Episode #22 – Rossco Paddison of Heart Centred Money Makers
In this episode number 22 of the InnovaBuzz podcast, Rossco Paddison who is the founder of Heart Centred Money Makers, shares with us his views about how passion and vision help business owners get clarity and be inspired to do more. Rossco has helped hundreds of business owners discover their true passion, develop their vision and then build a successful business with that. Listen to the interview to learn about Rossco’s principles for doing business with a heart.
Listen to the Podcast
Today we are giving away an awesome prize! Rossco has very generously donated a ticket to his Remote CEO Workshop that will be on the 4th, 5th and 6th of December. This workshop will teach you “the Laptop Lifestyle” – how to work remotely from anywhere in the world. The value of that course is $2,999.
Leave your comments underneath the Podcast post and tell us; if you can be working from anywhere in the world, where would that be? Secondly, what’s stopping you from doing that?
Show Highlights
Some of the highlights of this episode include:
- Rossco said that adding value to customers is critical and he asks every day “How are you serving people?”
- Asking the question “What is the no. 1 problem that humanity has to solve in the next 50 to 500 years to survive as a species?” entices a visionary to think grander, beyond themselves and beyond their own life because it essentially invites them to start thinking of things like technology and innovation and what are the things that are going to have to happen in order to solve that problem.
- The most important lesson or learning from his ups and downs is really connecting to what he stands for, believes in and to share his message with the world.
- It’s important to innovate every single day. However, you must also to recognize the difference between something new (for the sake of it) and something better. It’s relatively easy to make something new – much harder to make something better.
- Giving away your best information, forces you to keep developing new intellectual property – that is one of the best ways to keep being innovative.
- It’s vital that business owners spend time on themselves and their own personal and professional development – best away from the day to day routine.
- It’s the entrepreneurs role to map the road of the future. Entrepreneurs are the visionaries and the entrepreneur’s job is to map the future in an inspiring way.
if you want to make more money, you need to have the intention to serve more people and then be a really good marketer and sales person.
Rossco Paddison
The Buzz – Our Innovation Round
Here are Rossco’s answers to the questions of our Innovation round. Watch the interview to get the full scoop.
- #1 thing to be more innovative – Slow down. Take time to get a macro-view of your business, by stepping right out of it. That will give you a much broader perspective of your problems and challenges
- Best thing for new ideas – If you figure out what breaks your heart, you figure out what you’re fighting for, real quickly.
- Favourite tool for innovation – Workflowy!
- Keep project / client on track – It’s such a case-by-case basis to be honest but I think the first thing with any of them is really being clear on priorities.
- Differentiate – Have a unique compelling vision and lead with that vision.
To Be More Innovative and Productive
Slow down. Just do what you actually need to do. The quickest way to accelerate your results is to stop being so busy.
Reach Out
You can reach out and thank Rossco via Heart Centred Money Makers Website , Rossco Paddisons’s personal site or his Facebook Page and LinkedIn.
Suggested Guest
Rossco suggested I interview Chris Duncan, co-founder of PointB Education, author of “The Freedom-Business Blueprint” and creator of The Freedom FASTTRACK. So, Chris keep an eye on your Inbox for an invitation from me, for the Innovabuzz Podcast!
Competition Hint
Hint: To enter the competition, leave your comment underneath the Podcast post. Tell us: if you could be working from anywhere in the world, where would that be? Why aren’t you doing that now, unless of course you are doing it? If you are doing it, then just tell us that you are. I’ll get Rossco to swing by in a few weeks’ time and pick a prize winner.
Links
- Heart Centred Money Makers Meetups (Gold Coast, Australia)
- Blueprint to a Billion
- Virtual Freedom by Chris Ducker
- Tools:
Workflowy.com
Slack.com
Trello.com
Full Transcript
Click to Read…
Intro:
Hi, I’m Jürgen Strauss from Innovabiz. Welcome to Episode No 22 of the InnovaBuzz Podcast – designed to help smart businesses with an interest in innovation and the Internet of Things become even more innovative.
In this episode, my guest is Rossco Paddison, founder of the Heart Centred Money Makers. Rossco has helped hundreds of business owners discover their true passion, develop their vision and then build a successful business with that. Rossco spoke a lot about passion and vision in today’s interview and shared some great insights with me. This is another fascinating and inspiring interview, I learnt a lot in my hour with Rossco and I hope you will too, so stay tuned.
This podcast is sponsored by Innovabiz, where we help smart, innovative business owners save time and money and grow their business by making their websites achieve more. Of course, at Innovabiz, we do more than just build websites – we provide solutions to our clients’ needs by leveraging the power of the internet in innovative ways. If you want to learn more, then go to innovabiz.com.au or contact me directly through the contact information there.
Before we meet Rossco, a quick competition announcement – this week’s competition prize is awesome! Rossco has generously donated a ticket to his Remote CEO workshop that runs for 3 days on 4-6 December, in Hawaii. You will have to organise your own travel and accommodation, but Rossco has waived the $2999 workshop price for the winner of our prize today. That is such an awesome prize, I think I might even have to put in an entry myself! Stick around for details on how you can enter the draw to win that competition prize later on in the interview.
Now, let’s get into the Innovation Hive and get the Buzz from Rossco Paddison.
Interview:
Jürgen: Hi. I’m Jürgen Strauss from Innovabiz, It’s a great privilege to have with me here today on the InnovaBuzz podcast Rossco Paddison who is the founder of Heart Centred Money Makers. He’s also a really exciting person. I’ve been researching on his background, so we’ll learn a lot more about him today but Rossco basically helps people heal their relationship with money, so business owners can use that to improve their lot in life and their contribution. Welcome to the podcast, Rossco.
