Business Advice & Data Driven Strategies for Success: Innovate with Robert Indries -4

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Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:00:00

Welcome to Authenticity Amplified, your resource for attracting and connecting to your ideal client. You found the right resource for mindset messaging, marketing, and podcasting for entrepreneurs. I'm your host, Shawna Rodrigues, a fellow entrepreneur and founder of Authentic Connections Podcasting Network. I'm excited to learn alongside you today in our conversation with Robert. Hope I said that right. He's from a small town in Transylvania, Romania, and I appreciate that his family told him early on that if you want to learn, you can learn at any school. He's taken this to heart and has translated from learning to achievement. He has traveled to more than 17 countries and generated over 500,000,000 in business revenue for his clients.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:00:43

And I am so excited from all that we have to learn from you today, Robert. Thank you for being here.

Robert Indries [: 00:00:48

Thank you for having me. I'm equally excited.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:00:50

Go ahead. We let we prefer it that way. So tell me about a person in your life who has been the most supportive of you reaching your goals and your dreams, and how has that made a difference for you?

Robert Indries [: 00:01:02

I have been very fortunate to have many people supporting me, on this journey. It would be unfair to mention only 1. So I've, brought in a ton of support from my mother, as far as I can remember, my grandfather and grandmother, from my father, from my aunt. My aunt, actually, when I was young, this is something almost no one knows, I would say things like, I can't do that, and should say, there's nothing you can do. And I kid you not. I've heard that thousands and thousands of times. She told me there's nothing you can do. And and when you're young, you just say, no.

Robert Indries [: 00:01:41

I can't jump that high. I can't do this. I can't whatever. You know? Yeah. You're like, no. There's nothing you can do. So very, very helpful. And I don't even think she knew what she was doing.

Robert Indries [: 00:01:50

Right? She was just Yeah. You know, annoyed that I felt I have a limitation. I was like, no. You don't. Don't say that. Right? She has helped me a lot. I've had a lot of school teachers. There are some school teachers that are in it because they're lazy and they don't wanna have a a a real career. Right? They just wanna, you know, pretend that that they're doing something with their lives. And then there's the teachers that actually want to be teachers, right, that really give their all Really give their to their students. So I have the maybe, like, a dozen of those during, you know, my schooling years, and they really make a difference.

Robert Indries [: 00:02:24

So those teachers, gosh, godsend. You know, literally, like, they they really make you fall in love with education, make you fall in love with, you know, whatever it is that they're teaching and many other parts of life. I've had a big impact by many of the people that write books and, you know, have written books or have written courses, or I've gone to seminars and so on. I kid you not. 100, probably thousands of people have left a positive impact on my life until now, and I'm just so grateful to have had that experience. And you can pay $20 and have someone's entire life experience in a few pages just written down. And people do not understand how valuable that is. Like, I can literally take any book.

Robert Indries [: 00:03:11

Basically, I can take Principles, for example, by Ray Dalio. I have it here behind me. 300 pages of pure wealth, like, literally, like, you can make you a billionaire in one lifetime. Right? And so like that, there are so, so, so many other books out there and so many other courses, so many other inspirational people, and I've met many of them. I've loved shaking hands with them. Interestingly enough, when you actually meet one of your idols, they're just such normal people. It's shocking. It's almost disappointing when you see them.

Robert Indries [: 00:03:45

You shake their hand. They're like, oh, they're smaller than me. I don't know. It's just something like, you look at them, and they're just such a normal guy or or a woman or whatever. And then you realize, like, when you meet many of your idols, you're like, the only thing that makes the difference is how you use your time. That's it's just like, do you use your time binge watching Netflix, or you do you use your time creating content? Or what do you use your time for? Like, it's it just falls down to that, because at the end of the day, these are not, you know, gods on pedestals. Right? They're they're just literal human beings, and I I hope everyone listening to this has the chance to meet at least one of their idols in their life just so that they can see how normal human beings they are. And then they shift they get that perspective shift that I got many years ago.

Robert Indries [: 00:04:39

They did it. I could do it, obviously. Let me just do more, and then I can achieve their results. Yeah.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:04:46

Yeah. So the reason I love that you put that quote in there about, like, you can learn, you know, at any school, basically, or whatever else, because that concept that, like, your what you bring to it is just as important as what is available to you.

Robert Indries [: 00:04:58

Yes.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:04:58

And that concept is such a powerful thing. And I have you heard of the movie Good Will Hunting?

Robert Indries [: 00:05:03

I did. Should I walk?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:05:04

Yeah. Yeah. So I love that that movie, that concept of the character that Matt Damon played, while hunting. His character, like, had this concept of, like, you could get any knowledge you want from Okay. From Late Fees the Library. Like, you can any book you want to learn, anything you want to find out, you don't have to go to some Harvard education Yeah. Or MIT or some fancy school. You can you can learn anything you want to if you just find the knowledge and you decide to learn it, you can learn it.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:05:28

So it's what Yeah. You want for yourself is what matters more than what's available to you.

