Latest / The ROI Online Podcast / Charlie Hoehn On How To Get Hired & Cure Your Anxiety — The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 6

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Charlie Hoehn On How To Get Hired & Cure Your Anxiety — The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 6 · The ROI Online Podcast

• 0:03
  Charlie Hoehn: I would approach them and say, "I found this problem that you have. I'm a huge fan of your company. By the way, I'm a huge fan of your work. But I found some areas where you can improve. Here's where you could improve. And here's how you can do it. I will do it for you. And I will do it for free on a trial basis. And after that trial basis is over, you can either use my work or you can throw it away. But all I would ask is if, at the end, you're really happy that we discuss a paid arrangement." And that works like gangbusters. And so I went from being a struggling, like you said a struggling kid, basically, in my parents basement laying on my bathroom floor.
• 0:48
  Steve Brown: That makes me laugh.
• 0:49
  Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, I went from that to being able to not just create work opportunities on demand but create them with my heroes, my idols.
• 0:59
  Steve Brown: Hi, everybody. Welcome to the ROI Online Podcast, where we believe you, the courageous entrepreneurs of our day, are the invisible heros of our economy. You not only improve our world with your ideas, your grit and your passion, but you make our world better. I'm Steve Brown. And this is the place where we have great conversations with winners just like you while we laugh and learn together.
• 3:16
  Charlie Hoehn: Thank you, Steve. That was a lovely reading of my Wikipedia page.
• 3:21
  Steve Brown: Nice. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Obviously, I read a little bit there.
• 3:27
  Charlie Hoehn: I was gonna say, do you want me to read my Wikipedia?
• 3:30
  Steve Brown: How did you stumble into all of the unique opportunities you had at such a young age? It's fascinating to me.
• 3:38
  Charlie Hoehn: It was initially by necessity, but it was something I thought about ever since I was a kid of seeing adults doing jobs that they clearly didn't like or or get much energy from. And that always confused me. Like what are we working toward? Why are... What's this all for? And so I was constantly thinking about, "How can I get paid to basically just be myself? And just be a person and not something that I hate?" You know? Even just the idea of wearing uncomfortable clothing day in and day out because it was required just seemed crazy to me, and for decades was incomprehensible. So it's just little things like that. It's like I want to decide when I wake up, I want to decide what I wear. I want to decide when I can eat, go to the bathroom. That's it. Like these are table stakes.
• 5:56
  Steve Brown: Especially if you're putting on there. I want to wear whatever I want to wear. Get what I wanna get, and I want to do whatever I want to do.
• 6:04
  Charlie Hoehn: It's just a picture of me in a bathrobe, sitting there saying, "Give me a job, buddy." It felt like Groundhog's Day, those few months of waking up coming upstairs to eat breakfast in my parents house, and having you know, notes from my parents like, "Hey, there's a job here." So I'm getting stuff in my inbox that are suggestions from them. And like... All due respect to them, I didn't like any of the jobs that I saw. None. Right. And so I got two offers. One was from a staging company like a physical labor staging company. And I actually went to that twice, because I just was like, "I need to do something." And it was all people, most of which I'm guessing either had a criminal record. I have no problem with that. Fine. Or maybe had a high school degree, it was hard to tell. But they were all chained smoking. They all hated their jobs. And that was one of over 100 jobs that I got offered with a college degree. And so I remember one day just kind of laying on my bathroom floor and thinking, "Everything that I was told about how to start a career and get a good job is either incomplete at best or just flat wrong. Conventional wisdom is nonsense. It's totally wrong." So I have to just start from the ground up and create a strategy that I think could work.
• 8:11
  Steve Brown: That makes me laugh. You laying on the bathroom floor.
