Latest / Glovisor Podcast / Entrepreneurs, Are You Leading Your Family Like You Lead Your Business? - Blake Allsmith [Ep 84]

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Entrepreneurs, Are You Leading Your Family Like You Lead Your Business? - Blake Allsmith [Ep 84] · Glovisor Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What if the leadership ability that you have been given,
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: which is truly a gift, what if that was actually
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: meant first and foremost to be deployed in leading your
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: family like an organization?
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Glowvisor podcast, where we explore business growth, communication,
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: and personal development through real conversations with people who make
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: an impact. Our guest is an entrepreneur who has built, grown,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: and exited a tech company. led marketing teams, and now
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: the co-author of The Family Framework, written with his wife, Chandler,
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Glowvisor welcomes Blake Allsmith.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Excited to chat with you today.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Likewise. All right, Blake, before we get started in talking
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: about the book, who are you and what do you
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: do when you're not writing?
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I do a lot when I'm not writing. I feel
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: like I'd like to write more. I am a father,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: first and foremost, so Blake Allsmith. Father of seven kids,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: ages 15 down to one. So we're still in the
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: thick of it. And I'm also an entrepreneur. So I've
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: founded three companies, sold two, and right now working in AI.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: So I'm working on the marketing side of an AI
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: company called Synthweave.ai. So we're kind of like a marketing
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: AI technology, essentially like a marketing Jarvis, if you will.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: So I spend a lot of my time on that.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Outside of that, from a hobby standpoint, I do Brazilian
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: jiu-jitsu with two of my sons. We do that together
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: three or four days a week early in the mornings.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, we just like playing outdoors, doing
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: kind of the family thing.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: You were saying, I was into the tech and I
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: built these companies and I sold them. Now I'm into AI.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: But by the way, I also authored a book. So
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: how do you have the time to do all this?
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Number one, with seven kids. And what is it about
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: your brain that it's putting you in all these different
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: places and you're successful to tap it all off? Yeah.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Well, first off, to have the time to write a
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: book is really, how did I have the time to
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: write a book two years ago? Because the process of
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: writing a book versus publishing a book is kind of interesting.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: So if we go back two years, summer 2024, I
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: was running a marketing agency. We had a little bit
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: of a dry spell. It's kind of like that August
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: period where everybody's on vacation. And so I was like,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I have time right now available. So rather than bang
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: my head against the wall trying to do sales while
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: everyone's on vacation, maybe I should just write down these
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: questions that people have been asking. So I've been writing
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: a newsletter for four years, and on it, I always
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: give one thing from an entrepreneurship I'm thinking about, one
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: thing kind of like from a life hack kind of
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: personal growth standpoint, and one thing about family. And what
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I've noticed is as this newsletter's grown, it went from
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: a couple hundred people to now over 17,000, the number
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: one thing I get replies about is always that third
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: point around family. And I guess I had an epiphany
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: 15 years ago where I realized that my role as
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: CEO of a startup is actually is beneath my role
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: as CEO of a young family. Like I'm the leader
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: of this family, an organization that will actually last, far
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: outlast any company I start. So what if I were
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: to take the same level of intentionality that I put
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: on my business and put it onto my family and
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: start treating it more like the organization that it is?
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: And that has shaped a lot of the way my
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: wife Chandler and I have done parenting, have led our
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: family and the rhythms that we have. And it's actually
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: led to a decent amount of thriving. And so I
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: think that that framework seems to be resonating specifically, I think,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: with maybe founders of businesses, leaders of businesses, or just
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: executives who experience the enjoyment of competence in the workplace
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: and maybe want to have that same level of competence
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: at home. Because the truth is that a lot of
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: people who are incredibly smart, incredibly successful, still struggle in
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the home. And that's puzzling to me. And so I'm
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: trying to present a framework as maybe a way to
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: have success in both.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: No, I totally get it. So- Here you are, August,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: you have a little time, you jot these things down.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Did you just like drive home and say, let's have
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: a board meeting and this is why we're going to
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: do things moving forward?
