A Simple Roadmap To Be Your Authentic Self As An Entrepreneur, with Ben Laws

Dan Sullivan: Hi, this is Dan Sullivan. I'd like to welcome you to the Multiplier Mindset Podcast. In today's Multiplier Mindset interview, we have a great, great entrepreneur, just a great person by the name of Ben Laws. And Ben has four companies. He's in a smaller town north of Milwaukee in Wisconsin. This is just such a beautiful entrepreneurial story because he starts at 13 years old. I don't know what it's like in Wisconsin, but when you're 13 years old, you don't drive a truck. And so Ben talks about getting a job through his father's influence to mow the cemetery in his town. And that's his introduction to the entrepreneurial world. And you could just see that there was no going back to working for someone else. We all have to have jobs moving from our teenage years into the marketplace. But the thing that he went after right away, well, what is the job that allows me to be an entrepreneur? And there's a whole number of steps and we all have those same number of steps as entrepreneurs. But you could see at 13, he totally had the Multiplier Mindset. You know, he was already saying, I'm in charge of my own time. I'm in charge of the impact that I'm making on the public. I'm doing a great job, and I'm getting more and more opportunity from this. Rather than saying, you know, I'm going to go off to the best college, go to the best university, get my degree. 

He was at 13 where people coming out of graduate school from the university aren't there. Because they're just doing in their mid-20s what he's doing at 13. So when he had his first job, that was graduate school. Because he learned everything about what his life was going to be. And the thing about Ben that I find really amazing is his vision outward to find what is something that's not getting done for my clients or customers, what is it that they're not handling that I have the skill and I have the understanding that I can help them succeed? And there's a lot of misunderstandings about entrepreneurism for people who aren't entrepreneurs. And they say, well, all they're after is money. And I said, no, no, no. All they're after is freedom. Money happens to be one of the freedoms. 

We have in Strategic Coach, we have Four Freedoms that entrepreneurs can continually multiply in their life. Freedom of Time. And he gives a wonderful description of what happens to his overall life way, way beyond his original vision, where he is today. But where he is today is very, very small compared with where he's going in his life. So he has Freedom of Time. He's got Freedom of Money. He's got Freedom of Relationship, not only business relationship, but the most important relationship, which is with his family, with his partner in business and his partner in life and their children, their growing family. Ben has just mastered so many thinking tools in Strategic Coach. And I'll just let you in on a little secret. Ben has just become one of our coaches in addition to having a full family life and in addition to having four businesses with plans for a much bigger entrepreneurial future, a much bigger personal life. 

And all he does is come to every workshop in Strategic Coach and he learns new thinking tools. The more tools you learn, the greater that you multiply your freedoms. And the final one is Freedom of Purpose. So time, money, relationship, and purpose. These are the Four Freedoms. And all you do is every quarter you say, okay, how can I get more Freedom of Time at work? How can I get more freedom outside of work of time? How much more Freedom of Money that I can do to free myself up to get even more time? Who are the relationships that I have to have that grow my life? And what is my overall purpose in life? So Ben is in the top level of Strategic Coach after eight years in Strategic Coach, he's at our very, very top level. He's a marvelous contributor to the other entrepreneurs. And now he's one of our Strategic Coach coaches who do this with all the time that they've freed up. In the years ahead, he'll help hundreds of other entrepreneurs who joined the Strategic Coach, plus he's helping all the people in his marketplace. 

And this is just a very, very classic, textbook case of what happens to entrepreneurs who understand that if they take complete charge of their life, and instead of working for someone else and always being worried of working for people who don't know how to get solutions that he can get done, he just took charge of his life. And I'm just so pleased. And my greatest reward, I've been at this for 50 years now, my greatest pleasure is the kind of story that Ben Laws tells here about what the thinking tools in Strategic Coach do if you just come every quarter and you take a look at where you want to go next and you apply new tools to your progress that free up your time, your money, your relationships, and your purpose.

Ben Laws: My name is Ben Laws. I'm the CEO of multiple companies. I own a wealth coaching and wealth management firm with my wife. I also own an accounting firm with my wife, which I co-founded. I also own a digital video production company that helps entrepreneurs and founders do the art of value telling. And I'm about to actually launch a coaching company that helps entrepreneurs and founders become a category of one using experience. I think when I started to realize that I probably didn't belong in any sort of employee role was actually starting back when I started doing some jobs in high school. And I found myself constantly questioning why. You know, "Why does it have to be this way?" "Hey, if we just did it, like, this way..." 

So much so when other friends were getting jobs, you know, just doing the normal teenager things, I got my dad to represent me at a town hall where he actually put a bid in for me to actually go and do lawn mowing for one of the local cemeteries, which as a teenager felt like a lot of money. And I remember the freedom, and again, I was about 13 years old. I remember the freedom that I had when my dad actually allowed me to take the truck with the trailer and drive eight miles as a 13-year-old. Again, obviously, these are not things that I don't know if can be replicated today. But I was able to actually go by myself and do the cemetery, knowing that this was something that people were going to come and see, and just the gravity of doing a really good job and knowing that people would have immense appreciation for it. 

