It's when one person says, you know, this is who I am and I'm not going to change, and, you know, and then someone else digs their heels in, and it's kind of like, well, that type of relationship just cannot last if, if you're both not evolving.
- [65:28]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah. I mean, what I see and what I can relate to with my own relationship with Nicole, my co founder and my wife and going on the journey is that story you shared with being in the hostel in Bondi and just this idea of having somebody that you know has your back, knowing that you're on this journey with somebody that is, is going to support you, that you're not alone. And the fact that, you know, she's like, we're going to figure this out, we're going to go even if it's just Bandai and we're 25 minutes away. But your well being is my well being. And that agreement that maybe we're going to disagree, maybe we're not going to be always up, but bottom line, I got your back, you got my back. And that that foundation is like paramount in my opinion. And that's what I see even today when I see you guys together at an event or even socially is that even though you guys might be different as people, your agreement with each other is that you're my number one priority and I'm yours. So I think that's something I learned from you. Thanks so much, man. Going back to the holidays, one of the things that you may not know about Dale, but Dale takes a lot of holidays and long ones. How are often and how long are your normal vacations or, or trips?
- [66:43]
Dale Beaumont
About a month. Normally four times a year. Last year we did six months traveling. So the backstory behind that was that we, I can still remember the, the kind of the month that Catherine came home and said it was 2007, honey, you know, I'm pregnant, we're gonna to be parents. And so I was thinking to myself, okay, I'm working at the moment. Like I'd wake up, turn on my laptop and just start working and I would just work, work, work, work, work. And then I'd still be working at, you know, 9, 10, 11, 12 o' clock at night. That was just my life. And I thought, I'm about to become a father. I can't keep doing this. I need to kind of figure out how I could not be work, be all consuming because I need to make space for being a father and I want to spend time with this, this, my children. And the month after I found out that news, April 2007, Tim Ferriss released this book called the Four Hour Week and just kind of burst onto the scene. And I was like, I need to kind of like that sounds good. To me, like, if I could even do, like, you know, half of that, I'd be like, over the moon.
- [67:56]
Co-host / Interviewer
How do I get there?
- [67:57]
Dale Beaumont
How do I get there? So I read that book.
- [67:58]
Omar Zenholm
Book.
- [67:58]
Dale Beaumont
And he spoke about a number of different things. He spoke about the importance of. Of systems, both by basically the importance of virtual assistants. But the other thing he spoke about was having these mini, like, vacations, mini retirements. He said the new rich, the old rich, was work until you were like 65, which the government now says 75, and then eventually get the pension.
- [68:21]
Co-host / Interviewer
And eventually we all seen the meme of the old couple falling asleep in the gondola.
- [68:26]
Omar Zenholm
Yeah.
- [68:27]
Co-host / Interviewer
In Venice. Yeah. You're too old now to enjoy it.
- [68:29]
Dale Beaumont
Exactly, yeah. So I thought to myself, okay, don't want to do that. He said, the other thing is to take these mini retirements throughout your working kind of life. And so we thought, wow, that would be really cool. And we both, Catherine and I both loved travel and we thought, wouldn't it be cool if we could actually travel with our kids? Because a lot of people kind of said to us, the moment their kids come along, you're not going to be able to travel. You're going to be stuck at home. And we kind of were really determined to.
- [68:55]
Co-host / Interviewer
What's this word? You can't.
- [68:57]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, screw that. Like, we just like, what is this K thing? I just don't like people saying no. And anytime someone says, you can't do something, I'm like, I'm going to figure out how you can do something. That's just kind of how I'm kind of like wired. So people say I can't travel with kids. It's like, okay, we're going to figure that out. So I read the book for our week, talked about this idea. And so when our son was born, we sort of took our first vacation. I think it was around about two and a half weeks.
- [69:20]
Omar Zenholm
Weeks.
- [69:20]
Dale Beaumont
We went to Hawaii, then we went on to. To Canada. I had some business stuff that I needed to do there as well. So it's a little bit of a working trip, but also a big kind of like holiday. And yeah, it was a little bit hard on the plane. We had a little baby and things like that. But we got there and we made it work. And we got over the jet lag and we're like, okay, we came back home, nothing blew up. You know, we stood out our business. We were still making money. While we're away, the systems that we had in place were working and we thought, thought, let's do this again. So then a few months later, we kind of did another trip and then we kind of came up, well, what about if we do this two months work where we'll work quite hard, we'll come back, we'll hustle, get in the trenches, do what we need to do? You know, we still had goals and dreams. We weren't ready to fully retire. But then we're going to take a month where we could kind of like relax.
- [70:05]
Co-host / Interviewer
And so when you are relaxing, what percentage of time are you working? Laptop open?
- [70:10]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, I'd say on average it would be like when I'm traveling, traveling two hours a day of kind of like work. In the past it was just like on a laptop early in the morning or we'd get our son to bed at like 7 o' clock and then I'd go to the lobby and I'd do another couple of hours worth of work. Now it's become so much easier because of the smartphone and I've got 90% of what I do on my laptop I can do on my phone. So I'm working a little bit throughout the day, replying to messages, you know, checking WhatsApp or our Slack channel and different things like that. So. But yeah, some days I might go three or four days where I'm just traveling or moving, whatever, and I'm tired and no, just checking the team. You're good. They're like, we're good. So nothing. Yeah, weekend, you know, everything kind of like quiets down, so we're all good. And then other days, what would happen is that after about a week, sometimes like a few big projects kind of like build up and the team go, we need you for a few hours.
- [71:05]
Co-host / Interviewer
Hours.
- [71:05]
Dale Beaumont
And then I'll tell Catherine on Thursday, would it be okay if I have a whole day to just do work and she'll go, cool. Then they'll kind of go do a tour or something like that, or go to a museum. And then I'll just sit in my laptop and just work for the whole day.
- [71:19]
Co-host / Interviewer
And then you can enjoy after that.
- [71:20]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, and then I can enjoy sort of after that. So on average, I'd say it's probably like when I'm traveling, two hours a day would be the average. And then I can just sustain that like kind of indefinitely. It gives me enough time to kind of like clear the day, respond to messages. I didn't want to come back, go away for a month and come back to 3000 emails and then have like, you know, a month to just catch up. So If I could just maintain, you know, the, the bare minimum. And look, this is, it's kind of an interesting thing to kind of. We could have like, we've done very, very well and. But we could have been more successful if we just financially, if we just threw ourselves into work for the last 16 years. Years. But we would never have had all of these experiences that we've had with our children and been able to travel to over 85 countries and had these most wonderful things. And if you know the book Die with Zero by Bill Perkins, he talks about your attire on your memories. Like, I, we oftentimes just sit, you know, in bed with Catherine with the iPad or my phone and just go through photos of, oh, look at the kids when we were here and look.
- [72:25]
Co-host / Interviewer
At what we did here and frames in the living room and that. That's. I think that's one of the best products in the world.
- [72:31]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah.
- [72:31]
Co-host / Interviewer
Because you get to relive all those things over again.
- [72:34]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. And so that is what we have, have done. The two months on, one month off has, has been something that. And it also has sustained us, I think, a lot more because I think sometimes if you, if you're so attached to at the beginning, it's like your business is like a baby. It requires all of you to watch it all the time. Time. But then once that business grows up a little bit, you know, you need to kind of like let it stand on its own two feet. And sometimes for two reasons. One is that the. Some of the best ideas that I've had is when I'm out of the office and when I'm in a different location and I have all these ideas that I would never have had if I stayed stuck in it. And also, your team will never actually think for themselves, never grow, never take on new challenges if you're always there and they go, oh, Dale, how do I do this? Or can you help me with this? The fact that they are not there and they have to think for themselves and they have to solve problems without me, then builds, I think, a much better business.
