Define Your Business’s Values to Prevent Burnout with Shante Cofield

Joe Casabona: “Get a real job.” “If you’re going to start a business, you need to grow.” ‘Hustle.” If you’re starting or have a business, you’ve probably heard all of this quote-unquote, “advice.” You’ve also probably heard that you need to do exactly what someone else did.

When I was starting my first business, someone told me if I wanted to be successful, I had to wear suits every day. But all of that is poison to our creator businesses. And Dr. Shante Cofield, The Movement Maestro has the antidote: More you.

If you want to know the importance of values-based marketing, how to be vulnerable enough to grow, and about the seasonality of life and business, this episode is for you. I met Shante at Craft & Commerce, and my conversation with her is real. I might even get choked up during part of it.

It’s so important for anyone who works for themselves to hear. So here’s what I want you to look for. Talking about impostor syndrome and being objective and trusting the data, talking about the big picture value stuff before talking about implementation, and why values are so important. Values are verbs, as Shante will say.

So I really hope you enjoy this episode. You can find everything that we talked about and maybe join her community which looks fantastic over at streamlined.fm/285. I want to thank this week’s sponsors Nexcess and LearnDash. So stick around and stay tuned. I really, really loved this conversation. But first, let’s get to the intro, and then the interview.

[00:01:53] <music>

Joe Casabona: If you’re looking to start a small business or side hustle or already own one, Business Brain is a podcast definitely worth listening to. Dave Hamilton and Shannon Jean, two longtime business owners, come to you each week to talk through the trials, successes, pitfalls, and tips it takes to successfully run a small business in today’s world.

Hear real-world folks talk about real-world problems, letting you know not only what it takes to get it done, but that you’re not alone in doing it. Business Brain covers topics like thinking of mistakes as tuition, ADHD in owning a business and revenue streams.

No matter where you are in your journey, Dave, Shannon and the Business Brain community are there to help. Start engaging and learning with Business Brain at businessbrain.show or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. That’s businessbrain.show. Head there today and tell them I sent you for a free gift of their book, We love mistakes. Your key to living a charmed life is right around the corner with Business Brain.

[00:03:07] <music>

Intro: Hey everybody, and welcome to How I Built It, the podcast where you get free coaching calls from successful creators. Each week you get actionable advice on how you can build a better content business to increase revenue and establish yourself as an authority. I’m your host Joe Casabona. Now let’s get to it.

[00:03:29] <music>

Joe Casabona: All right, I am here with Dr. Shante Cofield aka The Movement Maestro. Do you prefer Dr. Cofield or Shante or Maestro?

Shante Cofield: No. Whatever. Shante is fine. Honestly, people call me Maestro too. No one calls me Doctor. So anything but that.

Joe Casabona: I assume he doesn’t listen to this podcast, but my brother’s friend’s dad, like we were like on church council thing. I got roped in because I was doing the website I was telling you about in the pre-show.

Shante Cofield: Big money.

Joe Casabona: Big money. Exactly. And I said, “Oh, hey, Mister so and so,” and he goes, “Actually it’s Dr. so and so.” And I’m like, “You’re a dentist though. Be a little cooler please.” Not like being a dentist is easy, because it’s not and like my teeth are a disaster, but come on, man. “I’ve known you since I was like four. You’re gonna throw the doctor at me right now?”

Shante Cofield: I love it. Actually, be a little cool.

Joe Casabona: I was like, “I’m gonna get my PhD just to make him call me Doctor.” Anyway, I have Shante here. I’m really excited.

We met at Craft & Commerce 2022 and your talk about like being more you really resonated with me. So I’m psyched to talk about just kind of values-based marketing, building a good life. Best life building is how you put it.

And we’re going to talk about how it bums me out when people say they don’t have hobbies like outside of work, because I have many hobbies. And we’ll talk about those and Build Something More which you can sign up for over at streamlined.fm.

But I usually don’t ask you to do the intro but you are a physical therapist, right? And you’ve kind of moved into… it’s like business coaching?

Shante Cofield: Online business coaching, yeah. Let’s say a very nebulous title, but yeah, moved over into that. First off, dude, thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming up at the conference and just being so dope. And thanks for having me on.

I don’t take it lightly when people invite me on their podcast. It’s a big deal. You exposed me to your audience. I’m grateful for that, grateful for the airtime with that. So thank you.

And yeah, like you said, my background is physical therapy, but I learned that that wasn’t my best life. It was part of it. So I became a physical therapist, very interested in movement, didn’t want to go to med school. Went to physical therapy school instead.

Went through all that, graduated, became physiotherapists. Basically hated it and was like, “This is not what I signed up for. I don’t know if I’m actually helping people or if people are getting better because I’m telling them not to do the things that they want to be doing. I’m actually telling them to not do their hobbies for six weeks.” So I was like, “I don’t know, man. I don’t think this is the way.”

I stumbled across Instagram largely because I started doing CrossFit and I was just looking for more things to learn about it and more places to connect with people. At the time—this was 2014—there was far less people in the space putting out content about movement. And I saw this guy Kelly Starrett, people know him as Kstar, MobilityWOD, Supple Leopard, I was like, “I think I could do that. I’m not going to become him but like I could share my ideas.”

