IAM1371 – Coach Helps Businesses Achieve Freedom and Money

Todd Randall, the eight-time CEO and business coach from rural Florida found that running a business can lead you to an early grave if you let it. He set out to build a business enterprise that worships freedom more than money and somehow ended up with both. This is the story of how a man set a crazy goal for himself, to learn to play polo and travel the world indulging that passion, and then worked persistently until he achieved it.

• CEO Story: Todd worked in a 300 billion company with a high-paying position. Came to a moment of revelation in his life when he was living a simple life in Paris which was the turning point in his life. Working for a big salary but with a lot of baggage in his life. Off he went to search for his new business idea when he went home.
• Business Service: Business coach and consulting firm.
• Secret Sauce: Help people with practical skills. Transferring real business skills to people.
• CEO Hack: Reading Seth Godin’s blog on marketing and branding. Scott Galloway – big picture thinker. Tom Bilyeu is on the Impact Theory podcast.
• CEO Nugget: The road of set self-development is the one you need to curate, it's for you to develop yourself not for somebody else. Join in small groups in your industry and you get a small imminent of wisdom.
• CEO Defined: Helping other people run a business. Separated yourself from the day-to-day operation and your job is to support the team.

Website: BeachviewCoaching

Facebook: realbusinesscoaching

Linkedin: todd-Randall

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Transcription

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00:22 – Intro

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 Harkness 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.

00:49 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Todd Randall of Beachview Coaching. Todd, super excited to have you on the show.

00:59 – Todd Randall

Hey, Gresh. Thanks for having me. It's an honor.

01:01 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, the honor is all ours. What I want to do before we jump into the interview is read a little bit more about Todd so you can hear about some of those awesome things that he's working on. Todd, the eight-time CEO and business coach from rural Florida, found that running a business can lead you to an early grave if you let it.

He set out to build a business enterprise that worships freedom more than money and somehow ended up with both. This is a story of how a man set a crazy goal for himself to learn to play polo and travel the world, indulging that passion, and then working persistently until he achieved it. Todd, super excited again to have you on the show, my friend. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:37 – Todd Randall

I'm ready, thanks. Nice intro.

01:39 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, nice work that you've been able to do. So now, before we jumped into, you know, all the awesome things you're doing, I wanted to rewind the clock, hear a little bit more about what I said, Sean, how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:49 – Todd Randall

Yeah, I love the stories. One of my favorite stories to tell because it was a real life changer for me. Like I was running through life in the same way that people do. Right. They get up and they have breakfast and they do the normal things every day that they have expected of themselves. And then I had a reason to look at life differently. About 15 years ago, I was a corporate bureaucrat in the middle of this really big company and a very satisfying job. It was amazing. I worked for a $300 billion company and they asked me to go to Europe and check out a couple of countries there to see if any of our divisions would work for their workflow, et cetera.

And it was really, you know, I got to work with the executives of our company. I got to live in other cultures and practice language and all the things that make life and work fun, right? And while I was there, the financial system started to collapse. And so my boss has said, okay, great work, Todd, it's time for you to come home. We'll find someplace for you here to work back into the fold.” And I was so sad because I was really onto something. I was establishing this great work-life balance. I was learning, like I said, language and meeting cool new people. And I said, okay, I need a couple of weeks to decompress. And they said, you know, we understand, Todd.

They were very gracious and generous about the whole thing because they knew I was disappointed, right? And so what I did is I took a couple of weeks off, 3 weeks, and I went to Paris, which is a fabulous city. All the things you've heard about it are true. And I enrolled in a language program where you study language in the morning and then you go out and you practice it in the city in the afternoon. So I played golf with friends and I went to museums and shows and I traveled around Europe and stuff. And at the end of the month, I looked down on my credit card bill for that month.

As a fraction of what I was making at the time, it was an embarrassingly small amount. And it was one of the best months of my life. And I thought, holy crap, I was living in a dorm, by the way, because I couldn't, last minute, I couldn't find a place to stay, real estate is tough in Paris. And so the school I was going to put me up in a dorm. And I'm like, yeah, sure, I don't care, it's fine with me. And that's one of the reasons at the end of the month that I had this, It was like a couple thousand dollars. And I was doing everything I wanted. Like I said, I was getting out in the town, I was seeing art, I was visiting with friends, I was traveling to other countries.

And at the end of the month, I thought, well maybe I don't need a million dollars a minute to be happy and I reset that value in myself, that maybe a fancy house, because I had a nice place in the US at the time. And I thought, gosh, maybe investing all the money into a big home and a fancy car, because I didn't have a car when I was in Paris. I didn't have a fancy house when I was in Paris, but so many other things were really fulfilling. Very, very satisfying. And at that moment I said, aha, big revelation for me.