As I got into college, I started to realize that my path was not one of following people. I knew that rather than being the sheep is that I either wanted to be the sheepdog or the shepherd. I took the leap after I left college early. I realized that I view risk a lot differently than others. What seemed to me like a simple, single step forward of leaving college and going out into launch in terms of what was my first company, Evexia Wealth, a lot of other people had a really, really hard time being like, well, how could you do this? What happens if you fail? And I think that in retrospect, I never thought that I could fail. And I think that's when I realized that I was destined for being in the entrepreneurial world. 

I actually, in Dan's always like winning, right? You're always creating a winning game, is I actually viewed if I did fail, it is an actual win, is I figured if I was going to go out in a blaze of glory and fail, I was just going to come back to college, which for most people is most people's success. So that didn't seem like a real scary second place. So I think the lack of fear actually came from a lot of instances of where I failed. And so I did a lot of athletics growing up where I was really, really good. I was really naturally talented. But then as I continued to ascend, where I started playing with bigger fish who had equal talent, is that I had some opportunities where I failed and I had the opportunity to either go two ways: either number one, you know, be down and out about it, or realize that this was this incredible gift that was given to me of this opportunity to actually just get better and actually be in gratitude that the failure actually pointed out the opportunity for me to actually hone in and work my craft. 

You know, but it is interesting. I think a lot of people who are entrepreneurs realized when they were like four years old. You know, I've heard lots of stories, especially at Strategic Coach, where I knew I always wanted to own a business, and I had little bit of inklings of what it could be like to have freedom. My dad was a pastor where he set his own schedule. So I got to see him really for anytime throughout like a day, right? If need be. And so I remember being like, wow, that's really pretty neat. But I think the underlying piece where the confidence came from was from early age is I knew I wanted, I don't know if the word is I wanted to be great. I wanted to like have impact. When I looked at the people that I admired, they had changed the game, you know. So early on, right? I think a lot of young kids can ascertain, those least who can remember, is like Michael Jordan. There are all of these other superstars, but somehow he was doing something different that would just transcend it. And I remember going, boy, you know, I would like to do something that transcended, that, like, it was different. 

And that just fanned this flame in me that I just wanted to commit to that process of whatever that was. And I think that when I got to college, and originally it was like, hey, the success level was, hey, let's go to college, let's do college athletics. And then I did that and I realized, you know, this is not the level of greatness. This is not where I'm actually going to like, hey, I've arrived. And then when I left, when I got into this industry, the financial services industry, first year, almost got fired because I stopped doing the things that actually got me there and doing the things that I needed to do. But it was that almost getting fired because I wasn't doing what I needed to do that ignited this flame. And within a year, I was like top of our region. I was like top 100 in the company. 

And one of the things that was really important is that I also realized that it's a lot like in athletics. Records, right? Records are really great, but it's like when you get there, well then what? And what I started to find in this journey and actually what led me to Strategic Coach was I started realizing, hey, what all of these other pinnacles, these mountaintops, these summits that everyone said, hey, when you get there, you will have arrived, is I realized, were just like these empty, not really filling my heart with joy and knowing that, hey, next year, it just starts all over again. And in dealing with a lot of other business coaches, I found that everyone wanted to give me a silver bullet. And inevitably, I would reach their Ceiling of Complexity. Of where they have like, I've taken their silver bullet, and maybe it works, maybe it didn't work. 

But the common denominator when I started looking around me of other people, and I think this is actually a common thing that's happened throughout, is I started to look at where other people already done the work of finding the thing that actually works. Who are the people who have been successful? And around me in the financial services industry, a lot of the people who were just seemed not only successful, but full of quite frankly what I think the definition of success is like living abundantly, living joyfully were, all kept kind of repeating this word: "Oh, yeah, I use Coach. Oh, I use Coach." I'm like, well who's Strategic Coach? And they're like, oh, well, it's this company. You might've heard of them, Dan Sullivan. And so, you know, of course I go on YouTube and, you know, Dan Sullivan. And at the time, it seemed like this massive investment—excuse me, not investment. At the time, it seemed like this massive expense. The realization that it was an investment that has this unlimited return on investment came later. But that started back in 2005 where I started hearing this about Strategic Coach. 

Fast forward about 10 years, even though I'd heard, you know, our top guy at our company, he's like, yeah, I take half the year off and I continually grow like 20, 30 percent. And I'm going, OK, because he lived on the West Coast. I was like, oh, that's just because he has access to wealthy clients on the West Coast. And I actually went out to shadow him, and I started meeting some of his clients, and I realized, no, there may be some more wealth out there, but they are just like everyday people that they're working with. There must be something different. 

