PP 334: Extus Justin, Consultant From Get Elevation

Website: https://extusjustin.com/
Facebook: https://business.facebook.com/epjustin23/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/extusjustin/
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Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/100574055700324550459

Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. I am so happy to have you here, and I’m thrilled to introduce our guest today, Extus Justin. Extus is a consultant from Get Elevation, and has a tremendous story to share with us all. 

So Extus, I’m just gonna say, welcome again, and I’d love it if you would share your journey with us.

Extus Justin: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on your show, Kim. In terms of my journey, I guess my business, and really just getting started because I think that’s where a lot of individuals are either growing or just getting started. My journey, I came from an Island called St. Lucia back in the Caribbean, and I moved to the US. I joined the military, the Marines. And then from there, I decided, I did the military thing. And now, it’s time for me to move on to the next chapter in my life. And when I got out of the Marines, I started building my consulting business.

Kim Sutton: I have to ask, which has been more difficult mentally, the Marines, or being an entrepreneur?

Extus Justin: I would say, well, that question is a good question. Because again, I get asked about it a lot. And what I find is that it’s different types of mindsets. Because what I find with the Marines, the mindset of being a Marine, although it could help in business, it also could hurt you as well too. And the mindset of being an entrepreneur, it could help you as a Marine, but it can also hurt you as well too. And what I mean by this is, what I find is that with being an entrepreneur, there’s a lot of change in that, there’s a lot of becoming that. because what I learned on my journey is that the person who I am today, just on my entrepreneurial journey, it’s not the person that’s going to achieve the results that I want. And the only way for me to achieve those results was for me to, in essence, give up who I am and become a better version of myself versus when I was in the Marines. A lot of what I did was more in terms of, in a sense, a lot of I guess you could call it in a sense repetitive. As far as, Okay, here’s where we’re at, here’s the mission, and let’s go make it happen. Does that make sense?

Kim Sutton: That absolutely makes sense. But I can see how the structure of the Marines as well. This is a bad example, but it’s the one I’m thinking about even just preparing your bunk at the beginning of the day to make. Just having that order. That can be so valuable if people could just find that same type of order in their businesses, but so many people are lacking it.

Extus Justin: Mm hmm. Yeah. And that’s a good thing that you mentioned as well too, because one of the things I definitely took away from being in the Marines is doing the small stuff. Because most people, they overlook the small stuff. And the small stuff might just be taking the first step. And as you mentioned, making your bed first thing in the morning. Because I remember being in a boot camp, and going through that journey, it was just something like quad three months, that’s the first thing we did every single morning. And it’s something I still do today.

Kim Sutton: I was gonna ask you that.

Extus Justin: Which is pretty interesting. And I said, one of the things I found is those small little habits because most people who want to build a business want to become successful. What they do? They try to figure out, okay, what’s this one big mountain I need to climb versus how, what I’ve noticed is that the most successful people, and something other than the Marines as well too, it’s all about those small habits. Whether it’s making your bed, whether it’s just eating that apple instead of a candy bar or whatever. Ultimately, those are the little things that add up to those big things.

Kim Sutton: Oh, absolutely. I can definitely see that. My husband is a US Air Force veteran. And when we met, he had been out of the service for three or four years, and he was still making the bed first thing in the morning. I’m not proud of this, but I think I broke him of the habit. Actually, it’s not me. It’s just the craziness of the children. He gets up, he rolls out of bed, and all of a sudden, he’s got three monkeys climbing from his neck. But he does make the bed before we go to bed. I love just those little things. But yeah, I agree. I got stuck in that trap where I was looking at the big mountains and not thinking about the little action steps that were necessary to get there. I know you’ve had an interesting entrepreneurial journey, would you mind diving into that a little bit more and telling us about the struggles you overcame to get to where you are today?

Extus Justin: So in terms of struggle, I think I kind of, when I first got started, because I think is just a natural progression, you kind of see other people doing something similar to what you want to do. You maybe watch a few videos, or you just see someone, I’m saying how they’re, in essence, able to achieve something, and you’re like, I could do this as well too. So you take the leap, you take the pledge and you say, I’m gonna get started with this thing. Because for me, I saw how others were, in essence, using information, like you’re using the knowledge to build the businesses. And I said: “You know what? I could do that.” And one of the first things I did was I said: “Okay, let me go out and find people to coach, to ultimately help.” As far as helped them overcome challenges. And when I got started my journey, it was one of the most difficult things I ever did, because I left the Marines to kind of pursue that approach. And I ended up, because I moved to Indiana first and I said: “Okay, I’m in Indiana. I want to move to California to start my business.” 