Rossco: Thanks for having me, Jürgen. It’s good to be here.
Jürgen: It’s a privilege to have you here. Now before we learn a lot more about Rossco, Heart Centred Money Makers and all the exciting things that he’s doing there with his business partner, John Bellamy, who we interviewed a little while ago and who suggested that I talk with Rossco, before we learn more about all of that, I’d like to announce today’s prize which is actually an awesome prize! Rossco has very generously donated a ticket to his Remote CEO course. Now that course is running on the 4th, 5th and 6th of December. The value of that course is $2,999.
It’s going to be teaching business owners how to scale their business while managing cash flow, so I’ll get him to talk about it some more later on but it’s about building an offshore team, about scaling your business as I’ve said. Another awesome thing about that is, it’s going to be in Hawaii at that time of the year. Now, obviously, you have to get your own flights and accommodations there but the seminar itself, Rossco is donating. That’s fantastic, Stay tuned later on in the interview where you’ll learn how to enter that competition. Rossco, I really appreciate you making that available to our audience.
Rossco: My absolute pleasure.
Jürgen: Before we talk about Heart Centred Money Makers and your journey there, I normally ask my guests when you were a child what did you want to be when you grew up? Now I noticed on one of your pages that you said when you were 5 years old, somebody asked you that. You said simply that you wanted to save the world. Do you want to expand on that one for us?
Rossco: It was interesting because I know when I was 5 I didn’t understand the question when they said, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” I didn’t know if it was job titles or anything like that. I just said, “I want to save the world,” which in retrospect whilst I definitely want to contribute and give back to the world, I definitely don’t think it needs saving now. I just think it needs edging along to progress and evolve in the right way but that was my 5-year-old I guess naïve response that just automatically came out. I just wanted to help people, Jürgen. I think that’s always been true for me and still is today.
Jürgen: What’s your background in? How did you get into business first? Did you have any corporate jobs or designer’s trade?
Rossco: Oh I’ve been an entrepreneur from early on. When I was still in primary school, I’d setup a street stall and collect Mangos that had fallen from a tree, and sell them to the neighbourhood kids. My product cost was zero. My profit was infinite.
Jürgen: That’s a good business model. While you’re doing that, you’re cleaning up the street as well.
Rossco: Totally. That was great. I had bought my own businesses, all sorts of computer businesses, all sorts of things before I even turned 18. I haven’t been in the past, known for sticking to things. I’m very great at starting projects until probably about 7 years ago when I started my coaching business. It’s had a couple of names but now Heart Centred Money Makers is the logo for life because I don’t know if you know this, Jürgen, but I ended up getting it tattooed on my arm, the logo of the company, so that I don’t haven’t to change brands ever again!
Jürgen: That’s one way to do it.
Rossco: I had to make a commitment. I’ve just constantly been in the entrepreneurial space. I did have a few occupations for a while in between there in my 20’s which were in real estate. I did quite well in sales then. I just loved selling property. That was very easy to do. Then from there I went bankrupt personally, in 2008 just for the lack of a better term being too cocky in a good marketplace and got myself to the point where I was too top-heavy in property investments and had to personally go bankrupt.
Then I had to rebuild from scratch again in 2008 onwards but probably the biggest lesson around money for me which was I think most people’s relationship with money is unconscious, Jurgen but if we sat people down in a marriage counseling type couch, put money at the other end of the couch and then at the other end of the couch start talking about how they treat it, a lot of peoples’ relationship with money is toxic. It’s something that I had to learn for myself by essentially just … If I was in a little bit of an abusive relationship, I would have gotten locked up if that was a person.
Jürgen: Right.
Rossco: I had to come full circle but no, as far as corporate experience goes, John and I speak to a lot of corporates and do a lot of workshops and planning sessions for them but I had no corporate formal training for myself.
Jürgen: That’s an interesting journey. Obviously, you’ve got the entrepreneurial gene in your blood so to speak.
Rossco: Definitely.
Jürgen: Certainly, I’ve got a corporate background but I think it was a lot of the times when we had training courses in the corporate world, it was refreshing to have somebody like you come in that wasn’t tainted if you like by all the constraints that you build up in your own mind as well in the corporate world. That’s quite fascinating. I guess the partnership with John who does come from a corporate background is something that compliments one another really well.
Rossco: It’s great synergy. It’s my most difficult job to get John to turn things into plain English. His most difficult job to get me to have a chat. It’s a nice yin and yang.
Jürgen: Corporate speak still can get in the way, right?
Rossco: Yeah, totally.
Jürgen: You went through a lean period then in 2008, I guess coinciding with the global financial crisis as well. I don’t know whether that had anything to do with it but it’s interesting you point out the relationships with money because I guess as we grow up we build all those different beliefs. I know certainly from my point of view the belief that was instilled was work hard. Do the right things. You’ll earn some money along the way. Then save that money. Spend it wisely but don’t spend it all. When you get into business, you have to change that mindset, don’t you?
Rossco: Yeah, on so many levels the word business instantly the first thing that comes to mind is that you’ve got to take some level of risk which is some level of investment which you have to be very conscious or very aware of your relationship with money to be able to move through that in a way that actually grows you that wealth. A lot of business owners end up in a business that essentially just created more debt for them than having a job. They don’t manage their cash flow correctly. That’s something major that I see in 95% of start-ups easily.
Jürgen: Tell us a little bit about what happened after 2008 when you declared bankruptcy. How did you get yourself back up on your feet? Obviously, that’s a key part of what you now teach people in terms of the relationship to money.