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: That happened, gosh, I guess 15 years ago when my
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: son was born. That was also six months later, I
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: quit my job at a hedge fund and started a company.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: And so for me, the path of leading a company
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: and leading my family has gone hand in hand the
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: entire time. And so every time I got a new framework,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: you know how it is leading a company, you're like,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Googling how to fire somebody and then firing somebody at
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: 8am the next morning. Like you're like, you're always learning
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: on the fly. Every framework I received, because I mean,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: entrepreneurship is filled with these frameworks. Everyone I received, I
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: was like, I wonder if I could fit that on
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: our family in some way. And some of them worked.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Some of them didn't work. Actually, some went horribly wrong.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Like the time that I tried to time block my
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: wife's schedule by 15 minute increments when she was nursing to,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: you know, a child. She didn't love that. That did
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: not work well at all. But we just kind of
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: kept trying and trying to see. And what we found
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: was they just kind of increased our capacity and gave
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: us more energy.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: The kids don't know any different, right? This is it.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: They were born right into this framework system.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: And this is how they see the world. So how
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: are they when they interact with other children? Are they
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: having board meetings with their friends?
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Right, right. I mean... In reality, children are children and
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: the vast majority of their life is just like the
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: life of any other kid. You know, we live in
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Northern Kentucky. We homeschool our kids. The kids are outside
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: most of the time. Like they're just kind of living
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: the freewheeling life. Our family does not feel, if you
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: were to come over, it doesn't feel like a company
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: or a startup. There are a handful of rhythms that
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: they're used to. So for instance, every day at breakfast,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: I kind of do a morning standup. And so it's like, okay, hey,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a quick reading, you know, kind of
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: talk about a couple of things. And then from there,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: I'll say, okay, here's the plan for the day. Look
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: at the calendar. Here's what everybody's got. I'm like, is
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: anybody blocked on anything? Does anybody need anything from mom
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: or from pop before we kind of start our day
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: from a school day standpoint and that sort of thing?
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: I was like, that's a very basic thing. I happened
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: to learn that by doing lean startup and doing standups
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: with my company. But the truth is that that's just
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: a helpful rhythm. So I don't think that they feel
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: especially different or weird. It's just these little rhythms that
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: kind of help create clarity and maybe remove some chaos
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: especially in a large family, when you've got seven kids,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: you kind of need to do that or die.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: You have to be a little bit more efficient in
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: order to make sure you address everyone, for sure.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. Sometimes it feels like a presidential press conference.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: So I'm like, does anybody have any questions? And everyone's like, Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I'm like, no more questions at this time, no more
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: questions at this time. I have to just leave the stage,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: otherwise it'll go on forever.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: I want to look behind a curtain a little bit.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: You co-wrote this with your wife. How do you do that?
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, logistically, because here you are, you have your
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: thoughts and your mindsets, your frameworks and your experiences from work.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: But she's also a co-CEO of the home and she's
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: been doing her process and her framework. So how did
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: you put those together?
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd say first, I'd say the idea of the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: book came from her. We actually were on a camping trip.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: You and I had mentioned earlier today that we go
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: camping only once a year. So we were on a
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: camping trip. And she was like, hey, I just feel
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: like we've got these concepts. It seems to be working.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: We should at least write this stuff down and share
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: it to somebody, you know, maybe a Google Doc. So
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: it was her idea. So I took the lion's share
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: of the writing first draft. So I would go to
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: a coffee shop every morning, you know, 8 a.m. to
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: 10 a.m. And I would just write. And I tried to,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: I almost pictured like a bunch of blog posts. And
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: then once we put the kids to bed at night,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: you know, call it 8.30, we'd sit on the couch
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: and I'd read it all out loud to her. Whatever
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I wrote that day, I read out loud to her.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: And then she would kind of edit in time, real
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: time with me. We would discuss it together. And then
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: every chapter I left like a big chunk where I'm like,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: all right, I want to hear from your perspective on
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: this framework. How have you made it your own? Where
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: has it been difficult for you? And so there's kind
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: of like, I would say the vast majority is written
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: by me, edited together. And then she has a part
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: that's purely hers where she kind of writes her kind
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: of two cents on each of the tools.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: So who did you write the book for?