There’s another guy out there WodDoc, and I was like, “I could share my ideas.” That was largely it. I went into the space just to share ideas. It wasn’t like I’m going to create a brand and I’m going to become a creator, because that wasn’t really a thing 2014. It just wasn’t as popular of a thing. I was like, “I’m a physical therapist, I want to share my ideas.”

Started posting on Instagram, got hooked up with a company called RockTape, went to a class, became an instructor and learned I love teaching. And basically since then it’s just been kind of an evolution of doing less of the things I don’t like and doing more things that I do like aka building my best life. And made the hard pivot actually just in 2020 into only doing business coaching.

Before I was still teaching movement and coaching movement classes for other professionals. In 2020 I was like, “Dude, I’m done with this.” I’ve been done with it but now I’m ready to officially announce I’m done with it. And now I help other movement professionals largely, PTs Kairos, people like that, trainers and such I help them brand themselves in the online space.

Joe Casabona: That’s awesome. So, first of all, I just want to highlight here that you’re teaching within your domain knowledge, which I think is cool. I think a lot of people are like, “I’m gonna coach anybody who wants to be coached.” That’s tough, right? People come to me, and they’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, can you coach me on whatever?” And I’m like, “I don’t know anything about whatever.”

But my question here is, when did you feel confident enough to start coaching? I think maybe I suffer a little bit from imposter syndrome. It took me a long time to call myself a podcast coach, because I was like, “It’s not like I’m whoever, like giant podcaster person. Why would people want me to coach them?” What pushed you to call yourself a coach?

Shante Cofield: You know, it’s so interesting. I loved you used that example because so much is relative. And you were just like, “You know, I’m not like some big podcasting.” But I feel like if you were to speak to the general population, the only name they would know is like Joe Rogan.”

It’s so interestingly we really put this on ourselves of like, “I’m not as good as these other people that I know of even though nobody else knows about it.” And in reality so much of coaching is being ahead of the people that you are coaching.

I think it’s a slippery slope because then people will be like, “Well, you need to be one step ahead.” No. You need to be like 100 steps ahead of the people that you’re actually coaching. But that experience that you gain along the way I think that’s something that is just always been a part of something I like doing, and learning something and then sharing it with other people and carrying that skill set just across domains where at first it was coaching in sport and then coaching with business.

But for me, it’s always been super important that I can get the results and I can get the results for other people. I see a lot of in the online business space where people didn’t have business success until they started coaching online business. And it’s kind of like MLME, right? It’s like, “But actually, you never built a successful fitness business. You’re just coaching other people.”

So for me, you know, I think I’ve always felt like that with sport as well. Like I wanted always one of my coach to have been successful themselves and understand what it’s like to be in that position. I know there’s some circumstances where the coach wasn’t that good, but they were good at coaching. I get it. But for me, it’s really valuable to have a coach that has that experience.

And that was what it was for my journey. That’s why I said 2020 I was ready to bring it public facing if you will. It was kind of like before then… I live in SoCal. So before then it was very much like in and out, you know, animal style off the menu, where people would come and ask me and I was like, “Okay, cool. I can help you out with this thing. I can just share what I know. I’m not this business guru, but I can show you what I did,” because that’s what they were asking. They’re like, “Well, what did you do?” And I’m like, “I know that.”

And then after accumulating enough success stories… I think it’s really important that we get objective and we trust the data. Like, if you would get a lot of success stories, you do know that thing. If you are helping people do this thing, you do know that thing. And believe that.

And then 2020, by that time I had enough people that I had helped and I was like, “I can do this and I can help people with this, and I want to bring it to the forefront.” But it did take some time.

Joe Casabona: I love that. Like we need to get objective. I’ve always said like I won’t say I’m something unless like three people tell me that. Like a bunch of people told me I’m a good teacher. Before that I would have never said I’m a good teacher. I don’t know if I’m a good teacher.

Shante Cofield: I really liked that. I respect that so much. I talked about it on Instagram, about I think one of the simplest marketing approaches is be the best at what you do. And one of the comments I get on that a lot is like, “Well, how will you know if you’re the best?” And I’m like, People will tell you. They’ll tell you that you’re good at this thing. They’ll be like, “Wow, they’ve really helped me. They’re really good at that.” Then you know.

Joe Casabona: Which I think goes back to kind of how you started your journey, right, is people will tell you if you share, right? Like you need to share what you know and help people that way.

Shante Cofield: I love that you bring that up because it’s definitely… I think as creators maybe sometimes we take it for granted that… because sometimes it can come easy to like, “Oh, I do this thing, I make this thing.” You know, it’s called opening a vulnerability loop. You do have to initiate that and put stuff out there for people to have something to say about it, for people to have something to initiate a conversation with you, for people to get results from so they can say thank you and give you those compliments.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, if you come with an open mind, you’re gonna learn something to. I learned via YouTube video that I made that I was using… It wasn’t this mic. It was a different mic. And it was a side address mic. So we’re both using the Shure SM. You’re using the MB7 or the SM7B?

