Jim Cathcart - How to Pick Your Lane and Become a Certified Expert in 5 Years or Less (Even if You're Starting from Zero)

Jim Cathcart  0:00  
I find that for some people, what I need to do is help them think more clearly and choose. For other people, I need to help them respect themselves and their abilities more and gain confidence. For others, I need to help them with a better strategic plan, better decision making, better choices. But that's the thing, when you pick a lane, the world is your oyster.

David Bush  0:23  
Welcome to the Business Builders playbook, the show that breaks down the systems and strategies behind Predictable Revenue Growth to win in business. In each episode, we're diving into the proven strategies that separate the winners who scale from the losers who fail. This show is sponsored by bdr.ai the AI powered business development platform that automates your outbound prospecting so you can focus in on closing deals instead of chasing leads. Let's get started. All right. Well, welcome everybody. Hey. We are going to kick this off with just reminding everybody in today's competitive marketplace, being good at what you do is no longer enough. I would even go as far Jim as to say, being great at what you do is no longer enough, because AI is great for so many people, they can get a lot of information online, but you need to be known for being great. You need to have people chasing you down for your insights, your information, your services, your products, and today, we get a chance to meet with one of the all time greats. Many of you already know Jim, or you've read his books. He's got a quite a library of 25 written books that He's authored. He's been one of the most award winning business thought leaders in America. And over the course of his career, he's delivered over 3300 presentations to audiences around the globe. And today, this makes 3301 No, I don't know if that's exact, but he's a creator of the Cathcart method for positioning professionals as trusted experts, and he's been recognized along some of the most top, well known communicators, like Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, and his work has been featured by many media outlets, including his TEDx talk that has now got over 2 million views. I can't remember the last stuff, 3 million. Now almost 3 million. So if you get a chance to just Google Jim Cathcart, you'll find his TEDx talk that is truly extraordinary. And today we're going to be diving down deep into JIM'S MIND and Jim's expertise. And you know, Jim, we're not here to age anyone but 45 years of experience, my man. And more

Jim Cathcart  2:36  
than that, actually, I went full time in this business in 1977 Wow, that's crazy seven. I mean, we've got I've got colleagues I've worked with who weren't born when I started speaking full time. How many Robins was 12 years old when I went full time as a speaker?

David Bush  2:57  
Well, you've got the expert and the experience advantage to most of us here that are watching live or watching the recording, and so enlighten us on how to build influence and impact and income and share a little bit about you know what brought you to this particular topic and why you think people need to really learn how to become an expert at their