Robert Indries [: 00:05:32

Everything's online. Everything you can find. Every book, every course, every mentor. Right? There's so much amazing content out there. Just pick your poison, you know. Like, let's just get whatever it is you want.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:05:44

Yes. I just learned about how, like, MIT has free courses available that you can just watch.

Robert Indries [: 00:05:49

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. 100 of hours. On yes. They launched it a few years ago.

Robert Indries [: 00:05:54

Yes.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:05:54

That's amazing. So all the things that are available too, if you just decide for yourself that you want to achieve that. So I love that. So and I'm curious to tie it in because we also like, as well as our little opening question, we also have, like, this opening thing about, like, what is some of the best advice that you've received, which might just tie to what we've already talked about, that you feel has been most powerful for you on your journey in business and in entrepreneurship or that you would offer to entrepreneurs?

Robert Indries [: 00:06:19

Oh, I can give you a few. One thing that has shifted my world significantly, came from one of my mentors, Jack Canfield. He has written a book on the principles, of success. And the very first principle is the most important one. I typically don't tell people what that is so that they go out and get the book. But you asked me, so this is the advice the first principle, gives you. And that is to take 100% responsibility for everything in your life. Everything.

Robert Indries [: 00:06:56

Every single thing. And so if I ask sometimes I ask people on coaching calls. I don't do coaching calls for a while now. I've done 100 and 100 and 100 of them, over a 1000 coaching calls until now. And something I asked people at the beginning is, in your relationship with your spouse, what's the percentage of responsibility that you have to make that relationship work? And so I have various degrees of answers. Some people say 5050. It's 50% me, 50% them. Okay.

Robert Indries [: 00:07:27

Acceptable. Other people say that are closer to high achievement, they say 99%. Right? Because 99% me, but there's that 1% them that I don't I can't control. Right? It's a little bit them. And then I tell everyone that answers that they're wrong because you are 100% responsible for how your relationship goes. 100%. And they can say, well, Robert, they might have a horrible day and just yell at me for no reason. Like, that's when they need you most.

Robert Indries [: 00:07:59

That is exactly when they need you. When they're yelling at you at the top of their lungs and they can't stand something that's in their life right now, that's when you need to calm the f down and then look at them and say, honey, how can I help you today? Do you all need a hug, or do you do you need me to do something? Do you wanna eat some chocolate? You know, like, how can I be of service to you right now? How can I be there for you right now in this moment of need? Because when you marry someone or even if you don't, the same principles should apply, which is in good and in bad. The good days and in bad days. Right? And guess what? This is what bad looks like when someone's yelling at you and you're not to blame. That's what that looks like. And so that is the moment where you need to cut them some slack and say, I understand you're upset. They can go to the other room until you calm down. But before I do that, can I help you with anything at all? Right? And so 100% responsibility.

Robert Indries [: 00:09:00

100%. But this one piece of advice has helped me so much. And he gives an example. In a course, in a seminar that he went to, people were given files, folders, right, in which they had paper, working sheets. And so the files were of the olders were 3 colors, red, blue, and yellow. And so he got the yellow one, and the woman beside her got blue. And when he got the folder, because they were just given them randomly, he remembers himself saying, oh, I hate yellow. I am so upset I got yellow.

Robert Indries [: 00:09:38

And then the person that was the speaker says, you need to take responsibility for changing your life, doing everything in your life the exact way you want it to be. So if you got the folder that's a color that you don't like, change it with someone else now. And he looked at the woman to his left, and he's like, would you like a yellow folder? He's like, oh, yes. I love yellow. Could I give you the blue one? That's it. That and then he said from that point in time, it shifted his life. If something in his life was not exactly the way he wanted to, he would then take 100% responsibility to change it that it is that way. So now I'm not saying this for anyone that's super ambitious out there for you to go out and create a bubble for yourself.

Robert Indries [: 00:10:23

Right? So if the pillow isn't exactly the right size, smell, and texture, you can't sleep well at night. No. No. No. No. You know, don't avoid be becoming a pillow connoisseur. Right? You should be able to sleep on a mattress if you have to. Right? So don't become that fancy.

Robert Indries [: 00:10:39

We don't recommend that. Or at least my wife and I, you know if we, for some reason, sleep in a 2 star hotel, so be it. We're gonna sleep well. We're gonna wake up in the morning and then be, you know, on with our lives. What I'm talking about is if there are things in your business, like client success isn't where you want it to be, lead generation isn't where you want it to be, something isn't where you want it to be, stop pointing at your staff. Stop pointing at your systems. Stop pointing at the government. Stop pointing at the economy.