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say probably parents of, uh, Elementary age
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: kids in particular, I think that's where a lot of
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: the logistics is really important. And I would say, especially
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: if you're a startup founder, you're going to be really
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: familiar with a lot of these frameworks. And so it's
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: like one-to-one, that's the prime prospect. If you're not a
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: startup founder, if you're just an executive who likes getting
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: stuff done in work and maybe enjoys competence and struggles
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: to get that same level of satisfaction in the home,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: it's for that person for sure.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: When was that defining moment for, When you started your
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: startup companies and you decided that you wanted to grow
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: and eventually exit, what was that moment that you decided
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: to exit to make that change and shift? Because you've
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: done a couple of different things. So I want to
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: know what made that turn. Because some people sometimes do
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: startups and that's their baby and they want to stick
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: with it for life. But you exited.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, in reality, ours was a venture-backed startup
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: called Cladwell. Started it in 2011. And the moment you
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: take venture capital, you are essentially saying, I'm going to
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: either go public and exit or I'm going to sell
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: and exit, right? So it's a pre-written commitment. And venture
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: capital is kind of like the worst bank on earth.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: The name of the game is you give them 100
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: times their money or within seven years, or they fire
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: you and find somebody who can, right? And so it's
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: a very difficult kind of high stakes game. And so
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: we received venture capital from some of the best VCs
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: in the world. So Science Incorporated, who backed us along
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: with like Dollar Shave Club, MeUndies, Liquid Death. And so
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: they're coming off of a billion dollar exit with Dollar
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Shave Club, like they're expecting the same thing from us.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: And so in reality is, you know, we were able
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: to get to a place of kind of default alive
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: and like a decent amount of revenue, but we were
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: so far from being a billion dollar company. And so,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: you know, after trying to pivot and break the model
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: and figure out what's our kind of breakout way, it
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: ended up being the Mike Jones from Science, who was
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: on our board, kind of made the call. And he's like, hey,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: this is not going to be a billion-dollar company. It
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: is a thing. We should let the team exist. We
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: should let the product exist, let the customers exist. But
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: this is not venture-worthy. So he refused to put any
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: more dollars in. And so at that point, he's like,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: we're already partnered with 90% of the people who would
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: potentially buy us. Let's run a quick process. No harm,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: no foul. Let's try again. But that's kind of the
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: name of the game. So that exit was, in many ways,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: not a successful exit. It didn't return the fund for anybody,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: but it was kind of a base hit. It's kind
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: of like, all right, sold that company. Let's get on
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: to the next thing. And so I'd say it was
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: kind of pre-written. Now, the agency that I just sold
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: to Synthweave That's a little bit different. And that was
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: fully bootstrapped, fully owned by me. And that really came
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: down to, I did not want in this era of AI,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I don't want to just be a consumer of AI.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: I want to be a purveyor of AI. I want
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: to benefit from the upside of this. This is the
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: biggest opportunity I think we're going to see in our
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: generation in terms of a new technology. And I'm an entrepreneur,
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: so I need to be a part of this thing.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: And so when that kind of, I started using their
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: tool and it greatly increased my capacity as a marketer.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: And so I was like, heck, Like, this is amazing.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Brian Bigelow, the guy who founded it, he and I
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: have been friends for a decade. So as we started
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: talking through it, we were like, hey, maybe it makes
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: more sense for us to kind of combine and work together.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: So that was an all-stock deal, but it's something that's
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: totally worth it for me. From an upside standpoint, I'm
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: very excited about it. And I need to be playing.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Y Combinator, they always talk about this thing of like
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: 90% of the growth that you're going to experience is
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: depending on which river you jump into. And if the
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: river's moving fast, you're going to move fast no matter what.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: And this is the fastest moving river I've ever seen
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: as an entrepreneur for now 15 years.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: How do you benefit as a purveyor?