So I moved to California. I didn’t have a job at the time, I had just gotten out of the Marines. So when I moved to California, I ultimately, to make ends meet, what I did was I go to a TSP, which is my retirement account. So I kind of withdrew it. I had about maybe $50,000 there. So I withdrew all of it, I’m gonna use this as basically a stepping stone to help me get my business started. So I’m living out in California, I got like a cheap car, a cheap apartment, and just trying to live off of that money to kind of get my business up and running. And one of the things happened is that I ended up going broke as far as just trying to figure this out, trying to forget the market, and now trying to figure out how to get clients, customers and build the business. And every month that went by, my savings, the money, I had my savings, it was going out paying bills, but nothing was coming in. And I just couldn’t for the life of me figure it out, and I remember being in my apartment at the time. I think it’s like a 550 square foot, just tiny apartment and just realized that I’m at the end of my money. I’ve bought these programs. I’ve tried a put them forward, but it just wasn’t working out. And I realized that I would have to really move back to Indiana, back home because, again, it just wasn’t working the way I thought. So that’s just a piece of my soul. And I think a lot of us have these pieces. So that’s just a little piece of it.

Kim Sutton: Oh, yeah, I’ve had those pieces. I didn’t have the retirement account to work from. But when I started my first business, I had high limit credit cards that I had had since I was 18. And I was late 20’s when I started my first business so I thought, okay, I will max out my credit cards to buy inventory, and I will sell it, and I will make lots of money. And that’s not quite how it worked out. Instead of making lots of money, I ended up making lots of debt, like close to $100,000. And even when I shut the doors, I was making a quarter a day if I was lucky because of just the cost that was incurred from late fees and interest, and I had to get an office to house all this inventory. And then there comes a lot of added expenses there so I can totally feel the pain in California even for a 500 square foot apartment. That is not cheap. I mean, one year and in that would go through half your savings.

Extus Justin: Yeah, it definitely, definitely.

Kim Sutton: Yeah.

Extus Justin: The process, it definitely did because California is a pretty expensive place especially when we don’t have any income coming in.

Kim Sutton: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I’m not too far from you. I’m outside of Dayton, Ohio. So when I hear about people living in California and what they’re paying for their mortgage or for their rent, I just feel so grateful. Yes. I mean, where we are is not exactly in the mecca of entrepreneurial activities. I think that would be fair to say, don’t you?

Extus Justin: Oh, definitely.

Kim Sutton: 

We can’t exactly walk out the door and have lunch with a lot of the heavy hitters like you could if you were in San Diego or LA. But sometimes, that offset is okay being in a small town USA. We can still do great things and make great community, and get the clients even when we are in the middle of corn and soy fields. What were some of the next steps that you took? Because I know that that’s not what you’re looking like now. So what were your aha moments, and what happened next?

Extus Justin: So my aha moments are, and it’s interesting because a lot of people, and even myself when I first started my business, I used to think that there was one thing, like there was just one thing I needed to get my business up and going. But as I kept doing it, because I had to kind of move back to Indiana and really had to sit and reflect on all the things I did, and all the things that didn’t work, and all the things that kind of did work or whatever to try to figure out, okay, is this the end for me? Is this where I just finally just throw in the towel and get that 9:00 to 5:00 job, which I just knew with a passion that I just didn’t even enjoy the thought of. Is this why I do this? Or is this why I say, okay, what have I learned? Because I think a lot of us, whenever we get into a situation whenever it doesn’t work to the point where it’s like we hit rock bottom, the only thing we have left is to kind of reflect. And when I reflected, because I had some good mentors, I guess, just gone through. 

Because of my entrepreneurial journey, it all started with getting into personal development and personal growth. And one of the couple of mentors I had was Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Brian Tracy, just listen to this stuff constantly. Like it was just like a staple for me, like people would be listening to music and stuff. And for me, I just got to the point where I just listened to this word, that was my music. So whenever I got into tough situations in my life, that kind of what I learned from this, listening to this stuff over and over again. It kind of made sense. When I got to the stuff situations, those are the voices that came in my head. Well, there’s a Tony Robbins saying, Hey, is this the end? Or is this the beginning? And it really kind of helped me to see, okay, you know what? What I need to do is to evolve myself. I had to change. Because when I look back on the past few years of what I was trying to do, it was ultimately me being me trying to get results. And as you know, they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And I realized, my mentor said that a business it’s not, the best way he said is that, we don’t have business problems. We just have personal problems, and it reflects in our business. And when I kind of saw–

Kim Sutton: Extus, can you say that again?