Robert Indries [: 00:11:08

Stop pointing at anything else and realize that you're 100% responsible for everything in your life, good and bad. Everything good in your life, your responsibility. Everything bad in your life, your responsibility. And so that one thing helped me so, so, so much. And there are obviously many other things that, you know, I can say around, for example, in terms of marketing to trust data instead of anything else.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:11:33

Yeah.

Robert Indries [: 00:11:33

Because everyone's like, Robert, could you please help me with this? Right? And then I write them, for example, email copy. And then they read it and like, oh my god, Robert. That's so amazing. I'm like, what's amazing about it? The text on the paper? Send it to a 100 people. See if anyone replied. If 0 replies, it's excuse me. It's a shitty, you know, email sequence because it didn't work. Right? You told me your audience.

Robert Indries [: 00:11:59

You told me your product. You told me the medium. I wrote you the script. You send the script, and out of 100 people, not even one bothered to reply. That means you could potentially write a better script. Data tells you you should be iterating. You should be pivoting. You should be doing more.

Robert Indries [: 00:12:17

You either reach out to different people, different market, different script, different subject line, different whatever. So trust the data whenever you do business. Data will tell you the truth. Whatever you believe is the truth doesn't matter. It's your bubble. I'm sorry to say. I'm sorry to break your bubble. It's not true.

Robert Indries [: 00:12:35

Data is reality. Do you own a $1,000,000 business or a $100,000,000 business? Okay. You own a $1,000,000 business. Act like it. Right? Don't act like you have a 100 staff and you can just delegate everything. You need, potentially, sometimes to roll up your sleeves and get to work. Right? And because that's where you are, you're a tiny business. And I'm sorry if you're a $1,000,000, you're tiny.

Robert Indries [: 00:12:58

You're as you're an amp compared to, you know, the Apple past $1,000,000,000. I don't know if anyone knows, but that's a a $1,000,000,000. That's a $1,000,000,000. Right? It's like a $1,000,000,000,000 in valuation. And or what what's their name? Amazon passed a 1,000,000 in headcount. Right? 2nd largest company on the planet, 1,200,000 staff. There are tons of countries that are smaller than Amazon is as a global company right now. Right? So you're not them, probably, if you're listening to this.

Robert Indries [: 00:13:31

Right? You might be Jeff Bezos listening to this. Hopefully.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:13:34

You'll never know.

Robert Indries [: 00:13:35

Pleased to meet you. You know?

Robert Indries [: 00:13:37

That's all I can say. Otherwise, if you're like all of us, right, who have 6 or 7 figure businesses, 8 figure businesses, some of us, right, then you're still very small. You're still considered an SMB until you have, like, over a 100,000,000 or over a quarter 1,000,000,000. You're still an SMB. So within this realm, it's so important that you trust data in every single thing you do. When you're larger, you can afford to play around with research and development, to play around with things that you don't know, that, you know, that you're just testing and so on, because you can allocate $1,000,000,000 for it. I'm not even exaggerating. Like, a 1,000,000,000.

Robert Indries [: 00:14:16

Like, more money than, you know, a 100 listeners will make in their entire lifetime combined.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:14:21

Yes.

Robert Indries [: 00:14:21

Right? That's how much an enterprise level entity can dedicate in 1 year towards just testing stuff. Right? And so until you get there, trust the data and be super focused on that because you can't afford, you know, to waste $20,000, a $100,000, or whatever to be mindful of that. It doesn't mean you won't fail. Right? We have, for example, a client that a few years ago, we worked for them. I think we're still working for them or something like that. But at the beginning, I remember the 1st 3 months we were doing b to b lead generation for them. In 3 months, I think we got them 3 leads.

Robert Indries [: 00:15:01

It was horrible. It was so bad. We were sweating, and it was, like, crazy. Like, we couldn't understand why it didn't work. And then we kept changing and changing and changing and changing thing. And at one point, we said, let's change something drastically. And we changed something drastically at the end of month 3. I kid you not.

Robert Indries [: 00:15:22

By the end of month 4, we generated 60 leads in 1 month. Wow. We generated, on average, 3 leads per day, per working day, compared to 3 leads per quarter. It was a massive change. But it took us 3 months of constant changing and trying and trying and trying. So if they would have stopped our arrangement in month 3, they couldn't because we have year long arrangements. But let's say if they could have, right, legally, if they would have stopped it at 3 months, that's it. They would have just lost $15,000 or whatever they paid.

Robert Indries [: 00:15:58

You know? Yeah. However, because they were in a year long contract, and we tell them we're not in the gig economy. We don't care about you know, if you want to hire a freelancer, go to Upwork. We're not that. We take businesses from 4,000,000 to 8,000,000, from 8,000,000 to 14,000,000, from 14,000,000 to 20,000,000. True stories. Right?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:16:17

Yeah.