Shante Cofield: The MB7. I just switched the pop filter out because the shorter one was like… the plosives were messed up, man.

Joe Casabona: So we’re both using front address microphones, right? This microphone I had was a side-address, and I was using as a front address and this comment was like, “Are you using it wrong on purpose?” And I’m like, “Well, no.” It was like the most YouTube comment.

Shante Cofield: And then did they say, “Call him doctor?”

Joe Casabona: They like call me a doctor. And I’m like, Oh, Dr. Mic. I got it. All right. So after I got annoyed, I was like, “I am using this mic the wrong way.” All right, cool. I like that opening a vulnerability loop.

And I want to touch on something else you said. Like being ahead of the people you’re coaching, but not like one step. I really liked that a lot. My friend Chris Lema has something called The Bridge Framework where when you’re offering somebody a product or a service or coaching, he equates it to trying to cross the bridge. And most people don’t just want to cross the bridge, they want to get to what’s on the other side of the bridge.

So if I’m mangling this framework and bringing it into our example, when you start coaching people, you should at least be across the bridge, right? You shouldn’t be halfway across the bridge to be like, “Hey, I can show you how to cross this bridge. I’m actively crossing the bridge.”

Shante Cofield: Yes, before you both fall down.

Joe Casabona: Because you know, you do see it all the time, right? I’m a recovering WordPress developer as I told you. And I’ve seen a lot of plugin developers strike it big with one plugin, like right place, right time and then they like instantly become a business coach, but like they know only their situation. And they’re like, “Well, I just made this plug in and people bought it.” And I’m like, “So you made the plug in when people needed it.”

Which is I think another reason I was so hesitant. Because I was like, “Well, I was lucky?” And then I did it again and I’m like, “Well, you know.”

Shante Cofield: There you go. I like that you have that number. That’s nice objective number of like three people have said it. I like that. Because people are like, “Well, how many?” And it’s like, “Realistically more than one,” because it might be your mom.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, exactly. But like if you’ve taught like five people and four of them are like, “You’re super great at it,” that’s like an 80% hit rate.

Shante Cofield: Believe the information. Believe the data.

Joe Casabona: Believe the data. I love it. So again, one of the things that really resonated with me from your talk was, again, be more of you. And I think part of that is something we mentioned earlier, which is this values-based marketing. Can you talk a little bit about that? For some context, I tried to keep my personal views on a lot of things close to the chest, especially because like, I don’t know, I feel like I’m always gonna get dragged on Twitter. It’s like my biggest fear.

Shante Cofield: “Joe is trending.”

Joe Casabona: “Joe said something.” But the truth is I don’t think my views are very controversial. But anyway, can you talk a little bit about values-based marketing and how you can really bring more of yourself to your business that way?

Shante Cofield: Totally. I love this question. We were kind of chatting a little bit about before we started recording. I think that it’s becoming, at least in my space, in my online business coaching world it’s becoming something that’s talked about a lot more. And to me, it also seems very common sense like, yes, you should be leading with your values and making sure that you’re instilling your values. Not to be confused with your opinions on things in everything that you do.

And I think it’s really important, especially today, Joe, because we have so much information being thrown at us. And so for people that are trying to find their voice, yeah, we start off by imitation. Absolutely. That’s human nature. Nothing wrong with that.

But we have so many things being thrown at us and so many coaches and gurus being like, “Do it this way. Do this, do this, do this for success.” So many guides across the bridge, super important you always have your own Northstar that you lead with that, and you can always come back to that.

And it’s what do you value? And what are your values? What are the things that are important to you? I think that it’s very easy to kind of be pulled in other directions and influence in other directions. And we look at Instagram, look at TikTok and I don’t want to like get on a soapbox about it, but as a creator, my favorite thing is creativity and seeing it.

And as a human, I just love creativity. It come up before hobbies and things that people are passionate about. I love that it’s different for everyone. I love that you love Star Wars and Disney. I don’t love it. I don’t need to. I love that difference. And I think that I see with social media that there’s like a homogenizing of people of like, “Do this trend,” and everyone looks the same, and everyone’s just being the same.

I don’t want to say we can avoid that but I think the antidote to that is that people identify and stick to their values no matter what. And it’s gonna be different for everybody. Obviously, everybody should be subjective and independent, but I’m not sure if people do that enough early on in their career.

I do a lot business coaching for Instagram and people are really focused on like, “But do hashtags matter?” And the one of the first things that we’re working on is write out what your values are because those are the things that always have to come back to and those are going to be your anchors. And the content you create around it and the way that you show up is going to be founded in this. And that is how you’re ultimately going to attract your people.

I met a good friend named Sarah Suds, and I met up with her and she said to me once, “We don’t attract what we want, we attract what we are.” Totally flip that around. We don’t attract what we want, we attract what we are. And really resonated with me.

And to me, when you lead with your values and you’ve established “this is what I’m about,” you will attract that audience that values the same thing. And so I think that becomes an integral part of marketing and an integral part of sustainability and longevity irrespective of what field you’re in.

