The Interview That Will Change Your Life (Seriously) with Shannon Graham

Transcription

No offense to the other interviews that we’ve had on the show, but today might be the most impactful one. I’m serious.

My good buddy Shannon Graham is going to be one of our speakers at Healthpreneur Live this year in Scottsdale on September 20-23rd. If you want to join us, it’s by application/invitation only. I don’t know if we’ll have spots left by the time you’re listening to this. If you want to join us, head on over to Healthpreneurgroup.com/live to learn more about the event.

If you want to connect with 150 amazing coaches, practitioners, and influencers in the health and fitness space, this is the event to attend. It’s not about being massive in scale; we scale by going deeper, not wider. We help you connect to those people that matter most to you and your business.

Anyways, this interview is a game changer. Listen to it. Listen to it again. Listen to it and rewind.

This one interview could potentially change the trajectory of your business. It may very well change the way you look at how you lead moving forward. I love speaking to Shannon. We’re very much on the same page. He’s a big thinker, very articulate, and he has a great way of framing things. He is the founder of the Legacy Program.

He’ll talk a little bit about what that is. But essentially, he works with very visionary, high-achieving entrepreneurs and helps them lead and create a legacy in their life. He’s helped multiple clients achieve seven figure earnings with extremely simple boutique high impact coaching. If you’re ever worried about how to price your coaching, listen to what Shannon has done for his business. You’ll fall off your chair when you hear how much he charges for coaching with him for one year.

But it’s all good because he brings the goods and creates the change for his clients. And that’s what matters most. I’m not going to spoil the surprise. You’ll hear exactly how much he charges for a year of coaching with him and it might open your horizons to what’s possible.

So, sit tight and bookmark this interview. This conversation is a big deal. It’s probably my favorite conversation I’ve had in this entire podcast to date. And you’ll see why in just a few moments.

Without any further ado, let’s welcome Shannon Graham to the show. Shannon, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast. How’s it going, brother?

 Shannon:                             Oh man, it’s going great. Thanks, man.

Yuri:                      Awesome. We were just in a ten-minute discussion about what we’re about to talk about, then I decided to stop and hit record. Now we’ll continue because I think you guys will get some value out of this.

Shannon and I are talking about this great book he has and how it’s flying in the face of convention in a world where we see a lot of grind and hustle, working 20 hours a day, and working yourself into the ground to get ahead. You basically present an alternative to that, which I’ll let you talk about and we can just go off that.

So, go ahead! Talk about this new form of leadership, what it entails, and why it can serve people.

 

The new era of leadership and the definition of an expanded leader

Shannon:                             Sure. What I call “The new era of leadership,” has two major pillars. The first is leadership in a way that I would call a total or expanded leader. That means a leader that does not sacrifice their health, happiness, or family to create some level of commercial success. That’s a slap in the face of how it’s done currently. Even the most notable leaders right now still don’t even fall into that category.

Yuri:                      Well, let’s name a few of those. I can’t even think of one or two leaders who have the whole thing figured out, in terms of health, relationships, and all that stuff.

Who are a couple people that may not be the best idols to worship?

Shannon:                             Elon is a great example. I love Elon. I love his passion. I love his drive. And he is notorious for not being great to his employees. He admittedly is on his cell phone most of the time that he’s with his kids.

Steve Jobs is very similar. He was admittedly not great to his employees. In his last days, he regretted not spending more time with his children. His health was a challenge near the end; which maybe was avoidable, maybe not. But you can only imagine this very detrimental kind of model. So, Elon and Steve Jobs are great examples of victims to this model of people who say, “To dent the universe, this vision is so important that I’m going to sacrifice basically everything to achieve it.”

This perpetuates the toxic idea that it’s good to sacrifice some of the things that are the most important to the human experience. And, you and I can go an entire episode on this topic alone, but it pre-supposes that the only way to achieve massive commercial and universal denting success is by sacrificing all those things.

That’s funny to me because Elon is not a stupid guy. And Steve Jobs is not a stupid guy. It’s almost baffling that people who are so smart and so innovative can’t see the big picture and can’t think to themselves, “Wouldn’t the universal impact that I’m creating be better if I was really happy, fulfilled, nurtured, and with amazing relationships and health? Wouldn’t it be better? There must be a way to do it. It can’t be impossible.”