Rossco: I’ve got to be really honest. I didn’t get myself back up on my feet straight-away. I had about a year, a year and a half, off because I had very much worked in … I guess I had worked my whole life to that point, took some time off to be honest and just re-assessed which I guess the most important lesson or learning from that is really connecting to what I stood for and what I wanted to essentially stand for, believe in and share essentially my message with the world.
I did spent a lot of time getting clear on what my message was because all the businesses I’d had to date and some of my toxicity with my relationship with money is I was focused on making the money rather than focused on serving an ever-growing number of people I was just essentially wanting more and more and more without trying to give more and more and more. For me, it was about really finding my message so that I could be where that I was inspired to get up every single day and give more and more and more rather than regress more and more and more. That was probably the monumental step.
Then from there, the lesson that I learned in 2008, the major one, was that I was very much a capital gains strategy. My strategy, I was building, speculating and building house and land packages. I learned a big lesson about cash flow because I had quite a bit of equity but I had zero cash flow. I basically spent a lot of time building business cash flow and did quite well and in my first year in my coaching business turned over $765,000 which is great. In the first year of coaching business, that’s I guess the 1% as far as first-year results go.
The biggest thing I then got taught was to truly grow your cash flow, you need to focus on what are the things you’re doing to serve people? It’s a theme throughout but if you want to essentially make more money, you need to have the intention to serve more people and then be a really good marketer and sales person. You need that skill set but it was a great journey.
Jürgen: There’s a couple of really strong messages there that come through for me. The first one is getting clear on what compassion is and how you can contribute and secondly, focusing on how you serve people and I guess by extension from what you’re saying about cash flow is how you serve them on an ongoing basis because if they keep paying and the cash flow is fine but you’ve got to keep serving to keep giving value for doing that. Then the third message is marketing that. It’s getting people to understand that, “Hey, this is what I’m passionate about. This is how I want it to be” – and communicating that.
Rossco: Some of those bigger wake-up calls for me in that time too around being heart-centered some of the distinction of what that was for me, I literally had a friend where I was talking about business sitting with her in Bali. I was telling her about our plans for the future and stuff like that. Literally out of nowhere she open-hand slapped me to the face, like a physical slap. She’s like, “Get out of your head. Get into your heart, kid.” I’m like, “what? What does that even mean?” Then I’m like, “I’m physically slapped. 7 people are doing this and doing that.”
Again, out of nowhere, she’s like, “Whap.” I was like physically slapped. Some people are waiting for the wake-up slap. I got the physical variation. Anyway, it was the start of my journey of becoming heart-centered. As I went along discovering more about what that was for me, I saw this quote that the Dalai Lama wrote which was quite interesting.
The Dalai Lama said, “The Western world will be saved by the Western woman in the future.” Essentially what I made that mean was that just capitalists or when essentially potentially women get into business or more of the conscious capitalists that are running the companies and the organizations of the world.
That’s when the world will start to shift, when people are focused as much on profit as they are on contribution and making more meaning whilst making their enterprise is going to essentially catapult this world forward and where it needs to go because at the end of the day, not go get political but, the government’s job is to maintain and make sure that we’ve got roads, hospitals, all those sorts of things. By the time they’re done, we’ve all said in the budgets, “There’s no money left over for them to think about the future.”
I think that’s an entrepreneur’s job. I think it’s our job to map the road of the future. For us to do that, we have to look at essentially the conscious enterprise model and things like that so we can start to tip that or change that.
Jürgen: Yeah, that’s an interesting take on it. Clearly, the politicians, I find it quite frustrating actually, that there’s never a real vision that goes on beyond the next election.
Rossco: I think that the system itself is designed in such way that a visionary can’t stay in power for long enough. Anyway, you get a couple of terms but wrong or indifferent, I think it can be inspiring for us as entrepreneurs to look at that and go, “Right. We can spend a whole lifetime growing a business that makes money and makes a contribution to humanity. It gives us something to fight for.
Jürgen: That’s great. Tell us then in a sentence what do you actually do at Heart Centred Money Makers or what does Heart Centred Money Makers as a business do?
Rossco: That’s such an interesting … Heart Centred Money Makers is in an interesting phase. To say it in a sentence would be impossible because it is still evolving right now. We just opened a physical center.
Jürgen: I understand. No, I was talking to John about it. He was really excited because it is just before it was about to happen when I spoke with him.
Rossco: Essentially John and I are full-time mentors to business owners who are looking to grow a conscious enterprise from their passion. We’ve recently opened a space where we’ve got a lot of made-up groups, a lot of different events, running in the space. We are really using that to create an ecology or an environment for entrepreneurs to come into it to get away from essentially their own ecology if it’s not where they want it to be right now.
We’re really just looking to set the space. The company vision so to speak is to have a number of spaces around the world. I’m already looking at sites in Melbourne for our next one.
We’re looking to essentially build a network of spaces where you can go internationally if you’re a mentor, a coach or a conscious entrepreneur who is looking to escape the kitchen table or your partner nagging at you because you haven’t taken the trash out whilst you’re trying to do something really important on your business, that kind of thing. That’s 9 sentences long. Sorry, Jurgen.
Jürgen: That’s good because I think I liked the first sentence where you talked about acting as a mentor for businesses. You talked about coaches and mentors as well focusing on those who are building a conscious enterprise. That’s a good thing that would get people to say, “What does that mean exactly?”
Rossco: For sure.
Jürgen: I was certainly going to ask you about the offices or the spaces as you call them because I know that John was very excited about that when we last spoke.