Robert Indries [: 00:16:17

This is what we do. And you don't do that in 3 months. You do that in years or multiple years or whatever, and so you build systems. We have a lot of things that we do. So, basically, with $15,000, they got 3 leads. But with $20,000, they got 63 lead. And this is what changes. This is literally the hockey stick effect.

Robert Indries [: 00:16:40

If you keep doing it over and over and over again, you eventually figure it out. Because you have so much data of what not to do. Eventually, you will do something you should do. Right? So that's how it works.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:16:53

Well, I think that's an excellent lesson for entrepreneurs of it takes time. You need to pay attention to the data, and you need to keep at it. Because I think that there's that thing of, like, you give up at month 3. You give up at, you know, week 7. You give up at this point before you get that hockey stick effect, and it finally takes off.

Robert Indries [: 00:17:13

I do have one thing to mention. It doesn't take time. It takes work. So you can be successful in week 1. Like, you can nail the target, the script, the medium. Like, you can nail everything in the very first time, and you can. And you can continue on that pattern. However, let me tell you a little funny metaphor.

Robert Indries [: 00:17:37

Yes. A 100 monkeys in a line. Right?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:17:39

Uh-huh.

Robert Indries [: 00:17:40

They have one of those little sticks that has a cup on the top and a little ball with a string on it. And so you need to do like, you need to basically shake that, like or or throw it so that the little ball gets into the cup. Right? And then you throw it down and then you do it again. Oh. So it's a it's a little game, you know, that children can play to on their dexterity. Right? Okay. So out of those 100 monkeys, they that try this, they will there will be 1 monkey that manages to do it 20 times in a row or whatever. Right? From the very first time.

Robert Indries [: 00:18:14

They just figure it out and they just do it. They do it 20 times in a row. At the end of those 20 times, the monkey will write a book on how to do it. They will do a podcast on how to do it. Right? They will go on shows. They will tell the world of the perfect way, you know, to swing that little ball to so that you get it there. That's what that monkey will do. And that's what every single guru out there is.

Robert Indries [: 00:18:39

They're a monkey that managed to do something correctly once in one industry, and now they're talking about it like this is the way of doing it. And guess what? Guess what? You do their way exactly the way they tell you, and it doesn't work. Because you have a different stick. It's a different ball. It's a different rope. Their length of the rope is different. You don't have the same toy. They have their toy, which was whatever, x centimeters and x cup and x ball and whatever.

Robert Indries [: 00:19:08

And so if you use the exact same strategy, it's not gonna work. Right?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:19:12

Yes. So Yes.

Robert Indries [: 00:19:13

It doesn't matter how many books the monkey writes. It's still a monkey writing books that work. I don't wanna be disrespectful to all of the amazing people writing books. Yes. Truly amazing. But that doesn't mean that this works every single time. And I listened to an episode on another podcast that you have, right, in which that person said that in the book, I have 22, I remember, tactics on how to do this. And they said there's a tool for every situation.

Robert Indries [: 00:19:43

And so if you have a specific situation and you use a hammer instead of a screwdriver, right, might not work because you used the wrong tool. And so that's why she gives you 20 different strategies. Right?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:19:55

Yes.

Robert Indries [: 00:19:56

And so that's the real world. And so I love people that think like that and say, hey. This is the philosophy. This is what worked. And so now please do it your way. And the way to do it your way is to trust data. That's it.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:20:10

Yes. That's brilliant to be able to recognize that you need a toolbox, and your data will tell you if it's actually working because you might be using that screw. Because even, like, going back to the toolbox analogy, like, if you've ever, like, tried to hang up a picture and people, like, oh, you just put a nail on the wall. Well, if you put the nail on the wall and the nail the wall is too thin, like, that nail is just gonna fall right back out. Like, you had to put it into a stud, or you had to have a thing that hooks behind the wall. Like, every wall needs something different. And so you go into a project to hang a picture on the wall. And I've lived a lot of places, and there's different walls based on what year that building was built and where you're trying to put it and if there's a stud there or not.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:20:47

And so it depends. It changes every time. So when you go to put that nail on the wall, you'll learn quickly if it's working or not.

Robert Indries [: 00:20:55

Yes.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:20:55

So gotta use the data. I like that. I definitely like that. So as you've worked because you've worked, like, internationally with a lot of different folks. What do you feel like is the common challenge that entrepreneurs and people in business have with connecting to their audience and finding their market?

Robert Indries [: 00:21:13

A few things. Number 1, one of the most important things that I feel 99.9 people fail at is they do not actually talk to their market. They think they know their market, but they don't actually talk to them. I cannot tell you the 100 of times I've hopped on calls with entrepreneurs, successful businesses, sometimes, you know, 8 figure businesses, and ask them, when's the last time you talked to your client? Like, someone that just signed up last month. And they're like, I can't remember the last time I talked to them. And how do you expect you keep running your business for the long run if you are losing sight of how your clients are adapting? Right? Like, because they're all evolving. All of them are evolving. And, you know, if you have a specific niche and a specific client type, guess what? At one point, they're gonna grow old, and the new generation will not be marketed to in the same way.