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Our technology is essentially a marketing department AI. And so
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: what happens is that anybody who's in your marketing department
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: can now, rather than having just like a co-pilot alongside them,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: which is I think how most people are using AI,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: chat GPT or cloud or something like that. But there's
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: not a shared context layer. There aren't shared skills that
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: are going across the entire organization. And when a person
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: leaves the company, they take their knowledge with them. This
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: is essentially one shared AI that is actually layered on
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: top of a ChatGPT or a Claude or anybody else.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: We layer it on top, but it's a shared context
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: layer that then gets smarter and smarter the more marketers
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: who are working on it. And you can train these
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: skills to essentially increase your capacity. And so we're selling that,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: which is essentially an agent harness that's on top of that.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: And so because of that, I'm selling AI. I'm not
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: just using AI.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah. During those different projects that you worked on,
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: what would you say was the biggest challenge and the
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: biggest lesson that you picked up from those two?
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Goodness. I'd say in the first company, I would say
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: that I really did a lot of delaying of a
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: good life because I was shooting for a billion dollar
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: exit someday. And so I'd say that in terms of
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: my prioritizing of our life at home, What I did
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: was I essentially said, hey, we're going to hold our breath.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: We took out a HELOC in our house. We're fully
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: to the hilt to try to push this thing so
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: that we can someday maybe get this thing over the horizon.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: That thing over the horizon didn't actually pan out. And
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: so after looking at eight years of being a CEO,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I was kind of like, man, was that really worth it?
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Was that a good idea? Or was that maybe a
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: fool's game? And so I think there's a big pivot
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: that happened after that where I started saying, no, I
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: owe it to my family and to my marriage. And
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: to this world's like build and structure a good life
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: here and live good weeks on repeat as I build
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: something new. And so I think I started maybe prioritizing
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: thriving in the here and now while aiming towards something together.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: And I think that was probably the biggest lesson that
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: I learned there. On the agency side, the biggest lesson
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: that I learned was it's really easy to scale up
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: an agency. All you have to do is lower costs.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: your bar for who you're willing to work with and
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: lower the bar of who you are willing to hire.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: And you can scale real fast and then you explode
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: and nobody likes you and nobody wants to work with you.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: So scale is not the issue. The issue is that
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: the only thing that matters with an agency is you
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: have to grow the company's bottom line. If you can
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: grow their revenue, everything else works out. You get referrals.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: You won't grow maybe super fast, but you will build
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: a compounding rhythm. But that takes a lot of attention
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: to the customer's business. And so I had to learn
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: that the hard way. In some ways, I think I
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: scaled a little too fast and then had to back
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: off and say, no, we have to serve. It's a
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: services business. You have to serve the customer. And that's
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: kind of the true north. And if you can be
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: highly skilled, top 10% in the world at whatever type
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: of service you're providing, for me it was marketing, everything
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: else works itself out.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: I like that, how you went right back from quantity
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: back to quality and it's the focus.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: But lowering the bar, you can really get some serious numbers.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, you can get a lot of customers real fast. Yeah.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: How about your newsletter? I find that so interesting that
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: you went from hundreds to thousands. Was that something that
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: you followed along from your first venture and you had
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: people just following you through that process and then moved
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: on to your next venture? How did that work and
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: how do you grow a newsletter? Yeah.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: The... I've tried multiple times to figure out like what's
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: a con. I do think having an owned audience is
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: a very powerful thing for an entrepreneur to have that
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: stays with you throughout every organization you build. Owning your
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: own audience is huge. So like what you're doing here,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: incredibly powerful. It is an asset. And it's even better
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: than most assets is it doesn't actually take any cash
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: to generate it. You just have to kind of put
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: yourself out there. And so I'd say the best time
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: to build an audience is about 15 years ago. And
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: the second best time to build an audience is today.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: And so if anybody's thinking about it, they should do it.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: The reason I chose a newsletter and the format that
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I did was that a friend of mine asked, what
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: is something that you could do every week for the
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: rest of your life effortlessly? And if you come over
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: to my house tomorrow, I'll have three things on my mind.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: And then I'll be like, hey, I've been thinking about
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: this thing from a startup standpoint. I'm thinking about this
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: life hack. I'm thinking about family. These are the things
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: that I care about. And I'm constantly pitching my friends
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: on stuff. And so it's an extension of my personality.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: This is something I will do for the rest of
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: my life and I want to do that. And so
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: because of that, the consistency could stay on there. And
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: then just paying attention to what do people respond to?