Jim Cathcart  3:18  
craft. Yeah, that my audience, my chosen market, at this stage in my career. And as I said, you know, very close to 50 years doing this full time, what I do now, more than anything else, is I mentor experts. Now, what's an expert? Expert is a person who's in business. When I say expert, let me qualify that professional experts. A lot of people are an expert, but they don't make that the central focus of their business. If you are a consultant, a speaker, an author, a person who is selling basically you as a product or a service, then you're a professional expert, because your profession is about being the go to gal or guy, right? So that would be coaches, speakers, authors, consultants, advisors, specialists, problem solvers, people that do expert testimony in courtrooms, those are all professional experts. Why do why is that different from anything else? Well, if you're the local Chevy dealer, you might be an expert on cars, but you're not selling your car expertise. You're selling cars. If you are a person who's an expert on customizing automobiles, that's a different story altogether. Because if I'm going to Dave Bush Custom Shop, I'm buying Dave Bush's expertise in customizing cars. I don't want just somebody else that's good at it. I like his style, you know? I follow his show. I want one of those, right? So that's my chosen market. Okay. Now, what is a professional expert? Well, there's five things that qualify an expert. They are highly educated in their field, not just academic education, but they really know their stuff right. Their Education never ends. So they keep relearning and adding to their learning for life. Three, they do what they do for pay, so it's professional, not amateur. They do it as a service to other people. That's number four, so it's not just the thing they do. It's done to help other people in some way. And number five, it's done according to a set of ethical standards. All right, so we've got highly educated in their field, never ending education done for pay, done as a service to others, and done according to a set of ethical standards. If that's you, and that's the path you're on, then I would say, to help you advance in that path and become the name in your niche pick a lane. Well, I want to be an expert on leadership. Okay, that's about as broad as North America. If you want to be an expert on leadership. Who are you competing with? Well, first name comes to mind is John Maxwell. What is it about John Maxwell? First off, he's been a leader of many organizations for a long, long time. He's written scores of books on the subject, given speeches all over the world. He kind of owns that category. Is there room for others? Absolutely. But what if, instead of choosing a wide lane like leadership or sales or communication, you chose a narrower lane, like crisis leadership of small teams, hmm, in one year of extra study in that field, you'd start to really know your stuff, and you'd know many of the shakers and movers. In two years of focused study in that field, people would start calling you and asking for your advice on crisis leadership of teams that are small teams. Third year, you would be a known name. You'd be serving on committees, invited to special events, included in collaborations, you'd probably be in business in one way or another with some people in that field. Year number four, you're getting calls from all over the place. People you never heard of have heard of you. Year number five, you're a national expert. They're calling you from network headquarters for interviews on the news in a crisis situation because you picked a lane and you kept getting better and better and better and better and better in that lane. What if it was communication? Okay, let's say it's public speaking to large crowds, and that's all you focus on, not small groups, although that you could cover, you focus specializing in large crowds. How do you do arena size presentations? Right? Very rapidly you would advance in that field. So whatever field you choose, the narrower your your lane, the faster you'll advance. Now I when I first got into the field of professional speaking, which was what it was called, I wanted to go into the field of motivation and Human Development. Back in the 1970s people would say, Hey, Jim, what do you speak on? And I'd say, time management, strategic thinking, planning, sales communication, public speaking, leadership, managing people, interpersonal communication. In other words, whatever I could get a book on that morning so I could do a speech to you, Dave on that afternoon about it. And I literally did that a couple times. One time I was hired for a strategic planning session, and it was a big deal strategic planning session, but I knew I wasn't good enough yet for the job that I had just acquired, so I made the sale, but I couldn't complete it with integrity, so I called a friend of my colleague, Pete Johnson, who was a narrow lane specialist in only strategic planning, and I said, Pete, can you be in whatever city that was at this date and do this program? He said, Yes, I can. And I said, Well, here's what they're paying me, and I'll give it all to you. And he said, Well, wow. Okay. And so the client paid me, and I showed up to introduce Pete, and then I got out of the way. I didn't make a penny, but I had had the the greed motivation to make this. Fail without having the integrity to follow through and deliver what they had bought. So I caught myself, spanked my hand and corrected the situation and learned my lesson. I haven't done that since. So now then, if I book something, it's because I'm the guy, right? So what do I specialize in Applied Behavioral Science? What is that? Motivation, human development, achievement, success, skills and strategies, right? So it's, how do you advance as a person in your craft? And I take people on a six month or a longer process, mostly through zoom meetings, but some in person, and get them focused on the lane they should be in and then on the skills they need next, so that they get to the point where they're progressively better and better known, and they become the name in their niche, and they can stay there indefinitely, because I've certainly done that in the field of professional speaking, and I've got now 27 books, 3500 engagements, and literally every major award in the field of professional speaking in the world.

David Bush  11:16  
Wow. So if this show is resonating with you and you're ready to take action because you want to scale your business faster, smarter, with more AI and technology and less labor. Check out. Bdr.ai, we help entrepreneurs and executive sales leaders to automate the grind of prospecting so you can focus your time on closing deals and growing revenue where you should be spending your time with AI powered data, digital outreach, automation and done for you prospecting systems, you'll connect with more qualified leads, book more appointments and build Predictable Revenue without adding more hours to your week or the week of your staff. Visit BDR today and discover how our AI prospect finder and digital BDR agents can help you to build your pipeline and your profits. Visit bdr.ai, where business builders learn how to automate and scale their playbook. Well, Jim, you've given us a lot to just chew on right there, and so much of that stuff is just resonating with me. I'm just thinking about all the things that you know myself personally, need to go back and kind of fine tune a little bit, because it is, it's, it's hard to choose a lane, right? I mean, especially when you have all the lanes of the highway to choose from, and it was made starting out, yeah, and again,

Jim Cathcart  12:36  
you're the topics. But who's your client? Anyone who will pay? Yeah,

David Bush  12:41  
and you were, and you were most likely great at many of those different topics, if not all of them. And so it's hard to be able to, you know, cut away some of the things, almost like pruning a rose bush. It's hard to cut off that beautiful rose, but if you don't cut it off, the whole Bush suffers, and it doesn't blossom in the way it should, hey, Bush should know. Yeah, that's right, yeah, I didn't even plan on that pun. But good, good, catch on that. So let's just, I mean, we, we obviously know there's some specific benefits to being an expert, but let's just say that the people that are watching this right now, they decide they're going to pivot, and for the remainder of this year they're going to get really mono maniacally focused on choosing a lane. What are some of the benefits and consequences that are going to come from that, and what are some steps that they could take to start moving in that direction?