These guys are known for doing the impossible, so it’s silly if you ask me. That’s the first pillar. It’s a slap in the face to human potential to think that the only way to dent the universe is by sacrificing all these things that are important to the human experience.

Part two is that the grind and hustle focuses on a person’s ability to be a mule, a work horse. That’s great, but we’ve moved into an era where it’s our magic that is most important.

And we’re starting to see that.

Some of the biggest companies in the world grew to heightened status in a very short amount of time. Of course, there was some grind and hustle involved, but if you pay attention and look closely under the microscope, there is magic. More than anything, what I want for this new era of leadership is for people to embrace their magic, which is essentially by asking, “How do I create the most value with the least effort?”

For example, a mule gets paid for its time, but a magician gets paid for their magic. They don’t get paid for their time. If you could turn lead into gold, and you come over to my house, bring lead, and I say abracadabra and I turn it into gold, it didn’t take much time, but it’s worth a lot of money. That’s valuable.

 

The magic, the gift, and the biggest impact from the least effort

Yuri:                      A discussion a lot of people have that fits here is that the idea is more valuable than the execution.

I think what you’re talking about is the magic, the idea, and execution has become commoditized. We can get almost anything done by anyone else, but the only thing we can’t delegate is the magic, the idea, that we come up with.

Shannon:                             Right. I fundamentally believe that you can either have a gift or you are a gift. And if you are a gift, that means the absolute value that you bring to the world is you, your gift. It’s not your time. If you’re someone who is a gift, your time is practically irrelevant.

There is a woman, a guru, from India. Her name is Amman. She’s known as the hugging guru. She is so saturated into the essence of love that she will have people line up for longer than a mile just to hug her. That’s all she does.

Yuri:                      That’s awesome.

Shannon:                             She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t give lectures. She doesn’t do seminars or trainings or teachings. Maybe she does do those things, I’m not sure, but what she’s known for at the highest level is purely hugging people. She’s so saturated into her magic that when she hugs people, their shame, unworthiness, and sadness literally melts away.

Yuri:                      That’s radical.

Shannon:                             It’s amazing. I believe that people who are leaders are also a gift. Regardless of their ideas, that’s what makes them a gift. Their idea creating power.

The challenge is that they get fooled into thinking they have a gift. They think their idea is the gift rather than them, so that becomes the fundamental disconnect.

Yuri:                      So they’re the golden goose. What’s magical isn’t just the eggs they’re laying.

Shannon:                             That’s right. They laid a golden egg, and now all the praise, attention, and focus is on the egg rather than themselves.

Yuri:                      I want to give a great example of this. It’s something I see over and over again, especially because we help so many entrepreneurs in the health space specifically. But, this can translate into any industry.

So, why do webinars work for some people and not others? Why does the product launch formula work for some people more than others? Why do Facebook ads work for some people more than others?

What I’ve recognized is that the magic is in the magic. It’s in the little nuances, right?

You could do PLF; one video, two videos, three videos, a sales video, but why isn’t it working for you? Well, there are the things that people don’t see. It’s everything beneath the surface, the little nuances, the magic of what you’re talking about. It’s the thinking. It’s the idea that gives birth to something unique that people haven’t seen before or disrupts something they’re aware of.

That’s where the big breakthroughs happen.

I can’t remember who said this or if I heard it somewhere else. He said, “You cannot innovate and hustle at the same time.”

That’s such a great statement because if you’re hustling, then you don’t have time to disconnect and create space, think, and give genesis to that type of idea.

Shannon:                             That’s right. I’m so glad you brought that up. Ultimately, what I am ushering in is an era of peak potential human beings. And again, it connects to the same idea. I believe it’s silly that we think the greatest asset we must create in our lives is hustle. We’ve been doing that forever.

Yuri:                      It’s archaic.

Shannon:                             It’s archaic. And let me ask you this: What is the peak of human potential?

Yuri:                      I don’t even know if I can answer that, honestly.

Shannon:                             No one can answer that. That’s the point. That’s why I love that question. But let’s go a little deeper. Can we pre-suppose that the peak of human potential is far beyond how we show up and exist today?