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Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by LearnDash. Look, I’ve been making courses for a long time, I’ve taught at the college level and I’ve created curriculums for several different organizations, including Udemy, Sessions College, and LinkedIn learning. When I create my own courses, there’s no better option than LearnDash.

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[00:18:20] <music>

Joe Casabona: There are two things here I want to repeat because I think they’re really important. Values not to be confused with your opinions. Your opinions are probably based on your values. But like I don’t need to tell you what politicians I love to do like value-based marketing, right? The answer is none of them.

And then you mentioned people get caught up in the details. Do hashtags matter? I gotta remind myself not to be that way when I start a project because it’s a lot easier for me to think about implementation. That’s a concrete thing. Values are not really a concrete thing. I guess they can be, right?

In the pre-show, I was telling you how I left my full-time job and started a business because I had a three-month-old at home and I wanted to spend time with my family when I could. So like one of the values for me is having a flexible job so that I can be there for my family, which was really important during the pandemic.

My wife’s a nurse and we have three children now. Yeah, we have a lot of kids by today’s standards. We just thought it would be nice to like book end of the pandemic, you know. Like one was born towards the beginning, one was born towards the end. So like some nice symmetry there.

But that value was really important because my wife was going to work and my kids were home from school and daycare. And I was able to take the time I needed because I built a business around that.

Shante Cofield: That right there. The longevity, the sustainability, the fulfillment, the happiness around there. I agree that values feel less tangible than this thing that you can check off. The cool part is you can totally write out your values. And a good friend of mine Laura Jean, she has a great saying: Values are verbs.

And that’s what I encourage people I’m working with is that you can have these values but are you living them? Are you enacting them. Because it’s one thing to say I have this value, which is slightly different than I value this thing, but close enough that we’ll leave it.

If we flip it then or take a step further and we say values are verbs, so how are you living that out? And then to see you doing them and being like, “Yeah, and that’s why I love my job because I value family time and I value relationships.” And what does that look like in action? That looks like me making a decision and prioritizing these things. That speaks volumes. This speaks volume.

Joe Casabona: Thank you. I appreciate that. It feels a little bit counterculture because I think like… Maybe less now like post-pandemic. But I think a lot of people started business to make money. Before I was 30, I said, I don’t care where I’m at with my relationship, with family, with whatever. I just want to be a millionaire by the time I’m 30.

Now that I’m 36, I’m like, “God, what a dumb kid I was. I’m way happier now with like a chaos house of three kids, five and under.” And it’s just like so much fun. My kids are goofballs. I think a lot of people might want to start a business to make a lot of money. And that’s kind of what we’re told, right? “Build a big business, have an agency make your first hire.”

Shante Cofield: That part. I think you nailed it. It’s what we’re told. I have a good friend, Jill. She’s my business partner as well. And selling drives her and her business is her passion. She loves doing launches, and I’m like, “That’s not for me.”

Well, when you identify the things that you value, you’re cool then. And you’re like, “Yeah, I actually really, really value this. And it’s not just something someone told me or not that the books told me. It’s that I want to be doing it.

Whereas if you only look at, Okay, well, someone on Instagram told me to do it, or the business coach told me to do it, I just heard it, I just feel this way but believed this, but I never questioned it, and I never established my own values, then suddenly you find yourself leading a life that you’re like, “But I’m not happy. And maybe I made money, but I’m really unfulfilled.” These are such good points you’re bringing up.

Joe Casabona: Thank you. I feel like I don’t usually make these points and you’re really bringing them out. And like what you’re saying, it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I mean, I read like Paul Jarvis’ book, Company of One, I don’t know, if you’ve read that.

Shante Cofield: I haven’t yet.

Joe Casabona: It’s really good. It’s about how everyone tells you to hire and build as big a business as possible so you can remove yourself from it. But I was explaining to my brother-in-law yesterday. He asked me, “So are you looking to hire any employees?” And I’m like, “Nah, man. It’s just like, I built this business so I could help people make money podcasting, or whatever I was doing before. Like help people build websites. My business is very me centric and I’m cool with that.”

Shante Cofield: Dude, this is something that… You know, I do business coaching, but I also have… We call it a mentor mind with that woman, Jill, I was just speaking about. We’ve capped it at 30. 25 is pretty ideal. 25 women is pretty ideal. They are all online business owners.

And it’s very cool to run this with someone who we have very similar values, very similar values. We have slightly different things that we value, right? So there’s like a little bit different with that. And because of that, we attract a little bit of a mixed audience, where some people are all about business, grow the business, and I am all about build your best life.

So I think that the people that are in the mentor mind that we run get the best of both worlds because they get to decide, do I want to be pushing and growing and doing this? Although, you know, Jill’s business is fairly lean, she has a handful of people that work underneath her. But I’m very much like, “I like being in the middle of the business.” Jill’s in the middle of her business as well. And I like being in that and I like keeping it very lean and not having a massive team.

Part of that is because I really value safety. And for me, safety comes when I can pivot and adjust things and I don’t have a massive bill every month of employees. That’s the number one thing, right? So if you’re online, you don’t have overhead.

