Sean Douglas is a U.S. Air Force Veteran, TEDx Speaker, Master Resilience Implementer, Suicide Awareness Trainer, Performance Enhancement Expert, International Radio Show Host, and Author. His WHY is he's a suicide survivor who hit rock bottom with no purpose or passion.

He believes that you were created for a purpose, and once you unlock your true potential, you will elevate your life, which is why he founded The Success Corps. In a highly interactive and engaging environment, utilizing online mentoring sessions and face to face workshops, Sean provides a framework for success to Millennials up to 50-year-old Professionals, Military Veterans, Speakers, Entrepreneurs, and Business Owners that reduces anxiety, stress, and depression in your personal and professional life.

• CEO Hack: Play Bigger by Christopher Lockhead and create a problem only you can solve e.g. founder of Priceline and Indeed.com. Google Alerts.
• CEO Nugget: “Say yes and figure it out” and live a life a gratitude (count 3 blessing a day). Build your resourcefulness muscle.
• CEO Defined: Putting it all on the line. Ask: (1) What are you willing to do more of? (2) What are you willing to do differently? (3) How are you connecting with the people you serve and those that serve you?

Website: https://www.thesuccesscorps.com
TEDx talk video: https://youtu.be/CKudfG39Vs4
Facebook Page: http://www.Facebook.com/SeanDouglasSpeaks
LinkedIn: http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/sean-douglas-a0890473
Amazon: http://www.Amazon.com/author/seandouglas
Book – https://amzn.to/2Dryb0q
Radio Show: www.BlogTalkRadio.com/LifeTransformationRadio
iTunes Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/life-transformation-radio/id1210888786?mt=2

FULL INTERVIEW

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Sean Douglas of The Success Corps. Sean, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Sean Douglas 0:36

Thanks for having me, man. I'm honored.

Gresham Harkless 0:38

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, I truly appreciate you Sean for taking some time out. And what I want to do is read a little bit more about Sean so you can learn a little bit more about him and all the awesome things that he's been able to accomplish. And Sean Douglas is a US Air Force Veteran, TEDx Speaker, Master Resilience Implementer, Suicide Awareness Trainer, Performance Enhancement Expert, International Radio Show Host, and Author. His Why is why he's a suicide survivor who hit rock bottom with no purpose or passion.

He believes that you were created for a purpose. And once you unlock your true potential, you will elevate your life which is why he founded The Success Corps. In a highly interactive and engaging environment utilizing online mentoring sessions and face-to-face workshops. Sean provides a framework for success to Millennials, up to 50-year-old Professionals, Military Veterans, Speakers, Entrepreneurs, and Business Owners that reduces anxiety, stress, and depression in your personal and professional lives. Sean, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Sean Douglas 1:38

Dude, let's do this.

Gresham Harkless 1:40

So I wanted to kind of give you the mic so to speak and hear a little bit more about your CEO story. And what led you to start your business?

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Sean Douglas 1:46

When I was in fourth grade, my oldest sister and I were abused by our stepfather. Many times, he would control my mother by taking all of the money that she would earn, she worked two jobs to support us. And then as I grew up, I just I liked doing my own thing. I got fired from jobs I tried to work at McDonald's for a little bit that didn't quite work out. I tried to work at this other job that didn't quite work out.

So I just kind of always wanted to be in business for myself, I joined the military. And I see a need where there's the listed club and officer's club and all that base, they need DJs and I go on, I can do that. So I started DJing. And then I was like, This is awesome. And that opened the door to my first real business, which was an entertainment company.

Gresham Harkless 2:27

Nice, it's been obviously incredible that you've been able to have that experience and be able to help other people out from you know, the difficulties that you might have gone through. But it seems like it might have also like made you stronger and made you stronger, not just for yourself, but also seems like for the people that you work with. Is that correct?

Sean Douglas 2:44

Absolutely. Yeah. 100%

Gresham Harkless 2:45

Awesome, awesome, awesome as well. So I wanted to drill a little bit deeper to hear a little bit more about like how you serve the clients, and how you help these people that you work with.