Jim Cathcart  13:34  
Well, first off, I came from a background of being a trainer, and I had done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of training programs, but I was teaching other people's material. So I was I was getting really good at being in front of the classroom and leading the learning experience for people, and I was getting really good at getting someone else's manual of material and digging through there and coming up with lesson plan. So I was basically a professional teacher, more than a subject expert at first, and then now, I've done, as I said, 3500 plus convention speeches all over the world, and those have been on a continually more and more narrow range of topics. So what do you do if you're starting out in your career, and your coach, you know, you've been doing the the John Doe coaching program, teaching people how to set goals, how to whatever you know. But you want to branch out on your own, and you want to get known. You want to be somebody. You want to make a difference. Well, that was me, young, rosy cheek, me in my 30s, late 20s and 30s. I wanted to be somebody I never had been, you know, I wasn't an academic scholar. I wasn't an athlete like you. I wasn't I had never excelled at anything, but I was a nice guy, you know, kind of a likable loser. I graduated 176 out of 400 30 in my high school class in Little Rock, Arkansas. So, you know, I hadn't distinguished myself. And I thought I've really I'd like to matter, you know, I don't. I think I matter to my parents, but I don't matter beyond that. And I heard Earl Nightingale on the radio program, like, like, you know, you doing these webinars and podcasts. And he said, If you'll spend one hour extra every day studying the field you've chosen in five years or less, you'll be a national expert in that field. And I thought about that, it's not just working eight hours a day at something and say, there, that was my study. This is one extra hour focused specifically on studying the lane you've chosen. Well, I hadn't picked the lane yet. Well, pick a category. You can narrow the lane as you get closer, right? But pick a category, like, if it's sales, or if it's fitness, or, you know, whatever it happens to be, startups, you know, business, entrepreneurship. Pick a subject and decide now to become known for that, and really good at that. And if you say, Yeah, but I don't know if I want to commit, you got to commit to something. It's kind of like again Nightingale one time, said to somebody who was complaining, hey, that take me five years to do. He said, Well, the five years are going to come and go whether you do it or not. Darn good point, right? So pick something for now and ride that horse until it's tired, and then pick a new horse, but stay on the same directional path, right if you want to, like, I did become an expert in the field of motivation. That's a pretty broad path, but by focusing on motivation, and not on industrial techniques or system design or programming or office decor, by focusing on motivation, all of the things started compounding. It's like when my son was younger. He in high school, he said, Dad, I want a career in music. And lots of kids do you know, they fantasize about that. I want to be like whoever you know, Taylor Swift, I want to be on big stages and famous and writing songs and super, super rich. All right, fine. I said, then get a job in the music business. He said, Well, you know, I don't have anything. I don't have any skills. I said, okay, so it'll be an entry level job. He said, Yeah. And he says, well, so I just go to work anywhere. I said, No. I said, if you're going to sweep floors or run errands, do it for a music studio. If you're going to stock shelves and work at the checkout counter, do it in a music store, if you're going to clean bathrooms, clean bathrooms in a theater, backstage, right? And just whatever you do, do it in the category you've chosen, if it's health care, then surround yourself with health care, whatever you do, do it in that field, but I don't know where in healthcare. There's 8 million paths, yeah, but none of them lead to IBM. All of them lead further into healthcare. That's the point about music. And so I told him, start wherever you start, and then consider this, if you start at the ground level, grunt work in a music store or at a nightclub, who are you going to hang with as you work? People in the music business, entertainment business, are you going to meet some of them? Well, of course, do you think occasionally someone in one of the bands at your theater or nightclub might say to you, hey, excuse me, could you help us with these, these speakers over here? We need to get our equipment in place. Yeah, and if so, you know, they'll ask your name, or you'll ask their name, or whatever, and then you'll start chatting. You're going to learn how they think, how they talk, you'll learn their jargon. You'll learn what this means and what that is, and you'll learn what they like and what they don't like. You'll get to know some people. Occasionally, one of them's going to say, hey, we're going down to Denny's and get a hamburger and go. Now you're hanging with them and getting to know them even better. And one of them says, hey, my band needs a roadie to go with us on tour. We're doing five cities. Would you like to come along? Because Dave will teach you how to do the electrical rigging. Now, you got a new specialty, you say, and this all your first year when you still got no skills. Now, just keep compounding that. Next thing you know, you're an executive in Nashville. Or New York or LA, and you're booking events in Vegas, holy smokes, and all you had to do is pick a lane and stay at work, right? Just don't give up. So I coach people through that process, and I find that for some people, what I need to do is help them think more clearly and choose. For other people, I need to help them. They've got that, but I need to help them respect themselves and their abilities more and gain confidence and courage to do the things they need to do. For others, I need to help them with a better strategic plan, better decision making, better choices. For others, I need to help them in their sales or marketing skills. But that's the thing. When you pick a lane, the world is your oyster.