I remember going home and telling my wife, who was my co-founder at the time, I said, hey, I think I need to do this. I think I need to commit to going to Strategic Coach. She had gone with me out to go visit this advisor. She goes, yeah, I think you do. And at that time, I made the commitment that when I show up—and it's the same commitment I actually still do today, even though now that I've been through Signature level, you know, for a year, and then I went up to 10x level for six or seven years. And then I went to Free Zone level. I made the commitment that I was going to show up at 7:50 even though the class starts at 8:30 because I wanted to get a spot in the front and that every single person that came into there, I was going to introduce myself and I was going to ask them, why did they show up to Strategic Coach? And that has served me really, really well because of the fact that I think that it has allowed me to tap into other people's vision, their dreams, their "why," and be like, oh, I hadn't really thought about that. But I think, more importantly, it gave me even more conviction of who was actually going to be in the room. And that has served me ever since. 

I think one of the things that, just on that note of just retuning, when I used to think about my title, how I started this off, I said, I'm the CEO. And before, it used to be a lot of pride, like, I am the head of this organization. Look at where I've gone from leaving college early to now I'm the CEO. What's really interesting to me about this is that how I view our org charts is that it's not top-down. It's actually inverted. And the fact is that I just show up every single day looking to how can I be wildly helpful. And two things have happened. Number one, it is incredible to see the growth happening. I talked about this in my conversation with Shannon Waller. She said, what did you have to do to make the change in your team? I thought about it and I remember saying to her, well, I first started with myself. I was listening to this podcast the other day that said, where do you have the biggest leverage, pushing or pulling? And in the podcast, they make the case that it's actually pulling. When you pull people along, that's a lot more effective than pushing people along. 

And I just think that when you show up at Strategic Coach, you're going to actually learn to start with yourself. You're going to learn to become inspired and fascinated first with yourself of who you are and who you're becoming and where you want to go. And that is the thing you can't articulate. Hey, if you do one plus one, this is the two, right? There's no silver bullet, but just the craft of being fascinated and motivated with yourself. You are going to pull people along. You're going to go on this journey that literally, worst-case scenario, you're going to be so fascinated and so motivated with who you have become that that is the worst outcome of joining Strategic Coach. And if I would actually be able to fully articulate what that actually could have been, I would have signed up 10 years earlier. This is actually a big difference. When I started Coach, it was like, hey, you know, how can I get all this stuff done? And what's really interesting to me is I started to realize it has nothing to do with me. It really has everything to do, how can I be so wildly helpful to every single person that comes into my vicinity? And that Strategic Coach has built the ultimate trust of me knowing that the success, the things I'm wanting in life are just the natural outcomes of me just showing up in my authentic, unique way. 

It is, in my opinion, just an absolute joy. I mean, that's the crazy thing. That was one of the most unintended consequences that Strategic Coach had was that I went from four people on the team to now having like 20 people in one of the companies. And I look around, and I feel so relationship rich. I mean, to steal a phrase from one of our coaches, Chad Johnson, this relationship rich in the fact that I have now been able to give the gift to other people to allow them to be able to have a position they are fascinated and motivated by. And we get to all show up and say, this is a job, right? This is what we do professionally. It's so fascinating to me. And what I think it does is that whoever your end user is, your client is, they will feel that. They will understand, wait a second, there's something different here. 

It's interesting when I think about what is different now than when I started. I'm reflecting back on my first workshop and where, at the time, you know, the coach is walking you through it. In the first session, they do something Lifetime Extender. Going through it, and you can start to see how the transformation may or may not actually happen, what you thought it was and what's going to. But what I realized then, and it's fun for me to reflect back on now, because I remember when we did the group share, and they said, hey, what was your takeaway? And I said, I realized that Strategic Coach, they're going to give me a road map to joy. And I said, when I find that joy, all of these other successes that so many other people strive to, they are going to be the natural outcome of me actually finding this joy. 

And so when I look backwards now, when we were talking about the intro, what do we do? Eight years ago, if you would have said, hey, Ben, would you have time to be able to run four different companies, be in the process of writing a book, right on the precipice of actually getting my private pilot's license and looking to actually buy a plane, I would have said, there's no possible way that I can actually grow my existing company, do all those different things, and oh, by the way, stay married. And not only that, but also because I'm married to my co-founder, you think, okay, well, boy, that's going to put a lot of stress on. And the reality of it is, the more and more that I committed to Strategic Coach, the more and more I showed up, the more and more that I found that there was velocity, not just in business, but in my life. 

And so when I think of the velocity, right, those things that happened beforehand, you know, so I'm blessed. I have a daughter who will be turning 15. I have almost two-and-a- half-year-old and about to welcome my next little one, next baby Laws here, baby boy here in January. And I will tell you that I'm more present as a father now with my youngest than I was when my oldest was that age. I'm looking more forward to having more children because I am more patient. By the way, these are my wife's words. I'm more patient, I'm more empathetic, I'm more kind, and I also have a lot more time. Which is sort of interesting when you look back at what I just talked about. Four companies, getting my private pilot's license. I'm writing a book. You know, I'm down probably about like 40 pounds since I actually started at Strategic Coach. There is not one aspect of my life that hasn't been touched by Strategic Coach or impacted by Strategic Coach.