• 10:09
  Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, I went from that to being able to not just create work opportunities on demand, but create them with my heroes, my idols. And then after doing great work with them... That's all they needed. Right? This, this strategy works for anybody who is not only ambitious, but can do great work. And that's a lot of people. And so, I was able to start working with Tim Ferriss. I was able to start working with Tucker Max, and I still work with Tucker max to this day it over a decade later. Tim and I have collaborated on many things over the years. I've worked with him for three years, all paid. And you know, Tim introduced me to the founders of YouTube, the founders of Ubers. He let me work on a New York no. 1 New York Times bestselling book when I was 23. And they introduced me to... Gosh, I mean, I got approached by the former CEO of Disney. a fortune 10 company contacted me, sought me out. And this is not to brag. It's just to illustrate that like it was world changing, this strategy.
• 14:28
  Steve Brown: And I was thinking the other day of my journey is.., You know how many times I interviewed for jobs and was told no? I made two really strong runs at becoming a State Farm agent. They said, "Meh." And the Think about how many times we get rejected trying to live up to someone else's standard when probably that story right there is very common amongst business leaders, really good ones. Or entrepreneurs who just said, "Well, I'm gonna go start my own business." Well, the reason you didn't get hired is because you didn't have all these qualifications and past resume of all this. So they said no. And they're evaluating you based on your past performance not being able to see what your future value would be. And yet, we have it. But we struggle with this thing in our mind that whether we give ourselves permission to go ahead and own it, just do it anyway.
• 15:25
  Charlie Hoehn: Yes, yeah. And it's... To that point, it's not fair to the employer either to have that process. It's like, you're trying to figure out how to put somebody on your payroll and insert them into your precious company culture based on bullet points in a single piece of paper on their past performance? Which anybody can lie about, by the way.Like, you have to do your due diligence. It's crazy.
• 15:53
  Steve Brown: I don't even... You know, when I interview people, I don't even look at their resume. Really, if I... You know, the interviews I love are the ones, so the typical setup is you're going to come to me wanting a job. So I'm gonna sit and interrogate you and try to discern. If I was to flip it and go, "How about this? You asked me all the questions you want to ask." If you lead with, "How bout I do this? How bout I do this? I was studying your business, and I'm seeing where you're struggling in this area. So I'm going to do this for a bit. I'll do it for free. Just to be fair, if you like my work, would you hire me?" That's what you did.
• 16:36
  Charlie Hoehn: That is exactly what I did. And I'm curious as a business owner yourself, if someone came to you with that offer, what would your response be?
• 16:45
  Steve Brown: I admire those people because I've done that I relate with them because I've thought those things myself. I respect them and I do I try to figure out a way to let them try to feel into our organization. I struggle with... So you come to me, I'm a business owner. So what I'm supposed to do is pick a great fit off a short little conversation. There's a lot of risk for me. And if you and I were going to go hunting, let's say we're going to go hunting pheasants, but we didn't have dogs. So we stopped by the rescue center. And we walk in there and there's all these dogs lined up. What kind of dog would we go and pick to take with us? It'd be a Labrador or it'd be a bird dog. Right? We walk in there and it'd be real clear to us. The dog we need to hire for this position that would be set up for success. We wouldn't take a poodle. We wouldn't pick a border collie because they're going to be scared of, you know... They ruin everything. Well, that's what we're doing. But we can't discern our pedigree so to speak, when we're seeing someone sort of walk in and go, "Man, I'm been looking at this." You're identifying your pedigree, if you will.
• 17:58
  Charlie Hoehn: This is who I am. Yes, exactly right.
• 18:02
  Steve Brown: And the people that you looked up to, they love that they respected that. And then they would do what... You were so important to them they introduced you to other people. I just love that. So, in that process, Charlie, there's this thing I'm observed in... I've started my business. And I'm sitting there a year or two later, and I'm in a room with some other folks, and I overhear a conversation across a room of someone talking about my company, as if we'd been around for years, and what they were looking forward to in the future. And I was, like, shocked how they saw my company, compared to what I knew about my company, right? I knew all the uglies. I knew all the struggles. I knew all of the doubts and fears, and it really convicted me. I needed to start seeing my worth of this job in a different way. And I realized it was my mindset or my identity, seeing what it really is in the future, not what it was in the past. I read a blog the other day that you had posted that talks about... that really lands on this area. Talk to us about at some point you started seeing yourself as this person that could be very valuable to Seth Godin, or, or Ramit or Tim, or whoever. Where did that change happen? And when did you give yourself permission? You had to give yourself permission to do that, even though other people saw you as valuable, but you still had to go, "Okay, I'm gonna own it." Talk to us about that.