David Bush  20:50  
That's so good. And you know, you do a lot of coaching and mentoring and training with these folks that you're mentoring around the idea of becoming a certified professional expert. So what are some of the most common misconceptions about becoming an expert in your specific lane of choice that you've encountered with some of these others? Is there any like common misunderstandings or preconceived notions?

Jim Cathcart  21:16  
Well, first off, when I when people have completed my training, I certify them as a CPE certified professional expert, and they get a medallion, and they get that certificate, and they get included in this list of what is now 32 people, and it includes people like Dr nito kubain, Tony Alessandra, Patricia Fripp, Don Hudson, Ivan Meisner, who founded BNI business network, and Brian Tracy Les Brown, it goes on and on, Dennis Whateley, Dan Clark, Renee gottefroy, most recent. So I've got 32 people that have been certified so far, and it's pretty substantial group of people. But when I talk with people about becoming a professional expert, they say, What? Just like a roaming expert, you're an expert on anything. No, I'm not. If you're a landscape expert, I'm not going to teach you landscaping. That's your homework, I'm going to teach you to build a profession around it. If you're an expert in spaceship interiors, I'll help you build a career as the go to person on designing spaceship interiors. But I don't know how to design a spaceship interior. It's not about the expert word. It's about the professional word. So the, you know, an expert, everybody's got some degree of expertise on something like, I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson said, every person, in some way, is my superior. And in that I can learn from them. Well, Jim, that's not always true, really. What about a homeless person living on the street? They know more about living on the street than you do. They know more about where the cops are than you do. They know how to find free food better than you do. So what I mean, everybody's an expert on something at some level of expertise. Now, what are the levels? Well, the basic level would be just knowing, seeing data. I see a whole bunch of items. Means nothing to me, but I see it. Here is a coaster that means nothing, but there it is right. When you organize data, it becomes information, meaning it can inform you. So data when organized, becomes information all right. Information when studied, reveals knowledge. Knowledge, when applied, yields understanding. So having knowledge doesn't mean you understand something, just means you can answer the questions when they give the test, right? But if you can apply that, then you understand it. And understanding applied over time reveals wisdom. Wisdom takes application over time in a mass number of varied circumstances. Quick illustration, my son, when he was nine years old. Said, Dad, I want to you remember the TV show The Alamo? It was a movie we saw on TV, the one with John Wayne as Davy Crockett. And I said, Yeah. He said, I want to go see the Alamo. I said, Okay, we'll do a father son trip. And I had taught him. A process for planning, and I called it the seven step planning guide, and I had him memorize it like a poem. I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree. You know, it was almost like that. I would say to him, nine years old, I would say, Jimmy, come here. Come here. What's the seven step planning process, determine the need, set priorities, establish goals, plan schedule, you know. And he just rattled it off and he got to where he could, you know, just spit it out like that. Well, one day I said to him, hey, it's time to use that, because knowing that, did him Zero good. I said, we're going to apply that to the trip to San Antonio. Okay, determine the need. What's the need go to San Antonio? Now be more specific. So in writing, we write out exactly what he wants to do. He wants to walk through the Alamo he wants to be right downtown San Antonio, feel the place where the movie people were right, and then we go through the whole thing. He and I went over a Thanksgiving weekend years ago when he was nine. So that would be 1980 and we stayed on the river walk. We went to the Alamo. We went to all these key places around San Antonio, and ended up with extra money left in our budget and extra time that we didn't have a plan to use. Wow, nine years old. Nine years old. He did the planning. I just guided the process. So, you know, there are skills that can be taught that make you advance much more rapidly.