Sean Douglas 2:53

Yeah, so I always ask myself three questions. And the first question I always ask myself is what am I willing to do more of, you know, nowadays, all we hear is you got to target market, you got to niche down, you got to do this. But back in 2004, when I first started my first business, or even when I was a kid, you know, yeah, so who do I serve? Well, there was no one in the driveway, knocking on their door.

So if they need sound if they need DJ, if they need whatever I'm knocking on their door. But I always ask myself three questions. The first one is what am I willing to do more than anybody else? What am I willing to do more of people in the same space as a Podcast Host a Speaker, a person playing music at a wedding, or a DJ? What am I willing to do more of?

So I started talking with the client and started with like, what are your favorite songs? Or what, you know, what's this for you? And what does this look like? And how does this gonna be a success? What does success look like for this event? And I just kept asking all these different questions. And I would notice the same questions coming up, took notes for everything, took notes, if I had an interaction that was amazing or gotten bad if I had a success here or failure, I took notes on everything.

And so I figured out what I was going to do more than anybody else. And then the second question is, what am I willing to do differently? If everybody's doing the same thing, you're not going to stand out. So how do I differentiate myself? What makes me different? How do I separate myself from the rest of the pack? How do I stand out if the answer this question, and sometimes it's, well, I know my target market or I niche down, got it, it can be a lot of different things. But you need to figure out what makes you different because it's not about doing things better than anybody else that just becomes a race to the bottom.

And I'm not just like, oh, I have my program. Here's my program, just take my program, I tailor-made one-on-one and I'm sitting down with them and I'm giving them me, it's me, I'm connecting with them through me eye contact story, whatever, telling them exactly what they need. Instead of just saying here's my overarching one size fits all everything program is not going to work. That makes sense.

Gresham Harkless 4:49

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. So now I wanted to ask you, I think it was your number two question which is what I call your secret sauce and kind of like your differentiator, what you feel sets you apart and you might already touch on that but what do you feel like is your secret sauce?

Sean Douglas 5:02

As a speaker, how I differentiate myself is I specialize in the event aftercare, a lot of speakers will show up, collect the paycheck deliver their little bit, their one-hour deal. And they are, they didn't converse with them after their talk. They didn't even eat lunch with them, they do their bit that it's I'm out.

So what I do is specialize in event aftercare where I have lunch with the people who are in my talk, right? I have lunch with everybody there, I'm connecting with the event organizer, and I'm building relationships. Months later, right, we connect on social media, we connect through email, and some people even have my cell phone number, they just call me anytime.

So we will grab my business cards. But that's a one-way communication, they grab a business card, and I'm hoping that they'll call me I need to get their information as well because I know I'm going to follow up and I know I'm going to call them. That's just one. That's just one as a speaker, as a Radio Show Host.

So my show is on BlogTalkRadio. My show is live, it's a live online radio show that people can actually call into the show. So I don't know too many podcasts that are doing that. But they can call directly into the show. And then I mean, it has literally a Radio Show feel to it. And it's a live online show.

Gresham Harkless 6:14

Now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And the CEO hack might be an app or book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

Sean Douglas 6:25

Man, you know I thought about this question, man, I kind of like agonize over it. Like there's so much. You know, it's not just like one app, right? I mean, it's not just I mean, I don't, I'm not a real big app user. I love Delta's app where I can just like log in right on my app and change my seat and do what I got to do. And like, you know, that sounds cool, but like a hack.

So there's a book called Play Bigger by Christopher Lochhead. It's how pirates, dreamers, and innovators create and dominate their own categories. So in that book, Christopher Lochhead talks about creating a category that only you play in. It's about category design that drives company culture, and how you do that. That is you create a problem that only you can solve.

So you frame the problem in a way that people can receive it, you condition the market to receive that problem, go, oh, my gosh, I didn't even your right. I don't even know, I didn't even know that was a problem. I've been doing that all the time. I didn't even know that was a problem. You know, I mean, you conditioned the market to receive the unique problem that you created. And then you created the solution to solve that problem. Right.

