IAM1403 – Speaker, Author and International Radio Host Helps People Elevate Their Lives

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 Story: The difficulties that Sean experienced while still young, made him grow stronger and help more people through his company. His first business was in the entertainment company, DJing. Then found his purpose through mentoring other people in need.
• Business Service: Tailored made program/coaching/speaker.
• Secret Sauce: Specialize in event aftercare. Extra time with the people, connecting, and building relationships.
• 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 of gratitude (count 3 blessings 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

Episode Link: https://iamceo.co/2018/09/27/iam073-speaker-author-international-radio-host-helps-people-elevate-their-lives

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Transcription

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00:10 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEO's 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.

00:27 – Gresham Harkless

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 core. Sean, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:36 – Sean Douglas

Oh, thanks for having me, man. I'm honored.

00:38 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I truly appreciate you, Sean, for taking some time out. What I wanted to do was 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. 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 core. 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 fifty-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?

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01:38 – Sean Douglas

Dude, let's do this.

01:40 – Gresham Harkless

So I wanted to kinda 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.

01:46 – Sean Douglas

When I was in fourth grade, my older 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 liked doing my own thing. I got fired from my job. I tried to work at McDonald's for a little bit, and that didn't quite work out. I tried to work at this other job that didn't quite work out.

I just always wanted to be in business for myself. I joined the military and I see a need where there's they list the club and office club and all that on base. They need DJs. I'm like, well, I can do that. 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.

02:28 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. It's been obviously incredible that you've been able to have that experience and being 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 it seems like for the people that you work with. Is that correct? Absolutely.

02:45 – Sean Douglas

Yep. One hundred percent.

02:46 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, so I wanted to drill a little bit deeper to hear a little bit more about, like, how you serve the clients. How do you help these people that you work with?

02:53 – Sean Douglas

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 gotta target market. You gotta niche down. You gotta do this. Gotta do this. But back in two thousand four when I first started my first business or even when I was a kid, you know, yeah. So who do I serve? Well, if there's snow in the driveway, I'm knocking on their door. Right? Alright. 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, as a speaker, as a person playing music at a wedding, as a DJ, what am I willing to do more of? So I started talking with the clients. I started, like, what's your favorite songs? Or what's you know, what's this for you? And what does this look like? And how is 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. I took notes if I had an interaction that was amazing or gone bad. If I had a success here or a failure, I took notes on everything. And so, I figured out what I was gonna do more of 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 gonna 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? I have to answer this question.

And sometimes it's well, I know my target market or I niche down. Got it. It could 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. It's not gonna work. Does that make sense?

04:49 – Gresham Harkless

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 kinda like your differentiator, what you feel like sets you apart. You might already touched on that, but what do you feel is your secret sauce?

05:02 – Sean Douglas

As a speaker, how I differentiate myself is I specialize in event aftercare. A lot of speakers will show up, collect the paycheck, deliver their little bit, their one-hour deal, and then out. They didn't converse with them after their talk. They didn't even eat lunch with them. They do their bit. See you. I'm out. So what I do is I specialize in event aftercare where I have lunch with the people who were in my talk. Right? I have lunch with everybody there. I'm connecting with the event organizer. I'm building relationships months later. Right?

We connect on social media. We connect through email. Some people even have my cell phone number. They can just call me anytime. So people will grab my business cards, but that's a one-way communication. They grab my business card, and I'm hoping that they'll call me. I need to get their information as well because I know I'm gonna follow up, and I know I'm gonna call them. Right. So that's just one that's just one as a speaker. As a radio show host, so my show is on blog talk radio. 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 the radio show feel to it. And it's a live online show.

06:14 – Gresham Harkless

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 a book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

06:25 – Sean Douglas

Man, I, you know, I thought about this question. Man, I kinda, like, agonize over it. I'm like, there's so much. Like, you know what I mean? 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 gotta do. And, like, That sounds cool, but in a hack? There's a book called Play Bigger by Christopher Lochhead. It's how pirates, dreamers, and innovators create and dominate their own categories. 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 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 and go, oh my gosh. I didn't even you're right. I didn't even know I 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 what I mean? You condition the market to receive the unique problem that you created, and then you create the solution to solve that problem. Right?

So it's just like, you know, as being a disruptor, it's being an innovator, you know? So I talked to Jeff Hoffman, who's 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 can check myself, and I'm already here. 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 could book my own travel. Priceline.com was born. Do you see what I'm saying?