- [73:31]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah. And I'm sure you get a new perspective on things when you step out a little bit. I know I do. When I go, especially when I go and see something like an incredible cathedral that was designed and built, was designed and then built, you know, two generations after the designer, you know, put it together and this idea of this long term vision. Am I building something? When you really see greatness on display, you start to think about, like, what am I doing? You know, like oh, maybe I should start think bigger. And I think that that's definitely informs your. Your perspective on business as well. So you talked about. You. You do take these holidays. They're scheduled. I want to talk about the preloaded year. I first heard about the preloaded Year from Dan Martell, who was our coach when we were building Webinar Ninja and growing it. And I asked him, where'd you learn this? He said, oh, I learned it from Taki Moore. I said, oh, okay. And then when I moved to Australia, I met Taki and we were hanging out. Hey, Taki, thanks so much for, you know, teaching Dale the preloaded year. That's. That's, that's incredible. We use it all the time and it's really helped us, like, kind of have everything we want in the year. And he's like, oh, no, I learned that from Dale. And I was like, okay. Then I found out. I met you and we chatted and I was like, so you, you are the person that kind of started this movement, especially in our group of entrepreneurs. Tell us about what the preloaded year is, why it's worth spending a few hours doing this every year, and what does it empower you to do?
- [75:01]
Dale Beaumont
So the preloaded year is a concept of what gets scheduled, gets. Gets done, and it's living life and building a business by design, not by kind of default. And it's also based around this concept of kind of like batching. If you have to do a lot of the same things, if you do them at the same time, it's actually much more efficient. Like, for example, if I had just one pair of socks and I put a whole load of washing on for one pair of socks, that would be kind of a waste of time and a waste of resources, a waste of water. Whereas if I've got like 10 pairs of socks and a few T shirts and underwear and whatever, I do a load of washing together, then it's much more efficient. And so the concept is sometime before the year has started. And that's part of, like, when do you write your to do list? The night before, you know, is that when you decide what you're going to do for the next day?
- [75:53]
Co-host / Interviewer
We do ours. Ours and end of November, because then the holidays get busy.
- [75:57]
Dale Beaumont
Exactly. So applying that sort of same concept to when do you load your year? You don't do it at the January. You do it in October. November, it may be December at the latest. You basically go, okay, what do I want from this year? And by the way, you can do this kind of anytime. You don't have to wait until the end of the year before next year. If you're halfway through the year, you can just start now. But you basically go, okay, I'm going to look at the next 12 months and go, all right, first of all, we're going to. And the way that I teach it is I get people to just sort of think differently around things. Like, we start with the easy stuff. So first of all, your birthday. Find your birthday on the calendar, all right? Put in your birthday. And if you have a partner, find their birthday. Put in their birthday, okay? You're going to make a decision that you're not going to work on your birthday. Like, because what do you call, like, someone that drinks every single day? An alcoholic. What do you call someone that works every single day? A workaholic. You know, there's no difference. You know, we judge other people for smoking and drinking and taking drugs. But if you cannot live a day without working, you have an addiction, and you need to break that addiction. And how you're going to do it is by not working on your birthday. Now, whether it's your birthday or it's some other day that's significant to doesn't really matter. But the whole idea is I want people to realize work is something that you do. It's not who you are, you know, and so, you know, when. So I get people to kind of, like, separate themselves from their business, you know, to say, you are a person that has, you know, a life and passions and interests and hobbies. And one of the things that you do is a business, and you can. Because I've known a lot of people that have sold their businesses and go into depression because they're like, I'm a nobody now. I'm nothing. Like, what do I do? I've lost my whole identity. So part of that is separating out by just putting down your birthday, as simple as that. And then you got a kid's birthday. Put your kid's birthday. You still got parents. You know how lucky you are to still have parents. Put their birthday in, you know, and say, mum from. You know, I'm going to take you out on your birthday. And that's going to be a special kind of thing because you may only have, you know, 5, 10, 20 left. Who knows how many more years you've got? You've got. Then once you get in the birthdays and kind of like anniversaries, anyone that's important to you, then you put in your four holidays.
- [78:02]
Co-host / Interviewer
So four holidays, starting with the Fun stuff first.
- [78:04]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, yeah. I used to do the business way. I used to teach it like that before. And when I realized, wait a second sec, this is completely the wrong way around. Like, that's like the tail wagging the dog. Like the business is, is then telling me where I need to be when you know where. It's like, the business works for me. I don't work for it. So it's a psychology kind of thing that I flipped around for five years. I taught it, put it all your business first and then basically, what does that tell you? Then your life gets the scraps, your family gets the scraps, you know. No, it shouldn't be like that. You put in your life comes from first. You know, who is the most. At the end of the day, you know, what's the most important thing? Your wife, kids, mom and dad. You know, whoever's important to you, they go in first. Then you need to look after yourself and you need to spend time with your significant other. Otherwise you won't have a relationship and you won't have. You might have a lot of money, but, you know, he who dies with the most amount of toys still dies, you know, so you're not taking any of it with you when you kind of like leave.
- [79:03]
Co-host / Interviewer
Sorry, Mummies of Egypt.
- [79:06]
Dale Beaumont
Exactly. So what's the point of having all this money if you haven't had these amazing experiences? And I believe that that's your greatest wealth is experiences that you had with the people that you love. Four holidays a year, start off with two days. I can't afford it, I haven't got money. Start with two days. Four times a year, pitch a tent, get in the car, drive for an hour, pitch a tent, that cost you nothing. So don't tell me we started with debts as well. When people start making excuses, I'm talking a bit bluntly to you now, like, it's just like, drop the excuses. Just kind of like, do it. Start with what you got. That's the whole kind of message. Four holidays a year for two days, then you double it every single year. Then once you put in those things, then you can look at what other personal things do you need to take care of? Like, if you're over 50, then you should probably have an annual checkup with your doctor, you know, when are you going to do that? Put that in your diary, you know, because how many people do you know of that caught prostate cancer too late or breast cancer or those type of things? So put that in. You get your checkups. For some people, they Might go, okay, well, I got my hair cut maybe eight times a year. So I'm going to put those, you know, kind of personal care days, maybe spend a half a day. And what I'd recommend that you do, if you have a few things that you need to do, like, ladies will kind of go, okay, I need to do my hair, I need to like, do my nails, whatever. Great. But you don't want to do your hair here, then your nails here, and then you're waxing there. Do them all. Like take half a day, once every six weeks or once a month and batch them together. And that's like your personal care kind of thing. Exactly.
- [80:27]
Co-host / Interviewer
You're gonna get through it.
