Bryan Harris | Blueprints for Business: Crafting Success through Growth Tools
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Are you ready to change your habits, sculpt your destiny, and light up your path to greatness? Welcome to the epicenter of transformation. This is Mic Unplugged. We'll help you identify your because so you can create a routine that's not just productive, but powerful.

you'll embrace the art of evolution, adapt strategies to stay ahead of the game, and take a step toward the extraordinary. So let's unleash your potential. Now, here's Mick. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged, where we dive deep into the stories and strategies behind today's most successful individuals. Speaking of success, today I have a special guest who is dedicated to helping business leaders grow their businesses and brands. His journey is a testament to

To perseverance, innovation, and passion. Get ready to be inspired and enlightened as we explore the because behind one of the greatest leaders and founders that I know. Please join me in welcoming the incomparable, the amazing, the founder of Growth Tools, Mr. Brian Harris. Brian, how are you doing, brother? That's an extremely uncomfortable intro. I'm fine.

I'm doing good. I'm looking forward to chatting today and sharing the very comparable lessons I've learned over a couple of decades or so of doing this. So looking forward to jumping in and helping your audience in any way I can. I appreciate it, man. And that intro is totally you. So don't be uncomfortable, although it's great to be uncomfortable. That's where growth happens. And speaking of growth, let's talk about growth tools, man. Like what was the pivotal moment that sparked your passion for creating growth tools?

My first coach ever hired in business, his name was Stu McLaren. A lot of people know that name and a really good dude. And before I hired him as a coach, this has been a decade ago. I remember watching a launch, like a Jeff Walker, PLF style launch video series he created. I think he was working at Michael Hyatt at the time.

I don't remember what the product was. I don't remember when it was. I just remember distinctly where I was and how I internally reacted to what it was. And he said, you know, we all are getting into this entrepreneur thing so we can work less and make more and spend time with our family. I remember thinking that that's actually not the reason I got into this at all. Like those things are good, by the way, and make more and, you know, and spend more time with your family. Like, hey, plus, let's do those things. But like, that's not.

I remember distinctly saying to myself in the moment, that's literally not why I'm into this, which generated a second question. Well, why am I doing what I'm doing? And there is, I think for a lot of us, this internal program inputted from us that came from outside of us that forces us, inspires us, drives us, me at least, to make things. And that's the reason.

At the end of the day, the reason that I'm doing what I'm doing is I was built to make things and to help other people solve problems. Like I just love doing that. I love coaching people. I love building products. I love making software. It's just fun. It allows me to spend time with my family. It allows me time to raise my boys and my one girl. It allows me the money to give and to spend and to do the things. But like the driving force isn't to work less.

The driving force is some average of the things I just said is to help people. To some degree, I don't know how much of a choice I have. Like it's like a bird is going to fly because it was made to fly. Like if you ask it why it's flying, it's just what it is. So that was the first pivotal moment that I can think of that has been enlightening as I've gone over the last 11 or 12 years of doing this. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter where you put me, the human. It doesn't matter where you put the different people listening to this. Like you're going to go make things and help people.

help people. So then the second question is what's that going to be? Wow. You know, I'm, I'm inspired by that because you hit on something that's important to me. I tell people all the time, especially young entrepreneurs and they're like, Nick, how do I get started? Or what's the secret? I'm like, first off, there is no secret. Anyone that tells you that there's a secret or blueprint might run the other way because typically there's not, but you have to love what you do and then master that thing. And

And so that's one of the things I appreciate most about you is I can hear the passion. I've been a fan of yours, been a follower of yours for a very long time. You genuinely love what you do and you've mastered the thing that you're great at. So I applaud you for that, brother.

There's a verse in the Bible in Ecclesiastes chapter four that says there's nothing better than for a man to enjoy his work and yet, amen. But then go to the opposite of that. And it's even more true. There's nothing worse than to despise what you spend your days doing. But the problem is like, I didn't engineer me. Like we have an engineer on staff and he makes stuff, he makes software. And our users experience that software from the front end UI perspective. They're using our LMS system and they're doing the things.