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: When do people get offended or when do people get
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: bothered or people have clarifying questions? And you kind of
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: learn over time to make this a service. And so
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: for me, I literally write my newsletter every Friday in
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: real time. So I write it and then I hit
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: send right then. And so I don't pre-schedule it. I
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: don't have it scheduled out months in advance or anything
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: like that. And so it lets me stay kind of
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: connected to these actual people. And when they reply, you know,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: there's 17,000 people. When they reply, it goes straight into
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: my email inbox. And so I actually am in constant conversation.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: It's a way to build kind of relationships at scale
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: and find commonalities with people at scale. In terms of
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: you asked how to build the audience in particular, the
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: biggest thing for me was finding a lead magnet that
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: actually resonated with people. And so my lead magnet is
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: our family dashboard. So if you go to theallsmiths.com, You
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: can put in your email address. Look at my pitch
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: right here. Put in your email address and you can
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: get our Google Docs, you know, Google spreadsheet of all
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: the frameworks that are in our book, as well as
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: videos that explain everything that we do, how we do it.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: And you can try to implement it with your family
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: for free at theallsmiths.com. So I run ads on Meta
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: to get that spreadsheet. And I'm getting new emails for
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: like 90 cents a piece. And I've been doing that for,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: you know, geez, two years. And it kind of keeps
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: on building and building from there. I have a couple
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: of courses and stuff that I kind of sell to
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: pay for those ads. And so it's not, I don't
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: see a world where I'm getting to a million subscribers,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: but it kind of has been slowly compounding and there
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: are people sharing and it kind of keeps on rolling.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: And so I see it as a very good use
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: of time. It takes me, what, an hour to write
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: it every week? And what an asset.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: It sounds like it's a private book and you're journaling
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: on an ongoing basis and everyone gets to peek in
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: and see what you're thinking. Yeah.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: And they always say, like, if you really want to
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: understand something, you need to be able to teach others.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: And so for me, it is a way of kind
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: of chewing on my learnings every single week.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Going back to the book, have you shared the book
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: with anyone? What are the reviews you're starting to hear?
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: What's the feedback?
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of two. People either absolutely love it. Oh,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: my gosh, this is what I've been looking for. I
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: can just implement these things right away. Or this is
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the worst thing I've ever heard. You might be Satan.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: And like family should be spontaneous and should not have
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: any structure or order. And I'm offended you even exist.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Like it's one or the other for sure. And I
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: think that that's like the key to a good idea
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: is a good idea needs to be a little bit polarizing.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: And so I would say the folks who maybe are
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: familiar with these frameworks, maybe they tend to see the
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: value in it. But those who maybe have maybe had like,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: we recommend having a mission vision values for your family.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: If you've had to make a mission vision values for
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: an organization, you know how powerful that is. If you've
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: got some lip service version of a mission vision values
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: in your big company that was kind of thrust upon
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: you and you're like, this is all just marketing speak,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: that person is maybe a little bit more jaded at
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: some of these tools. And like, why would I even
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: do that? And so I think some of it has
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: to do with a person's experience with some of these
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: frameworks beforehand.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Is this something that I can read and start instituting
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: into my family life immediately? Or is this something that
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: I have to read the whole book through and then
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: plan out for the next six months?
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Right. No, this is a list of 16 tools. These
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: are all tools that have been proven to work for
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: multiple years for a family of seven that I think
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: can be used right away. in your marriage and in
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: your family to help create order, combat chaos. So I'd
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: say it's absolutely useful. I would not recommend reading the
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: book and implementing every single tool in order in the
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: same way I would not recommend going to the hardware
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: store and and just going down, well, let's go through
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: aisle one and buy everything on aisle one. Let's go
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: through aisle two, buy everything on aisle, right? These are tools.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: And so tools need to be mapped to a problem
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: that you have. So identify the problem you have and
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: implement that tool that is appropriate to solve that problem, right?
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: And so we end up mapping out kind of four
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: main areas of problems, which are, you know, relationship, direction,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: which is are we on the same page going the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: same way? I'd say systems of, you know, accountability, like
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: are we actually making traction? And then finally operations, which is,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: you know, Kind of the click-baity stuff of like, hey,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: can we get in the car in an efficient amount
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: of time? Or does it take us 45 minutes to
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: get in the car, right? You know, meals, dishes, that
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: type of thing.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Now, I always like to have that other side of it,
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: the devil's advocate side of it.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Blake, this is what some people may think. You have
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: a young family. They learn from the beginning. As soon
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: as they were born, they were ready to sit at
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: the boardroom and get started. What happens now for me?