- [80:29]
Dale Beaumont
Then you've got your gym sessions, whatever. You put all that in. Then that's the first big kind of like layout. And there's like seven or eight things you put in. Then you put in all your business things and you go, okay, what are the things that you do that generate the most amount of income for you? Some people it's events, Some people it's sales calls. Some people it's writing, marketing campaigns. Some people it's doing sales promotions. If you're running an E commerce business, so you kind of go put in all of those. Those and then what are the things that you need to do to. To kind of like promote that particular thing? Put in all of those as well. So basically call it like your rocks, your pebbles, your sand, your rocks are all of the big things that generate your income. Then the, the basically the pebbles are all of the delivery things that you need to do to deliver on your promise that you kind of like make. So you got to sell the thing and then you got to do the thing thing. And then the sand is all of the other stuff. Performance reviews, batching, content, you know, looking, spending like time with your accountant, whatever. So it's like, how often do you have to do it? It's like, okay, got to do this every quarter. How long does it take? Takes an hour. Great. I'm kind of going to put that in four times a year. So you make. You spend about three, four hours and you basically preload. About 50% of your calendar is preloaded. The rest of it can be flexible and you do whatever you need to do at the that particular time. But there's a saying that I remember well, the person's been discredited kind of now, but there's a lesson in it, and it's from Lance Armstrong. It's not about the bike and the. One of the Principles, which is still sound, is like, eat before you're hungry, drink before you're thirsty. Like, if you're an elite athlete and as an entrepreneur, you are like an elite athlete, if you wait until you're tired, you're probably burnt out, and then it might take you weeks before you recuperate. And if you get sick, and some people we know, entrepreneurs that have had chronic fatigue syndrome or have. And it's taken them years, years, literally years to recover. So you're an athlete, you need to make sure you look after yourself. Eat before you're hungry, drink before you're thirsty is all about kind of knowing, I'm not going to wait until something breaks and then it becomes a crisis. It's going to be all consuming. If I can just maintain. It's much easier to maintain something than it is to fix something that's broken. So let's not wait until the engine blows up in the car. Let's just go, I'm going to get twice a year, I'm going to book it in for a scheduled service and then it's done. Done. Then you don't have to worry about that stuff. So it's applying that philosophy to your whole life and it's, it's like, you know, amazing. And then you do that consistently for a decade and you'll have massive success.
- [82:56]
Co-host / Interviewer
Two big takeaways from preloaded deer. Number one is it's really important for you to have the conversation with yourself or anybody else you're working with. What's important to me, because I need to put that first in the calendar. What's important to me, whether it's like, my health, my wellness, because I could say something and do something else, you know, Like, I think it's Ramit who says, Ramit who says, like, if I look at your bank balance or you look at your bank statement and your calendar, I can basically figure out what's important to you. And what you spend your money and time on is really what you love. So if you want to get into something, then put it in the calendar. Like, if I want to start playing pickleball, then I'm going to put pickleball once a week or whatever it is in the calendar. So it's like, it's a good way to. For you to start making some decisions. Decisions are very empowering, I find. Like, make a decision, then it's just, okay, I made a decision, now I just gotta do the action.
- [83:43]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah.
- [83:43]
Co-host / Interviewer
Which is great. The other thing I love about it too is that the fact you're setting this up is because a lot of people don't understand that. I think it's brilliant, especially if you're starting out in business. You don't have any guardrails when you're an entrepreneur. So the tendency is to just work all the time. Yeah, Right. When you're an employee at a company. Company, they have a whole structure for you. They have parties and days off and national holidays and vacation time and hours.
- [84:09]
Dale Beaumont
And a weekend and a weekend and.
- [84:11]
Co-host / Interviewer
All this stuff like where you kind of have to recuperate and rest and they kind of do your preloaded year for you.
- [84:17]
Omar Zenholm
Yeah.
- [84:17]
Co-host / Interviewer
So you have to do it for yourself as an entrepreneur. And then eventually like you do is like, okay, how do I enjoy life more or do more of life than business and let business take care of itself and let me do all that. But I love this concept of like, I need to build the system for myself because no one's going to do it for me. And I think it's so empowering. We found it super empowering. We've been doing it for years now, so it's been great. Speaking of like the holidays and preloaded year and all this kind of stuff, I have a personal question I've been wanting to ask you for so long and we've hung out a lot, but I just never asked you, like, how do you not get stressed out, get overwhelmed? You do a lot of stuff, Dale. Like, you, you have business blueprint. You know, you're still keeping an eye on, you know, empower you. You know, you're kind of still kind of an ambassador. You have, you know, virtual staff finder now. You have work pod, you have investments, real estate. You, you're, you're doing trips, you're doing vacations. You have your own, own personal house builds. You have all these things going on. Like, how do you not be like, okay, this is just too much to handle. How do I. How do you keep all the balls in the air? How do you relax and go on holiday when you have all this going on? Like, for me, it just sounds like either Dale is just some sort of like spiritual guru and has can block this all out, or he's got systems in place or he's delegated this to somebody. Like, I'm just so curious about how do you not get over overwhelmed with everything you do and have going on constantly. I'm sure I forgot a whole bunch of stuff that I don't know about. I use other businesses, other ventures.
- [85:54]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So a few things come to Mind, there's people, there's also technology, good systems. So let me unpack some of those. First of all, having a wife that can handle like a lot of the finances and the insurance side and dealing with kind of banks and, and all that stuff is a huge kind of like weight off your shoulder. So if you're in a position where you have kind of have a partner and you can have someone else take responsibility for certain things and you're responsible for other things, that just is amazing. Not everyone's in that position, which is, which is fine. But you could hire someone to kind of help you. Even if someone hire you to help you around the house with kind of like stuff that you don't want to kind of do or things that you're not good at. Or maybe you have like a part time bookkeeper that kind of like helps you with that type of stuff. Fractional cfo. Like if you don't have a life partner, there are other ways of, maybe you have to break it up into three or four kind of people. I had was with one of my friends in, in Denver, Colorado and he just had a person that came into his house and just watered all the plants and like, you know, and that was just their job to kind of do that because he's like, I forget about it and then the plants die and then I kind of get frustrated that I, you know, so I just, I realized that was something that I wasn't very good at.
- [87:10]
Co-host / Interviewer
Outsource. Yeah.
- [87:11]
Dale Beaumont
So we outsourced it and like, so you could do that then you need to. Once you get over a million dollars a year in revenue in a business, you need a good general manager. You need someone that is going to be running the day to day of the business.
- [87:23]
Co-host / Interviewer
What am I looking for with this person?
- [87:25]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, so you local, international, whatever. It depends on the type of business that you have. I, I have someone that's local that's kind of like in my office because I have sort of staff here as well. So when I'm traveling for a month, it's good that there's some consistency there and having people come into an office and someone that's able to, to manage those, those people and spend time with them. And, and so that creates that sort of like office vibe. But I know people that have remote businesses and they might even have their general manager based in another city or even another country. And so, so you know something that, that you can, you can do. But having someone that manages the day to day, whether they become a general manager or Operations manager or even this person could be even like a fractional sort of like type of person to begin with. There's a few people out there that are like, you know, fractional integrators. It's kind of like called, if you follow like EOS. That means that like 70% of this, the dramas that I'd normally have to deal with between like, you know, a life partner partner and a gentleman, it.
- [88:23]
Co-host / Interviewer
Doesn'T even reach you, the drama.
- [88:24]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, most of it doesn't kind of like reach me. So that's kind of the first line of first and second line of defense. Then from there the other businesses that I have, most of them have someone that's running that business sort of day to day. So again, they deal with most of the issues and dramas and crisises that come.
- [88:42]
Co-host / Interviewer
So do you start that business with that in mind or do you bring them on later or.
- [88:46]
Dale Beaumont
Sometimes I have found the business and then found a person to run that business and other times I've found a person and we've developed a business kind of together or sometimes they've started that business and then I've come in six or 12 months later and invested in that business and then became a business partner. But the other companies that we have, there's normally someone else that's running the day to day that's in that driver's seat. Then from there, good systems are really important as well. So. So we've got like a knowledge management system that has lots of systems in place, documented policies and procedures for all the things that we do. And I also have an amazing team in the Philippines as well. So we have in business blueprint, we've got 12 people that live in the Philippines that run various aspects of that particular business kind of as well. So it's not all coming to me. So by the time it kind of filters through those people, people, you know, I'm probably only dealing with a 10% of kind of like stuff. And then the other thing, you know, you need to. I've just kind of learned that, you know, don't jump before the bullets left the gun in terms of if there's a problem that happens and you can do something about it, don't worry. Like the moral of the story is don't worry if you can't do something about it's going to happen anyway, let it happen and it will unfold. And then you wait and see what happens. You and you have to respond. So if staff member calls up, you know, and, and says like this has happened, okay, Is there anything I can do about it? If I can't do anything about it, then there's no point worrying about it. It's going to chew up just more mental energy and just rob you of your kind of, like, life force and energy. Better off just going, okay, I'm going to save my energy for when I have to deal with something that I can control. And then if you can do something about it again, don't worry about it, because you can. You're not a tree. You can move, you can change, you can evolve, you can. You can, you know, be resourceful, you can solve it, you know, and nothing is. Everything is figureoutable. Like, everything can be kind of, like, solved. So I just have that kind of mindset around things. It's going to be okay. We're going to work it out. And if there's a problem and we're going to this better opportunity kind of like coming, or it's happened for a reason, or there's going to be a great lesson in this, or this is going to be an amazing story one day. And I just approach it with that mindset. Mindset. So I'm not freaking out all the time.