So it's just like, you know, as being a disrupter, it's being an innovator, you know, so I talked to Jeff Hoffman, who is the founder of priceline.com, I had a chance to sit down and talk with them, you know about this. And he says, You know, I was in an airport, and I missed the flight because there's one person at the counter checking everybody in, this is stupid, man, I could check myself and I'm already here. Do you know what I mean? He made the kiosks that are in the airport. That's what he did. And then out of that, he says, Well, if I can check myself in, I bet I can book my own travel. priceline.com was born, it seems. And so he saw that he's like, I missed the flight. And this is what we think, and so nobody was solving these problems. He's gonna solve this problem.

So the advice that he gave me was to get into an industry that interests me absorb everything about the industry, everything, read everything, know everything, and then find a problem that people frequently experience and solve it. That's all he did. That's exactly it. So there are one, one or two little hacks right there as a speaker indeed.com is the most underutilized tool that anybody's ever you actually, for any business. Grossly underutilized, for example, you make a profile there, and you can type in different keywords.

So I type in motivational speaker, why, because that's what people outside of the industry always use. It's a motivational speaker, when not really the transformational speaker. There's a business speaker sales speaker, but they just type in a motivational speaker.

So I tend to be a motivational speaker, got a bunch of keywords and all that, and download email addresses and all that stuff from it. Then I typed in conference speaker, and then I got a bunch of these, right? So what happens is, I don't care that they're putting out an event or whatever, and this and that's what I care about. What I care about is the people on indeed, that are putting out the job descriptions that are hiring for conference speakers. I want that decision maker, that's who I want to get to right.

So I can Google call for speakers or whatever and get booked. Got it. But this is right here, and indeed, there are companies right now hiring podcasts consultants, and health and wellness directors. So if I want to go and be a corporate consultant, and I know on indeed, there's somebody hiring for a Podcast, you know what the company wants to get into podcasting, I'm going to email that person with that job and say, well, I'm not interested in that job. Actually, I just want to show you what to do. I'll consult with you on two bases to set the other whatever.

So instead of getting $50,000 a year for a full-time job, I'll show you how to do it for 10 grand, and you can do it yourself how to consult with you, you know, I'm saying on ongoing support. So you're using indeed to find those keywords that companies are hiring for, and then asking to be a consultant, not an employee. But those are the decision makers that I want that you can't find anywhere else.

Gresham Harkless 10:17

Yeah, and I love those CEO hacks. And I kind of see overlapping them. And in a way in which a lot of those people when you're going on indeed.com, they're looking for people to hire. But again, like you were talking about before, you're creating a solution, which they didn't even know was a problem. Rather than having to have $50,000 to hire somebody who benefits from all of those things, you are able to help them solve the problem, and do it in an efficient way. And maybe they can do something else with that additional revenue or additional money they had kind of bookmark for him that so I love that. And I love that CEO hack.

So now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And the CEO nugget might be a word of wisdom or piece of advice that you might have for entrepreneurs and business owners.

Sean Douglas 10:52

Man, I love this question. Because I asked the same question on my show. I'm like, give me some nuggets, man give me like, I want something you know because everybody has so much knowledge. Like, you can just google anything you want, right? You can YouTube, anything you want. But what I love about this question is that is based on experience. And it's like, dude, don't do that. It's usually rooted in failure. Right? Like, don't do this, because it's gonna suck. Do you know? So do my nugget, man. I'm just an overachiever. So I'll give you two quick ones.

Gresham Harkless 11:22

Okay.

Sean Douglas 11:22

My mentor Brock Thomas always drills it into us. He says, yes. And figure it out. Because when you say no, you close the door to new opportunities and new ideas that had you said, Yes, probably would have transformed your life.