So if you’re a brick-and-mortar, that’s usually your number one overhead. And then after that or close to that is going to be employees. To not have that and worried about that is a big thing for safety for me. I love to use that word counterculture. That’s definitely that’s counterculture of keep your business lean. Let it be you. Like do a lot of the things.

It’s almost like you get shamed for like, “You edit your own videos? Oh my God!” And it’s like, because I love doing that. I don’t edit my podcast anymore. But leaning into the things that you enjoy and that fulfill you, there’s nothing wrong with that. Definitely check out that book because I’m all about that confirmation bias.

Joe Casabona: Likewise. I bought that book knowing I had to agree with it. But yeah, absolutely. I don’t edit this podcast thank you, Joel, but I hate editing my podcast. I’m just like, Uhhh. I think this is probably the most I’m like Johnny Depp in that I don’t like watching or listening to anything after I’ve done it. That’s the most I’ll ever be like Johnny Depp. But yeah, when it’s done, it’s done. I made it, I was there when I created it, and so like I’d rather have somebody do the editing.

Shante Cofield: I feel the exact same way. People are like, “Do you listen to your podcasts after… the ones that you’ve been on?” And I’m like, “No, what’s done is done.”

Joe Casabona: I will listen to the ones that I guessed on because I want to make sure I didn’t like promise something and forgotten about it. Like, “What was that URL? I gotta make it right now.”

Shante Cofield: That’s right. So good. Can I just interject real quick? Because I wrote it down. Something you said earlier that I did an episode about it and I sent an email out about it. And how when you started that you were like, “I want to make a lot of money.”

I think that it’s important that we also want established our values. And two, we start recognizing what phase or what season… I don’t want to say phase. That sounds very pejorative. What season of life we’re in. I think that we can divide things into three seasons of your expand seasons, your experience seasons, and your pivoting seasons. And most people are in one of those.

And when you’re in your 20s, for the most part you are, especially with business-oriented, you’re creative, you’re creative, there’s oftentimes a big expand period of life, a big expanse season, and you’re like, “I want to make money, I want to do more things.” And then suddenly you’re just like, “I want to just enjoy what I’ve built or I just want to be with my family.

And we’re in that experience phase of life or that experience season of life. And then COVID hits for many people, and it put them in a pivot. And not necessarily a forced pivot, because that’s real, too, but it was a great pause. And people got to look at their values and the things they valued, and they were like, “Wait a minute, “This ain’t it. We pivoting.” And then you see people building new careers and things like that.

So I think when people are looking at creating these value-based businesses and doing values-based marketing, self-awareness is paramount there too in identifying where you’re at and being okay with that.

Joe Casabona: It’s so interesting you mentioned that. I earlier depending on when this episode comes out, but in an earlier episode, I had Dr. Sherry Walling on the show, and she has a book called Touching Two Worlds: A Guide for Finding Hope in the Landscape of Loss, where we talk a little bit about that and the great resignation, and the great pause made people reevaluate.

Now, she experienced considerable grief during the pandemic, but this book kind of came out of that. And so hearing you kind of reiterate and reinforce some of that is really cool.

Also really important. I think, like understanding that there’s like a pivot season of your life, right? Because I’m there now. I was a WordPress developer for almost 20 years. WordPress came out in 2003 and I started using it in 2004.

Shante Cofield: Joe invented WordPress.

Joe Casabona: I was there very early and it was great, and I love it. Making websites lets you like flex both sides of your brain. And now I’m like pivoting into helping people launch podcasts, helping people make money with their podcasts.

And I’m like, “I’m wondering, am I making the right decision? How many people actually do this this many times in their lives?” Because my old man, he’s a boomer I guess and he… Not pejoratively is a baby boomer. He’s 70 years old. And he was at Verizon, formerly NYNEX, formerly Bell Atlantic, formerly whatever basically his whole life. And I’ve like changed jobs every two years and then I went out on my own.

And now halfway… not halfway, but five, six years into my full-time self-employment as an adult, I’m like, totally changing my audience and my offering. I just wonder if that was-

Shante Cofield: I just had a discussion… I’m trying to think who I was even talking to about this. It sounds like, yes, you are obviously related to your dad and he raised you and instilled a lot of values and things like that, but also you’re two very different people.

And in what I do and who I’m exposed to, one of the things that I’ve noticed is that we as entrepreneurs oftentimes forget that we are a very small subset of everybody. And we built different. What other people consider safe, we consider risky.

Like to me, working for somebody else sounds incredibly risky. And I saw it happen in COVID and people got furloughed, and I was like, “What? You don’t have no money now? What happens? This is it?” Incredibly risky to me. Whereas people that prefer that set paycheck may look at what we do and are like, “Are you kidding? You have seasonality in your business? And sometimes like what you made before is not what you make now? And it’s changes? What?”

So when I talk to other entrepreneurs and other coaches… Now I remember who it was. They’re largely in the fitness space and they were talking about hiring coaches. And that they didn’t want to hire coaches that were multi-passionate because those people tend to dabble and leave.

And I was like, I think it’s very small subset of people. We tend to think that it’s so many people, but I do believe that so, so many people, the majority of people want a simple life. They want a set life, they want to have a family and live in this kind of house. I think there’s nothing wrong with that. And they want to be able to provide an income and they get so much out of that and they value that. And sometimes they don’t have any, you know, other options. But I think that also let people do really enjoy that.