Rossco: It’s definitely something that I think we’re still learning what it is. We’ve tried on a number of different things and had some amazing results which we’re really excited about. We’re still figuring out the template because it’s a … To put it into a label like an accountancy firm or a co-working space, you can’t put a label on it as of yet which we’re still building the template and figuring out that label and the place where it’s still evolving. To give it a label is quite difficult.
Jürgen: I was going to ask about that as well because you describe it as spaces in your website. To me, it sounds a little bit like co-working, a co-working space but obviously now from what you described here, there’s a whole range of things – it’s much more than a co-working space.
Rossco: Totally.
Jürgen: All right. In terms of the services you provides then and how you go about that, tell us a little bit about your sales process and marketing because you mentioned that before, that was one of the keys to your whole business.
Rossco: Absolutely. We have a very simple formula. We have essentially a 4-step formula that we run our whole business from which is reach, convert, deliver, contribute. The reach component is essentially what can you just give to your community? What information can you give? How far can you get essentially that message to go? In our business right now the way in which we reach more people is John and I are speaking probably 100 days a year at different networking events and functions around the country.
John just came back from Perth in Sydney last week. I’m off to Perth next week. We’ve spoken at a number on the Gold Coast in the last couple of weeks. We’re constantly out there speaking. Another way we’re reaching more people constantly which is working brilliantly at the moment is just meet-up groups. I’m surprised at the reach that $12 a month on MeetUp.com can give you. It’s brilliant.
We’re having some great success there along with joint ventures. Email swaps with other great trainers or providers who’ve got similar lists. That’s definitely been something that’s helped us reach more people, LinkedIn and Facebook. They’re probably the main platforms we use right now.
We are in the process and probably by the time this podcast is out, we’ll have our HeartCentredMoneyMakers.com out which is a reach platform essentially we’re building the content marketing side as well. That’s the strategies. I definitely without a doubt, and John would back me up on this, is that speaking is the quickest way to grow a company. It’s just the number of leads you can get in a room.
John spoke in front of 30 people in Perth just a few days ago and got 30 people, 30 out of 30 of that. It’s definitely the quickest way to grow a business is speaking.
Jürgen: That’s awesome, 30 out of 30, a very persuasive speaker! It’s interesting, the meet-up groups also, so you go and speak at meet-up groups, do you?
Rossco: No, we actually hold meet-up groups …
Jürgen: You hold them.
Rossco: … at the centre. So that means having a centre, the brilliant thing about that is that we can run as many events as we want now without having any excess cost because we’ve already got the overhead, except things like staff, but we’ve been running … What we’ve found really useful is the fringe things, not necessarily … We have the full business events.
A great event we have here is called Serve where people bring their laptops for 36 hours and build an entire funnel marketing start to finish but what we’ve been doing in the meet-up groups is doing 3 and 6-hour events where they’re doing things like come and build a vision board, come and do a meditation to get clear on abundance or something like that. A lot of the fringe stuff has been working really well to fill the meet-up groups.
Another thing we’re doing is we’re just doing a co-working day because we’re not actually running the space as a co-working space but we’re doing a day a month as a meet-up group where they can just come and use it as a co-working space, so lots of different little fringe things. What I’ve found is that the things on the fringes are the things that sort of attract people in.
People when they go Google to grow their business, they don’t necessarily go and Google what they should be Googling. They’ll go and Google things like how to get things done faster? How do I get things done cheaper? What I’ve found is use that to reach more people. Give them what they want. Don’t give them what they should be looking for essentially.
Then when we’ve got them in say the meet-up groups, we’ll invite them to come to what we call in the next step of the process is a conversion event. We’ll invite them along to a conversion event which is one like Serve, for example. That’s also a free event. We go free to free.
That’s something that’s working extremely good because at that conversion event, our conversions are extremely high because we’ve built such a community on the front end. It gives people the ability to get to know I can trust you before you even offer them anything.
Jürgen: That’s right. This Serve is a full day event, I believe, right?
Rossco: It’s 3 days.
Jürgen: 3 days!
Rossco: Yes. It’s 36 hours of a free event.
Jürgen: By the time people commit that level of time, they’re virtually sold on what you’re helping them with, right?
Rossco: Yeah. Totally. I think the thing is that most businesses are afraid to give away their best IP. Serve is potentially our best IP in 3 days, just jammed in. It was something that I personally spent over $70,000 learning from different internet marketing trainings and different trainings. We know that the processes that we teach inside our front end events is literally giving away our best IP.
You really want to lead with the absolute best you can and have an abundance mentality which says, “If I give away the best, then people are going to want to continue getting your help to continue to implement the simple things as well.”
Jürgen: That’s right. It always amazes me because I’ve talked to a lot of people on their websites and say, “We have to have something that you give people in return for them sharing their email with you.” There’s always this feeling, “I don’t want to give away something. I don’t want to give away the house.” That literally can give you more success than if you don’t give anything away or if you give something away that’s of limited value because then people won’t give it away themselves.
Rossco: Obviously. It’s interesting because I’d love it if they could live a day in lives of people like myself and yourself, Jürgen, who understand it. Serve, for example, at that event we’ve had a events we’ve run where we’ve done as high as $3,800 a head in sales in the room which is astronomical for every single person that was sitting in the room. That was at a free event. You want to try on, if anyone listening to this is afraid to give away your IP, is the more you give, the more you can ask for.
You really can charge a lot more when you are in a position that allows you to be abundant. Let’s be honest too. The more you give away, the more it teaches you to go and be at the leading edge beyond everyone else and to have the next-best thing coming because you’ve already given away the thing before it.