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I have a 14, 15-year-old.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: We've already gone through our process. We have our ways,
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: the way we run our family. How can I now
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: read your book and roll this out into my family?
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, so in order, we actually roll these
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: out in order for a reason, which is the number
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: one thing is relationships. If you look at this study
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: that was done by Google, I think in the early 2010s,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: they found that there was one attribute that actually results
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: in teams operating the best together. It was not IQ.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: It was not pedigree. It was not even shared language
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: or something like that. It was what they called relational safety.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: And so when a team has relational safety, they can
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: entertain different ideas and the outcome of the team ends
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: up being better than any other outcome. So we start
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: with relationships. There's like, okay, how do we make sure
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: we're connected on a weekly basis? And so we recommend
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: having one-on-ones with your spouse and also one-on-ones weekly with
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: each of your kids. And so in that, some of
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: this is just unstructured time of like, hey, do I
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: have 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour? where I can
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: just have open conversation, I'd say if you implement that
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: with your teen, they've never had anything like that, that
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: is not going to go poorly, or it might go
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: poorly from time to time, but it is going to
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: benefit your relationship and help you get on the same
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: page more and more. So that would be an example
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: of that. We talk about how to conflict well in
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: a relationship, which is what does it look like to
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: always have the person's back in public, a unified front,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: but then also have radical candor at home. So inviting
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: your 14 or 15-year-old, saying, hey, I want you to
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: have radical candor with me. I don't want you to
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: worry about you know, disrespecting me or hurting my feelings
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: or worrying about how I perceive you. I want to
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: know the truth of what you actually think when it's
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: behind closed doors. But when we're out in public, we
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: always have each other's back, right? Because the world is
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: filled with people who are going to shoot each other
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: down in public. There are very few people who always
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: have each other's back. And I've got your back. I
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: want you to have mine. These are talks that I
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: think midstream in a relationship are still beneficial for sure.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Do you have any final thoughts that you want to
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: share with our listeners?
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Final thoughts. If there's one, this is the idea that
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: kind of blew my mind, which is what if the
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: leadership ability that you have, I mean, we're talking to entrepreneurs, right?
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: We're talking to founders, we're talking to business owners. What
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: if the leadership ability that you have been given, which
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: is truly a gift, what if that was actually meant
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: first and foremost to be deployed in leading your family
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: like an organization? Like, what if your family was not
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: just a place that you retreated to to get away
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: from the rest of the world. But what if it
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: was the vehicle that you actually use to enact your
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: vision that you have for the world? Like what if
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: your family was your team and you said, what could
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: we accomplish together multi-generationally over the course of decades or
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: eventually centuries? What would the world look like? Because if
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: we really look at what shapes the world today, At
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: the end of the day, who are the final stockholders
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: of every Fortune 500 company? Their families, right? Their families
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: who caught that vision that, oh, if we work together multi-generationally,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: we can accomplish a lot of things. And I want
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: to see a world where everyone steps into that role
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: just a little bit more. So that's the idea. I
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: want you to just ask that question and say, if
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: you led your family like you led an organization, where
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: would you go? What would you do? I want to
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: see that world more.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Blake, where can people connect with you? Find a book
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: and continue these conversations.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Check out theallsmiths.com. Allsmiths is our last name. So theallsmiths.com.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: You can get that dashboard. It links to the book.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: It links to some of our e-courses. Our book is
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: available everywhere books are sold. So whether it's Amazon's or
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: bookstores or anything like that. And so it's available now
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: and would love for you to check it out.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Awesome. Now, Blake, thank you so much for your time.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to read the book and looking forward
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: to connecting with you soon.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Joe. This has been great.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: You're welcome. Thank you, everyone, for listening. If this episode
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: inspired you, make sure you share it with someone. And
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: do not forget to follow the Globalized World Podcast for
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: more conversations that make an impact.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Till the next time.