They understand that people that have been around a while, like really get the software, but nobody understands it like Chris. Chris actually built the thing. So he understands the actual intricacies of it on a level that a user or the software itself never get. So yes, loving what you do

We live in a society that's really bizarre the more you think about it, actually. Like if you really stop to think about it, like at 18 years old, we send our kids off and ask them the question, what do you want to be when you grow up? And then we put them in the worst possible environment you could ever engineer for four years. You leave home, go into debt. You're in the most temptatious environment you could possibly draw up on paper. And in that environment, you're supposed to discover who you are.

This is like absolutely absurd. Like it's the dumbest thing we could possibly do. But there are ways you can go about figuring out who you are, what you're able to do. And ultimately the most success in all the different ways to define that term, peace, impact, happiness, prosperity, all those things is going to come from just being what you were made to be. Like a bird will never be happy if it tries to act like an elephant.

And I think the first 10 years of Running Earth Tools, the thing we do is help people. We help make it almost impossible to fail for our clients to grow their business, to get more customers. So I spent the first decade of the 11 or 12 years, 2013, when we started helping people figure out the math side. Like, how do you actually get random people on the Internet to know you exist and buy your thing, whether it's a book or a course or a coaching program or a service or whatever it is? We happen to specialize like in high end coaching and services and clients that do that.

that. But it's the same thing for everybody. And we get really good at that. Like we know how that works. We know that inside and out and backwards and forwards. But there's a second component to that. Like

Like you think about like success or I don't know your business doing whatever you want it to do is like a French door. It's not just one door. It's not just the math of it. It's not just the funnel. You have to have that. Like if that doesn't work, nothing else is going to work. But if the other door you have to walk through is like, what were you built to do? If you were built to do another thing, no matter what the math is, you will not like it. You will not enjoy it. I coach three different clients personally that are, you know, in the 20 to $50 million a year range that are names people know. And two of the three are doing exactly what they were built to do.

One of the three is not at all. And despite amazing success, happiness, joy, peace, none of that stuff is there. Like they've crushed the numbers and buy all the things and hire all the people and fantastic.

And like, man, at night, the fear has overwhelmed them in decision making. It's because you're not doing what you were, but you're trying to be a bird and you're a fish. Like, what are you doing? Like, you need to like find your thing and stay in that lane. So now we coach people on both things because one of that, the other doesn't work. All the peace and purpose in the world. But like, you know how to run a business. You're screwed if you know how to run a business. But you're doing literally the wrong business. That ain't going to work either. Like a lot of people talk about product market fit. The thing that don't talk about is business founder fit.

Like, are you the person to actually do that?

It's great that you heard me talking about a coaching business, but if you're built to be a software engineer and to solve these sets of problems like that, this will never work for you. So now thinking about both of those things for myself, because the flywheel of our business is we solve our own problems first. We then codify the solutions. We give them to clients and their business grows as a result of that. And we just spin that flywheel as fast as possible. And as we've gone over a decade, we keep finding more and more problems on our side that we come up with good solutions for, discover past solutions that people

to found and make our version of them. And then we give them to our clients and they win. So the first 10 years was figuring out how do you get customers? And we know how to do that. We know how to do that for practically any business we've encountered. Like we know how that works. The last year, year and a half has been all right, but what about that other door? Because some people are super successful, but they're not.

that they have one or two areas of life, but the other 10 are just a disaster. But what's that? Like, why are they sabotaging theirself and their business? So now just holistically, we do both things. And that's like, man, I have personally found more joy and purpose in that second door than the first door. And the first door, I'm like a numbers geek, spreadsheets out the wazoo, love that side of things. And that's fun. But without the other, like you violate,

Solomon 101. There's nothing better than for men to enjoy the work that he does. And there's so many people, including myself at many times that I haven't enjoyed it because I'm just doing the wrong thing. Yeah. And here I'm going to give a shout out to one of my accountability partners, Carl Lester Crumpler, who was also on the podcast. And one of the things that he asked and it got deep with me is, people define success in different ways and happiness in certain ways, but

But at the end of the day, if what you're doing, shouldn't it really be more about joy and fulfillment? Like shouldn't fulfillment matter more than anything else that you do? And so I love that you just put a nice bow on that piece as well, too.