David Bush  26:54  
And I would imagine that a very common misconception is where people feel like to become an expert, they have to have lots of years, lots of learning, lots of training, and they need to be the very, very best where you've already kind of unraveled. That is, say no, if you stay in your lane and you kind of dominate the puddle, right, then you can begin to become known as the king of the ocean, you know, but you start with the pond or the puddle, and then you move to the pond, and then you move to the lake. And over time, you can, you know, become that known expert and demand the highest fees and the most prestigious opportunities, because you have now become that person. But right now, in the next 12 months, you could become an expert, a professional expert, certified professional expert, on the things that matter most, right? Rather than just being a professional know it all, where you have a lot of education and a lot of experiences, but you don't know nobody wants to work with you and nobody wants to work with you, you could actually take some of those steps. So let's talk a little bit about the things that you are actually mentoring, guiding, coaching people through in the CPE program, because I'm curious of how those things complement the expertise. Because expertise by itself, you know, there's a lot of information that's available at our fingertips right now with chat GPT, we don't even need to reuse our fingers. We can just talk. And it's actually creating expert level content,

Jim Cathcart  28:25  
and it makes us look like we really know things when we don't necessarily yet. Well, let's take an example of a simple situation, then I'll walk you through the the five categories that I train people in. It coincidentally, five. It's not the same five as I covered earlier. Let's say you're an electrician, and you just started as an electricians assistant. Okay, so this is your first year in that business, and you're just helping out, and you're learning the difference between needle nose pliers and, you know, and all the other tools that are used and different types and gages of wire, and you're learning about how electricity flows. And you learn to do what I call thinking like an electron. If you're an electron, and you came from a power station through the power lines down to a house or a building, and you're in the wall outlet, how do you get the electron, the electrical juice, from that wall outlet, into your electric guitar that's plugged into the amplifier? Because when I was performing in nightclubs, that's what I would do. It when I was setting things up. Is there any interruption to the flow of that electrons journey from the wall to my guitar, to the speakers, and whenever I found that interruption, suddenly my electrical problem was or sound problem was solved. All right, so you're a helper, and you want to be an expert, a professional expert, and you want to be known around the world as one of the leading electric. Electricians on Earth? Okay, that can happen. Well, no, Jim, you don't know me. I'm not that big of a deal yet. Yet. That's the most magical, wonderful word. Use it all the time. I don't know how yet. I don't think I can do it yet. Well, they say I'm not big enough yet. I don't have them yet. You know, whatever it is just put yet on there to keep the doors open. All right, so you decide, let's say you're going to focus on installation of doorbells. Doorbells. Now, that's about as narrow as you can get. So out of this big electrical company, you're the doorbell specialist, and you read the manuals, and you toy with the tools, and you know you you volunteer for extra work, and you do door bells everywhere that you get an assignment to go, and you get so good at Knowing what the difference is between a ring doorbell and that, if someone wants to know about it three months from now, they say, I don't know. Dave's not here yet. He's our doorbell guy, you know, let's, let's wait till he gets here, and then we'll know. So you've already got a reputation on one little teeny item. Well, once you're good at doorbells, you can start with TV installations, and then, you know, then Wi Fi, and then all, if you just go as far as you want, but master one of them before you add the next one and make sure, if you can that whatever next you add complements the first one. So it's not you go out there and do something, and then sometimes you go over here and do something. No, you go to one place and do not just one thing, two things, three things, four things, five things. And then, then you get to the point once your skill is at a level where you can specialize, you start thinking, How do I get my name known, and I've got to be known. Whenever you're known, you should be known for who you actually are, not who AI can make you look like you are, because anybody can look really impressive. But your reputation is the world's opinion of your character. If your character is not fully developed, then the world's going to have a false opinion you can't live up to, and you're going to end up booked to do a strategic planning session that you're not qualified to do, and that could be a career limiting decision. Don't take gigs you're not qualified for. Fake it till you make it. No, that's a quick way to end up bankrupt and and ruined where nobody wants to be around you because you were faking it. Be a person of integrity, of character, and then we'll go through the five items. Here's what I coach people to do. First, pick your lane, and in that, choose the value message you want to communicate to the world. Hey, Jim, what do you do? The answer to that not just an elevator talk, but it's the message that you deliver that describes the value you can bring to other people that is worth paying to get. What do you have to bring to the world that's worth paying to receive? So we refine your value message and get that really tight and laser focused. Second thing we do brand identity, my brand is helping people grow. That's my slogan, and I adopted that slogan in 1977 Whoa, a long, long time ago, grow. Now, take that word, grow, helping people grow. That's what I do professionally. I help them grow. I also could have made it more personal growth, but I apply it to business, because those are usually funded, whereas personal growth is not necessarily right. So I help people with growth, and I help small businesses with growth. The universal symbol of potential for growth is the acorn, and the acorn has a stem representing its legacy that came from before it the cap that holds on to the seed and protects it, which would be your coaches, your teachers, your mentors, your parents, your guides, your role models. And the seed itself, which holds your potential, but it also holds the potential of every other person you will affect through a stem into their seed. It for the remainder of time. So I chose the acorn as my my logo and my metaphor. And yes, I've got a squirrel back there holding the acorn, because I decided I'm going to go deep with this. Since my brand is growth and the acorn is my metaphor, I want to understand acorns, so I literally Dave joined the American oak society, because every acorn that grows up is an oak tree. None of them are pines. None of them become giant redwoods. None of them are cedars. They're all oak. But some of them aren't very good at it, and some of them are magnificent, and they spawn millions of acorns all over the world, right? So the same thing for you and me. We need to know what kind of seed we've got inside so that we can grow it to its optimum potential, not maximum, because you might outgrow your resources, but optimum. What's the highest and best use of you in the world today? So item one, what's your value message? How can you help other people that's worth paying for? Item two, what's your brand? How do you stand out differently from all the other people in your field? If you're the doorbell guy, then you're not just an electrician, right? If you're the the one who's in charge of stage setup, in the in the road crew for for the Eagles band, you know, then that doesn't mean you're in charge of ticket sales. You're in charge of stage setup. Get that, right? And everybody's happy, right? So what's your brand identity? How do you stand out? Number three, what who is your ideal client? Now I don't mean your dream client. Who is the ideal, perfect fit client for you? At first, it's going to be somebody with very simple needs. Later, it's going to be people with more complex needs. Then you can expand that as you go, but that answer needs to be clear up front. Who are you going after, and who can you really serve? So if you're just starting out, you serve people that are just starting out with whatever your subject is, if it's fitness, then you take people who are not fit and help them become fit. If, if an Olympic aspirant comes to you and says, Will you train me? You're not ready for that, don't take the job. But you can help them with basics, you know, like nutrition or exercise, fundamental exercises, right? So your business, your all of your focus needs to be, at first, on the people that ought to be doing business with you and can afford to pay when I was newly married, I took a job selling mutual funds and life insurance for investors, diversified services in Little Rock, Arkansas. And someone said, you should choose a market and specialize. So I chose the Arkansas, the University of Arkansas, Medical Center, people that were going to med school to become doctors. Well, one thing they don't have is money. Another thing they don't have is time,