Robert Indries [: 00:22:10

I'm sorry to break your bubble again. Right? But this happens over and over and over again to companies. The very good example is Kodak. Kodak literally invented the virtual or the digital camera before Sony. Right? Literally yes. They you can look at it up in history. But because all of their manufacturing plants were building those foils on which you print, they did not want to release it to the world, which ultimately ended up in them going bankrupt a few years after that. One of the biggest companies on the planet went bankrupt because they invented the next generation of their tool and they did not want to bring it to the world.

Robert Indries [: 00:22:52

Yeah?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:22:52

Wow. That is amazing. Well, especially right now, I feel like the AI tools and the AI piece and individuals trying to figure out how that fits into their market and their tools and the work they're doing is this challenge. And you have to embrace, like, how it fits with what you're doing. Otherwise, you will be left behind because it is such an important tool.

Robert Indries [: 00:23:15

Yes. Yeah. It's like the digital camera in the that analogy. It's like everyone will move to digital. It's not not an exception. It's like expecting people to rock walk around in 2023 with the Walkman, if you ever remember those. Right?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:23:29

Yes. I do.

Robert Indries [: 00:23:30

CD player and so on and whatever. Like, some of the people listening to this might have no idea what I'm talking about.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:23:36

No clue. No clue.

Robert Indries [: 00:23:37

But but it literally, you have to carry around CDs with you if you wanted to change your music. I kid you not. That was a reality, you know, 20 years ago. Right? Now you wouldn't even think of even downloading music because you have Internet everywhere you go, and you just literally can listen to it, on that. Right? And it takes, what, half a second for entire megabytes of data to come from a satellite to your phone.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:24:06

And you stream it now. Look. I don't even buy any of it. I have a streaming service that has all of it accessible to me, so I don't buy any of it. Yeah. Exactly. We were just talking about literally, like, 2 nights ago, I was joking about some a friend of mine whose wedding I was and the guy that she married, he had, like, a a100 well, it was more than a100. It was like this huge disc changer which was a monstrosity because it was huge.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:24:28

But he had no clue where any of the discs were. And so I thought it was the stupidest thing ever. He spent all this money and he was so impressed with this tool because we were, like, we were young. We were, like, in high school, and we had it. Yeah. But he had this, like and all these exchanges. I'm, like, well, I wanna listen to this song. He's, like, well, I don't know where that song is.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:24:42

I'm, like, what's the point of your player? Like, this is stupid. I mean, I have, like, like, a 5 disc changer, and then I knew which 5 discs were in it. But, like, why have a 100, 200? I don't it was, like, it it was, like, 200. It was ridiculous. So, like, but now, you just type in the song you want, and it pops up. And then it made sense to have, like, all of it available. But then you had to have, like, this monstrosity. We could even, like, I own, like, thousands of discs, and they're all this big changer, but you don't know where anything is because there was no way to tell what was on any of the disks even if he could change them all.

Robert Indries [: 00:25:10

So I'll give you I'll give you 3 more examples. A lot of people know about Blockbuster. They were there. They could have built Netflix. Netflix did not have to exist. We could be watching Blockbuster right now. But because they did not want to evolve, they had all of the money, all of the resources, all of the connection, everything, everything. Blockbuster had everything necessary to build Netflix, and they said, no.

Robert Indries [: 00:25:36

We want to stay retail. Okay. Well, then you will go extinct retail. That's fine.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:25:41

Actually, Robert, I have to tell you an important detail. The town I live in, I live in Bend, Oregon, we have the last existing blockbuster in the town that I live in.

Robert Indries [: 00:25:50

Oh.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:25:50

There is one. They're not extinct. They're not extinct. There is one in the town that I live in Bend, Oregon. This is the last existing blockbuster. The last one in the world.

Robert Indries [: 00:25:59

Everyone learns something. You know?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:26:01

Yes. You get to know this little piece of trivia for the next time you're at a pub and they have, like, that trivia night. You know the last existing blockbusters in Bend, Oregon. So

Robert Indries [: 00:26:09

There's so many so many, examples.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:26:13

It's an exciting point of recognizing that if you hold on to it, you can find a way of keeping that. Like, we do still need Kodak paper, but you need to, like, scale that way down and scale up what the next thing is. Otherwise, you're gonna, like, lose marketing.

Robert Indries [: 00:26:25

That was same with your marketing. That was the point. Right? That was what we're thinking. You might have figured out something that works amazingly well. Get that revenue and then dedicate 10% of that to figuring out another channel, another column on which your business can, you know, basically live on.