Yuri:                      Yeah, for sure.

Shannon:                             Absolutely. Then let’s chase it. Let’s find out how far we can go. That’s what I want. That’s what I’m after. I want to push the limits of everything. We’ve done hustle to death. We know we can hustle. We’ve proven it. Okay, case closed. Let’s move on.

Let’s see how far we can go with our magic now. Let’s see how far we can go with the biggest impact coming from the least effort. Right?

Let’s do that. That is my current fascination. That is the focus of my twilight mania at this point.

Yuri:                      That’s awesome. That’s good. Everyone listening is in the health and wellness industry, you know, entrepreneurs building practices or online businesses who’ve come from a health background. From a point of integrity, you can’t operate a business in any way other than what you’re describing.

If we’re telling our clients and patients who have burned themselves out to slow down, take some time for themselves, schedule workouts, and take care of their body, yet we’re not doing that ourselves, we’re operating without integrity.

This is such an important message, especially for this audience.

Shannon:                             100 percent. Think about it. If you’re a leader, what do most leaders want to do? They want to help the world in some way with a product or a service, bottom line. Well, that’s great, and if the person that’s at the fundamental core of that, which is the leader, isn’t having that experience themselves, then what they can bring to the world, at best, is a shadow.

Even if on the outside it seems like they’re denting the universe in a beautiful way, if they are leaving themselves out, then they don’t know what they’re talking about. They have no idea.

Maybe they are bringing something amazing to the universe. If so, then it’s still just a shadow of what it could be had they been a steward of this new model where they were truly complete, truly overflowing in these areas of health, relationships, and fulfillment.

Just imagine what the impact would look like when that’s the case.

Yuri:                      Yeah. I’ll give you a personal example from the past year or more.

I don’t know if you knew this, but our health and fitness business was built with the old model, which was a lot of platform building, content, and just stuff. That was initially how we got success, and then I started teaching that to other entrepreneurs in our space. One of the things I recognized very quickly was that it was taking a very long time for people to see results from that method.

I asked myself, “Am I being of service to these individuals by showing them this model?” The reality was no. It’s actually a disservice to give someone a model that is not going to help them achieve the result that they want anytime soon. I looked at myself wondered what it was that we’re doing with Healthpreneur to build the business.

It was a very different model. It wasn’t based on building a huge content platform. It was very direct. It was working closely with people at premium prices, cutting to the chase, and getting the results for us as well as our clients in a much faster way.

Now, that’s the model we teach because number one, there’s less grind and hustle. It’s a faster path to the desired outcome. And everyone wins. The client wins. The entrepreneur wins. But it all started with the question: “Am I, first and foremost, being a dutiful servant to those I want to serve in a way that’s valuable for them?”

Shannon:                             That’s right. It’s amazing that you say that. I feel like you and I are cut from the same cloth.

I have a formula for exactly what you’re talking about and it’s called, “The Highest Probability of the Deepest Impact.”

You can wake up in the morning and if you have product or a service, there’s a million ways that you can bring it to the world these days. But, there are probably very few ways you can bring it to the world with the highest probability of the deepest impact.

Maybe I’m a dreamer and maybe I’m naïve, I don’t care, but imagine if most people that had products and services led from a place of, “I care so much about the end user that I’m only going to bring this to the marketplace in a way that the end user has the highest probability of the deepest impact.

Yuri:                      Exactly.

Shannon:                             Holy shit.

Yuri:                      This is the biggest epiphany. This is what my past year and a half has been all about. I spoke about this at our big event, Healthpreneur Live. I said, “A lot of people are confusing impact for importance.”

They’re chasing influence instead of doing what matters which is, from a business perspective, building income. And to build income, you must impact people; not at a superficial level, but at a deep level.

I believe that the future resides, from a business perspective, in what we’re doing by working with people in a way that deeply impacts their business and lives. It impacts much more so than putting out free contents on the internet, which is fine, but if that’s the primary focus of what you do, you’re not going to have the impact or fulfillment that you want. I believe that.

Shannon:                             100 percent. Now, I agree with everything you just said, and I would take it even a step further.

Yuri:                      Bring it.

 

The legacy you leave behind, your lasting impact, and subtraction

Shannon:                             Legacy.