So he saw that. He's like, I missed a flight, and this is and so nobody was solving these problems. He says I'm 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. And that's all I did. That's exactly what it is. So there's 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 a motivational speaker. Why? Because that's what people outside of the industry always use. It's a motivational speaker when not really. Is it a transformational speaker? There's a business speaker and a sales speaker, but they just type in a motivational speaker. So I typed in a motivational speaker, got a bunch of keywords and all that, and downloaded 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 not what I care about.

What I care about is the people on Indeed who are putting out the job descriptions that are hiring for conference speakers. I want that decision-maker. That's who I wanna 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 podcast consultants, and health and wellness directors. So if I wanna 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 gonna email that person who put that job up and say, well, I'm not interested in that job.

Actually, I just wanna show you what to do. I'll consult with you on two bases, this, that, and the other, whatever. So instead of getting fifty thousand dollars a year for a full-time job, I'll show you how to do it for ten grand, and you can do it yourself. I'll consult with you. You know what I'm saying? And 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.

10:17 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And I love those CEO hacks, and I kinda see overlap in them 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 that they didn't even know was a problem rather than having to have fifty thousand dollars to hire somebody benefits, all of those things.

You are able to help them solve the problem, 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 from that. So I love that, and I love that CEO hack. So, now I wanna ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And the CEO nugget might be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice that you might have for entrepreneurs and business owners.

10:53 – Sean Douglas

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 it's based on experience. And it's like, dude, don't do that. And it's usually rooted in failure. Right? Like, don't do this because it's gonna suck. You know? So, dude, my nugget, man, I'm just an overachiever, so I'll give you two quick ones. Okay. My mentor, Brock Thomas, always drills it into us.

He says, say 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. Live a life of gratitude because this literally scientifically reduces anxiety, stress, depression, and loneliness, and those are some of the characteristics that we experience as entrepreneurs. Right?

Nobody gets us. We're an entrepreneur. Nobody gets us. Right? Well, duh, because you're like the top percentage of people that don't wanna live in a corporate freaking rat wheel. Right? The core is almost gonna get you. You know, we get anxious because we don't know where our next client's coming from. We don't know where this lead's gonna generate from, and we gotta have strategies, but that didn't work, and we're failing. And it's like, oh, it's super stressful. So just three blessings a day. Cut three blessings a day. Live a life of gratitude, and I'm telling you, it's gonna change your life.

12:28 – Gresham Harkless

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

12:42 – Sean Douglas

Yeah. It's putting it all on the line. You know? We hear a lot of times, you know, from Business Daily and, you know, entrepreneur.com and all these like, oh, the CEO is a freaking multibillionaire, but his employee gets, like, ten ninety-five an hour. You know? Dude, that's cool. But for me, a CEO is number one, investing in their people, 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 what I'm saying? It's it's cool to be a CEO, you know, of, like, a Fortune 5 hundred company or, like, Amazon or like, that that's great. 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. Like, 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, when you're the only employee. Like, you know what I'm saying? And then when you get three, four, five or six employees, but it seems like you start to just be like, oh, you guys got it. You guys got it. You know, 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 everybody else has got it. I'm gonna go toward Europe. Like, I still wanna live a life of freedom, but I still wanna make sure that my people know that I'm invested in them and invested in the company.

14:07 – Gresham Harkless

Makes perfect sense. And I yeah. I absolutely love that definition. So, Sean, 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. 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 ahold of you.

14:24 – Sean Douglas

Go make it happen. You know? Like like, stop the excuse. Like, man, I hear all the time, and it's so frustrating. Like, literally, like, during my active duty military time, like, I'm building businesses, like, sixty hours a week in the military, and I still find time to build three businesses. Like, you can't tell me you don't have time, you don't have money, you don't have the 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 have strategies that automate things.

I have speaking leads that come directly through my email because I set up Google alerts. Oh, there's another hack. Nobody even knows this. Do you know many people that I know that don't even set up Google alerts? Like, I get emails right to my phone that says conference speaker, call for speakers, call for 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 set up a look for everything.

I set one up for myself so I can see if I'm in the news. So, man, there's no like today, there's no excuse. You have YouTube, Google, pay for a mentor, pay for a freaking mentor that'll show you what to do. There's no excuse for you not to succeed. Like, there just isn't. So if you wanna know more about me and what I'm about, you can find me at www.thesuccesscorecorps.com. And I have a free Facebook group. Everybody kinda hangs out and enjoys, that. It's called the success core. That's it, man. That's that's what I got for you.

15:57 – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate it, Sean. 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 the world and truly appreciate it. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:09 – Sean Douglas

Thank you, man. I really appreciate you.

16:12- 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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