• 19:45
  Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. So this is really about like, probably getting over imposter syndrome. And having the confidence to approach somebody with something like this. And even beyond if you're a business owner, like how do you have that confidence in your own value that you're providing to the world? And I think the big thing for me is I and I still don't... It's not about me. It's really the people that I approach, yes, I have a goal in mind. Yes, I have my own selfish needs. And I know selfish is a loaded word for some people, but like, let's call it what it is. I have what I want from the scenario, but everything I communicate around is about their problem. And how they are in pain in some way, shape or form. So I think this applies to not just business owners, but graduates too, which is: You have to almost think of yourself and treat yourself like you're the doctor. Like you are the one who's coming to them with a diagnosis and you're putting your heads together and saying, "How can we resolve this together?" So it was less... Like, I knew I was competent with my skill sets. But I never came to people and said, "Hey, I'm a video editor. I've been editing video for years. I'm really good at it." It was none of that. No, the the structure. The skeleton of the conversation matters a lot. And that is, "I'm a huge fan of you. And your work has impacted me in this specific way." So I'm not just blowing smoke like I would send to Ramit like, for instance, "I was able to create a budget. Here's a snapshot of my budget because of you," or whatever.
• 21:52
  Steve Brown: Let me stop. Let's stop right there. Just what... I'm interrupting. When you say you were a fan of Ramit, you were Connecting with him yet at some level of why he does what he does. And it must have been congruent with why you believe what you believe or why you feel your why, I mean, your why you want to help people. It was coming from a similar area. Would you disagree?
• 22:18
  Charlie Hoehn: It was sincere like saying I liked him as a person. And we all on a deep level wants to be liked and approved up for the work that we do, no matter how successful you get. But beyond that, the reason I love working with entrepreneurs is because they take responsibility for other people's problems. Right? And I've always identified with that, where it's like, "Look, we can't all solve every problem. We all need help." And so to approach people who I knew were already having a big impact on other people, and say, "Hey, if I just dial you in a little bit in this one area, you will affect thousands of people in a more positive way." Right? Like, these aren't little things; they have ripple effects across society. And so I always wanted to be an entrepreneur myself. And at that age, I was like, "I just need to find the smartest entrepreneurs I can find that are operating in this digital era that we're in." Seth Godin was the only one who was talking about permission marketing back then, for instance, and everybody else was talking about direct mail and stuff. And so I wanted to learn from them, and help them do their jobs better. That was really it.
• 23:40
  Steve Brown: it doesn't sound like you were this, "I'm gonna make a billion dollars." You don't strike me as that money was your motivation. It seemed your motivation is, "I want to help other people be successful."
• 23:54
  Charlie Hoehn: And that's the majority of people. Yeah, like at our core, the primary motivators for exceptional performance. The lowest one is money. The next highest one is pressure. So you have economic pressure, pressure of your family, pressure of your boss. The next highest one is purpose, "Hey, I'm on a mission. We're going to Mars," you know. The highest one is play. That is the highest motivator for exceptional performance. I just wanted to have fun with great people, you know, and I wanted to do my crafts, which were video and marketing. Like they feel effortless to me. You know, they're fun. Yes. So, yeah, it's hard to distill all that into like a narrow thing. But money was never a motivator. I've always just wanted to be able to cover my expenses, and then some and build a great life now for my family. Money to me is just a scorecard for how much value you're bringing to other people, how many people you're affecting, and so beyond that, I think it's just like, yeah, it's a scorecard.