You and I both know the backend data on pretty much all this stuff. We both know that of people who consume any type of online product, program, or anything like that, over 90 percent do not get any long term, deep results.

So, you must ask yourself: At the end of your life, on your death bed, do you want your legacy to be that 90 percent of the people during the lifetime of your business did not get the result that they entrusted you so desperately to help them create? Is that a beautiful legacy? Absolutely not.

That’s repulsive, in my opinion.

That’s not something that I would desire to be anywhere near. So, highest probability of deep impact keeps my blinders on and keeps me on the straight and narrow path of being an excellent guardian and steward to the people that I want to serve the most. If that means I serve “less” people at the end of the day, good.

I’d rather go a million inches deep with a few people than an inch deep with a million people.

Yuri:                      Totally. Our whole brand is built on skill by going deeper not wider.

I think we’re seeing the impact of this in the marketplace. People selling digital products, even courses, are having a much tougher time than they were two or three years ago, and definitely compared to ten years ago when I first started.

I think there’s a reason for that. Getting the impact out of a $47.00 e-book is just not going to happen. Plus, most of that information is free online. That means there’s a huge opportunity to take all that overwhelming information that’s out there for free and help someone implement it in their life and create change.

I tell people all the time that if you have expertise, if you have a way to serve people, there has never been a better time to do what you do best and create that legacy for yourself, the people you serve, and build a great income in the process.

Shannon:                             Totally. Let me go on a little rant here for a second.

For those of you listening, this will be absolute gold. We live in the information age. We have more information at our disposal than ever before and it’s so easy to access any level of information that you want, practically for free. Your information is not valuable. Period.

The most valuable asset in this day and age, mark my words, is subtraction.

Subtraction.

Remove all the things that are in the way of their health, their success, of their “blank”. That is the key. We all have access to tons of information. I think we’re so overwhelmed that we can’t be successful. It’s not the fact that we don’t have the information. The information’s there.

You can find on YouTube videos on, literally, just about anything these days that are high quality and content rich. We’re talking about Facebook ads and webinars, but you can learn anything these days.

There’s a kid in Africa who lost his arm to a land mine, and just by using electronic parts from the village, he used YouTube videos to build a robotic arm for himself.

Yuri:                      That’s awesome. Wow.

Shannon:                             Fully functional. Fully functional robotic arm for himself. Like, what? Right?

Yuri:                      That’s impressive.

Shannon:                             Subtraction. Remove all the overwhelm. Remove all the things that are in the way. That’s what people need the most. Transformation, in my world, is a subtractive process, not an additive one.

Yuri:                      Totally. Couldn’t agree more. Let’s talk about how we can do that. I’ll share what I’ve done, personally. I’ve removed all social apps off my phone. I have no Instagram, no Facebook, no Twitter. And the reason for that is because I was sitting on the toilet with my phone just wasting time and I asked myself, “Am I consuming or creating right now?”

I made the decision that if I’m not actively creating something, there’s no point in me actively or passively going through my news feed. It’s not adding value to my life. I’m not adding value to anyone else’s life. If anything, I feel worse about myself.

I said, you know what? I’m going to get rid of this. It’s not moving the needle for my business anyways. I don’t enjoy it. So, that’s one of the things that I’ve done.

What about for you? What’s subtraction look like for you?

 

Creating magic, innovating magic, and the pricing that aligns with it

Shannon:                             Well, here’s where addition matters for me. I’ll say it like that.

In my world, there are only two things that matter. Creating magic and innovating magic.

Yuri:                      What’s the difference for you between those two?

Shannon:                             Well, let’s say that you hire me to turn your lead into silver.

Even still, if I had the ability to turn lead into silver, that’s a valuable service, I don’t care who you are. If you could come to my house and bring a truckload of lead and I could wave my hand over it and say abracadabra and it turned into silver, that would be valuable.

But if I took the time and had space, if I wasn’t hustling and grinding, if I had the time and space to innovate my own alchemy so that I could take my ability to turn lead into silver and upgrade it to my ability to turn lead into gold, gold is worth significantly more than silver at this point. Do you see?

Yuri:                      Yes.