Brian, you're amazing, bro. How do you define success for you? What does that look like? So for me, it has changed recently. So for me, success is about the legacy that I'm able to pass with joy and fulfillment. So it's easy to pass monetary success, right? That's pretty easy to do. You build a business, you can set your kids and your kids' kids up for success. But if I'm not passing fulfillment down and explaining fulfillment to anyone associated with me,

then I'm not doing the purpose that I was put on earth to do by God. So for me, it's about passing a legacy with joy and fulfillment.

That's good. I have 20 follow-up questions, but I love that. That's so good. And getting to the question, what's fulfillment? What does it mean to be fully filled? Who does the filling and what are you filling with? Like, what's that? So fulfillment for me, it goes back to the Old Testament, right? My cup runneth over. And so I'm fulfilled because it's coming out. It's exuding out of me. So fulfillment for me means fulfillment.

I've given everything and it's coming out. It's showing out and it's there for others to grab. And for me, that's fulfillment because a lot of times we're empty and we fill that emptiness with fake.

Right. You know, we we feel that emptiness was with likes and subscriptions. We feel that emptiness with, oh, I've got this post who watched it. We who reshared that. That's that's fake to me. And so for me, I want to be able to have so much that's pouring outward that my cup run over. To me, that's fulfillment. Well, I'll plug a thing real quick. So this coming Friday.

We do it almost every Friday and you can grab a link growthstools.com slash make M-I-C-K. We run a workshop and this is kind of uncomfortable new territory for me because like the crunchy, hacky, tactical funnel marketer side of me is confused by what I'm saying here. And that's kind of new still. So I haven't like fully absorbed it yet. So every Friday for clients, we host a workshop called clear the fear. And the point of it is to identify what fear is overwhelming you so you can get rid of it and then identify what your God given purpose and identity is so you can walk

in it. And most of the time that doesn't, sometimes it does, but most of the time that doesn't necessitate some radical change of vocation because your purpose and identity can be wrapped in many different vocations. So growthsouls.com slash Mick invite to that. There'll be a link on the page where you can, it's just a zoom 20, 30 of us get on and work to that. So if you're interested in like exploring further what this means for you, like how do you tomorrow know who you are and how does it affect the sales car you're going to get on? How does it affect the marketing email you're getting right? Because it does

drastically. You can track it with numbers. We were in this room about a month ago and we had the owner, the lead sales leader on the team here. And this is about a $3 million company. They help salon owners and they help them grow their salons. So cool, interesting business. And we spent the first two hours in person running through the exercise we do every Friday on Zoom, but in person and in person is way better. But the end of it, that sales leader found their identity was to be the holder and bringer of safety.

I was like, what in the world does that even mean? So we went through a series of exercise parade and listened and talked and discerned that in a group. At the end of that, they're like, man, it isn't deeply resonating with me because I'm not that human because it's not my identity. It's her identity. But at the end of it, we're processing through. Okay. So that's true. That feels deeply true to you. And I was like, okay, but what does that mean for your sales call tomorrow? And what does it mean for your sales leadership of your sales team? Because if it doesn't work on Monday, then what it is you heard on Sunday is like, I don't

know how helpful that is i don't know if it's just a theological mental philosophical pursuit or does this actually change your life and impact in big ways on monday morning so she was processing through that in the months since then her close rate has doubled because she realized like

Like first, I don't ever feel safe. That's what she said. I don't feel safe. So first I have to receive the safety from somewhere. So before I get on a sales call, I'm like, God, I don't feel safe right now. I feel scared. I feel fear. I feel shame and guilt. Like I need you to bring me safety. So when I get on the call with John in a few minutes and we start talking about his salon and blah, blah, blah, I can bring him safe because if he feels safe and secure and he's in a safe environment, he'll buy. If this is a good fit, he'll buy. There won't be any fear holding him back or any of that stuff. And she's crushed it since then.

So like this stuff is super practical when you get into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, when you start writing that funnel or coming up with that offer or you start coaching or whatever it is, the thing you do, man, it's been so fascinating to walk my team through that, to be walked through it and get to the like on the grounds in the weeds impact of that on a Monday. It's super cool to see. So anyway, go earthworks.com slash make if you want to do that yourself. It's free. There's nothing to buy. We just do that every Friday for anybody that wants to come. So come check it out.