Jürgen: I can’t remember who said this now but I remembered the quote. I thought, “That’s fascinating.” It said, “Give away everything you’ve got, your absolute best, because that forces you to innovate,because basically you’ve got to develop the next-best thing.
Rossco: Totally.
Jürgen: The other one, of course, is when you’re teaching other people things like this and you’re doing it for free, the amount of education, self-education, you get out of that is invaluable. If you approach it from that point of view so you’re not actually doing it for free and you’re actually doing it to further your own education in terms of what are your audience looking for, what are you customers looking for, where are the opportunities.
Rossco: Absolutely. I think at the end of the day too you’re going to make an absolute reality in this day and age is that if someone new had a go on Google what it is you’re giving away anyway, they can probably find them on Google or they are cheap already.
Jürgen: Exactly.
Rossco: It’s not like it’s not out there. It’s interesting. There’s a metaphor I like to use is that when people are trying to grow a business if you imagine your business as a seed, you wouldn’t clasp it in your hands and suffocate it. That’s essentially what a lot of people do with their IP. You need to fertilize it and water it, give it sunlight. You need to share it with the world to get it to grow. I think that’s something that people really need to take on.
Jürgen: That’s a great analogy. You’ve talked a little bit about innovation. What do you see as the most innovative thing about Heart Centred Money Makers?
Rossco: I’m going to answer it with a question that’s going to help people innovate. I think one of the most important questions for an entrepreneur or as Martin Gabel would describe them, “An entrepreneur is truly the visionary of a business.” I think the most important thing for an entrepreneur is to have a grand vision. I don’t know if John shared this with you but the vision for us is to have 50 of these centres throughout the world.
Then when Richard Branson gets his act together and builds a space centre, we want to have one up there. We literally on our company vision board have a seminar room essentially in outer space. One of the grand visions of our company is that essentially is to help … Essentially, the one word for word that describes our vision is perspective. We want people to be able to get perspective on their business and their lives.
We answered this question to figure that out, which I’ll share with the listeners which is, “What is the 1 problem that humanity has to solve in the next 50 to 500 years to survive as a species?” That question really entices a visionary to think grander, beyond themselves and beyond their own life because it essentially incites them to start thinking of things like technology and innovation and what are the things that are going to have to happen in order to solve that problem once they’ve decided what that problem is for them.
As a company, we decided that the problem essentially was is that people are stuck too much in their circumstances. Their environment needs to change in order for the world to essentially change. Perspective was really our answer or I guess our solution to that problem. I think everyone needs to really think about what is that 1 problem that their company vision is going to solve. Then dedicate their vision, their mission.
Those vision and mission things that they put in every business plan are actually very useful when you start thinking in terms of inspiring visions like that. Then you can spend a lifetime building a mission around that. I think we can learn a lot from the billionaires of the world like Richard Branson. He’s an exceptional example of a visionary or people like Elon Musk. They’re solving big problems.
I think that if you want to grow a bigger business, you need to solve a bigger problem. Like I said, you need to become better at marketing and sales as well but the first thing you need to do is have a humanities-sized problem to solve.
Jürgen: That’s an interesting one-liner actually. If you want to have a bigger business you need to solve a bigger problem. I like that. I like the whole concept of a grand vision that’s inspiring, so looking at what’s a big problem that humanity needs to solve in the next 50 to 500 years. I’m sure if people think about it, there’s at least 1 or 2 things that might come to mind!
Rossco: There’s no right or wrong. Some people talk about ending slavery. Some people talk about having to have the internet connected to everyone. Some people say saving the planet. Some people say populating outer space. There’s no right or wrong answer.
Jürgen: No, exactly.
Rossco: It’s just about choosing which problem you’re going to solve and then going after one.
Jürgen: That’s a really great way to put it. I really like that. What do you see as the risks then because why don’t people take that sort of approach or why aren’t people more innovative in their businesses? What are the risks that are holding us back? What are the risks that you see? How do you deal with them?
Rossco: I think you need to innovate every single day. However, I think it’s important to recognize the difference between something new and something better. I think it’s easy to create something new. It’s a lot harder to create something better.
Jürgen: That’s right.
Rossco: I think you need to innovate constantly but I think that the importance innovation or the risks of innovation rather is that people need to constantly innovate but they need to innovate towards a profitable model. I think the risk is when someone focuses on innovation without having the oxygen mask on essentially when it comes to their own cash flow as the center of their business.
I think the important thing here is innovate or iterate constantly to be growing your business, growing your reach and growing your message. Then it’s going to be safe. If you’re innovating, bills are piling up and things like that, then you’re probably going to go make sure that you’re innovating around the things that are purposeful, that are really hitting your key or core priorities right now.
Jürgen: That’s right and that you’re aligned with that grand vision that you talked about.
Rossco: Totally but I think that the major risk that I see in innovation though is people just not considering … There’s a lot of creative energy out there. There’s a lot of people who have so much creativity. If they channel it to the actual problems rather than what they think their problems are, they’d get a lot further.
Jürgen: That’s definitely great advice. I know we tell people that we’re an innovative company but we don’t innovate just for the sake of innovating. It’s about doing things better and getting more value out of what we do. There’s a lot of that in what you’re saying.
Rossco: Absolutely. Innovation for the sake of innovation is probably just people being confused with what the purposes of what they’re doing.
Jürgen: All right. In terms of Heart Centred Money Makers, the business, do you have anything that keeps you awake at night that you worry about?
Rossco: I think right now it’s just this infantile stage. We’re constantly iterating different templates and trying to figure out where this space is going. We have a vision for and we’re very clear on where want it to go but it’s definitely something that I’m contemplating and thinking about all the time. The thing for Heart Centred Money Makers is that we’re always looking at extending our reach but our conversions are really high.