Jim Cathcart  38:24  
but I was going to be their guy, because they did have a need for life insurance and estate planning and things like that. I wasted so much time, and I wasted my bought an advertisement in their newsletter, and I, you know, it showed up on campus, and I didn't make enough sales to even cover my bills. So stupid choice, right? I needed a lane where the people had the money and where I actually could help. I ended up getting out of that business, all right? So that was number three. Who's your ideal client? And by the way, that ideal client will become more and more specialized and sophisticated as you go on, and they'll have more and more money to spend with you. Number let's say that's 1234,

David Bush  39:08  
what's number two? Again, somebody just asked a question. What's number

Jim Cathcart  39:11  
two? One is your your brand, your value message. Value message. Number two is your brand identity. So what makes you unique? Number three is your ideal client. Number four is your business model. When I started as a speaker and trainer, my business model was gigging musician, so to speak. You know, I can play guitar and sing. I'll stand on the street corner and get tips. That's a business model, right? You're not going to earn much, but that's a business model. I'm going to book myself into bars and nightclubs. That's a business model. I'm going to book myself into more sophisticated nightclubs and theaters. Well, it's another business. I'm going to book myself into arenas and special. Events and rodeos and stadiums. That's another business model, and each one of them requires a great deal more sophistication. Same things true in any other field, right? So what's your business model? Is it gigs? In other words, you're trying to get Dave to hire you for his weekend event. Okay? You want Jim to hire you to fix his problem at his business, fine, but at first, it's not going to be long term consultant, unless you've already got some super skills behind you. And I've got a client that I'm going to be speaking for next week in San Antonio. The first time I did anything for them, I went to a committee meeting where they paid me a couple $100 to sit in on the meeting and offer some advice. At the end of the meeting, they said, Hey, that went really well. Would you write an article for our publication? We'll pay you well, yeah. So I wrote an article for their magazine. Our people liked your article. Jim, would you do one every month for a year? Yeah, so they paid me every month for a year. Hey, we're enjoying your articles. Would you like to come to our expo and do a breakout session, and then later, general session, main stage, Keynote? And then would you train our executive team? Meet with us once a quarter for strategy. Said, Would you do skills training for our headquarters staff? Dave, I've been doing business with this client for 16 consecutive years, years, and I've I haven't had to make a new sale after the first year. So when I started out simple, simple, simple, and as it got more sophisticated, and I understood them better as well, I provided more and more services, and now they consider me a executive level Insider. I'm kind of a name in their world. Wow. So now we've got business model. The final one is Stan operating standards. What are the principles and systems that you will operate by? Maybe you need a business system like salesforce.com, or something simple, like Outlook, or, you know, some like high level or Infusionsoft, or whatever the the various types of software are that you can base your business in. I use go high level, that that network of services, but I've used a lot of others over the years, and I've used none where it was just my little hand developed system, so one of your operating systems, and I said, standards. Now, what's a standard? The standard is a it's kind of like a value commitment. It's like it's part of your character. For example, I decided as a professional speaker that I was not going to support causes in which I did not believe, even if they were willing to pay me. That was difficult, because if someone's offering you 1000s of dollars to come do what you do and they don't stand for what you believe in, that's a hard call to make when you're looking at your bills for next month, but I literally got a call from a tobacco manufacturer, a cigarette company, and they said, we'd like you to deliver the keynote speech for our annual convention, and we will pay you whatever it was. It was probably around $10,000 that's a lot of money. And I said, guys, I really appreciate the offer, but I can't do it, and I feel good about myself now for having turned that down. I could have done it. I would have gotten paid. I could have brushed it off and said, well, rationalize it, but the fact remains, I would have been helping to advance the use of tobacco, and I, as a non smoker who quit in the year 1974 and will never, ever, ever smoke again. I don't believe in it, so don't do it. Likewise, if it was Hamas or the Taliban and they said, Hey Jim, come teach us battlefield tactics. No, not only No, I tell you what. I'm not an expert in there. I'll teach you how not to do it and no, no, how to do it wrong, so that when you oppose us, we'll win.