Extus Justin: Yeah. People don’t have business problems. What we do is we have personal problems, and these problems just reflect in our business. Kind of like a mirror.

Kim Sutton: Wow. I asked you to repeat that because it is just so big. Well, I wouldn’t have ever seen that. But when I was going through my own struggles in my business, Brendon Burchard, was the one I turned to. And the same thing, he provided the biggest inspiration. And then I realized listening to him that it was personal problems that were reflecting in my business as well. So thank you so much for sharing. Yeah, so then what happened?

Extus Justin: And that’s when I kind of, again, got into God with my mentor. And all of the things I’ve always kind of found. Because for me, I am all about some leverage, as far as what’s the least you could do to get the biggest results. Because if you ascribe to the 80-20 rule, what you will find is, when it comes to anything in life, let’s say you’re doing something, if you say, okay, I want to get to California, what you’ll find if you say, okay, let me go on a trip. What you’ll find is that any piece of the time you put into the thing will give you 20% of the results, and 20% of the time that you put into it will get you like 80% of the results. And when I kind of saw that, I kind of figured out, well, if my business isn’t working, like what’s not working? What part of me, and what part of myself is not having my business work? And when I really had to think about the whole thing, I realized, oh, it’s in my wiring, it’s in the way I think, it’s in the thoughts I have. That’s where the leverage is. If I could figure out what’s going on in there, and that’s when I kind of got into it, okay, let me learn more about myself. Because I know that if I could figure out what’s going on within myself, that’s when I could understand what’s happening. Because I believe that with results in the world, everything that’s around us, although you might feel like, okay, yeah, I kind of worked hard to achieve this, and I did this. I think that right now at the point in my life where mine is like, I believe that everything is like innocence, it’s all automated. Although consciously we think that everything we’ve built, it’s like we literally built ourselves. But I believe that it’s all based on how we think. And based on the thinking we have, that’s ultimately just what attracts what we have.

Kim Sutton: Right. Definitely.

Extus Justin: Yeah. And that’s when I had to really look at my wiring. And I realized that just me being me, the person I was, I realized that that person could never achieve success. Because if you look into the meta-programs, how people think and help one person, if one person thinks that we’ll just naturally bring them down this path in life, and this other person with a different belief structure will bring them down this path, just so I could get to the point here, what I had to do was ultimately go ahead and rewire myself for success, changed my value. Change was important to me. Change is kind of how I looked at the world. And when I did that, that’s when everything kind of started shifting for me.

Kim Sutton: So how do you look at the world now? And what are your values?

Extus Justin: Hmm. So in terms of how I look at the world now, I’m not sure if you’re familiar, are you familiar with meta-programs and how they work?

Kim Sutton: I am not.

Extus Justin: So with meta programs, for example, if I had to say, okay, if you had a car and you would say, okay, what’s the most important part of the car? And most people say, it’s possibly the engine or something. And for me, I would say it’s fuel. Because without fuel, nothing could work. Doesn’t matter how good the engine is or whatever, it’ll just never work. And with meta-programming, they’re just based on different lenses that you could see the world through. And with them, they’re not good or bad. They’re just like lenses. So for example, if someone is a pessimist, it doesn’t matter what happens within their life, whether they find $100, or maybe they find $1,000. That mindset would just be a pessimist, they would find a way to either see $5,000 is a bad thing versus someone who loses $1,000. And an optimist, that person, in the sense of losing $1,000, they would find a way to see it as a good thing.

Kim Sutton: Oh, I love that. I’ve had clients or prospects decide not to hire me, and this was a big shift in my life. 2008, 2009, I didn’t realize there was a name for it, though, but I turned from a pessimist to an optimist. And now, if there’s a prospect who decides not to hire me, I look at it with the mindset, well, there’s something else better coming. Not that my life is shit, there’s something better coming, and I just need to keep on moving toward it.