Shannon:                             Now I’ve upgraded myself. I’ve upgraded my value, my magic. Now, instead of saying to the world, “Hey bring me your lead and I’ll give you some silver”, I can say, “Hey world, bring me your lead and I’ll give you some gold.”

Same service. Takes me the same amount of time. It’s my own personal alchemy that has improved. Right? So, it’s not about adding more stuff. It’s not bring your lead to me and I’ll turn it into silver and I’ll also show you how to make a webinar. I’m not adding things. I’m keeping the number of things the same, but I am creating addition in the richness of the magic, aka my ability to produce deep and rich results.

This is where the blinders come on. It forces me to metaphorically tie my hands behind my back and not go into a state of inadequacy by thinking that if I’m going to charge more, than I need to add more stuff. No. Let’s stay focused and take my ability to create magic to the next level. That’s what’s most valuable.

Yuri:                      That’s awesome. It’s going deeper with what you’re already doing. You just created more awesomeness, so just keep digging that well. Awesome.

Shannon:                             I see that as the fundamental challenge with most people who want to scale. They think that since they can turn lead into silver, they should perpetuate that to as many people as possible. The challenge is they never stop to give themselves time and space to iterate and innovate that ability so that they can bring even more value to the market place.

They just continue to add that same service repeatedly when they have the potential to bring an even more valuable service to the world, had they given themselves the time and space to create it.

Yuri:                      That’s awesome.

This has been an amazing conversation. I know a lot of our listeners are coaches and they’re doing one on one or group coaching. One of the things that I preach is the importance of premium pricing, because, number one, you show up in a much bigger way for your clients. Your clients show up in a big way for themselves. Everyone wins.

How do you approach pricing when it comes to this?

If you want to create that kind of magic upon magic to the point where you can command and feel confident about the pricing for your program or result, how do you get someone to learn the importance of charging more for their product?

Shannon:                             First, I sell them on the idea that their time is not valuable at all. I sell them on the idea that they are a gift and their magic is what’s most valuable. And if they were given the opportunity to work with someone who wanted and expected them to play and bring their magic at the highest level, what would that look like? Would it make sense to charge a lot of money for that?

Of course, because in the coaching world, your value is directly tied to how much value you can create.

So, if you can create a lot of value, then you can command a lot of money. I always push people to dig deep in themselves to discover their magic, not their hustle. Not their time.

But rather, “What’s your magic and how do we extract and innovate it? How do we discover that you can turn lead into silver, then innovate it and make it even more rich so that you can charge even more for it?

I’ll just use myself in full transparency. I used to charge for my knowledge and experience because I realized that those were valuable to people. They would come to me and they would work with me because I had valuable knowledge and experience. It helped them cut their learning curve at least in half, and help them be profitable, simplify everything, and it was great.

But I was unfulfilled. And the simple reason was because my gift, my genius, had a lot to do with my creativity and my imagination.

So, when clients were coming to me and asking questions that I knew the answers to, it didn’t require me to be that magician. So, I made a deal with myself a couple years ago that, from then on, I would only work with clients who asked questions I didn’t know the answers to.

In fact, I only work with clients where the answers don’t yet exist, so we must create the answers. I’ll give you an example. In full transparency, I currently charge $150,000 per year per client for 12 months.

Yuri:                      Love it.

 

Giving more when you are in financial overflow and serving “IRL”

Shannon:                             And the reason is exactly what we’re talking about.

That price point requires me to show up in my fullness, in the highest level of my gift and my magic. And it attracts to me the clients who want to play at that level. That expect me to play that way. It’s beautiful synergy.

They come to me with questions that are literally impossible. By our magic combined, we create solutions. For example, a guy from New Zealand came to me and said, “I want to raise the GDP of New Zealand by raising the GDC,” which is the gross domestic confidence. How do we raise the confidence of the people of this nation, so much so that it impacts the GDP? In New Zealand, they have this tall poppy thing around self-confidence, like, “Who am I to have a big idea? Who am I to want to change the world?” That mindset is a total plague in that country.

We came up with this idea to show the people of New Zealand that the impossible is possible. And we found an inventor who had invented a rapid public transportation system. Because he had this self-limiting belief, his invention wasn’t going anywhere. So, this guy from New Zealand worked with him on his mindset, confidence, and ability to communicate value, and he got invited to India to pitch this idea to the Prime Minister of Transportation.