Going to do that. Going to do that. You know, I forgot we're doing a podcast. Like this was literally just some great conversations that you and I are having. And so I want the listeners to know about growth tools, right? I don't want to assume everyone knows about it, but I'm pretty sure most people that are listening do. But walk us through why growth tools? What was your thought process in creating it? And what is it doing for businesses and people out there in the world?

So the problem we solve as a company is we make it almost impossible for our clients to fail at getting customers. There's two parts of that. First, know who you are. Don't make dumb decisions because you're inferior all the time. Second part, have a sales channel that actually works and puts customers into your program, whatever your program is, whether it's a book or a course or coaching or consulting or agency or whatever your thing is. And we take a very simple math-based approach to that.

So all customers are generated from one of two numbers, actually two numbers. The number of, if you're running like, if you sell via a sales page, it's going to be visits. If you sell via the phone, it's going to be calls on your calendar. So let's take a phone sales type approach. Like you're selling something that costs $5,000 or more, or they paid two grand a month, or you have an agency offering or something, but it's the same thing for a asynchronous type product, a course or membership or something.

There's only two numbers that matter. The number of calls in your calendar and your close rate. So if you put 10 calls on a calendar a week and you have a 10% close rate, that produces one customer every time. Those numbers work. Math is math. What we do is take a math-based approach. First, we look at each client and say, okay, based on where you're at,

What's the first channel we're going to install with you in order to produce the revenue that you actually need? For many clients, if you're sub $3 million a year, like most of the people we work with are, you're sub million dollars a year, which the majority of people we work with are. You've been getting clients from a hodgepodge of things, word of mouth, referrals. You've done like random acts of marketing. You have the RAM marketing plan. You just kind of do a bunch of stuff you see and sometimes stuff works. You don't quite know how it actually works together. And if you wanted to like just turn a dial up on a thing,

so disparate and disconnected, you don't know actually what to turn up. So we come in and just bring order to the chaos. And rule number one is you have to have one marketing channel producing at least $50,000 a month before you add a second marketing channel. So for most clients, the very first foundational marketing channel we install is called Bopa.

borrowing other people's audiences. Instead of trying to build an audience, instead of trying to run ads, instead of trying to SEO or YouTube SEO or whatever your thing is, all that stuff works. It's fantastic. Also, there's a million places for it to fail.

It is way easier to screw it up than to do it right. And if you're just starting out, like you don't have the privilege of going months and months and months or years and years and years and not having consistent, predictable revenue. So our goal is consistent, predictable sales channels that actually put customers in your programs. So the first one we do for most people is Bopa. And what that means is instead of you having a big audience that you've grown via all this content stuff you're doing, your only content hamster will to death. We're doing it right now, by the way. Mick, you have a faithful audience who's followed you for a long time.

Most of them have never heard of Brian Harris before. But right now we're 20 minutes into talking and a lot of them know me decently well now because the first stuff we talked about was pretty vulnerable things. It wasn't like tactical numbers stuff. And it's like they know me a lot better now than before. So several hundred people, as a result of listening to this podcast, will go to realstools.com slash Mick and sign up for that workshop or get the free BOPA training little video of them and put on there the free cheat sheet or whatever stuff we talk about on this. They're going to get it.

it. We have a couple hundred people that join our newsletter as a result of that. And a couple of those people will book a call with us. And one or two of them will probably hire us to coach them. Instead of me having to produce content to attract people to me, you just go to an established audience and share. Podcasts are a great way to do it. One of our favorite mechanisms to do this is something called a lead magnet swap or a resource swap, where you have a really good resource. Like we have this Friday workshop we do. We have a little 10-minute Boba training that'll go way deeper than we're going to do in the podcast. We can go check it out and see examples of this working in real time. Like just go get that.

So if you have a resource, Mick, that would work well for our audience, we'll just email it out to the audience and you'll get several hundred people that found out about you that didn't know about you before. And some of those people will hire you. Same thing for us. You share a resource with your audience from us. They found out about us and hire us. We have found it's way easier to go to a barrel that's full of fish and fish as opposed to to go to an empty barrel and try to tell all the fish about us a little jump in it.