• 25:03
  Steve Brown: Most every day for the last ten years, I've worked with business leaders such as you. And there's this common conversation that I've had over and over. And it goes a little like this, "Steve. I see other brands excelling online, and I feel we need to do the same because my customers are expecting it of us. I'm not sure where to start. But I think we need to redo our website. What's the best way to approach this?" And this is why I wrote my book, "The Golden Toilet: Stop Flushing Your Marketing Budget into Your Website and Build a System That Grows Your Business." It's a book designed to empower my business leaders so that they have the words and the proper expectations, to communicate what it is they really need and get what they really need instead of something that's sold to them. It puts them in a position of confidence and clarity. And so to get this book, it's a great read. You can go to Amazon, get it there, or you can go to the goldentoilet.com, and click on "Get your copy." Now, back to our conversation.
• 26:59
  Charlie Hoehn: Burning it in the middle
• 27:01
  Steve Brown: So what happened?
• 27:03
  Charlie Hoehn: So there's one inaccuracy about what you said, which was my parents are super proud. Now, I'm just teasing. They were actually very proud, but it took them a long time to understand like, "Oh, Charlie's working with people who are well known and established." Like they'd never heard of Tim Ferriss. They had no idea. They're like, "Charlie's working with random people on the internet. Well, at least he's doing something, you know."
• 27:31
  Steve Brown: So you go to the extreme.
• 27:33
  Charlie Hoehn: Yes, yes. Right. Yes. So, I love my parents. They were so supportive. I'm just teasing. I just like to joke because they did they were really like, "Who are these people?" I'm like, "They're so famous in my world." Yeah. So I, I was pushing myself really hard. At some point I became... I kind of shifted to... In retrospect, I just became disconnected with how I felt, you know, I became more connected with results and numbers, and seeing those numbers go up and pulling off big achievements rather than how I was feeling inside. I just kind of cut that off. And that was self-inflicted. I said in "Play It Away," and it's the truth. This would have happened to me in any high performing job I was in. If I was working at Google, this would have happened. I hit a point where I was... I had taken military level stimulants to keep me awake for four days straight with six hours of sleep total.
• 34:08
  Steve Brown: on a Segway. And, you know, if we find ourselves now and this time that I would imagine a lot of people are confronting similar feelings because they lost their job or the future, what future they did have an expectation of, has been taken away from them. And so they're relating in a lot of ways what's what you went through.
• 34:28
  Charlie Hoehn: I'd imagine a lot of people are not doing very well right now. All over the world.
• 34:34
  Steve Brown: So what do you have to share or encourage them? Obviously, your list with trauma and efforts makes you an authority or at least someone that they maybe think about what you have to share.
• 34:51
  Charlie Hoehn: There's no answer. I'm sorry. Nah, I'm just joking. Yeah, so I fortunately got out of that. And it's been I will say it's been seven or eight years since I've really experienced what I went through. And those feelings haven't returned. And it's only gotten better the more kind of work I've done around this area. And so also the aha moment, the breakthrough that I had was, I was at my buddy's apartment, and I pulled a book off the shelf, and it was called "Play" by Dr. Stuart Brown. And I thought that's an interesting concept. So like, never read a book on play. And it was about: why did mammals evolved to play? Why do we play? Because it seems like this frivolous inessential activity, and if you're talking purely on survival, it seems like it wouldn't be helpful. But yet, mammals play from the second they're born. You can't help but not play.
• 43:54
  Steve Brown: I think the thing that clicked in that book with me was kids don't come over and ring the doorbell and and Ask other kids to go and have a coffee.They ask them, can you come out and play right? Here we are almost full circle and this. You were laying on the bathroom floor. I just wanna play. I want my work to be playful. I want to wear what I want. I want to do what I want. The story we've just heard, you've been on this journey. You have a lot of chops. You've been... You've got a lot of experience. What are you parlaying into now?