Extus Justin: Yeah. And what I had to do for myself too was think more in models, because I used to be someone who’s like in the weeds. Meaning, let’s say that you’re in a jungle, in the forest, so you’re in a forest, all you could see in front of you are the trees. You can really look up and see the leaves. But really, you just see the trees just in front of you versus if you were in a helicopter, maybe 40,000 foot up, you could look down and see the entire jungle. So I found that [inaudible]. Another meta program I had, there’s big picture and small picture. Small picture might be the person who’s just focused on one leaf on a tree in a forest. And the big picture is a person who is on a helicopter looking down and seeing the entire forest. At the time, one of my meta programs was like, I used to be a really small pitcher person. And I just thought like, hey, this is the one thing versus, okay, seeing side thinking in more systems as far as, okay, don’t look at the one piece, think about this whole thing as a system and see which part of the system is broken, which part isn’t working. And I just had to basically kind of end the way I do, and it’s something I still do today. But I had to really kind of figure out, okay, what does it take to build a successful business? What type of person? What type of personality? How does that work? How does that look? And based on that, how do I kind of get myself to evolve to that person, that system in a sense?

Kim Sutton: So are you teaching this to your clients? How has your business transitioned? What are you doing in your business?

Extus Justin: So in terms of my business, we are at the point where we generate [inaudible] dollars per month.

Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh.

Extus Justin: Yeah. And the reason for that is, again, because I think I really believe that it’s about evolving. Again, with business, there’s two parts of it. There’s a system. There’s specifically what systems you have in place to ultimately get clients, enrolled clients. And then how you’re evolving to the next level. Because, again, as much as we generate that [inaudible] dollar per month mark, they’re still another level for us. So this is something I teach my clients as well in our programs. Because I found, just from someone who kind of went through what I went through, which is really, really struggling to make my business work, and to really make things happen in the real world to now be in the point where I’m at today. I realized that there were two aspects of it. It wasn’t just the business tactics as far as the opt in pages, the product, the websites, the marketing. It was a balance of both knowing the systems, but at the same time, learn how to transcend myself to get to that next level to become that better version of myself, and to really go work on that on the internal and have that reflect in the external.

Kim Sutton: I love that. How long did it take you to see this shift, though? Or maybe we refine that. When were you in California, how long did it take to get to where you are today?

Extus Justin: So in California, I was in California in 2014.

Kim Sutton: Okay. Just four years run. That’s huge.

Extus Justin: Something I do for myself too, because I realized that it’s just a process of evolution. This a thought process that’s constantly running through my head. Because one of the ways I used to think before was in terms of, again, it’s just me, what can I do to grow my business? And then a model I had to get away from is more systems thinking. Because with systems thinking, it kind of painful thing for me. Because when I kind of look back on what didn’t work, I realized back in California, one of the reasons why my business really didn’t work was because I was I thought I was my business. Meaning, whenever I showed up at a business I took action, something happened. But whenever I didn’t show up in my business, I didn’t take action, things didn’t happen. And I put on so much effort. I used to work like 16, 17, 18 hour a day trying to figure this thing out. And when I kind of got beat down and just couldn’t do anything anymore, nothing happened. And one of the months I had to switch, I realized that, I think I’m Peter Drucker, he said that the results that you get, it all comes from a system. Whether it’s in your life, your business, everything that’s happened, it’s just based on a system that you run. You have to be conscious of what that system is. 

So when I realized that, oh, really, I was focused on working. Working in my business, I wasn’t working on my business. Meaning, I was not there building systems that could work without me, that I could have other people run. Okay, let me start building systems and let the system do the work. That’s when I got out of thinking that, okay, me talking about, if you remember me saying you can either look at the forest and look at a leaf, versus being 40,000 foot up in a helicopter and look at the whole forest where you can see everything. So when I switched into seeing the world as far as, systems are really what businesses are built on. And although with my business, I’m a coach, I’m a consultant, I help people. But in the background, what needs to be running are, I need to be focused on building systems. Because again, the system does not always tweak it versus me doing the work and trying to show up every day and pulling all this energy. Although things would happen when I put the energy, but as soon as I stopped, everything just stopped.

Kim Sutton: I would love it if you would jump more into what your system actually is. Do you mean technology systems? Do you mean not technology? Like just a way of running your business, what do you mean by system a little bit more?

Extus Justin: Yeah. So what I mean, system is a process, a template. And I have two different places where I have them, there’s in the business, and there’s within my personal life. So a system in my personal life might be, because what I found is that humans, we’re all creatures of habit. We think we might be doing new things, or we think we like learning new things, or we think we like change, or we think we want a better life, but we really don’t. My mentor said: “We’re all addicted to our struggle.” Like as you know habits, that are built as like, if you focus on something consciously for about, somebody say 30 days, I think more about 60 days, and maybe actually focus on and do something each day on that habit, it’ll be just like the way you start seeing the world. And you just couldn’t see yourself doing anything else versus, hey, that’s just how I’ve done it, and it’s just a habit. 