And they said yes. They rewrote the entire transportation policy to include that technology.

Yuri:                      Wow.

Shannon:                             Zero emission and carbon neutral, it’s amazing technology. And now they are green lighting that technology in India. That one deal was worth 20 percent of the bilateral trade between New Zealand and India.

I tell that story because it’s inspiring, but also because that story couldn’t have come any other way than charging at that level and playing at that level.

Yuri:                      I agree. Absolutely. What do you tell coaches who are comparing themselves to the industry norm? The ones who think, “Everyone else is charging $100 an hour, these people would never pay me for that.”

Shannon:                             I would say you’re right. Simple as that. You’re right.

If you are paying attention to what everyone else is doing, then of course. If most coaches are getting paid, let’s say, $100.00 an hour, the people who are paying them that are obviously not going to pay you $3000.00 an hour. It’s like thinking, “Everyone’s selling Hondas, so I want to sell Ferraris. No one who’s buying a Honda is going to buy a Ferrari.”

You’re right, of course.

It means that you get to play a different game. Tesla entered the market with a little, over-glamorized go cart that they charged $100,000 for right out of the gates. That’s amazing. But it’s because they knew their value and they knew how they wanted to show up.

Bugatti’s the same way. They charge over $1,000,000 for their cars. They didn’t compare. They didn’t say, “What is everyone else doing?” They said, “What do we want to do?” We know that there’s a pocket of people, less than one percent, but they exist. So, let’s create something for them.

Yuri:                      I’ve never been on an airplane where business or first class was empty.

Shannon:                             Nope. Never.

Yuri:                      For the Brotherhood trip, we were in Puerto Mita, Mexico’s Four Seasons Hotel. There are villas there. There’s three classes; rooms that go for $1500 a night, thankfully we had a group rate which wasn’t that much, residences that start at $15,000 a night, and residences that people live in all year long that start at $6,000,000 a year.

Now, the Four Seasons isn’t hurting for business.

And just as there are people who will stay at the Four Seasons, there will be many more who stay at Motel 8.

My thinking is, well, it’s your choice. Who do you want to serve? What game do you want to play?

I think it comes down to just deciding and backing it up with being the best version of yourself to deliver.

Shannon:                             Yes. And there’s two parts to this. I would go so far as to say that if you showed up as the best version of yourself, then the value that you would be able to create in the marketplace would truly be suitable for people who would pay premium prices.

Yuri:                      Absolutely.

Shannon:                             Period. The second side of the coin is, that sounds all well and good but what if we all decided to just serve the one percent? What about the people who can’t afford us, how do we help them? What do we do about that? Do we just leave them by the wayside?

The answer is no. I have created a life and business that revolves around helping the people that can afford me at a high level, so financially I’m put in a state of overflow so I don’t have to figure out how to monetize helping the people that can’t afford me.

Yuri:                      Totally.

Shannon:                             I was asked several times last year to speak at events. I’ve done free 90-day challenges that were hugely impactful and valuable for people. I’m able to show up in a way where I can just give because I’m in overflow. People try to figure out how to serve the rest of the market when they have not gotten themselves into financial overflow yet, and it becomes a challenge because they’re trying to get blood out of a stone and it totally throws off the vibration and dynamic of the exchange.

Yuri:                      Absolutely. I agree with that 100 percent. One of the things I’ve recognized, especially in the health space, is that we want to help people who don’t want what we have. They don’t want our help.

For instance, if someone’s 300 pounds, we know they need to lose weight, but we all know they’re not likely going to do the stuff they need to do to lose the weight. You know that if they’re not going to the gym and not eating well, it’s like trying to move a boulder uphill. Instead of playing in the world of wants, serve people who get what it is you’re offering in the first place. It just becomes so much more enjoyable and a lot easier to work with those people at a higher level.

But as you said, there’s no nobility in being poor. You can’t serve yourself. You can’t serve anyone else. And again, it comes down to a decision. It’s about serving these people at a high level and being the best self. Then, as you just mentioned, you can give back in other ways to those who can’t play with you at the highest level yet.

Shannon:                             Totally.