So borrowing other people's audiences is the simplest marketing channel we've done over a million dollars a year for 10 years straight with this sales channel. And it is like my only goal isn't to like I'm not an evangelist for any sales channel. I actually don't care about any of them. My goal is like, what's the thing that's just simple and really hard to screw up? Let's do that first and get to the

the really complicated like running ads and tons of content that's going to get visitors that maybe they'll subscribe and maybe they'll buy like all that stuff's just way harder to do and way easier to screw up. So my goal for every client is to make it very,

make it really hard to screw up. And the simplest marketing channel that I have found after a decade is borrow the people's audiences. Do lead magnet swaps. Go on podcasts. Teach workshops. That attracts eyeballs. That builds trust. You can have three things for people to buy from you. You could have eyes, hearts, and then you can get wallets.

You got to attract their eyeballs. They're going to know you exist. And then once they're there, you need to build trust with them because if they just know you exist, but don't trust you, think of them as a sleazy weirdo, like they're not going to buy from you. So you get your eyes, you get the heart, and then you get the wallet. The great thing with borrowing other people's audience is, Mick, you already have the relationship with your audience.

By you having me here or doing a lead magnet swap or hosting a workshop or something, that trust is immediately transferred to me. Here's an example of this that most everybody knows. So Oprah back in the day when she had her daytime show, Dr. Phil and Robert Kiyosaki were totally unknown humans. No one knew these people existed.

After one guest appearance on Oprah's show, Robert Kiyosaki's book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, went from like no copy sold to one of the best selling books of all time. And he directly attributes it and tracks that success to one guest appearance where millions of eyeballs were there. Immediate trust is transferred. And all he had to do is make a simple offer and people bought. Same thing with Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil got his start by going on Oprah. And now he has one of the longest running daytime TV shows in like television history as a result of borrowing Oprah's audience. So that's the basic concept at a high

At a high level, what we do is make it almost impossible for people to fail. What I found to be one of the simplest tools to do that is burn other people's audiences. It just works well. And you can grow it to many millions of dollars a year without having to touch another sales channel at all.

That's amazing. Brian, you've dropped so many words of wisdom from your personal to the business side. What's two things that you want to leave the listeners in the audience with today? Whether it's about Brian directly, whether it's about GrowTools, the floor is yours. What's two things you want to leave the world with?

Know your math, know your purpose. If you get those two things down, the business will grow. It's impossible for it not to grow if those two things are in. So when I say math, literally what's the revenue you need to be profitable? Like what's your goal? And back the math out. There's only two numbers. So if you need $10,000 a month, great. What's your price of your thing? It's $5,000. Cool. All you needed to sell us two units. Two. Can you sell two a month? How many

How many calls do you need on a calendar? And what's your close rate? Close rate is going to be about 10%. That means you need 20 calls. So just know your math. You need 20 calls on a calendar, 10% close rate. You get to two people, you need to make 10 grand a month. That is the math of that. So then the question is, what am I, how am I going to put calls on the calendar? Use Bopo. Go to girlthools.com slash make. There's a cheat sheet and a video. Just go do it. Just go track that. If you want us to help, let us know. Because you can do it yourself. So know your math. Literally, what's your math? Too many people live in the mystery box, not the math box.

It's like the mystery is like, I need more money. I got an idea of what I want to do, but they're like searching around. They don't like, haven't made it concrete. And you can do this math in five seconds. What's your revenue goal? What's your price point? That's how many you divide the two. And that's how many units you need to sell. Now, all you need is a mechanism to put those calls in your calendar. Use Bopa to do that. It works. It's really tough to screw up. The second thing is know your purpose. Literally what were you built to do? And Hey, you can't read a label from inside the jar. You're inside the jar. You were you only you,

external factors, God is a huge component of that, can tell you who you are. So spend time with that. Come to our free workshop on Fridays and find that out. Find it out or do it yourself or speak to whoever. I don't care how you do it, but know specifically, not like some vague 17-page paper of who you are, but know you have a unique identity. Here's an interesting thing from Bible since you brought it up earlier, Old Testament. Almost every major character in the Bible, their story starts by God telling them who they are. And a lot of times he renames them to reinforce it. So