Kim Sutton: Right.

Extus Justin: So that’s ultimately what I had to do. For myself, I have to I have these habits. Because I found that all human beings, we’re all just creatures of habits. And if you want different results, it’s the wish, the want, the hope, and that’s cool. But really, you have to figure out, okay, what is the habit that’s gonna get you those results? And how do you condition yourself to install those habits within you? Because again, if you can get these habits, my mentor always says, if you don’t have it in habit, then you don’t have it. And I see a lot of different people who want to change their lives. I could get on a call and someone say, hey, here’s what you should do, here’s what you got to do. And on the call, they be like, yeah, this sounds great. This sounds great. Think about it for a couple of days and take action. But then next week, they just revert back to who they were. And simply because they don’t have a process of evolving themselves and figuring out, okay, how do I train this habit within me. So that’s one of the things I have, and I have a process. 

Each morning, in the sense of myself as far as to train those specific habits. Because I know that if I just do that, it’s inevitable that those habits will take roots. And it’s inevitable that I will reap the fruits that these specific habits give you. If someone eats a candy bar, that habit of a candy bar, oh, maybe let’s say whole cake. I don’t know if people just sit over and just eat entire cakes. But if someone just does that, build that habit, which I think that if someone doesn’t have it, that would be a pretty difficult hard habit to them to build just because it takes time and it takes persistence. But when they get that happened down, they will inevitably reap the fruits of that habit versus someone who decides, okay, I’m going to eat each morning, I’m going to go for a 10 minute jog. That person will reap the benefits of that habit, whether it’s good or bad, indifferent, whatever, but they will reap those fruits. And I see the same with us as well. So we got to figure out what habits are going to give us the right fruits, and then go ahead and install these. So that’s the first part about the personal kind of habits, system and building systems for these habits. And then the second part is within the business. And that’s when it really hit me. That’s when they’re most important. Because with business, a lot of people on the way, I used to think about it twice that, hey, this is my business, and I am the only one who could do this. 

However, I had to completely change my thinking about my business. How I see myself now is I’m a systems builder. Meaning that, I think, and I build systems, and I have other people run the systems for me. And that’s like me talking from this perspective right now. It’s totally different from where I was two years ago or a year ago. If we were having this conversation, I would say my biggest challenge right now is having more time in the day to get more done. That’s how I would think. 

And now, because I kind of changed my model within my businesses, in my business right now, my job is to figure out what result I want. What does the end result look like? What would the system have to look like? And it’s never just one piece. It’s always a combination of different pieces? And then how would that system look? And as soon as I have that mapped out in a B test out just a little bit, and then who can I find to run it. And just a tangible example as far as what we’re doing in our business right now is we’re in a sense, I’m reaching out to more affiliate partners to help us sell more of our products, because we do a lot with Facebook advertising. And we do a lot organically. But now, we want to get into more partnerships. And for me, the way I would have done it in the past was, okay, let me just be me personally. So many partners as they want to, or as many partners as they can, you realize that that’s just a job in itself. You could spend your entire day, weeks, months just reaching not driven people, having great conversations or whatever. But you also have to realize that that’s just gonna suck away your life, You can do anything else except for that. 

And for me, being where I’m at right now, I could see that if someone does that, then they don’t really have a business. They’re just like, in essence doing a task versus me having to sit back and say, okay, what are the pieces would I need? If I want a place to be promoting our products and stuff to really help us sell more? What does a system look like to make that happen? And I had to think, okay, first, we would need to figure out a system for finding these affiliates. After we do that, the next thing we need to do is figure out another system. What’s the communication that gonna look like when we find these affiliates? And that’s another system there. Then the third thing is, okay, how that is a call, we’d probably need to get a call to these different individuals. What does the call look like? How does the call look? And then the third thing is getting the actual promotion set up with the affiliates. I mean, the fourth thing is getting its affiliates. 

And then the fifth thing which is based on the results we got from those promotions, how can we schedule future promotions with these affiliates right there? So one person might, in the past, I would think of this as, this is one thing, and I could do it versus now, there are five steps to this system here. And the way I see it right now is like, I need to find, I’m going to build that system, and then I have to find different people to run that system. Because for me, if I get caught up trying to do the work, I can think, and the man I get into doing work, it’s like, if you’re doing the work, you cannot think of good ideas, and the results are just gonna show up. And all that’s gonna happen is you’re going to get to the end of your time. And whatever results you end up with, that’s just versus me thinking about the system, and how do I get other people to run the system? And they’re going to tell me what challenges they’re having? And I just focus on, okay, let’s address these challenges and keep having the system work the way I see it. Does that make sense?