• 44:27
  Charlie Hoehn: Yes, so, ROI Online has been helping me put together the assets like the branding assets for my program, which is Marketing Master Plan, and that is well prior to Coronavirus. It was it was partially like a live workshop in-person in Colorado. Now it's an eight week program where I guide entrepreneurs who are great at a lot of things but don't feel comfortable with marketing. I give them the most efficient path to their goals. So it is a small intimate group of entrepreneurs. We all help each other, which is probably my favorite part like I curate this group so it's awesome, intelligent people. And I'm more proud of the people that I keep out than the people that I let in in a way. But we support each other to get from A to Z as efficiently as possible. So it's different for everybody.
• 46:44
  Steve Brown: I love that. And I and I guess we could assume that there would be some playful aspects included in that. Yes?
• 46:51
  Charlie Hoehn: Yes.
• 46:51
  Steve Brown: So Charlie, we're getting too close to the end of this awesome conversation. I really have enjoyed it. I'm sitting here smiling a bunch as you're talking and we really appreciate your time so much. What's one question that I didn't ask you that that you would have loved to answer?
• 47:11
  Charlie Hoehn: Well, I'll say, Steve, I really appreciate you as a person and just for having me on and having this conversation. So thank you. It's been really great.
• 47:21
  Steve Brown: I'm proud.
• 47:22
  Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, me too. So, a question. I never, ever, ever know how to answer this. I guess I'll say, "What are you excited about?" And I'll ask you like, what are you excited about that no one asks you about because all they see is ROI Online?
• 47:43
  Steve Brown: You know, I'm excited about... I think I heard Lewis Jose at one time, his goal with this podcast was just to be able to interview whoever he wanted to interview, to meet that person. And I had this position one time for nonprofit where it was my turn to interview each member and introduce them. And I took him a lunch, I found that the most fun, connecting, fulfilling exercise and I just doing it to be playful and be to make you know... I was getting some good info because I was gonna make a joke about him when I did an intro. But I found that the relationships that came out of that were cool. They were lasting, and it's just from taking a little time and talking to them. So that's what I'm excited about. And this is evidence of it. This is... When do you get to sit and talk with Charlie one on one and not be interrupted by the phone and the kids and business and stuff? It's this.
• 48:42
  Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, you got the makings of something really fun for you for a long time.
• 48:46
  Steve Brown: Yeah. Well, I learned a lot from you listen to you ask a lot of authors a lot of great questions and relate with them and so I really encourage folks to listen to that podcast and go back to their earlier episodes there when Charlie was doing it. You'll connect with him How can a lot of people reach you or learn more about you?
• 49:06
  Charlie Hoehn: Yeah So the best way is just sign up for my email list CharlieHoehn.com. You'll get my books for free. I'm self published for a reason because I wanted to be able to get them in a lot of hands. And so you can get my books for free at CharlieHoehn.com.
• 49:22
  Steve Brown: They're great books and, and a lot of people have gotten value from them. Charlie, your Marketing Master Plan? What's the web address for that?
• 49:33
  Charlie Hoehn: It's not up yet, but if you go to Charlie home comm slash about if you go to my about page, you'll see a link there. So we haven't gotten it up yet. We're still in the process, but that's where you can go for now.
• 49:44
  Steve Brown: All right. Hey, I value you, man. And I appreciate you and this has been awesome. Thank you.
• 49:49
  Charlie Hoehn: Likewise, Steve. Thank you, sir.
• 49:54
  Steve Brown: Thanks for listening to another fun episode of the ROI Online Podcast. For more, be sure to check out the show notes of this episode. And feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn where we can chat, and I can help direct you to the resources you're searching for. To learn more about how you can grow your business better, be sure to pick up your copy of my book, "The Golden Toilet" at surprise thegoldentoilet.com. I'm Steve Brown, and we'll see you next week on another fun episode of the ROI Online Podcast.