David Bush  44:41  
So we got number one was choose your lane, identify the value that you bring. Number two is clarify your brand identity, what you represent. Did I get that right? Yeah. Number three is identify your well, a better way to say item one, you know, is your value message. How do you communicate

Jim Cathcart  44:59  
the value of. Buying from you, right doing business with you. Number two is your brand identity. What sets you apart when there's a room full of experts in your field? How do you stand out? You're the only green one. You're the only you know, one that's over six foot three. You're the only one that's 11 inches tall, whatever. How do you stand out? Number three is, who is your optimum client? Is it hotels? Is it lakefront property owners? That you know, who is it? And then number four is your business model. How are you set up? Do you need a staff, a team? Can you outsource everything? Can you do it all yourself? Is it available through software? And then finally, what are your operating standards? What do you stand for? What's your constitution? What do you believe in?

David Bush  45:51  
That's fantastic. Can you give a story or an example, as we begin to wrap things up here, of somebody who actually took their level of expertise to a whole nother level, and their competence grew, their confidence, grew, their commission or their compensation grew. Any examples of how you could tie it back to the monetary increase? Absolutely, I got a call the other day, the other day, being like, six or eight weeks ago, from a guy in Brenham, Texas.

Jim Cathcart  46:24  
And he called me and he said, Jim, do you remember going to the National Association of music merchants, meeting and running into me in the exposition area? I said, in Anaheim several years ago? Yeah, I remember it vividly. And he said, What do you remember? I said, I remember you had a quote from my book, The Acorn principle that you carried around in your briefcase everywhere you went, and that you were exhibiting at that conference, and you recognized me even though we had never met. And he said, Yeah. He said, Well, when I started my business making musical equipment, I was sleeping on the floor of a warehouse. I was renting and living from sale to sale, and I would go make sales before I had the inventory to fulfill it, and then rush home to build the product so that I could fulfill it. He said, I just want you to know today, I'm driving my brand new, beautiful truck out of the driveway of my brand new, beautiful home to meet my team down at my $5 million annual income business and celebrating the fact that I was inspired by your words those years ago. Wow, wow. Then I get an email said, Jim, this is Bob. We you knew me in 1977 70 Yeah, 77 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at Mass Mutual Life Insurance Agency, when you were advising and training us in sales, if you'll remember, I was struggling, and you spent some time doing some personal counseling with me. He said, Well, my wife and I had just celebrated X years of marriage, and I want you to know that I'm making $10 million a year, and you were a big part of my growth. Wow. Another guy I'd met him when he was a 19 year old kid polishing cars, and he asked me for some advice, and I gave him some. And then we corresponded back and forth. At the end of that year, he won the international sales leader award for the company auto detailing company he was part of, which was a world wide company called tidy car. And they gave him a brand new Corvette automobile. And I was there at the convention. I had given the keynote, and I ran up on stage and hugged him and congratulated him. And I said, What did you do? He said, I just did what you told me back in that seminar in Chicago last year. And I said, well, for heaven's sakes, what did I say, you know, if it was that good, I want to fall but, and he went on to become a quite a wealthy man and a Google licensee with another business. And he retired around 30 years old, and traveled the world for a while, and then went back to school to get an MBA and, you know, so there have been lots of folks over the years, and it's just it's such a joy. I was with Brian Tracy the other day on a podcast, and he told me about inspiration he got from me in the early days of his speaking career. Good heavens. I mean, he's big. I'm moderate size by comparison.