And the flip side is people like us that don’t enjoy that and would not thrive in that and do way better leaning into these things. And it sounds like yours are willy nilly. It’s not like you’re like, “And now I’m going to be a seamstress or something like that. You’re within your wheelhouse, within your skill set.

Your audience may pivot, but it’s actually probably tangential more than anything else. Because if people have a website, they’re kind of online. And then if they’re online, they’re realizing the value of marketing on different kinds of platforms and different kinds of mediums. So it’s not like some big switch.

But I love this discussion because it does come up a lot for me with people that I connect with on Instagram, things like that, and then feeling a bit authored because some of the people around them are different and they’re like, “But they want a traditional job and I don’t. What does that mean? Am I making the wrong decision?”

Joe Casabona: And to my dad’s credit, he didn’t get it, but like he supported me. He like made the first investment. Like it really means a lot to get the support of my parents. My wife, when I started my business, she was on maternity leave. So I was the only income and I’m like, “I’m gonna leave this secure job because I’m like, not happy. How do you feel about that?” She goes, “You need to leave this job because you’re not happy.” And I’m like, “Yes.”

Shante Cofield: You got chills, Joe. That’s what I want for people. They want for themselves, I want it for them. But that, that right there. You can hear… I mean, it’s great. I love that this podcast has a video because I can see you. It’s one of my favorite things coming out of Zoom, and I could see you and you can feel and see the richness of that and how it lights you up and what that means.

You will work a million times harder to make it work than if you were at that other gig. And yes, there are times… We’ve all done it. We’re just like, “I just gotta make this money and bite the bullet,” and like, “Okay, I’m gonna do it.” But when we have those options presented, and we’re like, “No, I have the ability to leap and you have people that believe in you, man. And you know your work till the end of time to make that thing work. That’s awesome.

[00:32:02] <music>

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[00:33:00] <music>

Joe Casabona: Well, as usual, this got deeper than I expected it to get.

Shante Cofield: Good stuff, man. That’s good stuff.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, this is good stuff. This show pivoted from talking to developers about how they develop something to like the bigger picture stuff like this. And since then it’s gotten a lot deeper. It’s really rich.

And it’s really important because when I first went out on my own, like my friends, my brother’s friend’s mom… I guess it was a mutual friend. But she was like, “When’s Joe gonna get a real job?” And my brother Phil, God bless him, he was like, “Joe makes this much money and your son is waiting tables. Who has the real job?” And like if you want to wait tables, it’s great. If you’re good at it, you can make a lot of money. But like don’t have your mom say like my job’s not a real job. So I appreciate that my brother like… I’m like book-smart. My brother Phil’s like street-smart.

Shante Cofield: Aha, what a combo. Older brother? Younger?

Joe Casabona: Younger. I’m the oldest of four boys.

Shante Cofield: Uh.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. So our house is falling apart by the time we all grew up.

Shante Cofield: Four boys. And you were like, “Yeah, I want a family.”

Joe Casabona: Actually, my wife wanted like six kids in the beginning. I talked her down to like three, maybe four. So we’re at three. We’re good right now. Abby is like eight months old.

Shante Cofield: Are you sleeping?

Joe Casabona: Yeah. She’s the best baby. She knew what preceded her. My two olders were bad at sleeping and eating. My son has a weak gag reflex or whatever. So she was like, “Look, I’m going to be born on Christmas Eve and I’m just going to be like the best Christmas gift.”

Shante Cofield: What a person!

Joe Casabona: I know, right? She’s been sleeping through the night for months. Like she’s good at being a baby. I mean, I could keep talking to you all day. I want to be cognizant of your time. But I do want to touch on this mentor mind thing again. Because I was looking at your website, you’re The Movement Maestro, you have like Mafia on there.

I’m a big giant New York Italian stereotype who’s worked out like a barber shop and a deli and in construction. So I was like checking out your offerings. But I’d love for you to dig into this mentor mind a little bit. Because the things we talked about, you would think they are intuitive, right? But I think there are so many outside forces.

I had a guy tell me like, “If you want to have a successful business, you got to wear a suit every day.” And I’m like, “This is the dumbest advice I’ve ever… I’m 19 and I know how stupid this advice is.” I was like, “Why don’t we need to wear a suit? I’ve made websites in my boxer shorts or whatever.”

Shante Cofield: That right there. Dude, I got that same talk as a physical therapist. And I was like, “This is so dumb that I have to wear this fancy clothes. I’ve ripped three pairs of pants as a physical therapist before I was like, “I’m not wearing these pants anymore. I can’t be physical and do my job. I can’t demonstrate a squat or a lunge because I’ve split my pants.”

So I think this circles back to that values-based marketing. And for people that are, let’s say, going to hire a coach, or they’re going to look for advice for someone, the number one thing I tell people to look for is alignment of values. If someone has the same kind of values, then the advice that they’re going to give you is going to be more relevant and more easily believable by you.