And then you don’t have to figure out how to make money from it. That’s the beautiful part. You can just show up and serve and you can be in total overflow. If you want to monetize it and figure that out, that’s great, but you don’t have to.

It’s beautiful because you don’t pigeonhole yourself into working only with elite people. No. I work with elite people and then serve everyone.

It doesn’t have to be one dimensional. It doesn’t have to be either/or.

Yuri:                      It’s a lot tougher to climb the mountain helping a lot of people for $10 or $50 a piece and having to deal with scale and volume, which becomes a nightmare. So, it’s either you’re doing that, or you just work with a much smaller number of people who are paying you a premium price to transform your life.

Shannon:                             Well, again, let’s put that under the microscope. Scale and volume require a lot of time. If you’re putting so much time into scale and volume, then what you’re not putting so much time into is highest probability of deep impact, by default.

It becomes a challenging game purely because you’ve gotten away from the magic. The game becomes easy when the magic is embraced and you can just show up powerfully and create magic –  and get paid wildly well to do it.

Yuri:                      I couldn’t agree more.

A couple years ago I recognized our health and fitness business was largely built on scale and volume. It was low impact, high volume. It got to the point where I didn’t know what I was doing. I felt very unfulfilled. Sure, I was “helping” people, but were they transforming their lives? I don’t think so.

There’s this thing that happens to you that has happened to a lot of people in the health and fitness space, and probably other industries too, as they’ve come online. They’ve had to learn how to become an internet marketer.

Initially, they’re an amazing technician. They have a magical power to do nutrition work, healing, or whatever it is and, suddenly, they must learn how to write sales copy. And funnels. And creating products, and a couple years later they’re looking back, thinking, “What the hell am I doing? I’m spending most of my time split/testing funnels and all I want to do is teach, coach, and serve people.”

Shannon:                             And help people. That’s right. It’s amazing. You know, I think of it like this: Some people who change the world the most interacted with very few people in their lifetime.

Mother Teresa, for example. She showed up in person to hospitals and places where people were sick and dying. She hugged them, fed them, and showed them compassion. In her lifetime, do you think she did that with millions of people? Of course not. It’s just not possible.

But she did it with a small handful of people and she goes down in history as someone who changed the world the most.

Again, that’s about death. She didn’t write an e-book about how to be compassionate, get it out to 4,000,000 people, and 90 percent didn’t open the damn thing.

She showed up in person and she brought that magic at the highest level.

She doesn’t go down in history as someone who did that with a lot of people but it’s how powerfully she did it, which makes her legendary. I think we forget that. I think we get so attached to the idea of helping people where scale means quantity. Really, scale means debt.

Yuri:                      Absolutely. Guys, this is such an important discussion we’re having here. This is the type of conversation that completely transforms the trajectory of your business. These are the types of questions and insights that come from brilliant minds like Shannon’s, especially having gone through the ups and downs of life and business.

Hopefully we’re imparting some wisdom about the big opportunity. I believe, Shannon, that the opportunity moving forward is in H to H, human to human. The more high-tech we get, the more high touch people are going to want at a deep craving level.

We’re already seeing that 14 year olds. I think 14-16-year-old girls in the states had the highest rated suicide in North America. I wonder why. Maybe it’s because they’re on their phone all the time, even when they’re together.

Shannon:                             100 percent.

Yuri:                      Let’s create an experience for people where we truly connect with them and impact their lives at a level of magnitude that can never be commoditized or compared to anything else.

That, especially if you enjoy interacting and serving people, will feel so much more fulfilling – even if you don’t have the 100,000 followers on Instagram. Who cares about that.

Shannon:                             You bring up a great point that I want to drive home with these guys that are listening. If you have a business of helping people, find a way to include, what I call, “I R L”. Those are going to be the three most important letters moving forward into the future. “In Real Life”.

I don’t care if you do one on one coaching or group coaching, it doesn’t matter. Figure out a way to include “In Real Life” into what you offer and you will be a god. Everyone’s trying to figure out how to do the opposite. But the interesting thing is that what everybody wants IS the In Real Life. Right?

If you had asked our grandparents back in the day, “Hey, let’s go to the desert where there’s no food, there’s no water, there are dust storms, and you’ll be coughing’ up sand for a week. Let’s go for about five to seven days, hang out, be naked, and dance around. Does that sound like a good idea?”