Kim Sutton: Oh, it absolutely makes sense. And I don’t know if you know, Extus, but I actually do marketing automation for six to seven figure business coaches when I’m not running Positive Productivity. And specifically, I still do a lot of work in Infusionsoft. So I can totally see that. Because there are a lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs who buy into programs like Infusionsoft, and they feel like they need to learn it themselves, they need to be building out. But if they hired an expert to do it for them, then they could be coming up with the ideas and having somebody else build it out for them while they are out there continuing to build their business by working on it instead of in it. And I found myself in that same place. Unfortunately/fortunately for me, because I do use Infusionsoft in my own business, I tend to do both myself. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing that. I should be getting somebody else to do my own implementation for me. But I see that so often people are spending, they think they’re being busy by working in their business or being productive. But in fact, they’re holding themselves back.

Extus Justin: Yeah, you could just never grow. And that’s one of the things I had to kind of, I constantly remind myself to because everything I’m sharing with you here, I have visuals for them. The only thing that makes me a little bit different and getting different results from people is because I’ve kind of brought myself up against that. I constantly say, hey, you’re not like a mindset. And I guess I’ll just pull up real quick just so I could just give you what I stare at every day. So one of the things I stare at every day is, because again, going back to getting other people to do the work, because I always thought that I didn’t have enough money. Because I would have some money in my business, I can’t afford to hire someone else. Because if I do, then I won’t have the money. Like where the money is going to come from. And what I found was just my model of thinking. They always say in business, or one of my other visuals is focus on what you want versus focusing on what you don’t want. And it’s like a family. I have to remind myself of, I make decisions based on opportunity, based on decisions, based on fear. Because my meta-program was, okay, hey, I’m doing this because I’m trying to get away from this bad thing. I could never make any progress versus, hey, I’m doing this because I see an opportunity and really just focus on the opportunity and not really caring about what else happens. 

A lot of people might listen to this and they might say, well, I would love to work on my business versus in it. And when I think back about my time, how much time I worked in my business, I realized like, wow, what kept me from working so hard in my business and thinking that, oh, there’s gonna be a time when I could work on my business. I guess the best way to say it is that I thought that if I could just work on my business hard enough to make it work, then I’ll get to the point where I could hire other people too so that I could work on my business. And they just never happened. I really had to just say it in an instant, like today, if I were having this conversation with myself, I would say ex, how much money I’m making in your business right now? Are you bringing in, whether it’s breaking even or whatever, are you bringing them just a little bit more than you are spending? Get a team, start to build other systems on your business. Because it’s like this cycle, that if you don’t, you’ll always be stuck in that hamster wheel.

Kim Sutton: On the hamster wheel, yeah, absolutely. Extus, the episode that is going out just before your episode, listeners, you can get all the show notes and the links for Extus episode at thekimsutton.com/pp334. However, in Episode 332, with Haley Burkhead, I was talking about how, I, for three months was spending 75 hours a month editing and doing all the work for my podcast myself. And at the end of those three months, I realized that I’m in trouble. My bank account is pretty much empty, and it’s because I’ve been working in my business rather than on my business. It wasn’t hard to find that perfect person. And she knows who she is, and she’ll be editing this episode. Hi, Leng. But those hours that she has taken out of the process have been absolutely amazing. I’m leaving for a conference tomorrow, which really wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t have her doing the work behind the scenes. But I do want to ask, though, what does scaling your business to over $300,000 a month look like? How big is your team? How many products do you have? Can you just give us a while to use your expression, the helicopter view of what your business looks like?

Extus Justin: So in terms of team members right now, we have about 11 team members. And with team members, a lot of people ask me, how do you get people if you don’t have the money to get people to, like if you can say, okay, I want to find the best person, just go work with them and pay them the money. What I recommend is, what do you call that? Upwork. So you would go upwork because what I found is that as an entrepreneur, you have to be in a sense a sales person, you have to have a vision, and you have to be able to enroll people in your vision. And if you’re gonna get a team member to work for you, you always want to find people not to believe in your vision. Of course, they want to get paid as well. And you want to make sure you pay them on what they’re worth. But you want to always share your vision. If someone comes to work with you, don’t just say, hey, I want you to do this specific thing for me, but share with them the big picture vision, and just share with them how you see it’s going to benefit them long term, and try to find people who they’re interested in being part of a team and working long term for you, because it will really help you. So that’s where our team is at. So we’re about 11 people here. And also, I’m in the process of getting a few more in there. 