Robert Indries [: 00:26:43

Because if you only have one, you're already in danger. If you have 10 things at work for several different markets, you know, selling different products and so on, amazing. The chances of you going under are very small because if you lose one of those, you still have the other 9. Right? But if you have just 1, already becomes a huge problem.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:27:02

Yes. Exactly. So when you're starting out, like, because I know you work with really big businesses. When you're starting out, like, do you recommend trying to, like, plant those multiple seeds, or do you recommend, like, building up one thing and then moving to the next and building up and moving to the next? Or do you wanna plant those multiple seeds we need from the start?

Robert Indries [: 00:27:21

So very easy answer. Have one that works. 100%. Have one. Once it works, keep that running, and then do something else on the side. So don't do multiple things that don't work uselessly. You can try them as I'm trying this, I'm trying this, I'm trying this until one of them works, and then you do that one. So, for example, let's say you want to generate leads on YouTube, for example.

Robert Indries [: 00:27:49

Right? And so then you start posting on YouTube. Well, guess what? Your first video will get how many views? 0. Or maybe your mom will see it, so that's 1.

Robert Indries [: 00:27:56

Right? And so so but that's basically it. No one will actually see your video. Please understand. No one in your target audience will actually see your video, statistically speaking. If you get incredibly lucky, your full first video goes viral for some odd reason, right, you're 1 in a 1000000. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that. So the chances of that happening are close to impossible.

Robert Indries [: 00:28:19

So you'll have to put out maybe 20 to 50 video up until you start reaching your ideal clients that may or may not reach out to you if you have good conversion rate optimization strategies in the video and in the description of the video. Right? And then the landing page or whatever else. Right? So there's a lot to do there, and so you can't expect for it to work. However, if you're diligent, again, that's why I come back to what you said. It takes time. It doesn't take time. It takes diligence. So you can, for example, post a video a day or 2 videos a day.

Robert Indries [: 00:28:56

Right? You can be very diligent, very like, I really wanna make YouTube work like, what's that guy's name? MrBeast. He said, I want to be the number one most successful YouTuber on the planet. And he diligently worked on it every single day, like, 5 years. He is one of the biggest. I don't know if he's bigger than PewDiePie, but definitely, you know, fastest growing channel on YouTube. Right? So if you want something, you can be diligent towards it, and you can achieve that goal. Doesn't take time, but it does take diligence a lot of it.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:29:26

Yes. And, yes, those 2 can kind of equate each other sometimes.

Robert Indries [: 00:29:31

Especially if you if you have a very holistic view of life and everyday you want to spend time on your health, spend time with your spouse, spend time on reading, spend time on whatever, and you only have a limited not number of hours that you can do, like, let's say you could only do, in that example, 3 hours of YouTube a day, then it's gonna take a long time, right, for you to actually see any form of success if you only do 3 hours a day. Right? It let's say you need best case scenario, you need 200 hours or 300 hours. So that that's, 100 days. If that's workdays, you need 5 months to get there. So in 5 months, you might get your first lead and then start having predictable lead flow weekly from there. Right? And so that's the reality of where we are.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:30:18

Yes. So one thing in our conversations, I've been very impressed at how much you are taking in information, learning, balancing, as well as having outputs and growing and doing as well. So you have this great balance of, like, learning and making sure you get all this knowledge that you can apply to the work that you do. How do you manage to fit those pieces in? You have a great relationship. You have this thriving business, and you also are constantly learning and growing and applying those things.

Robert Indries [: 00:30:46

So two things that helped me to do that. Number 1, I'm a civil engineer. So I have an engineering background. I've built many dozens of things so far, and I'm very, very happy. It's what I love doing most. It's I'm very geeky. Maybe it doesn't look like it, but I I am. I geek out on stuff all the time.

Robert Indries [: 00:31:05

You can see the top shelf of this, but I have a group there. I have a. Right? I have, you know, like, stuff like that. So, basically, in school, everyone that's an engineer will tell you the same thing. You had a challenge, like an equation, and then you were given a formula. That this is the formula on how to solve this. Figure it out. And then you use that formula until you figure it out.

Robert Indries [: 00:31:28

Until you succeed, you use that formula. And so in my engineering brain, I'm like, life is the same way. Right? If I find a formula on how to love my wife best, I will apply that formula, see if it works. If it works, I'll keep applying the formula all the time. Right? And so if I see a challenge let's say the challenge is it's difficult to manage my business. Right? Many moving cogs, so many things. By the way, we currently our portfolio has 8 businesses in it. Right? So I'm not managing 1 business.

Robert Indries [: 00:32:02

I own 8. Right? And so I feel I figured this stuff out by now. Let's say we have an issue with x in operations. It's okay. This is the issue. I didn't go out. I study the solution. I study.

Robert Indries [: 00:32:15

I find the formula for how to fix it. I then immediately apply the formula because that's what we learned in school, and everyone learns this in school. You have an equation. You have a formula. Apply it. I just apply it. Almost no one applies it. They go on this learning spree on YouTube or whatever.