- [90:59]
Co-host / Interviewer
That's great. One of the things that Nicole has taught me over the years is how much, you know, you hear this all the time in, like, you know, doctors talking about diseases and, like, the number one cause of xyz stress. Right? Like, you know, the number one reason for cancer is this, like, stress is a big part of why people get sick. And one of the things if I'm like, my mind is racing or I'm thinking about something in bed, and the first thing I think about is like, okay, let me stop worrying, because this is going to affect my health when I go to sleep. Well, I'm going to wake up all tired and I can't record the podcast all of a sudden. Best thing I could do.
- [91:32]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah.
- [91:33]
Co-host / Interviewer
Go to bed. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, but there is a TED.
- [91:37]
Dale Beaumont
Talk that has been done more recently about stress, and it's not the stress itself, it's how you think about the stress that is the biggest kind of, like, determinant of illness and other things. So I. I see stress as. As, like something that's actually, you know, a good thing. Like, it's kind of like, yeah, like, the fact that you're experiencing stress. It's like you're a human being. You're, you know, you could be dead right now. You get to live this kind of life and you get to have a good Problem to have. Like, you know, I've still got two arms, I've still got two legs. I can see, I can hear. Like, you know, I have. Have so many gifts that I've got already and a bit of stress. Like, I can deal with that. Like, if everything else, like, I do my checkup, I still got my wife, I still got my kids, I still got my arms, I still got my legs. What the hell do you have to worry about? You know? So I do that little check and I go, okay, this is not this big thing of, oh, stress. It's this thing of stress. And I can deal with that and it's okay. And I, you know, I can be resourceful. And so I just feel that my, it's people's response to stress and actually realizing that stress is a. Actually a healthy thing. Like too much of a. Too much of anything is bad. You know, it can be debilitating stress, and that's not good. But a little bit of stress is actually good for you. And it, you know, does make you stronger. It does make you more resourceful and learn.
- [93:03]
Co-host / Interviewer
Like, it's actually human nature for us. Even Korean stress, if you, if you have elderly parents or you have somebody that, that's, you know, up in age, they don't have a lot going on. Like, they're, they're retired, they're not working. They. They don't have a lot of issues or problems. So they, they might just get stressed or create stress because it's boring. Otherwise, there's no problems to solve anymore, you know, and, and I think that's an important thing to think about. It's like, so if you're getting stressed, it means that you have a challenge, and the challenge is. Challenges is good.
- [93:33]
Dale Beaumont
Exactly. I remember like hearing this saying and, and it sort of relates to this kind of point. And it was something like, it's. This is not going to be exactly what I love your mom. Sorry.
- [93:44]
Co-host / Interviewer
No, not talking about you really old people.
- [93:47]
Dale Beaumont
But it was like God found a way to punish him. He gave him everything that he wanted. You know, like, don't wish for an easy life. Don't wish that you had no problems. The fact that you actually have problems and you have stress is a gift.
- [94:01]
Omar Zenholm
Gift.
- [94:01]
Dale Beaumont
You know, if you have no problems and no stresses, then you're not living. You're probably dead or you are on your way to death if you haven't got any challenges in your life whatsoever. The fact that they've actually done studies that people that live at the bottom, like people live at the top of a hill, you know, the shops are down the bottom, live longer than people that live on the flat ground. People that have stairs actually have more mobility than people that don't have stairs.
- [94:26]
Omar Zenholm
So.
- [94:27]
Dale Beaumont
So a lot of people go when they going into their old age. I'm going to get a house without stairs. That's the worst thing you could do, get a house with stairs. Like, you want stress. You want to put your body under pressure.
- [94:37]
Co-host / Interviewer
You're in two story, go three story.
- [94:39]
Dale Beaumont
Exactly. But so don't wish for an easy life. Wish for a life full of highs and lows and challenges and stress. Because it all is important. And you look back on your life and the things that you're making most proud of are the times when you've had to overcome the most amount of struggle. Not like, oh, I woke up and I had all this kind of like money in my account. Like, who cares? We got through this. Like, we went through that. Remember when we had to fix that? Remember when we had to pay off all those debts or, you know, when this person kind of like, you know, ripped us off or whatever? There. That's kind of the stuff that, what makes you who you are.
- [95:22]
Co-host / Interviewer
Speaking of problems, good problem to have, a lot of people don't think about this until they're in this situation. I'm going to preface it. This is a good problem to have, first world problem, all this stuff. But it is something you need to think about and you need to solve. And that's when you start making money. You have some success with your business, you start making revenue, you have a surplus. Maybe you're making a lot of profit in your business. And now, now, okay, now you're going to be paying more tax because of that. You're going to have to do something with this surplus. You have to do something with the money you made. Right? You know, Nicole and I didn't come from means. And sometimes people are never taught, like, how do you not mess up being rich? Like, how do you not mess up having some money? What were the first steps you took where you're like, okay, I have some money. How do I invest this properly so that money's working for me and I don't need to just rely on my business for income or wealth. If I get sick, if something happens, I can take a year off and everything's gonna be okay. Like, what were some of the first steps you took in terms of investments in the profits of your business so that you feel like, you know, you have a safety net and Again, you're letting money work for you. You.
- [96:39]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, so if I was to kind of paint a picture from a high level, and then we can get into some of the detail. I think there's a certain period of time where you've got to be sold out, obsessed, like, focused to just get that thing off the ground and get that business kind of like, up and up and running. And we went through that sort of period of time where we just completely focused on the business. And I think everyone kind of like, needs to. To do that before you diversify too quickly. But what you've got to realize is that once you've got a business, that business always has risks. Risks could be in terms of your health. It could be around risks in terms of, like, technology. You know, the market changes, a bigger competitor coming in with, like, huge, like, really, really deep pockets or people's customer preferences kind of like changing all of a sudden, you know, we don't want this type of product. We want this type of product. So it's. It's always under threat. There's no guarantee. Imagine if when you started your business, every single year, it's like, there's a 10% chance that we could go under this year. You know, again, you never know. So if you kind of realize that and it's like, if I'm in business for 10 years, there's almost 100% chance that you could get wiped out, then you start thinking very, very differently. You start to realize that you're not infallible. And therefore, the prudent thing to do is to go, I need to take some chips off the table every single year. Because if I just keep doubling down at the casino, which is my business, and going, you know, whatever money I have, I'm going to go red, I'm going to go black. I'm going to go red, I'm going to go black. You might get seven or eight great years in a row, and then all of a sudden, boom, you get wiped out. And so what you need to do is to go, okay, I'm going to take some chips off the table every single year. And it's probably 10% of what you make to begin with. And then if you can afford to do more, do more over time as well, and put it into other assets. And so we waited about seven years before we decided to invest. We should have done it sooner. At least we did it when we did, and we didn't take. Wait another seven years. But the idea is 2, 3, 4 years maximum of hustle and Grind to get that thing going. Once it's kind of going and you're making some profit, take 10% and put it into other assets. What should you do?