Now, in terms of product wise, right now, we have a high ticket program which we sell for $6,000. So that’s the core of our program here, and we make the bulk of our money with that initial program here. And then from that program, because what we help clients do is ultimately packaged up their knowledge into high ticket programs, or programs they could sell anywhere from a minimum of 20, $500 to $10,000. So we show them how to do that. And we also show them in terms on how to basically automate their marketing, which is done just in time webinars, the automated funnels and stuff. They haven’t got their one on one and are trying to talk to individuals that way. And we take them through Facebook advertising. So in terms of product, we have to sell core products. We also have a high end mastermind group. Whenever our clients, when someone hits $30,000 per month mark inside of their businesses, they get a private invitation to our private mastermind group. So those are two core products right here. So the mastermind, and the high ticket program. So those two. 

And right now, my team and I will also build out some more products as well too. So that’s also in the mix. But in terms of how we work with our clients as well too. So when we sign on the client into our core program, the $6,000, so they work with us in our program. So in the past, the way I used to do it before was I used to it was me doing the coaching. But now, since we’ve transitioned into working with our clients, more in a group setting. When we enroll a client, they go into a private Facebook group, we have a couple of coaches in there who kind of provide support there. And we do weekly coaching calls, group coaching calls.

Kim Sutton: Oh, awesome. Yeah. Because I was gonna ask, that type of income, you can’t be making all of that. Well, I’m not saying you can’t. I mean, it would be really hard if it was just you making all of that if you were trading dollars for hours. But it definitely sounds like you’re not doing that. How many hours would you say you’re working a week right now?

Extus Justin: So in terms of how many hours a week, I think it’s all a preference. Because what I used to ascribe in the past was, I want to be able to work as little as possible, and ultimately get to a point where I just don’t work anymore and be able to just do anything I want. Just go ahead and travel, and just do that. And I did get to the point where I did that. But what I found is that it is the place where you want to get to, because most people feel like working too much is a bad thing. The way I see it is that doing what you love, you can never do enough of what you love. Because again, if you love it, it’s not work for you. This is just what I love to do. So I use it as far as working in my business, I spend within my business, I would say I probably spend about maybe 40 hours per week. But it’s not in doing, it’s more in thinking. Like what I love, which is kind of where I kind of the level I’m at right now. Although maybe in a few years might change and become a different version of myself, a different person. But as of right now, it’s really just figuring out, okay, what results do I want? And then based on that, what does the system look like? And map out the system, and then have other people run those systems for me, track the results and tweak that. So that’s why I spend the majority of my time right now. And I’ve spent about maybe 40 hours per week.

Kim Sutton: I am in a mastermind group on Tuesday evenings with an awesome group of guys. And we’ve actually nicknamed ourselves or our group as The Unretireables. Because we love what we do. Yeah, we’re not all 100% self employed yet, I am, and a couple others are. But those that aren’t are working to become full time in their business. But all of us love what we do in our businesses, and none of us can ever see ourselves retiring because we just love it. We’re not working because we have to, we’re working because we love to, and I will full out admit that I work at least 40 hours a week. But it’s not because I have to, it’s because when I’m driving down the road to get my kids from daycare, I come up with another idea. And I have to be careful of those ideas, I have chronic idea disorder. I should be careful how many ideas I am implementing at any one time. But sometimes, those ideas do run away with me, and I’ll build them out, or I’ll find myself just engrossed in a training. And I call that work because it is still working on my business, but I’m not doing it anymore because I have to. I’m doing it because I want to.

Extus Justin: And I think that’s the beauty. I think that’s where we all should aspire to be. Because I know a lot of people who maybe just getting started or they come in just thinking, hey, I just want to get all the money and just not work again. And for me, it’s like, no. That’s not really the way to think about it. The way to think about it is, hey, find what you love to do. Something that when you do it, of course, you want to make sure that if you’re going to be an entrepreneur, you want to make sure that it kind of makes you some income and makes me be able to provide for your lifestyle, the lifestyle that you want. But just realize that the thing, whatever you decide on, that’s going to be what should fulfill you, and you shouldn’t see it as work if you’re seeing it as work. Although in the beginning, it might seem like work. But as you keep evolving, as you keep getting to the next level, it gets to the point where you only do what you love. Because when you get to that point, then it’s like that’s where I believe life starts.

Kim Sutton: Oh, absolutely. Do you think you would actually be able to only work 10 to 20 hours a week?