So live your life by this principle, say yes. And figure it out. Just go make it happen. Forget the excuses, just go make it happen. And the second thing that I believe is really, really, really important is that live a life of gratitude, count three blessings a day, and live a life of gratitude. Because this literally scientifically reduces anxiety, stress, depression, and loneliness. And that are some of the characteristics that we experienced as entrepreneurs, right? Nobody gets us we're an entrepreneur, and nobody gets us. Right, well done. Because you're like the top percentage of people that don't want to live in a corporate frickin rat wheel, right. Corazon was going to get you, you know, we get anxiety because we don't know where our next clients come from.

We don't know where these leads gonna generate from and we got to have strategies that didn't work, and we're failing. And it's like, super stressful. So just three blessings a day. Count three blessings a day, live a life of gratitude, and I'm telling you, it's gonna change your life.

Gresham Harkless 12:28

I love it. I love it. And Sean, now, I wanted to ask you what is my absolute favorite question, which is kind of like the definition of being a CEO. And we're hoping to kind of have different CEOs on the podcast. So I wanted to ask you specifically, what being a CEO means to you.

Sean Douglas 12:42

Yeah, it's putting it on the line. You know, we hear a lot of times, you know, from business daily, and, you know, entrepreneur.com, and always like, Oh, the CEO is a frickin multi-billionaire, but his employee gets like 1095 an hour. You know, dude, that's cool. But for me, a CEO is number one, investing in their people and taking care of their people. And overall, man, laying it all on the line. I mean, just like you are all in on this thing. You know, exam, it's cool to be a CEO, you know, of like a Fortune 500 company, or like Amazon or like that, that's great.

Do you know what I mean? But really ask yourself those three questions I said earlier, what are you willing to do more of? As a CEO what are you willing to do more of? What are you willing to do differently? And how are you connecting with your employees? How are you connecting with the people that you serve? And how are you connecting with those that serve you?

So, man, it's just laying it on the line, man, as you do. Like, maybe you're the first to go to the office. And the last to leave. Usually, you are in your business when you're number one and when you're the only employee. Like, I was able to get three, four, or five or six employees, but it seems like you start to just be like, Oh, you guys got it. You guys got it.

I never want to be like that, I would never want to sit at the top of the floor in the ivory tower. And be like, well, I'm gonna leave because everyone else is gonna, I'm gonna go toward Europe, like, I still want to live a life of freedom. But I still want to make sure that my people know that I'm invested in them and invested in the company.

Gresham Harkless 14:07

Makes perfect sense. Yeah, I absolutely love that definition. So Shawn, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. And speaking with us, you have an incredible story, you've done a lot of incredible things. And what I wanted to do was pass you the mic to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know and how best people can get a hold of you.

Sean Douglas 14:24

Go make it happen. You know, like, like, stop the excuse, like my I hear all the time. And it's so frustrating, like, literally during my active duty military time. Like I'm building businesses like 60 hours a week in the military, and I still find time to build three businesses. You can't tell me you don't have time you don't have money, you don't have that those are all resources, build your resourcefulness, muscle right money is everywhere. The time is on you.

So have strategies for time management have strategies for energy management and strategies that automate things. I have speaking leads that come directly to my email because I set up Google Alerts. Oh, there was another hack. Nobody even knows this. The only people that I know don't even set up Google Alerts. Like I get emails right to my phone that say conference speaker call for speakers calls from presenters like, right to my phone, I never have to do anything.

I have an abundance of leads because they're on my phone. Because I set up a tool called Google Alert. You can turn it simpler for everything. I set one up for myself, so I can see if I'm in the news. So there's no issue like today, there's no excuse. You have YouTube, Google, hey, for a mentor, pay for a frickin mentor that I'll show you what to do. There is no excuse for you not to succeed like they're just as so if you want to know more about me and what I'm about, you can find me at www.thesuccesscorps.com. And I have a free Facebook group everybody kind of hangs out and enjoys that. It's called TheSuccessCorps, that's it, man. That's what I got for you.

Gresham Harkless 15:57

I appreciate it, Sean. And we'll definitely have those links in the show notes. But thank you again for like all the awesome words that you gave us today but also all the awesome things that you're doing to impact that world I truly appreciate it and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Sean Douglas 16:09

Thank you, man. I really really appreciate you.

Outro 16:12

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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