Robert Indries [: 00:32:31

They write down all of these things, and then they don't apply what they've learned. So application of the formula is the most important part that you apply and you see what results you get. You get data, right, based on the application of the formula. And then based on that data, you take your insights. You adjust the formula a little bit. Again, you adjust the strategy that the monkey, you know, has written, you know, 5 years ago and so on and so forth. So you have that, and then you just go from there and just keep applying formula after formula after formula. So that's 1.

Robert Indries [: 00:33:06

And then the second thing that helps me a lot is that I have come to terms with the fact that I'm happy being boring. Very, very happy being boring. If I tell people how many countries I've been to, how many people I've seen, how many things I've done, you know, from parasailing to walking on the bottom of the ocean, you know, like, just touching fish like that and so on and so forth to ziplining for the longest zipline in the world. That's, like, I think, 2 kilometers, so a little over a mile from one mountain to the next. And so on and so, like, just crazy thing. We're on team Lamborghini last year in, the Red Bull DTM in Austria. Right? It was so cool. Everyone was taking pictures of us.

Robert Indries [: 00:33:52

We were in with the with everyone, and I was never on this side of the picture taking thing. You know, like, everyone was just taking pictures. I was there. And I think I looked so stupid because I had no idea of half of the things that were going on. But it was so cool to see the cars, to talk to the driver, to talk to the coach. Right? Yeah. The coach the coach we had for team Lamborghini, he won Le Mans twice. Right? Twice.

Robert Indries [: 00:34:16

It's just, like, impossible to win it once. The guy won it twice. You know? It's cool. Very cool. So everyone would say, gosh. I already have such an exciting life. However, I don't define that as excitement. I define that as alignment with my purpose, alignment of what I want to do.

Robert Indries [: 00:34:33

I'm very comfortable being boring. I'm very comfortable working out every single day. I'm very comfortable cuddling with my wife every single day. I'm very happy going on walks. Right? I'm very happy eating the same food, the same healthy food all the time all the time all the time. Right? I'm very happy drinking water all the time all the time all the time. Right? I do not need alcohol. Right? I do not need pizzas.

Robert Indries [: 00:34:58

I do not need parties. I do not need, you know, anything eccentric. I do not I do not need the Lamborghini. I can be on team Lamborghini. I I love the excitement of the racecourse and so on and so forth. I don't need to own one to feel anything. Right? It it's I'm very happy being boring. Right? I drive.

Robert Indries [: 00:35:20

This is a shock. This might be a shock. Drum roll. I drive a Ford. If it's a full option Ford, it's not cheap, but it's a Ford. Right? And so that's intentional. And so will I probably, at one point, drive something else and buy myself something more? Yes. When maybe I'll make 10,000,000 a year, not 10,000,000 in I don't know how much time.

Robert Indries [: 00:35:42

Right? We passed 10,000,000 a little over a year ago. Right? So we're very happy with that. And so I wanna get to consistency. I wanna get to a 100,000,000 and so on and so forth. So when I get to a 100,000,000, can I buy myself a car that's maybe a quarter million? Maybe. I don't know. Let me be there, and then I'll tell you what I feel like. But if I have $20,000,000 of discretionary cash lying around, I might splurge.

Robert Indries [: 00:36:08

But I'm so happy being boring. I do not need anything that I don't consider important. So the way this helps me is because I only have 4 things I care about. Number 1, and it they're in this order. Number 1 is my resolve. My resolve, I define as my discipline, my calmness, my stoic way of being, you know, and so on and so forth, how relaxed I am, how calculated I am, how loving I am. And so that's my resolve. Most people get this wrong because they're being led by their cravings, by their, you know, instincts, by their whatever.

Robert Indries [: 00:36:45

Right? And here I am just calculating everything I wanna calculate. My life is exactly the way I want it to right now in time. And then if I want something else, I go for that something else. Right? So that's my result, number 1. Number 2 is my career. Right? Focus on my career, number 2. So that's the way I add value to society, the impact I have. You know, I do a lot of charity work and so on.

Robert Indries [: 00:37:08

Number 3 is my family, so my wife. And 90% of the family is my wife. And then 10% is, you know, my mom, her mom, my father, you know, brother, and so on and so forth. So I already told my wife she's number 3 and she perfectly understands because she understands me and we love one another deeply. However, I can tell you, my wife being number 3, she gets so much more attention, so much more love than almost everyone else that says that my family is number 1, and yet they go out to beers with their friends on a Friday evening for 4 hours. Right? I don't do that. I spend time with my wife during that same time frame. Right? Mhmm.