It’s only recently, probably 2 months ago, that John and I started focusing on our reach which I think is a smart thing. If anyone’s starting their own business, you should get your conversions working properly first. Then, go reach more people because driving them to something that doesn’t convert would be a waste of your time and energy. We’re definitely looking at and our attention is firmly on reaching more people which we’ve invested a lot in already. We’re having some success in it and just looking to grow from that.
Jürgen: Good. The reach is what you’re working on right now. How do you keep balanced? Now, actually, I was reading something on your Facebook the other day. Is this correct? You’ve just recently been married?
Rossco: Yeah.
Jürgen: Congratulations.
Rossco: Thank you. That was on the 21st of December last year but that was … it’s interesting. We had an engagement party. We invited everyone around. I got up. I spoke in front of the room. I said, “Sorry to disappoint everyone but this engagement party’s no longer an engagement party. It’s now a wedding.” That was quite fun. I definitely highly recommend to anyone who wants to get married to do a surprise wedding because you don’t have to abide by everyone’s rules. You get to do it the way you want to do it.
Jürgen: That’s a good approach!
Rossco: The other I guess life news for me is that I’ve got another son, Drew, due probably either later this week or early next week. That’s exciting as well.
Jürgen: That’s fantastic. I thought that that was fairly new news but I guess that December was already last year. Congratulations.
Rossco: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Jürgen: I guess asking you what keeps you balanced and what you do when you’re not working has an obvious answer.
Rossco: Family’s a big part of it for me. I think the other thing too that keeps me balanced beyond family … Family is quite important to me and close to my heart, but another thing that I do is really spend a lot of time on inspiring myself to the point of … Some people spend some time getting inspired but I’m very active in getting myself inspired. For example, yesterday on Sunday I took a day out for myself which I do about once a month.
I literally watched a bunch of personal development movies, collected a bunch of thoughts, quotes and things that I wanted and collated them, spent some time getting some imagery in front of me collecting things for my vision board. I actively inspire myself because what I’ve found is that people who are motivated get some results. People who are inspired seem to be really winning in business. Motivation essentially is of extrinsic forces. Inspiration is essentially intrinsic forces.
The more time that you spend on you, the greater acceleration you get in your business, especially when you’re driving it rather than external forces or responsively driving your business. That’s something that I’ve found has probably given me the most balance and helped me really stay in check is spending time on me actively. I’ve filled out worksheets that I’ve made for myself. I actively work on myself.
Jürgen: That’s great advice. Also, I like the idea of taking time out from the business as it were, so put way all the day-to-day things that need to be done for that particular day and focus on the development activities, the planning, the vision, whatever it is.
Rossco: Absolutely.
Jürgen: All right. Have you read any interesting books recently that you could recommend to the audience?
Rossco: I actually was just re-reading The Emyth for the 20th time.
Jürgen: You can’t read that often enough I think.
Rossco: It’s interesting. I’m going to recommend a book. I haven’t even read it yet. I just purchased a book called “Blueprint to a Billion.” It’s interesting. It’s a research document. I don’t know how easy it’s going to be to read. I’m probably going to need to inspire myself to read it but it was a study of 1,000 companies. 375 of them became a billion dollar business. The rest didn’t.
It’s a study of what those 375 companies did. He’s essentially brought it down to 7 steps. I’m really quite excited to read that book. Another great book I’ve just read was “Virtual Freedom” by Chris Ducker. That was awesome.
Jürgen: That’s a good book, isn’t it?
Rossco: It’s a great book. I quite enjoyed that as well.
Jürgen: Who wrote “Blueprint to a Billion”?
Rossco: I honestly don’t know but …
Jürgen: I’ll Google that one. We’ll post to both of those books under the show notes. All right. Let’s move onto the Buzz which is our innovation round. That’s designed to help our audience who are primarily innovators and leaders in their field to get some directives from your experience. Hopefully, there’ll be a great 1-line answer that really inspires people.
Rossco: Sure.
Jürgen: The first one is what’s the Number 1 thing you think anybody needs to do to be more innovative in their business?
Rossco: To just slow down and to get a macro-view of their business. Step right out of it. Literally imagine that space station that we want to build at Heart Centred Money Makers. Literally imagine going there and looking down at your business, completely and literally having a macro-view of your problems.
Jürgen: That’s great advice. I hadn’t thought of the space station as a physical venue for doing that later on once you’ve realized that but that could be the program you actually run there.
Rossco: Literally.
Jürgen: What’s the best thing you’ve done to develop new ideas?
Rossco: I think there’s an interesting question I got from a spiritual mentor a bunch of years ago which was, “Of all of the forces of things going on out there in the world, which of them breaks your heart the most?” That’s been a really useful question for me is to think about what breaks my heart over and over and over again because I think someone can innovate really, really quickly when they stand for or they’re fighting for something. If you figure out what breaks your heart, you figure out what you’re fighting for real quick.
Jürgen: There’s that passion thing again, isn’t it?
Rossco: Yeah. It’s the old story of for some people can go and make a million dollars tomorrow, it would be a really difficult task but then if you put the pressure on and put a gun to their loved one’s, they’d figure it out a lot quicker.
Jürgen: That’s right. That reminds me of a story where it’s a corporate training course we did once. The coach that was running the course said, “You’re up in the top levels of the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur which I think was probably the highest building.
Rossco: Wasn’t the Mission Impossible movie was filmed there or something like that?