- [98:44]
Co-host / Interviewer
What's a good first place to put it in?
- [98:46]
Dale Beaumont
First place would just be to even if you have like $10,000, even if a thousand dollars, it doesn't really matter. You could set up an account like in Australia we've got services like Superhero and Stake. Or in America you got like, you know, Robin Hood and these kind of E trade and different types of apps, Etoro where you can go, I'm going to put it into. The most basic thing would be like The S&P 500 or the NASDAQ, for example, the S&P 500. Even Warren Buffett said, if I was to not be doing what I was doing, I'd just be investing in the S&P 500, which is the 500 richest companies like in America, which is pretty much the biggest companies in the world. And let it compound. You can look at the average returns, it's about 12% over the last like 70, 80 years that they've been recording these kind of like records. And in more recent years, like in the last 20 years, it's been an average of about 22%. So they just kind of compounds then the next thing to do. I met this guy just two weeks ago actually, and he's like, all of his friends are telling him he's an entrepreneur. Like, don't buy a house. It's not a good investment to live. To live in. And mathematically it's probably, you can probably rent a nicer house for sort of cheaper. But I remember hearing something from Alex Hormozi and he basically said, these are some stats that a married man will always earn more than a single man. Like, because a married man has more responsibilities than a single man sort of does. And so. So necessity is the mother of all invention, right? When you have to do something, you'll figure it out. A married man with children will always make more than a married man without children. And then a married man with children with a mortgage will make more than any of those other groups of people on average. So pressure is actually a good thing. Like for a decade, I had nearly a $2 million mortgage, and that was like a massive motivator for me. I could take maybe a day off, but I'm like, I can't take two days off. I'm going to pay off this mortgage, going to make some sales calls. I got a hustle. And that pressure Actually helped made me way over compensate and has made me tens of millions of dollars on by having that pressure. So I said to this guy who's all of his friends are saying, you know, don't invest in a property, just what, leave the money in the bank or go rent. I'm like, no, like, look, if you don't want to have the responsibility or the debt, that's totally fine, go rent. But if you want to put back yourself and you want to actually put some pressure on and you really want that house and you want to have that security or maybe your partner wants that security and she like goes, I really want to have my own home and that's important for me. Then do it, do it and feel the pressure and then you're going to the results that you're going to produce over the next decade because you're going to have that mortgage are going to make you ten times more money money than what you're going to lose by, you know, owning a house.
- [101:36]
Co-host / Interviewer
Nicole and I were just talking about this earlier, I think a few days ago and I equate it to flying business class. If you flew business class once, all you want to do is just not go back to economy. So it's a motivator for you to just do better at what you do in your business so that you can afford. And it's not, you know, something that you're worried about financially. I would say, especially in Sydney, buying properties is a little bit like that where it's like, it's not totally a financial, like in terms of property to live in, it's not a totally financially sound, you know, decision, but there's emotion involved. Maybe you want to be a homeowner, maybe you want to spruce it up, change things up, do things your own thing. And it also is like you said, a motivator for you to be like, okay, how do I make this happen? Yeah, you know, how do I, how do I figure this out?
- [102:20]
Dale Beaumont
In fact, how are we like we bought our first apartment House. House was that. And the reason why we kind of did is we were doing the whole I got a rent because it's better to have that money in savings in case we need to reinvest it back.
- [102:34]
Co-host / Interviewer
For those who don't know, like renting is like three times less than your mortgage in terms of if you, the same property, if you lived in this, you know, three bedroom apartment, you know your rent is going to be, you know, your mortgage is going to be 3x your rent.
- [102:48]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah.
- [102:48]
Co-host / Interviewer
So that the property Prices are quite high. High, but, you know, you keep going.
- [102:53]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, yeah. So, but what happened was Catherine was seven months pregnant. And then the person who owned the apartment that we're in said, oh, by the way, we're selling the apartment next month. We're going to have people through like this weekend. And she was just about to, you know, go into labor at any time and was like. She just felt like. So what happened was we were telling this story to our neighbor who is literally across the hall in this apartment.
- [103:16]
Omar Zenholm
Apartment.
- [103:17]
Dale Beaumont
And we said, I can't believe it. They're going to be basically kicking us out. You know, and she's like, I'm actually thinking about selling my property. I was going to talk to a real estate agent next month. If you like the location, you like this kind of like building. What about if rather than me having to lose like 5% commission to the real estate agent, I'll just take that 5% off the price and this is what it would kind of like cost you. And we would just literally the. The doing the maths behind. We could just not even have to rent, like a furniture removal truck. We could just move all of our stuff from one house across the hall.
- [103:50]
Co-host / Interviewer
To the next apartment, one room to the next.
- [103:53]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. And then so that was the motivator that we needed. It was that feeling of. Of uncertainty of Catherine saying, I want to be bringing a child into this world and I don't want to be having to, you know, move. And so that was the motivation that we need. That pressure, that of having a moment mortgage then forced me to overcompensate and then kind of go nuts with my kind of business and be super productive. And then because of that mindset that I had and that then, like, I got to fix this. I got to fix this. I got to fix that. That compounded over 10 years, became a really smart. It wasn't probably the best decision at the time, numbers wise, but when you look at the bigger picture, it was then that was actually not that bad. Yes, I feel some pressure of a mortgage. And then we worked for three years, and then we go, what about if we get another one that wasn't too bad? What about another one and another one and another one? And then sooner or later we had 10 properties. And so sometimes just doing the first is a good thing because you'd be better off being in the game and learning than being on the sideline, you know, doing nothing.
- [104:55]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah. And I think that you seem like a person that is motivated by accomplishing goals, accomplishing Projects. Projects. So this is something that would work really well for you. Or it's like, okay, I have a new goal now, which is pay this mortgage off. You know, I have a new goal now, you know, get an investment property, that kind of thing. So, you know, I can imagine people, you know, listening to your advice and be like, what's the pressure? I don't know if I want to go under that kind of thing, you know, like, it's like, it's kind of a turn off for them. But I definitely understand because the truth is that we really don't do anything unless we have to. Yeah, yeah, you don't really do anything unless that's exactly required.
- [105:32]
Dale Beaumont
Yep.
- [105:33]
Co-host / Interviewer
I want to talk a little bit about, you know, you prioritize health and wellness. You do an incredible bike ride for charity every year. I was a part of it last year where you, you ride for 500km for charity, for Hands across the Water. You play pickleball, you play soccer. If I told you, let's go play basketball, you say, hell yeah. Right? Like, you're just a guy that, that enjoys health and fitness and all that kind of stuff. How have you incorporated that in your life? Why is it a priority for you? Is it because you're running businesses? Because a lot of people don't really do this until they have to. A lot of people don't actually get in shape or eat well or do whatever they need to do to be healthy until the doctor tells them they have to or they look in the mirror and like, who's that person? Because I've never seen you unhealthy. I've never seen you at a shape. Why has it been such a part of your life and why do you keep doing it?
- [106:26]
Dale Beaumont
I, in my younger years, when I was seven, I started gymnastics and so I had, like, I was an active kid, had a lot of energy as a, as a kid. But then when I became an entrepreneur, because I'd spent a lot of like more than 12 years going to the gym pretty much every day with sport, I kind of like shunned it for a decade and I'm like, I'm just gonna focus. I wasn't, I was just obsessed with my business. And also being a parent, we have a similar story and, and, and also surviving, like this is the other thing as well. Like, I'm with this kind of like one of the ladies I'm coaching at the moment is a mum and she's got like, you know, a three year old, I think, and a five year old. And she's like, you know, my business is growing fast enough, and I want this and I want this, and I want. And you know, this isn't happening. This is happening. I'm like, I said to her, you are surviving. That's the most important thing that you need to do. You're still in business. You know, you're putting food on the table, you're paying a mortgage. You're in the game. Like, just maintaining that is massive. Like, you are already winning. And you're exactly where you need to be at that stage of life is your goal is not to conquer the world. Your goal is survival until the kids get to school. And then once the kids get to. To school, then you can breathe a bit more, and then you can.