I work for a big company, I make a lot of money, and I have a big title, but I have a lot of baggage that comes with it, and those things have to offset each other. Maybe, maybe there's a different way. And that was the seed of all of it. When I came home, the very first thing I did was start searching for my own business ideas because I knew that I could run a business that could support myself.

That amount, remember, I told you at the end of the month when I went down and I looked, I had a number now. And it was very different from the number I had before. Everybody's got a number in their head of what they think they need. And I said, gosh, I know that I can start any number of businesses that could support that number. And off I went and the search began.

05:20 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, well, I appreciate you telling that story. Now that's one of my favorite stories as well too, because I think so many times, and I don't know if you've had that experience or you can speak to that is that We have goals and aspirations sometimes when we get out of school or whatever it might be, whatever point or inflection point that that happens. But we sometimes don't know why we have those goals and we can sometimes become so attached to those goals that we don't understand truly why we have those goals.

So it sounds like you had that experience where you started to really like, you know, do all the things you enjoy doing and be able to look at the credit card and say, this didn't cost nearly as much as I thought. And I have that fulfilling satisfaction. Yeah, exactly. If you decide the course and you decide the speed and you decide what hills and the distance Yeah, you're designing it for yourself.

You can win that thing I think that's also part of my story because you know So many entrepreneurs start a business because they're at a big company and they roll their division out Oh, I can tell Mr. CEO or Ms. CEO that you don't value this product anymore. You guys are going in a different direction. You're going all electric and I invented the gasoline engine.

06:26 – Todd Randall

I'm planning to take over this division of the company by securing a loan and running it myself. Many people start their own businesses in a similar way, either by introducing a great innovation, a new way of doing business, or by getting a loan. However, these stories get more attention than those of people who start businesses like laundromats, newspaper routes, or resell items from yard sales on platforms like Amazon or eBay. They're all business people too, and they're all entrepreneurs. It's not as sexy, it doesn't get front-row billing, front-row billing in the newspapers or on the online reporting mags. But those folks are entrepreneurs and they deserve just as much kudos and respect as the other crowd.

07:16 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I would definitely echo that as well too. And that's some of the things that I felt were the most captivating. When you sit down and talk with the laundromat owner or the person that has a tutoring business or the person that has a dance, whatever it might be, they have really captivating stories just like yourself on why they did, they're doing what they're doing. And I think it's one of the most motivational and inspiring things, which is why I love the work that I do as well. So thank you so much for making that happen.

07:42 – Todd Randall

Yeah, I envy your job. I think it seems so fun to be able to network with folks who have their own stories. There must be some tidbit that you learn from every single one I do from the podcasts that I listen to. So I'm sure you do as well. Right.

07:54 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. It's so much, you know, great information and knowledge that we can all kind of learn. So before we jumped into hearing more from you about your knowledge and what we can kind of learn from you, I wanted to go a little bit more into how you serve your clients and where you landed upon, you know, and being able to kind of provide that impact. Can you take us through a little bit more on how you serve your clients and what you feel is maybe your secret sauce and such a part of what makes you unique?

08:15 – Todd Randall

I was acknowledging right out of the gate that I wasn't the special sauce. I was the collector of skills, trades, networks, and practices, and I put them together. Someone has to be the project manager, And oftentimes that's what an entrepreneur is at the end of the day, right? So I love how provocative your tagline is, I am CEO. Because I think it begs the question, what does that mean? What is a CEO? What does a CEO do, right? And I think from my case, our special sauce is that I had to go learn those skills and apply them to my trade to make the businesses successful. And then when I made one business successful, that wasn't enough to create my dream.

So I had to do it again and again and again. And I did it with different industries. And so our secret sauce is we help people with practical skills. Business essentially is just a set of skills, right? There's nobody that wakes up on their fifth birthday and says, I, you know, I think I'll hedge some income from a different country to eliminate currency risk. Like, that doesn't happen. What happens is you start a business and you start trading with a vendor or a customer that lives outside the country and you get hurt. We're someone who can pass on real mentorship and guide them through the process. That's a long answer to saying that we're a firm that specializes in transferring real business skills to people who feel like they're in over their heads or want some help.

09:45 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely appreciate that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:58 – Todd Randall

Yeah, it used to be that I would just pick up a book a week. That was my favorite way, but I think books are tough these days because it's just so much easier to read digitally. I tell you what I do is I have a new favorite every 6 months or a year, and what I do is I just give myself permission to dabble in with the gurus. So there's so many out there at this point that it's kind of hard. Someone the other day said, oh, he reminds me of Tim Ferriss. And I'm like, who's Tim Ferriss? And they're like, what do you mean? Who's Tim Ferriss?