Jürgen: Yeah, that’s right. They were. I think actually Entrapment with Sean Connery that was there as well, but anyway he said, “Imagine this I Beam that’s about 30 centimeters wide standing between the 2 towers. At the other end I’ve got $1,000. I want you to walk across there. I’ll give you the $1,000. Would you do it?” Of course, everybody says, “No.” He says, I’ll make it $100,000.”
Then most people still say, “No.” He said, “I’ll make it $1 million.” Then he might get 1 or 2 takers but the majority still said, “I’m not going to walk across there and take a risk of falling down.” Then he says, “Now I’ve got your first-born here. I’ve got a gun to their head. Would you walk across?” Of course, everybody would walk across. That’s that. As you say, that passion thing is there.
Rossco: It’s what you stand for or what you stand against. The clearer you are on that, the quicker you are to solutions.
Jürgen: Great. What’s the favorite tool or system that you have for doing more innovation, if indeed there is one?
Rossco: Workflowy.com really comes to mind.
Jürgen: I love that.
Rossco: Honestly I think for a lot of entrepreneurs and leaders that are in the world that are out there innovating, their heads are too full. If you want to create more, then you need to create more space firstly in your brain to be able to do that. I think Workflowy is a great place to be able to organize that, along with using any of your other note-taking tools but I think that’s just good to organize from a bullet-point, top-level perspective before you go into detail. Then you can go into great detail in there as well.
Jürgen: That is an awesome tool. I use that. I’ve been using that I think from the time they launched.
Rossco: I love it.
Jürgen: There’s the free version. The free version is essentially fully functional. I think I paid all of …
Rossco: $5 a month is the paid one.
Jürgen: Yeah, something like that for a whole lot of awesome features. It’s like Rossco says, you can bullet-point everything, keep reminders. You can tag things going through which makes it very powerful too. There’s a whole range of little things to do there.
Rossco: It’s incredible. It is incredible.
Jürgen: What’s the best way you see to keep a project or I guess a client on-track if you’re coaching a business?
Rossco: The best way I see to keep them on track? It’s such a case-by-case basis to be honest but I think the first thing with any of them is really priorities. I think the villain or the enemy of the entrepreneur is entanglement and disorder in their life. It’s our job as a coach or a mentor to create order in their priorities again. I think that’s where generally our attention goes is to creating order in their priorities.
Jürgen: That’s really good advice. We’ve talked about a few shiny objects as we’re going through this interview but we need to keep that shiny object syndrome under control and focus on our priorities.
Rossco: Totally. Once we have a grand vision, our priority lists every single day is very much focused on to creating cash flow so that we can afford a space station.
Jürgen: Yes. You’ve got to keep that in your mind. All right. What do you say is the Number 1 thing anyone can do to differentiate themselves?
Rossco: Lead with their vision. Have a unique vision. Without doubt, it’s just choose a problem that humanity needs solving. Lead with your vision around that.
Jürgen: That’s great advice. There’s a theme coming through here, isn’t there?
Rossco: Yes.
Jürgen: Having a strong vision is key to a lot of these things.
Rossco: Absolutely. It’s the old saying of when the why is strong enough, the how will show up. I had this vision of that space station 6 years ago. Now we’ve got a centre.
We’re growing out different models to make it an actual … We’ve got a business plan in place for how to roll this in because that way we’ll require the real estate as we go and grow our wealth with cash flow and with capital gains through a property strategy as well. You’ve definitely got to be clear on that why because more how’s will show up to you each and every day if you’ve got a stronger why.
Jürgen: That’s great advice. What’s the future for Heart Centred Money Makers? You talked a lot about the space station. What other things do you see there?
Rossco: The future for us, one thing we’re going through the process of right now, and we haven’t hit the nail on the head yet, one of the things we’re going to do is we’re going to implement a social business model which is essentially there’s a few different models that people can do. You’ve probably seen things like thank you orders in the stores of a supermarket where for every bottle of water you buy, that purchase is water for someone in a third-world country.
We haven’t quite figured out what our social business give-back model is but that’s definitely something that’s on the cards. Something we’re really thinking about ferociously is what we’re going to do in that contribution space and getting our head around that. We’re in a learning curve around that right now.
Jürgen: Of course, you’re looking to build those 100 spaces around the world before we get to the space station.
Rossco: Yeah, totally.
Jürgen: What do you see as the role of the internet of things in your business?
Rossco: The role of the internet? The internet’s a medium for us to get people face-to-face. We do really want to build the physical communities. I think the enemy of a lot of entrepreneurs is main-stream media, their computer and their TV. We want to get people back together physically. We’re using it really as a tool to hang out with people physically but I think the internet …
Look. I saw a study recently. We’ve got 3 1/2 billion coming online in the next 4 years from developing countries just with the work that they’re doing to put internet into those developing countries right now which is going to shift it. Are we going to see a massive shift in the cost of work force even? We’ve got great out-sourcing organizations in places like the Philippines right now but I think we’re going to see the up-rising of a few other competitive nations around that as well.
We’re seeing some already in Ukraine and stuff like that. I definitely think that it’s going to shift the relationship everyone has to work. I don’t think people will work in offices so much anymore. I think they’ll have freedom with their laptop as the internet continues to grow.
Jürgen: That’s definitely a growing trend, isn’t it? It’s a good segway into the prize actually which Rossco has very generously donated – a ticket to his Remote CEO course which concentrates very much on working life that we’ve just talked about …
Rossco: Yes.
Jürgen: … off-shore teams working from anywhere, scaling and so on but I’ll let Rossco describe that in a little bit more detail before I tell you what we want you to do to be in the prize draw.