David Bush  50:03  
Wow, that's fantastic. Well, I just put the link in the chat for those of you that are attending live to learn more about the Certified Professional expert program that Jim is offering to a select group of individuals. And he's obviously earned his stripes, and now he's being able to pass those stripes on to the next group of individuals that want to raise their level of expertise as we close up here today. Jim, would you mind just kind of giving us an overview of what what does it look like to be in your CPE program, certified professional

Jim Cathcart  50:38  
expert? The first thing I do with the people who enroll in that is I spend some time in a couple hours face to face with them, either in person or in a private video call, and I just get to know what matters to them and where they're at and what they're aspiring to do, and just get A general diagnosis or lay of the land, and then we decide what's important to them at this time, although that may change over the next several months, but what's important first, it may be immediate revenue. It may be breaking into a new area, it may be coming up with a plan, whatever it happens to be, or overcoming a big challenge of some sort. So we get that clear. And then I have them go through my what I call acorns to oak trees, professional education and professional growth. And this is a simple little $99 video course where they go, they go on their own and enroll in that. And you can see it on the homepage of cathcart.com just scroll down a little bit and click right there, and it signs you up, and you get 16 short video lessons total length, like four and a quarter hours total. So each one's a short lesson, but it really walks you through the things I used to do face to face in coaching. And it saves you so much time, but gives you a way to go over it again, over again, if you want to, or just see it once, and then move on and and then, as you're doing that, every week, I meet with you in a zoom call, and there may be a few other people. I do small groups, sometimes anywhere from three to eight or 12 people at most, as long as everybody gets a chance to offer the input and ask the questions they want, and I can focus on them. And then, of course, I'm available for private calls or emails or texts or whatever for immediate problem solving. And then we go through the year or the six months, and it's all outlined on that page, CAFC card.com/experts, plural. You can see each step in it. But toward the end of that six months, we have a professional expert Summit, three and a half days where we get together in Austin, Texas, or La Jolla, California, Santa, Barbara, California, or Miami or wherever. It's going to be some special place, and put our focus in a group of 20 or fewer people, all of us helping each other get those five items refined to the laser surgical level of focus. And man, that the outcomes are just amazing. I've got video testimonials on my website, cathcart.com/testimonials and you scroll down and there's like 40 or 50 testimonials on there, but there's a couple of little one to two minute videos that show the expert summit and what people got out of it. So it's, it's thrilling to do with people. I love something grow,

David Bush  54:00  
yeah, well, I've known you for over 20 years, and everything that you've just said is so valuable. It's so appreciated by those people that have gone through the course. And I know that you're just launching this into the ether, so I'm sure that that list of 30 some odd people is going to grow exponentially as you begin to bring more people through the program. So thanks for giving us some insights and wisdom. Check out cathcart.com forward slash experts for more information. And if you thought this video is valuable, share it. Share it with somebody else. Share it on your social media page and make sure that you reach out to Jim for more details. Jim, it's always a pleasure chatting with you. Thanks for investing some time, I

Jim Cathcart  54:40  
couldn't be more grateful. Thank you. I appreciate

David Bush  54:43  
that. All right, take care. Everybody. Have a great day. Thanks for tuning in to the Business Builders playbook. If this episode gave you some plays that you can start running in your business today, hit subscribe and share with another revenue leader who's tired of the pipeline. I building Predictable Revenue isn't something you figure out alone. Whether you're looking to automate your prospecting with bdr.ai, or you just want to talk through the growth challenges you're facing, reach out. We help business leaders just like you to build systems that actually scale. And if you're ready to stop being your company's Highest Paid Prospector, let's have a conversation. Reach out to us@bdr.ai until next time, let's keep building you.