Extus Justin: I definitely can’t. In my business, I can.

Kim Sutton: I mean, mentally. I don’t mean physically, would you be able to remove yourself?

Extus Justin: Um, let’s see. The way I think about it now is within systems, because there’s parts of my business now where I could just totally remove myself completely and the business was still making money, things will still flow.

Kim Sutton: Let me revise this one more time. I mean, mentally, would you be able to physically and mentally remove yourself from working. Let’s just say that you got offered right now, a month-long vacation somewhere else where they told you that you could go if you could not think about work? Would you be able to?

Extus Justin: No, I would not be able to. I would always want something to be working on.

Kim Sutton: Oh, me too. My husband and I, people joke about when our kids move out and we still have little kids who are three and four, and someday when will retire, I’m like, I just laugh. That’s not happening. That’s not happening. I love what I do too much. I’m going to be really old and all gray, and I’m still going to be here, hopefully, doing the Positive Productivity Podcasts. I’ll probably be talking nonsense. But if it keeps me sane ish, and happy, and an old write page, I know it’s gonna take a lot of brute force to take my work away from me. Yeah, I just had to make sure that it’s not forced away, for health reasons. And I think that’s something that we all have to be careful about. Because we can easily give up the self care that we desperately need to take our business to the next level by sacrificing our own self care in the process.

Extus Justin: Yeah. I think it’s really important, and that’s why I always think in these systems things, because you always have to figure out, okay, what one thing affects the other one, you start thinking about systems, you don’t go into just, okay, let me let me work. You go into, well, what does my health need to look like? And how do I kind of structure it so that when I get to work, I’m not trying to go at 110 miles per hour with the handbrake up. Although my business is working, my health is one apart, my relationships are falling apart. And that’s why I love seeing everything, not just as one, or not just as a whole bunch of different separate pieces. They might be separate, but we also got to look at always go into that 40,000 foot view and see, okay, how is my health connected to my business? How is that connected to my family and all of those different pieces?

Kim Sutton: Absolutely. It even took me a year into the Positive Productivity Podcasts to realize that the pillars of my brand and my business are self care systems and support. So everything that you have talked about during our call has resonated with me so completely. And I love that there’s so many more systems that we need to have in place besides just the tech side. Extus, thank you so much. You’ve absolutely inspired me. I know you’ve inspired listeners. But just knowing in four years, hearing where you’ve come from to where you are now, you’re not just inspiring listeners, you’re inspiring me. Wow, $330,000 a month. That just blows my mind, so thank you.

Extus Justin: You’re welcome.

Kim Sutton: Where can listeners find you online, learn more about your programs, sign up and all that great stuff.

Extus Justin: Yeah. SThey could find me on my website, extusjustin.com. I’m giving away free training there. So they could just go to my website, check out the free training and just see what I’m doing within my business. I also own a couple of LinkedIn groups as well too, and Facebook groups. So if you just jump on my LinkedIn profile, add me on LinkedIn or just connect with me on Facebook. You’ll be able to just scroll through my profile and just find some of my different groups on there and connect with me there. And I’m also going to be hosting a special webinar for the listeners of this training. And Kim, we will be able to put links beneath this.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely.

Extus Justin: Okay, so yes. So if you’re a coach, consultant or service provider, there should be a link on this page where you can just click on there and register for a free webinar training I’m going to be doing. Ultimately, I’m going to be sharing with you exactly what I’m doing that’s allowed my business to generate [inaudible] per month. I’m at the moment so you can see what’s working for me. So if you’re interested in this free webinar, you can just click on the link that’s below this audio, so be sure you’re on Kim’s site to get it. I’m looking forward to seeing you there.

Kim Sutton: Yeah. Listeners, you can get all of Extus social media links, his website link and webinar link at thekimsutton.com/pp334. Thank you so much for that. Do you have a parting piece of advice or a golden nugget that you can share with listeners?

Extus Justin: Mm hmm. Yeah. So my point piece of advice is really to learn about meta-programs. Because I believe that if you don’t know what they are, and if you don’t know how they work, because I believe that a lot of people on your show, Kim, they’re achievers. They’re people who want a different life. They want a current place where they’re at in their life, and they want to either create a business to become better that makes some type of change. And if that’s who you are, I would highly recommend to look into meta-programs and do some study on that. And when you kind of learn about them, don’t just get a conceptual idea of them, but apply them to your life. Go ahead, work on change in yours because that’s where your biggest leverage is gonna come from in your life, your business and the ultimate results that you want.