They’d say, “Heck no! Why would I do that?”

Yuri:                      Yeah.

Shannon:                             And now, Burning Man attracts 70,000 people that come from all over the world to have that experience. Why? The average Burning Man experience costs, I think, somewhere between three to five thousand dollars at the low end.

Why? Why would you subject yourself to that? There’s one simple reason: In Real Life. Human connection is an absolute necessity and people will travel far and wide and cough up dust for a week just to have it.

Yuri:                      I couldn’t agree more.

Shannon:                             So figure out how to put that into your business and you will thrive.

Yuri:                      Absolutely. Great advice. Guys, like I’ve said, the best way to build your online business is to spend more time offline.

Shannon, dude, this has been awesome. We could probably do this all day long and I’m sure our listeners would love it. But I think for the sake of both of our times, let’s bring it to a close. Before we do, I’ve got five rapid fire questions for you. You game for those?

Shannon:                             Get it.

 

The Rapid Five

Yuri:                      Alright buddy. So, what is your biggest weakness?

Shannon:                             Probably my own self-doubt.

Yuri:                      Just that alone is a very valuable insight. Here you are charging $150,000.00 a year, yet your biggest weakness is self-doubt. Just let that sink in for a second. Number two, your biggest strength?

Shannon:                             My unrelenting belief in what’s possible.

Yuri:                      Awesome. Good. Number three, what’s one skill you’ve become dangerously good at to grow your business?

Shannon:                             Communicating value.

Yuri:                      Nice. Number four, what do you do first thing in the morning?

Shannon:                             I go for a walk.

Yuri:                      And finally, complete this sentence: I know I’m being successful when…

Shannon:                             The people that I work with are being successful.

Yuri:                      Excellent. Well there we have it guys. Mr. Shannon Graham. Buddy, thank you so much for being with us. This has been an amazing conversation. I have no doubts you guys will be downloading this and rewinding it and re listening to it. It’s the type of conversation that I hope you turn back to time and time again because there’s been so many golden nuggets in this conversation.

Shannon, thank you so much for showing up, for being you, for bringing the magic, and obviously for everything you do in the world for the select few people who get to work with you so you can impact their lives. It’s just amazing to see you in action, so thank you so much for being here and being with us.

Shannon:                             Yeah. Thank you, Yuri. It’s been my honor to be here today.

Yuri:                      Awesome. Thanks so much, buddy. Where’s the best place for everyone to follow you online and check out your recent book?

Shannon:                             Shannongraham.com.

Yuri:                      Very simple. There we go. We’ll make it easy for you. The book is called “Expand” and it’s awesome. If you enjoyed what Shannon’s all about, you’ll love the book as well. Thank you so much guys for tuning in. Shannon, thank you and we’ll talk to you soon.

Shannon:                             Awesome. Thanks.

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Yuri’s Take

The real deal, right? It’s so good to speak with someone who gets it and hopefully this has resonated with you at a deep level. This is the future of business, guys. This is the way forward. Everything that’s been done, up until now is great, but if you want to move forward with impact and create the life and business you want, this is the way to do it.

So please listen to this episode again. Ten times if you must, to let this sink in. What Shannon’s talking about is what I live with Healthpreneur and what we do, day in and day out. It’s the whole philosophy of our entire business. If you would like to go deep down this rabbit hole and build your business around a similar philosophy, then let’s start off by giving you some great training: The 7-Figure Health Business Blueprint.

I’m going to walk you through exactly how to do it. Grab that training for free over at healthpreneurgroup.com/training. Not only will that training be immensely beneficial to you, but I’m also going to give you a roadmap to help you track the best clients and convert them without feeling salesy, and how to deliver an amazing result for them.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this interview. I know it’s been one of my favorites to date. As I said before, Shannon Graham will be speaking at Healthpreneur Live this September 20 – 23 in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona. If you want to join us, head on over to healthpreneurgroup.com/live.  Submit your application because this is an invitation by application only event. If we’ve got spots left, we would love to have you join us.

That’s all for today, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. Remember to continue to go out there, be great, do great, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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Follow Shannon Graham at:

http://www.shannongraham.com/

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