Abraham was originally called Abram. And before his story starts, God tells him his identity. He's like, Hey man, you're not Abram. You're Abraham. You're the father of many nations. And that is his identity. Everything he did flow through that. He told David who he was. He told Jesus, Jesus's story starts with literally John the Baptist baptizing him and God from heaven in a voice saying, this is my son whom I'm well pleased. Told him his identity, John the Baptist. So

Almost every major character, Gideon's a cool one. You're a mighty warrior. And Gideon's like, no, I'm not. What are you talking about? Like almost every time you hear it, you argue with it, feel embarrassed by it. But like you deeply know it's true. And as you start walking in that at work. So two things I'd leave you with, know your math of your business and know your purpose. So you don't do dumb stuff because the dumb stuff will kill the math, but the math won't fix the purpose. So if you get both of those things down, like it will grow. Your thing will succeed, whether it's ministry or business or nonprofit or a family or whatever.

whatever that is, know your math, know your purpose, and you can't go wrong with those two things. - I love simplicity, man. Like I tell people all the time, especially in sports, like I'm a football nut. At the end of the day, football is just blocking and tackling.

That's literally it, right? Like all the other stuff is for show. And I love how you just brought that into the business and personal life to know your math. End of the day, that's what it's about for a business, right? Like, how do I make a dollar? How do I keep a dollar? How do I grow a dollar? That's literally it, right? And in your personal life, you hit it on the head, man. Like, what's your purpose? You know, my mentor, Les Brown says, who are you? And if you don't know who you are, how can you expect anyone else to know either?

I want to give an example of this because like all of my tactical, but what does this mean? And why should I care? Because almost no specifically dudes, we actually suck at this 10 times worse than the females in my life. At least they're like halfway in tune. We're freaking clueless. I can like none of this stuff matters all the time. The number of dudes I've ever had a conversation with like this is very small.

So for me, even like preparing for this podcast, the identity that I've heard God say is me and has been reinforced and discerned in a group of guys that know me well. I always feel weird saying this out loud, but the more times I say it, the more or less weird it sounds. What I've been told I am is a glory infuser. So here's how practically plays out. When I entered this podcast, I'm like, all right, a lot of thing I can talk about a lot of things I'm excited about. But like, what would it look like, God, for me to be a glory infuser on this podcast right now, right now?

And that's a question that becomes the single most orienting question. What does it look like when I get home? My nine-year-old's done something stupid today. Didn't finish the task I gave him today. It's like, okay, I could go off the rails like my dad would do. I could go to hyper-disciplinarian mode, like it's kind of built into me. Or what would it look like to train him and guide him and also correct him as a glory in the future? Because that's very different than probably what the built-in nature wants to actually do.

It is the most orienting question of every day. And when I work outside of that and try to be a thing, I'm not, I'm trying to mimic my dad or mimic a friend or do something that Alex or Mozi or whoever you're following is doing, you always do dumb stuff.

stuff a hundred percent of the time. Like what would it look like to be a football coach that is working fully in their identity, not mimicking whoever your football coach idol is or your mentor was, but like being you in that scenario. And that's where magic and innovation happens every time without fail. But man, the number of people that actually do that is so

So low. It's absolutely shocking. So man, knowing what you are, getting that down to a word or two and using that as your orienting point and working inside of a business or inside of whatever your job is like, man, that's the joy set before them right there. That is fun. Ladies and gentlemen, I told you, be prepared to be inspired. Brian is an amazing human being and growth tools is awesome, but it's awesome because they have an awesome leader. So Brian, I appreciate you being here. And more importantly, I appreciate who you are. And I mean that from my heart.

Thank you so much, Mick. And for all the listeners, remember your because is your superpower. Go unleash it. Thanks for listening to Mick Unplugged. We hope this episode helps you take the next step toward the extraordinary and launches a revolution in your life. Don't forget to rate and review the podcast and be sure to check us out on YouTube at Mick Unplugged. Remember, stay empowered, stay inspired, and stay unplugged.