Robert Indries [: 00:37:46

So even though she's number 3 because I only have 4 things I care about. Number 4 is my health, by the way. Right? So my health comes after my career, comes after my wife. If I have a workout to do in the morning, but my wife says that I feel anxious about the day, you know, I'm not feeling okay, I feel tired, I'm going to cuddle her to death for an hour, right, just so she feels loved, she feels tempered. Like, I ask, like, can I bring you something? You know? Can I make the right? I will sacrifice my health for her because I've taken that decision. So I will work out later. Likewise, if I have a meeting like, let's say, I have date night with, my wife every week, typically on Wednesdays. If an important meeting I have on that Wednesday, I'll say, my dear, this has just come up.

Robert Indries [: 00:38:40

Can we please move our date night to Tuesday or Thursday? And she's very good with those things because she knows she is a priority. She's one of my top 4. I only have 4 priorities every single week. But she's my in my top 4. So she knows that if I can't do Wednesday, I'm gonna do a Tuesday or Thursday or whatever. Right? And so that's basically it. And so that's how I juggle it because I don't have 20 things I focus on. I only have 4.

Robert Indries [: 00:39:06

Right? And because I only have 4, I make sure, okay, what can I do this week to improve my result? Okay. Well, I can listen to this podcast episode. I can journal about this. I can meditate about that. I can whatever I can do to improve my result. What can I do to move the needle in my businesses? Well, I could do this. I could do talk to that investor. I could talk to this client.

Robert Indries [: 00:39:22

I can Well, I could do this. I could talk to that investor. I could talk to this client. I can write this SOP. I can whatever I can do this week to move the needle. What can I do to love my wife? I typically come up with at least 5 things every week. Right? Because there are 5 love languages, so I wanna love her in all of them. And then what can I do for my health? Right? That's it.

Robert Indries [: 00:39:43

Just 4 things. Imagine how boring I am. I just look at 4 things, and that's it. And so by doing those 4 things, I get to experience all of life. Every single thing I want in life, I can experience through these four things.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:39:58

No. I love that. I love that you've given that thought to it. I think that makes a big difference of actually being really intentional about it. I love that. That is wonderful. And we are I can't believe. We've had such a great time talking.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:40:07

I could talk to you for a lot longer. But as we kind of wrap things up, what advice do you have for our listeners who are trying to make it in business and want to amplify their message and better connect to their clients?

Robert Indries [: 00:40:19

Find a mentor. Find someone that actually knows what they're doing.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:40:23

That is amazing. I like that. I love that. I think that's a really good real world application too for your next steps to take from this and to find somebody you can do that with. I love that. And what is the best way to reach you and for people to keep connected to you, Robert?

Robert Indries [: 00:40:35

I haven't been public up until this year mostly because I like being, you know, in the back. You're just doing my thing and, you know, this is a full time job. I don't know how you do it, but thank you so much, you know, for doing it. I really appreciate you and everyone like you doing this stuff. They can find me online. If they just Google my full name, first few pages should be about me and podcast and so on and so forth. I do have a domain, my full name.com robertindries.com. And if they wanna reach me personally, I do have a team of 4 full time assistants.

Robert Indries [: 00:41:05

However, if they email me at robertindries.com and they mention your podcast or your name, I promise to reply personally.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:41:14

Oh, you're amazing. That is so fabulous. So just mention Authenticity Amplified and you'll get a personal response. You are incredible. That is wonderful. And are you so are you looking to do more work with individuals and if people are looking for mentors and for opportunities? Like, what type of things are you able to offer currently?

Robert Indries [: 00:41:32

Anyone that's ambitious and wants to do good in the world, they can reach out. They can ask questions, right, and so on. The people I typically work with are the guys that actually want to move something around. Like, they wanna go play the guys that actually want to move something around. Like, they wanna go places. And I don't mean, like, they need to necessarily be the next Elon Musk. No. They can be the best programmer, the best developer, the best marketer, the best whatever.

Robert Indries [: 00:41:54

Right? They can be like that. I don't mind as long as, you know, they're ambitious, they learn, and so on and so forth. They can write me. We can have a nice chat. What I'm looking for almost all the time is businesses that I can help grow and scale. So if anyone knows anyone that I could add value to, I'd love to do that. Otherwise, on occasion, I start 1 to 3 or I go into 1 to 3 businesses, per year because I get pitched a lot of things, you know, every Yes. Every year.

Robert Indries [: 00:42:23

Yes. So 1 to 3 of them, I accept. And so sometimes I I'm looking for opportunities. Sometimes I'm looking I'm looking for investors. Just depends on where I am in history. You know?

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:42:34

Yes. No. I love that. This has been such an amazing conversation, Robert. You have so much value to add, and I I am very grateful that you've been on here and this has been a great conversation.

Robert Indries [: 00:42:43

Thank you so much. Thank you as well.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:42:45

Thank you. And for those of you listening, the majority of small businesses are small, but that doesn't mean you have to be doing this alone. So I'll be here every single week, and I hope you will be too. Thanks for joining us.