- [107:40]
Co-host / Interviewer
Nothing's permanent.
- [107:40]
Dale Beaumont
Nothing's permanent, you know, so just stay with it. You know, don't think that you need to be anywhere else or living someone else's life or you need to be more like, I should be making all this money right now. Because you're comparing your chapter three to someone else's chapter 12. You know, like, you're exactly where you need to be at that particular point in time. And it's meant to be hard, it's meant to be kind of difficult, and it's a season that will pass. So for 10 years, I did nothing. And then I kind of realized the fact that not looking after you, your body, is actually counterproductive to productivity and success.
- [108:13]
Co-host / Interviewer
You.
- [108:13]
Dale Beaumont
If you want energy, you've got to give energy. And so, because unless your body is put under kind of like stress, it's not going to. It's not going to give you anything kind of back. So again, don't wish for an easy life. You want to be struggling, you want to be out of breath, you want to be pushing yourself, because that's how your muscles then grow and respond. And, you know. And so I then realized, okay, I need to start exercising again. So I started kind of like jogging and things like that and. Or going for a run. And then. Because at the beginning it was just like, I'm a parent, I have no time. I was exhausted and I was working late in the night. Last thing I wanted to do was like, you know, go exercise. So if you're in that point whereby you feel like you can't, it's okay. Don't feel like I've got to do all these other things. Things. Just get through that period of time. But then when things become a bit easier, know the fact that you need to start, then, you know, Exercising. And so then I started to play soccer and then pickleball. And that's kind of like forced exercise, you know, in a way. And there's that team sort of element going for a run. It's kind of like if I don't go, no one's going to know other than myself. But doing team sports forces you to go. I would let myself down, but I won't let my sort of team down, down. So I've done that. And also I've realized the fact that you look at the, you know, the book Tony Robbins did around health, something like, you know, if you're someone that exercises three times a week on average, this is like general population. Yeah. You live about 10 years longer than someone that doesn't exercise. Basically did the maths and I realized every hour of exercise you get to spend another day on this planet. Right. So every hour of exercise equals an extra day of life you get to live. So it's like great trade. How much? That's a pretty good investment. It's a 10 times return on your money, so on your time. So. Yeah, exactly. So 24. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to like every time I. So basically, if you're not motivated to do something, link it to something else that is important to in your life. Like seeing my children's children is a big kind of like, you know, motivator. Seeing what type of. Yeah. What type of world we're going to be living in in 2080. I was born in 1981. Imagine 100 years time, you know, from when I was born. What type of world we're going to live in? Will we be having like people living on Mars? Hope so, you know, what type of, what will AI be like? You know, what will all that stuff. I want to be alive and see that for as long as possible, you know.
- [110:44]
Co-host / Interviewer
So how much of it is. I think about this a lot. How much of it is it identity? Like you refuse to be overweight or be out of shape because early on in your life you identify as an athlete, you were a gymnast. And like, you know, maybe also the fact that you're on stage and you know you have to be presentable. How much of it is like, that's not who I am, I'm not an unhealthy person. How you identify yourself, I think that's important.
- [111:11]
Dale Beaumont
I think your identity like does how you think it affects how you feel, the actions you take, the results that you get. So I think changing your identity and seeing Yourself as a healthy person. This is who I am and I'm someone, I'm a runner. You know, people that are runners, they're like, you know, they get to six o', clock, it's like, I haven't run today. I've got to, I gotta run like, you know, because I'm a runner. That's who they are. They identify, you know, with that. I'm probably not at that extreme, but I'm like, okay, if I can be exercising two, three times a week, either with forced through sport or bit of self discipline to kind of like get up in the morning and go for a run, I've got, got a peloton now, so I can kind of like if I don't get up in the morning and I. Then I'm kind of like seven o' clock at night, I can go, okay, well at least if it's dark outside or it's raining, at least I can jump on an exercise bike for 20 minutes and do something kind of like physical. You just basically do it.
- [112:01]
Co-host / Interviewer
I love this concept of like, I see myself as a healthy person and healthy people exercise. So like, I have to do the things that those types of people do if I want to, to be in that club.
- [112:11]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah.
- [112:12]
Co-host / Interviewer
You know, I think one of the best hacks I got was from Adams, Scott Adams, the Dober guy, his book, one of his books, he mentions that your goal should be just get into the gym. Just walk into the gym. That's all you got to do. You know, like if you lift the weight, fantastic. Maybe the next day you do a rep or two, you know, like just the fact that you stepped into the gym.
- [112:34]
Omar Zenholm
Yeah.
- [112:34]
Co-host / Interviewer
Three or four times a week, you've won.
- [112:37]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, right.
- [112:38]
Co-host / Interviewer
And I think that was so counter the way I think, which is like, no, I gotta go all out two and a half hours. What's Arnold working out? Like? I'm gonna do Arnold's workout, you know, like, you know, and this. And it's so easy to kind of, you know, hit a wall and be like, yeah, you know, that was tough, you know, and then not be consistent and kind of lowering what success looks like. It really helps you kind of.
- [112:58]
Dale Beaumont
And people even said if you can't get to the gym, just put your exercise shoes on. Just put your shoes on and then take them off. Like just lower it down to something you can.
- [113:05]
Co-host / Interviewer
The first step of the process. I love it. You've grown an incredible business or businesses along the way, and I would love to get into every single one. But you know, we will be here for 24 hours. I want to talk about the fact that you've learned throughout these years of building Blueprint and the other businesses and partnering with other businesses that a lot of it is a science, a lot of it is a set of systems, systems that you can basically repeat. And I remember you mentioning this to me, that like a lot of business owners think that their business is so unique and it's so like special and all that stuff, but basically we all run the kind of same business. It's about 80%, right, 80% the same. And one of the things that you're launching that I'm really excited about is this concept that you are sharing the 500 most important systems to install in your business and helping people instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
- [113:59]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah.
- [114:00]
Co-host / Interviewer
Leverage the experiences you had. Basically, you know, you're doing this at another scale. Like you did this with a book, but now you're doing this at a scale. It's like you don't have to learn. You could just install this right inside your business. So tell us a little about what is 500 systems? I want to know why you started it. Who's this for? What pain point does it solve?
- [114:20]
Dale Beaumont
So as I we talked about before, for the last 17 years, we've been doing two months on, one month off. And when people hear about that, the way I've been to like, you know, 85 countries, how well it's like, how do you do that? Like, you know, and a big, big part of it is because my business doesn't need me day to day because we have a whole bunch of more than 500 systems. So systems is basically a document or a workflow or for how to do something. Like in your business, it could be as simple as, you know, how do we answer the phone, how do we follow up an invoice, how do we put together a marketing campaign, how do we onboard a new kind of client, how do we board a new staff member? All of these different things in your business is a, there's policies, there's processes, and the standard operating procedures. So they will basically we'll just use a generic term system. And so what I realized was when people, when they go, how did you do this? I go, well, let me show you. When I showed them inside, they're like, wow, that's amazing. Like, can you one, can you teach me? So I've spent the last 16 years with business Blueprint teaching other people how to build all of their own systems. But then I kind of like realized Was that when I sat back, because everyone would say, oh, but my business is. I can't do that. My business is unique. My business is special. My business. My business is different. But what I've realized is that 70 to 80% of what a business needs is the same. Maybe 20 to 30% is different, but there's more that's the same than there is. It's like a car, like every car. Like, the parts are 75, 80% the same. They come from the same factories. It's just the shell on the outside and maybe the dashboard and stuff like that looks different. But the under the hood, the mechanics, the chassis, the, you know, the kind of wheels, the suspension, they're come from the same factory. So they're all the same kind of like parts, essentially. It's the same with, with business. And so what I thought was, what about if I could build the 500 core systems that every business kind of like, needs? Now, there's probably a bit more than you need. There's probably only maybe 350, 400that would be used by your business. But I've given a whole bunch more just to kind of make sure. So you kind of go through the 500 systems and you can then basically go, okay, these are all the ones that I want in my business. And then they go inside your business. And then I'll show you how to create another 100 or 150 that are unique for your business. So what you're left with IS500 systems so your business can run without you having to be there day to day.