Rossco: Essentially it is about building a laptop lifestyle. The name of the training is actually Remote CEO but the idea is to build that laptop lifestyle where we can manage business anywhere in the world and to be able to be flexible, to be able to have a lifestyle and a business you love at the same time. One of the things that we really teach inside of Remote CEO is how to grow a team.
Interestingly enough, the word company, the entomology of that word, means a large group of people. If you’re looking to grow a business or a company, then you need to become a leader, really step into that role and resource yourself with a lot of great people around you. We’ll talk about how we do that, how we manage them with different tools.
We use Slack and Trello and all sorts of different things, show you Workflowy and essentially processes to managing your team. We’re doing that in Hawaii. That will be fun. We’ll make sure we make you do the hula or something when you’re there.
Jürgen: That’s, of course, the 4th, 5th and 6th of December this year.
Rossco: Yeah.
Jürgen: Now remember, you have to get your own flights and accommodation. The value of the prize, the ticket for the workshop, is $2,999. To be in the prize draw for that awesome prize, we want to find out from you if you can be working from anywhere in the world, where would that be? Secondly, what’s stopping you from doing that? Leave your comments underneath, the blog post and tell us, if you could be working from anywhere in the world, where would that be? Why aren’t you doing that now, unless of course you are doing it. If you are doing it, then just tell us that you are. I’ll get Rossco to swing by in a few weeks’ time and pick a prize winner. How is that?
Rossco: That would be awesome.
Jürgen: That’s great. Actually, 2 more questions. First of all, what’s the Number 1 piece of advice you’d give any business owner who wants to be a leader in innovation, productivity and running a really good company?
Rossco: I think the 1 piece of advice would be, again, slow down. Just do what you actually need to do. The quickest way to accelerate your results is to stop being so busy.
Jürgen: That’s great advice, isn’t it? People find that counter-intuitive but it definitely works.
Rossco: You look at the way a lot of people fluff around in their working stuff. They spend 38 hours a week doing 2 hours of actual work. If you really want to accelerate your results, if you just slow down and did the 4-hour work week essentially … If you only had 4 hours a week you could work and you had to fit 38 hours into it, how would you work in those 4 hours? You’d slow down. You’d do 1 thing at a time, obviously in small chunks of time but you’d be very focused.
Jürgen: That’s right. You’d certainly pick the really important things that make a difference. All right. Finally then, who would you like to see me interview on the podcast in future and why?
Rossco: I’m not sure if you’ve interviewed him but I think he’s an exceptional gentleman, Mr. Chris Duncan. Have you spoken to him before?
Jürgen: No, I haven’t.
Rossco: Cool. He’s just finished writing a book called “The Total Freedom Blueprint.” He’s just got a great location independent business. He’s quite an inspiring gentleman. I think your listeners would find it quite interesting to hear what he has to say around freedom and that thing, I guess a pathway to becoming more innovative too because the more free you are, essentially the more time you’ve got to spend thinking about those innovations.
Jürgen: That’s right. Chris Duncan, I’m coming to get you for the Innovabuzz podcast, courtesy of Rossco Paddison. Rossco, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for your time here. Where can people reach out to you and say, “Thank you?”
Rossco: HeartCentredMoneyMakers.com is our website. You can connect with us on there, both mine and John’s website. Also, essentially if you’re on the Gold Coast, come along to 1 of the meet-up groups. You can find all of them at www.HCMM.com/meetup. That would be cool – physically meet you as well.
Jürgen: That’s great. We’ll post those links underneath the show notes as well. I did neglect to mention I think at the start of the interview that you work from the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. If somebody’s visiting there, go and check out the Heart Centred Money Makers face to face.
Rossco: Come talk to me face to face.
Jürgen: That’s right.
Rossco: The human version.
Jürgen: Exactly.
Rossco: That’s good.
Jürgen: All right. Rossco, it’s been a pleasure to have you on the podcast. I’ve learned an awful lot. I hope our audience does as well. I really appreciate the time you spent with us today. I’m going to watch out and see who gets to go to Hawaii for the Laptop Lifestyle thing. I might even put in an entry myself.
Rossco: Yes book it.
Jürgen: We’ll keep in touch.
Rossco: Awesome. Thank you. Again, it’s been great spending time with your audience.
Jürgen: Thanks, Rossco.
Wrap Up:
I hope you enjoyed meeting Rossco as much as I enjoyed interviewing him, I certainly took away a lot of lessons from the discussion, I hope you did too!
All the show notes for this episode will be at innovabiz.com.au/rosscopaddison, that is R-O-S-S-C-O-P-A-D-D-I-S-O-N, all lowercase, all one word, innovabiz.com.au/rosscopaddison, for all of the links and everything we spoke about in this episode . Remember, leave your comments underneath the video for your chance to win a ticket to the 3 day Remote CEO workshop in December.
In your comment tell us where in the world would you work from, if you could work from anywhere? And if you are not yet working from there, what is stopping you? I’ll get Rossco to swing by in a few weeks’ time and award those prizes.
Rossco suggested I interview Chris Duncan, the author of the Total Freedom Blueprint and co-founder of PointB Education on a future podcast. So, Chris, keep an eye on your Inbox for an invitation from me, for the Innovabuzz Podcast, courtesy of Rossco Paddison!
Thank you for listening or viewing the InnovaBuzz podcast. We’d love you to review this podcast, because reviews help us get found and your feedback helps us improve. You can review us at iTunes or Stitcher and while you’re there, please subscribe so you’ll never miss a future episode.
Until next time, I’m Jürgen Strauss from Innovabiz.
Remember, if you don’t innovate, you stagnate, so think big, be adventurous and keep innovating!