Whereas I think people just look solely at an outcome. “Okay, this person has a lot of money.” They don’t look at what’s their lifestyle like. Because maybe that person that, you know, that guy that told you this loves wearing suits, and he loves… He’s that guy and he’s like, “I’m in new suit every day and I feel good.” It’s what he values. And like, “All right, that’s cool. It’s not for me, but that’s cool.”

But people tend to just look at the outcome and be like, “I want that.” And I’m not going to look at “Would I trade places with them. What are the things that this person values?” Because we know that coach is going to teach you what they know. They’re gonna teach you about how they got across the bridge. That’s it.

And hopefully they’re not pooh-poohing other approaches. That’s the worst thing when they’re like, “Oh, absolutely, that’s the word. Don’t do that. Don’t do that.” Hopefully, they’re just saying, “This is what I do. This is how I got across. This is what I can teach you.”

The mentor mind that Jill and I run, Jill has been in the online business… I think she’s like you. Like she invented online business. You invented WordPress, y’all both some OGs. Just from the beginning of time. So she’s been doing this for years coming out of the fitness space. So nutrition, fitness competitor, things like that. Personal training—that realm. I came out of the physical therapy world. So obviously, there’s a lot of overlap.

She very much loves the strategy. She very much loves the numbers. She very much loves that side of things. But us having the same value, she understands having integrity, showing up with integrity, not just using clever marketing tactics and scarcity and urgency and just making sales.

She is a personal brand. She’s @Jillfit on Instagram. She has a personal brand as well and understand like putting yourself in the center of this thing and building a brand around that and truly getting results for people. She values expertise.

So we have the same value alignment in terms of integrity, in terms of expertise, in terms of action-taking. Whereas the things that we… I don’t want to say differ on, but where our strengths complement each other is she’s so much about the strategy and I am so much about the brand building, about the community building, about the best life building, the things that are on the other side of that. More of I would say the attraction kind of marketing side of things, right? Where she’s like, “Here’s the strategy and implementation,” and I’m like, “Here’s how you get the eyes. Here’s how you build the trust. I will show you that.”

She knows how to do it, she’s done it for years, but that’s stuff that I really like to go deep with and really like to dig into. So then when people run this mentor mind, it’s six months long for female intermediate plus online business owners. We both have decent-sized audiences, so they’re coming from our current audiences. And it’s basically we created an offer that didn’t exist on our platform.

So we have people that are waiting for something. And like, “Cool, this is an expense.” And for folks that are kind of like, I want to work with Jill, but was a little bit nervous, or people that wanted to work with me, but her audience now they have the two of us. And we run two live events with it. We do one on one coaching calls, we do group coaching calls. So it’s run in that regard traditional, like we see, like masterminds run but I am very much very adamant on the one-on-one calls.

I think that one thing we do see when we get into mastermind territory and mentor mind whatever territory is that oftentimes the group model is implemented, because it’s most beneficial for the person leading the group, not because it’s most beneficial for the people in the group.

So we have that element so that people can have that hive think and bounce ideas off each other. People do like that. But I’m very adamant on also we’re gonna give you the one-on-one attention because that’s what you’re paying for and that’s how we can look to guarantee the results that they want, that we can actually guarantee.

Joe Casabona: I love that. Couple of things to take away here. So you built these big audiences and then created an offer for them, right? That’s like the mistake I’ve made so many times and I’m like finally learning right now as we speak in this pivot, is like I can make as many products as I want, I can develop as many… I’m very good at developing good courses, but if nobody wants that or wants to learn it from me, like, “I’m just kind of wasting my time.”

Shante Cofield: It is incredible for so many reasons to hear you say that. One, that you’re willing to acknowledge you’re good at something. People have a really tough time acknowledging that. They’re just like, “Uuu.” They feel bad saying it. They can’t get it out.

But two, that order of operations there and you acknowledging that actually the creation part for the majority of us is actually the easy part. You can create a zillion things. It’s attracting the eyes, it’s building the trust, it’s listening to what people want, and then building that. That’s the hard part. And so if you’ve done that, and you’re like, “I have the onset of trust,” that’s actually pretty easy. After that, you just build the things and have fun with it.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, absolutely. I have a friend will call them straw man. I feel like they quote-unquote, “pivot” all the time because they don’t want to do the thing that they’re constantly told they have to do. Like, “Oh, I want to do this thing but I don’t want to do X. I just want to do Y.” And I’m like, “All right, well, this is not the business for you then.” Right? I think recognizing that too.

Again, part of my pivot was that I got really tired of doing web design work for clients. I was trading like hours for dollars. And I didn’t want to do that as much anymore. And I was really passionate about podcasting. I think it’s like thinking about that stuff. Thinking about your values, like you said, like, I feel like this conversation has me thinking a lot more. I hope it has other people who are listening thinking. Because I mean, like the books Start with Why is cited all the time for everything forever. And like forever and ever. And that title is fine. I read the book, it was great. But like you don’t need to read the book. You just need that one sentence.

Shante Cofield: There you go. Exactly.