He's one of the best advisors on the planet. And it's actually not weird that I wouldn't know one name, right? And so for years, I think that different experts are better at different things. Seth Godin is someone that I still go to to read his blog once a week on marketing and brand because he just understands that he can explain it so much better than other experts I have.

I think as it relates to strategy, I love a fellow by the name of Scott Galloway. He's a professor and lives in Florida. I can't remember what university he represents. Big picture thinker. When I want practical stuff, Tom Bilyeu has a group called Impact University yeah impact yes impact is like Tom he's so practical and he's willing to get into the weeds with you he has some groups that give you direct access to him, and they may not be cheap, and you may not get a bunch of time with them, but I'll tell you, a couple of minutes with Tom can clear up a real big problem.

And so I go those routes nowadays. 20 years ago, I really liked the inspirational stuff, you know, the Zig Ziglar and Grant Cardone and you know, that path. I feel like I'm inspired as I need to be now. It's mostly practical information so I'll find somebody that's relevant and then the blogs are my favorite thing because they can get downloaded to your email and you can read 2 sentences. And if it's great, super. And if it's not, you can just go on to the next thing and give yourself permission to dabble. Take a little information, read it if it's interesting, pass on it if it's not, and just keep coming back to the well. You know what

11:58 – Gresham Harkless

I mean? Yeah, that makes so much sense. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It might be something you touched on, but it might be something you would tell your favorite client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:14 – Todd Randall

Okay, so I'll expound on one of the things that we started, but add a little practical tip to it. That is the road of self-development is one that you have to curate. It's for you. The whole purpose of self-development is that you develop yourself, not somebody else, right? And so looking at somebody's top 10 business book list is not that helpful, right? Unless you spot something on it that's useful to you go read it. Reading all 10 is actually probably not useful, right? Everybody's business is pretty unique. And if you describe your problem to somebody who's been there before, in 5 or 10 minutes, you can make a life-changing decision, right?

And that's worth a lot, but I realize it's hard to front the money just in case you run into that scenario, right? So I think small groups, small groups are a way in your early stages, If you start a first chiropractic business or if you start online coaching for dog training, right? Early in the process, find someone that can go through with you, so that you can mediate that cost. You can compromise somewhere in the middle, where yes, you don't have grant Cardone for 3 hours a week, because you can't afford it, but you don't get stuck in a big group where you're just a number and you're not getting something valuable.

Find a small group where you can say, hey, I've just been listening the last couple weeks and I think it's really valuable but can I ask one specific question about my business because I think everyone's gonna learn from it and then you have the floor and you have one-on-one interaction with somebody who's much more experienced than you and that's a way to maximize value right now because it's really hard to find good mentorship for good value And that's my hack? That's my hack find a small group and then you get small moments of imminent wisdom, like really good reaching types of advice, but you don't need it every week. You don't need it every hour. Just use it when you need it.

14:02 – Gresham Harkless

So I was asking now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. You might've already touched on this, but we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Todd, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:12 – Todd Randall

Yeah, I think a CEO is helping other people run a business. I think you need to separate yourself from it. Like a true CEO, you can be president and you can be chief operator, but to be a CEO to me means you've separated yourself from the day-to-day operations and you have folks in those positions that your job is to support them as much as you can. And so it is a position of service more than any other in the organization. What do you guys need? I ask my general managers all the time, what do you need this week? We really need someone to grease the gates.

I'll be there then. I'll find some grease, I'll go to the hardware store and I'll grease the gates if that's what you need, right? We need a lot more inventory, which requires a lot more capital, so we need half a million dollars. It's a different job, but it's my job to support them. If they need more inventory to make their sales, then I have to find a way to do it. If they need more staff, you know, it's like that's the CEO's real task, I think, is to find the people that can run the organization and then give them whatever they need, set the culture, set the environment, give them all the resources they need to run it well.

15:16 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely appreciate that and of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic so to speak to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best people get a hold of you, find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

15:30 – Todd Randall

Thanks for that. Now I don't have anything in addition to add. Your questions are so insightful that I feel like there's a lesson learned in here somewhere if you look for it. The best way to reach me is I have a website, beachview.biz, because I had this fantastic apartment at the time when I created the name. I was overlooking the beach and I never wanted to forget it. So beachview.biz.

And I get a lot of my clients involved in a Facebook group. And so if you want someplace to go, we're just to kind of figure me out and see if I'm interesting or useful. The Facebook group is called Real Business Coaching. That's a good way to get to know our group. Even you can get to know it from a distance, you know before you reach out.

16:07 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I definitely appreciate that Todd, to make it even easier. We'll have the links and information in the show notes for the Facebook page and the website as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:17 – Todd Randall

Thanks, Gresham. It's an honor. Thanks again for the invite.

16:19 – Outro

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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