- [116:45]
Co-host / Interviewer
Like a playbook that anybody can go to.
- [116:46]
Dale Beaumont
Exactly. Yeah. So we're.
- [116:48]
Co-host / Interviewer
What I love about this, first of all, is like the first rebuttal I get when I tell our audience or our students the 100 MBA. Like, hey, you got to document everything you got. You got to put SOPs together. You got to put this in Google Docs. The first resistance I get, it's like, that's going to take forever. I got to write this thing. I got to make a video. I got to get it transcribed. I got to get somebody to do that. Like the fact that you're just like skipping over that step of like, you don't throw anything. It's done.
- [117:13]
Dale Beaumont
Exactly.
- [117:14]
Co-host / Interviewer
It's great.
- [117:14]
Dale Beaumont
So rather than starting from scratch, like, I've done 80% of the work for people, and they just can go in and then just tailor it for their particular business. I've even written AI prompts that can alter, alter the systems, depending on what type of business that you're in and it's now loaded into a build our own software. It's a knowledge management system called One Brain and it comes pre installed with 500 systems out of the box that they can then tailor. So it would save, I don't know, at least a thousand, if not 2,000 hours worth of time. And so anyone that kind of wants help to build systems, that would be a really good investment.
- [117:48]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah, I think that if you're building any kind of business, you should always think about how do I systemize everything. Not only to make your life easier and you can go on holiday like Dale does, but one day you might have to sell your business. Like you may not want to sell it right now. My buddy Rob Walling always says we all sell at the end, you know, we don't take it with us like the mummies. Right. You know, either gonna hand it over to a family member. They need to know the systems. Yeah. If it's all in your head, you don't have a business. You have, you know, basically you're a solopreneur or you're self employed. You just bought yourself a job. If you're selling it to a company or a third party or something, this is going to increase the value of a company tremendously. I've learned this through opener ninjas acquisitions that when it's easier for that team to be like, oh, we can just follow this playbook and just train our team and just watch these videos, that's easy. Okay. It increases the value business tremendously. So I think that I don't know what you're charging, but whatever you're charging, it's probably going to be dwarfed compared to the value it's going to increase into your business. How much time you're going to save, how more efficient things are going to be and the old fashioned ways what Derek Sivers teaches in his book anything you want, he used to get frustrated because he had a company called CD Baby where they used to basically sell CDs for artists on their website. You know, and anytime his team, he would be in an office with his team around him. Anytime his team asked a question, he got tired of answering the same question over and over. Somebody asked him question, he would say, okay, is it in the playbook? Is it in the systems that we have? And they'd be like, okay, let me check. They would check the binder, it was a physical binder at the time. And they would say, no, it's not like, okay, then we're going to put this in the book. Okay. This is how you do it. 1, 2, 3, 4. Now I want you to write it down, put it in the book, and then the next time somebody asks a question like, is it in the playbook? Oh, actually it is. Okay, then just read the playbook. Right. So this idea of, like, you not having to be so critical to the business business, but also the single point of failure, you know, like, that is something that I learned the hard way, something I had to learn very quickly when I built a software company because, you know, Nicole and I were operating in the beginning. Like, it's a. Like it's a content business. You know, it's like, no, no, no. We need to systemize things. You need to write, you know, you need to be in charge of like, you know, training the support team. I'm going to be in charge of, like, how are the standups for the developers going to be? And these systems are basically the way we were able to multiply our knowledge or the way we want to do the business to everybody else. In your experience of building your businesses, how often do you modify these systems? How often do you say, actually, we could do this better. Let's improve it?
- [120:21]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, like, they should be constantly evolving and improving. Every time that you're doing something, you just have the system kind of like there. Oftentimes you'll come, kind of know it by then, but you go, oh, this is kind of changed now. The location of the button is now being moved. So I'll go quickly go in and kind of like updating it.
- [120:38]
Omar Zenholm
Not using Google Me anymore.
- [120:39]
Co-host / Interviewer
Using Zoom.
- [120:40]
Dale Beaumont
Exactly. So you constantly be kind of like updating as you go. But then what I believe that businesses do is at least once a quarter. Sometimes people do this, like every sort of two months, but once a quarter, the whole company down tools for four hours, half an hour day. And you just go through all of your systems and go, what's changed? What's new? You know, what tools are we not using anymore? Or could I make a quick video for that? You know, I'll just record a video and I'll pop that in there. And so that way they're kind of refreshed because otherwise what can happen is three or four years go past and then someone's doing it and it's like, this is completely kind of different. So, you know, you call it like at school we used to have like working bees, which was like, you know, stopped kind of class and everyone cleaned up or everyone kind of washed the windows or did all that type of stuff. Like a deep clean. Exactly. So every quarter, take four hours, and the whole company just kind of goes, okay, your job is to go through your systems and basically go give them.
- [121:39]
Co-host / Interviewer
A sprinkle because it piles up. It piles up.
- [121:41]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah.
- [121:41]
Co-host / Interviewer
You reminded me, like, when.
- [121:42]
Omar Zenholm
What would.
- [121:42]
Co-host / Interviewer
Our engine. We do Fridays once a month, and it just be like, bug swashing day. We're like, okay, these bugs are piling up, building software. Bugs are going to happen. Anytime you build something new, a new bug will pop up. So it's a good way to kind of also maybe even make it fun party. Get your favorite cup of coffee or whatever, drink, and let's squash some bugs or let's update some systems.
- [122:03]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. Yeah.
- [122:04]
Co-host / Interviewer
So I love it, Dale. We've been through so much. I love the fact that you shared so much with our audience. But I want to kind of end on something that I learned from you. One thing I learned from you is that you give so generously. And I never feel. I never feel like you want something in return. Like, I never feel like you're doing this because one day you're going to ask for a favor or one thing or other shoes gonna drop, you know? Like, my question to you is, where did you learn that and how has it helped you in life and business of this idea of just like, I'm just gonna give and help? Like, you've helped me in so many ways, Helping give me advice. You've opened doors for me. You've put me on your stage like I can. I'm, you know, I'm cutting you short here. But so many things you've given me, and I've never felt like you're like, okay, Omar, now it's time for you to give me something. You know, like, I never felt that way ever. Where does that come from? Where did you learn that and. And how has it helped you?
- [123:00]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah, it probably was influenced from my father. Like, he was a small business kind of like, owner, and his philosophy was just like. Like, do the right thing always. Because it's kind of like a long life, and the most valuable thing you ever have is your kind of reputation. It's kind of who you are when no one's watching sort of type thing that's kind of like, you know, if you're going to do a. Do a job, then do it. Do it properly. And don't think that everything needs to be, like, transactional. Like, I've got to give something to you. You have to give something for me, like, today or this week, month. You Know, you might give and give and give for three years, and then all of a sudden, you know, they talk to someone that, you know, then gives you your biggest contract kind of like, ever. You know what I mean? All kind of just be a good person, no matter whether you're getting something in that moment or not, and you will kind of win over the long run. I've just seen so many people that have become really rich, very, very quick, being very, very transactional, but then they end up kind of like crazy, crashing and burn, kind of getting completely kind of so transparent.