Joe Casabona: No offense to Simon Sinek. But like, just ask yourself why you’re doing something and let that-

Shante Cofield: I think you make another really good point, Joe, if we tie it back into what you had said earlier of growth, right? And so if I was gonna keep it alliteration, I would say that I have my three phases of life or three seasons of life: being expand, experience, and the thing that they’re doing would actually be evolved. We call it pivot but I think it’s an evolution.

Because sometimes what happens is… and I’ve seen in my own business because Jill’s ahead of me in business, and some of the things that she does, I’m like, “I couldn’t do that.” Or at least I remember thinking about that like a year or two ago, being like, “Ah, I couldn’t do that. I don’t want to do that.”

And then fast forward two years, however, many more clients, however many more products, services, offers, and suddenly you’re like, “Mmm, I think I could do that.” Right. Where in the beginning when I first heard my podcast, I was like, “I love editing it, and I want to do this.” And then 100 episodes in, I was like, “I want to do this no more. Oh, good.”

So I think that exactly what you said where if we’re I want to say constantly, but continuously evaluating what we value, because that can change too, right, over time, and being like, “What do I value? Why am I doing this?” Like the person that you said that keeps changing and pivoting, oftentimes it’s because they actually value something else.

Like if I was to be like, “Why did I keep doing that?” Sounds like they value something else, they want something else and so they’re like, “Well, I don’t do these things because it’s not what I value ultimately. It’s gonna give me what I want.”

Whereas if you actually said, you’re like, “What are my values? What are things that I value?” and understand that this can evolve, and we don’t fix ourselves and be like, Well, I’ll never think that because it’s been my experience that over time you evolve, and you’re like, actually, those things that I was holding so tight, I’m okay outsourcing them. I’m okay doing something a little bit differently because I’ve evolved. So it’s a really, really good point that you bring.

Joe Casabona: Thank you. Honestly, I think for my friend, Strawman, the solution to their problem is they want to do the work and never deal with any of the clients. And I’m like, That sounds like a full-time job, like working for somebody else. And that’s cool.

Shante Cofield: I love that you bring it up. We are in this entrepreneurial Renaissance, let’s call it, and I think that people that like regular jobs or traditional jobs are feeling some kind of way and feeling some of that should.

I have clients like that. And I’ve had this conversation where I’m just like, “You would be best served to find someone really dope to work for.” And that does exist. I know we hear horror stories about all these other things, but go read some Seth Godin, and understand their leverage that you have.

And coming out of the great resignation and businesses changing and understand, especially if you’re older, you bring a lot to the table and the experience that you bring. And the things that you can say, Okay, I can do this and I can bring this to the table. What if you do it this way? And create that position that you want within the environment that really truly serves you.

I see people and they’re trying to make that entrepreneurial thing work and I’m like, You like certainty too much. And when I say “certainty,” sometimes people are thinking of a paycheck. That’s part of it. The certainty of an outcome. Right?

So you know, in the online space, just because you took all these hours to build a course doesn’t mean people are going to buy it. Just because you put all this effort into marketing doesn’t mean people are gonna buy it. But people that come from a world of certainty think “I did this input, I should have this output.” And when that doesn’t happen…

Even with an Instagram post, right? Like, I will spend an hour editing things because I really enjoy it. And I’m like, “Oh, look at this little new feature on Adobe. Okay, cool. No one else cares about it but I like it.” I spent all this time and if I was to go into that being like, “Okay, I put in this effort, this input, I expect this output,” you’re going to be sadly mistaken and grossly disappointed at the end of that. And for people that need that certainty, they’re probably better off in a different position. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Joe Casabona: There’s still a term from I think The FOCUS Podcast like. If you like to crank widgets, great. That’s awesome. And then you could spend your mental energy exactly the way you want to. I love experimenting, and being self-employed lets me do that a lot more.

Shante Cofield: That’s the best life out there, best life building, leaning into the strengths and the things that you value, it’s magic.

Joe Casabona: Absolutely. Well in Build Something More, as long as we still have time, in Build Something More, we are going to talk about our own personal hobbies. If you’re a longtime listener, you probably know mine, but we don’t know Shante’s. So we’ll learn a little bit.

But Maestro, this was such a great conversation. If people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?

Shante Cofield: Instagram is my platform of choice. Always the easiest. I’m The Movement Maestro over there. I’m at M-A-E-S-T-R-O. I know “Maestro” can be a little tough to spell. If you don’t like Instagram, that’s okay. My Website is the exact same, The Movement Maestro. You can check things out there and connect with me through that. DMs are always the easiest. I get back to them really quickly. Email, I’m not even gonna lie, I’m very slow.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. I will link to that and everything we talked about: The Bridge Framework, A Company of One, even Start with Why. I’ll link that in the show notes too, which you can find over at streamlined.fm/285. And folks, this is a treat because you’re getting a one-two punch of Craft & Commerce from Shante this week, and then from Cara Chace next week.

So we just set you up for like values-based marketing and think about what is important to you. Next week, Cara is going to tell us why that’s even more important. So definitely stick around for next time. Hopefully, this teaser works.

But Shante thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Shante Cofield: Joe, this was my pleasure. Thank you.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. And thank you to this week’s sponsors Nexcess and LearnDash. Thank you for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something.