- [124:07]
Co-host / Interviewer
You can see them all the way.
- [124:08]
Dale Beaumont
Yeah. So just play the. Play the long game. I just need to be a good person, deliver value, work hard over an extended period of time. I remember I had a mentor, a guy called Brad Sugars, and he said to me. I was 19, and I went along to. He's like a business coach, and he said, anyone can get rich quick in business. As long as your definition of quick is 10 years.
- [124:31]
Co-host / Interviewer
Yeah.
- [124:32]
Dale Beaumont
You know, it takes, like, 10 years of consistent effort. Yeah. Minimum. Over time. And you'll do great things. Like. But, like, you know, people were always like, I want to get amazing results in six months or a year or two years. And there are some people that do that, but oftentimes what goes up really fast must come down even faster. Yeah. And so it's better off being consistent over a long period of time. And that goes for effort, but it also goes in, like, relationship and looking after people and. Because that's the one thing that you'll have forever is who is Omar? You know, who is Dale? You know, it's that reputation that is your most valuable kind of, like, asset. And so, you know, people kind of say, like, I've tried to find dirt on you. I've tried to, like, you know, I just can't find it, you know, And I'm like, okay. Like, you know, it's just because I've never. I've. You know, maybe I don't. Maybe I've got a few unhappy people out there, but I've. If anyone found out about it, I've always tried to. What can I do to kind of make it right? There's some people that just can't be, you know, kind of, like, healthy if they are just being unreasonable. But I care. And it's not just, you know, I don't just say that. I really do kind of care, and I'll just try to be helpful for people whether I'm going to win in that moment or not. It's just like, who's a person I'm in front of? How can I help them with whatever they're doing or not help them or just be a friend or just kind of like, because it's a long life and you know, not doing this for getting something back in the future. But you also never know when by you might need to call in a favor or just say, hey, you know, is there something that you can kind of do here? And if you've given without asking for anything in return, then if you do ever need help, yes, you know, there's going to be a whole bunch of people there that'll go, sure, I'd love to give something back to you. Now I have a lot of people just reach out to me going, what can I do for you? Like, I want to give back. I haven't even asked for anything in return. But they're like, you've been so kind, you've been so helpful. What can I do for you? And sometimes I go, oh, this would be helpful or this would be helpful.
- [126:33]
Co-host / Interviewer
I love it. I mean, we, we live in the same world of entrepreneurs and you know, we go to the same events and we know kind of the same people and things like that. And yet you have the acquaintances and you have the people that you do business with sometimes and some people you refer to and all that kind of stuff. But I would say from all the hundreds of people that we know, probably you can count on maximum two hands who you could say they're a real friend. And I would consider you one of those people. Yeah, like you're, you're actually a person. I can, I would call and be like, hey man, I need some advice, you know, like, and, and you'd answer even if it was 2 o' clock in the morning.
- [127:09]
Dale Beaumont
And it's important to kind of paint a picture. What I see in my head is like, there's two things apart from, you know, your family and your health, which are important pillars. But a lot of people, it's like the one ladder is I want to become rich, I want to be successful, I want to make a whole bunch of money. But they don't see the ladder of I need to be a good person, has a good reputation as well, and be a good human being so I can enjoy that. And then so otherwise I'm just going to be at the top of this ladder with no one to kind of like, you know, share it with. And everyone thinks that I'm an. And I've got all of this money and no One that kind of that wants to hang out with me. Like, what's the point of that? Like, I'm just sort of like, for me. And you look at all of the longevity studies and they talk about the fact that it's not money that helps you to live a long period of a long life, it's friendships and quality of relationships with people. And that social element is actually more important than how much money you're going to have in your life, which will determine, you know, not just your length of life, but your quality of life is way more important. Your social aspect, which is being a good human being as opposed to how much money you have.
- [128:17]
Co-host / Interviewer
One of my heroes is Sylvester Stallone. I love the story of Rocky and how he created that film and that story. But one of the things he says that I think is a good kind of note to kind of end on is all great movies have great supporting actors and actresses. Like, if you think about any movie that you love, you know, there's the main character and there's the hero. There's a protagonist, but then there's the supporting, almost. The supporting characters are more endearing, and they make the story what it is. And his advice was be somebody that attracts great supporting characters. Be that kind of person. And it's an interesting thought. Like, life is better. Your whole story is better when you have great supporting characters in your story. So true. Yeah. So good. So good. Dale, thanks so much for being here. Being here. I'm in your office. Thanks so much for having. Being on our show and spending the time. And I love the fact that we got a chance to do this is well overdue. Thanks for being a friend and being a part of the community.
- [129:16]
Dale Beaumont
Me. Pleasure. Thanks, Omar.
- [129:17]
Co-host / Interviewer
Appreciate.
- [129:19]
Omar Zenholm
I had a blast with this conversation, going to his office, going to the studio, enjoying the whole process, and learning so much more about Dale. I mean, I know Dale personally for years now. We're good friends. But I learned a bunch that I didn't know before in that conversation. If you want to learn more about Dale Beaumont and Business Blueprint, go to businessblueprint.com I can't recommend Dale's work enough. Anything he produces is absolute value, absolute gold. He's incredible at what he does, and I've been a part of his events. I've spoken at his events on stage. I've gotten to know him over the years, and I can vouch for this man 110%.
- [129:55]
Co-host / Interviewer
If you want to learn more about.
- [129:56]
Omar Zenholm
What he's doing with One Brain and his 500 systems. If you want those 500 systems, check out One Brain.it so that you can learn more about that. Dale is an incredible entrepreneur, but he's also a great person. So if you're ever in Sydney, if you're ever in Australia, make sure you reach out to him, have a coffee with him. He's very approachable despite all his success. I think maybe I'm going to be flooding his DMs now. But he is somebody that I'm so thankful I got to know over the years because he's not only been a good friend, but a mentor, but also a person that you can rely on that is going to be honest with you. So love that for Dale. Love the fact that we got a chance to sit down and talk to him. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things I learn every time I sit down with these entrepreneurial giants like Dale is nothing comes easy. There's sacrifice involved. Everybody has their own path of struggle, their own path of getting there. But one of the things I learned from Dale is you got to be proud of how you got there. You got to be proud of your journey. You got to be proud of who you've become along the way. At the end of the day, like you said, your reputation matters. Your reputation is everything, and it's what people remember even when you're long gone. So keep that in mind. Also understand that that you're carving out your own journey and your journey is going to look different than Dale's. And you should be proud of that.
- [131:15]
Co-host / Interviewer
If you found today's episode helpful and.
- [131:17]
Omar Zenholm
You want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. Whether it's Apple or Spotify or ever, you listen to podcasts by hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically. And it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.
- [131:53]
Dale Beaumont
He's Kenny Maine, the funny guy from espn.
- [131:56]
Co-host / Interviewer
Formerly, he's Cooper Manning, the more intelligent and handsome of the the Manning brothers.
- [132:01]
Dale Beaumont
And he's Brian Baumgartner. But to me, he'll always be Kevin from the office. Yeah, you and everybody else together.
- [132:09]
Co-host / Interviewer
We're the hosts of the new comedy golf podcast. We need a fourth from Smartless Media and SiriusXM. It's like a cold beer after a round.
- [132:18]
Dale Beaumont
You hear the strangest and most bizarre.
- [132:21]
Co-host / Interviewer
Golf stories from our friends, athletes, celebrities and comedians. It's all about how much we love golf and how much we hate golf. New episodes are out every week. Listen now and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Could just be anywhere, just on a couch. Doesn't matter.