With Brady Patterson, a multiple best-selling author, survival trainer, and international rodeo champion. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies like Shell, BP, Husky Oil, and Suncor. As a survival and leadership trainer, he has worked with Les Stroud (Discovery Channel’s Survivorman), the cast of The History Channel’s “Alone”, and the Global Bushcraft Symposium, the largest conference in the industry. Brady helped grow the Entrepreneurs International Network from 10,000 members in 4 cities to over 150,000 members in 31 cities and 5 countries.

Currently, he is the Director of Strategic Partnerships of the #1 Joint Venture network for coaches and consultants, where he teaches entrepreneurs how to build a solid referral network for their business, where to find those partners, and how to generate 6 and even 7 figures through cultivating authentic relationships at the JV Insider Circle. Brady resides in Vancouver, Canada with his amazing wife Jamie of 12 years, where he stays very active paddle boarding, running an Ice Bath club, and continued wilderness survival expeditions.

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Biggest takeaways (or quotes) you don’t want to miss:

• Being honest about what’s going on is more important than anything else.
• Why connections are so important in business.
• “It’s not about the action but about the result you create.”

Check out these highlights:

4:59 How Brady’s love of the outdoors and wilderness began.

12:28 The world of JV’s and relationship capital.

28:00 The power that comes when you start leveraging the relationship building.

34:00 How to put the relationships in business first.

How to get in touch with Brady

On social media:

https://www.instagram.com/bradypatterson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebradypatterson

Tweets by bradypatterson

https://www.facebook.com/bradypattersoncoach

FREE GIFT FOR LISTENERS:

How to Connect and Collaborate with Industry Leaders training webinar here.

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Brady Patterson is a multiple best-selling author, survival trainer, and international rodeo champion. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies like Shell, BP, Husky Oil, and Suncor.

As a survival and leadership trainer, he has worked with Les Stroud (Discovery Channel’s Survivorman), the cast of The History Channel’s “Alone”, and the Global Bushcraft Symposium, the largest conference in the industry.
Brady helped grow the Entrepreneurs International Network from 10,000 members in 4 cities to over 150,000 members in 31 cities and 5 countries.

Currently, he is the Director of Strategic Partnerships of the #1 Joint Venture network for coaches and consultants, where he teaches entrepreneurs how to build a solid referral network for their business, where to find those partners, and how to generate 6 and even 7 figures through cultivating authentic relationships at the JV Insider Circle.

Brady resides Vancouver, Canada with his amazing wife Jamie of 12 years, where he stays very active paddle boarding, running an Ice Bath club, and continued wilderness survival expeditions.

Learn more about Brady here.

Imperfect Show Notes

We are happy to offer these imperfect show notes to make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who prefer reading over listening. While we would love to offer more polished show notes, we are currently offering an automated transcription (which likely includes errors, but hopefully will still deliver great value), below.

GGGB Intro 0:00
Coming up today on Guts, Grit and Great Business.

Brady Patterson 0:04
Being honest about what’s going on is more important than anything else. There’s no story to put together. It’s like, here’s what happened. And it’s transparent. And the end part of that is, here’s what happened. Here’s how I’ll fix it. Right? Here’s the plan, I have to move forward. And I think that oftentimes, it’s just like, there’s a loop that doesn’t get completed there where people are like, they have this problem. They’re scared to tell somebody something’s wrong. Then they get around to telling them something’s wrong. Both parties are upset, and then it just loops again. And it doesn’t or it doesn’t finish the loop, which is the finishing up the loop is here’s how I can fix it. Right? or asking the question, How can I fix it?

GGGB Intro 0:44
The adventure of entrepreneurship and building a life and business you love, preferably at the same time is not for the faint of heart. That’s why Heather Pearce Campbell is bringing you a dose of guts, grit and great business stories that will inspire and motivate you to create what you want in your business and life. Welcome to the Guts, Grit and Great Business podcast where endurance is required. Now, here’s your host, The Legal Website Warrior®, Heather Pearce Campbell.

Heather Pearce Campbell 1:16
Okay, welcome. I am Heather Pearce Campbell, The Legal Website Warrior®. I am an attorney and legal coach based here in Seattle, Washington. Welcome to another episode of Guts, Grit, and Great Business. Today, I’m super excited for several reasons. One, I get to introduce you to my friend, Brady, Patterson, and Brady and I met through through a group actually several years ago, but we’ve only been recently that we’ve gotten to know each other a bit better and I’m such a super fan of Brady, you’re gonna see why in just a minute. He’s got a lot going on. And he’s a very interesting person. And our topic is going to be super fun. So Brady hails from Canada. We were just joking that I’ve been I’m kind of a want to be Canadian. I get accused of it every once in a while, but I can almost throw a rock and hit Brady. He’s north of me a little ways. Brady is also a multiple best selling author, survival trainer and international rodeo champion. He has worked with fortune 500 companies like shell BP Husky oil and Suncor as a survival and leadership trainer. He has worked with les Stroud of Discovery Channel Survivorman, the cast of The History Channel’s alone and the global bushcraft symposium, the largest conference in the industry. Brady helped grow the entrepreneurs international network from 10,000 members in four cities, to over 150,000 members in 31 cities and five countries. Currently, he is the director of strategic partnerships of the number one joint venture network for coaches and consultants, where he teaches entrepreneurs how to build a solid referral network for their business, where to find those partners and how to generate six and even seven figures through cultivating authentic relationships at the JV insider circle. Like I said, Brady resides in Vancouver, Canada with his amazing wife Jamie of 12 years, where he stays very active paddleboarding, running an ice bath club, like we just are gonna have to ask more questions about that. And he also goes on wilderness survival expeditions. So Brady, welcome. Nobody else has an introduction like this, like ever. So I love I love your introduction, but I’m so happy to have you here today.

Brady Patterson 3:38
I’m glad to be here. It’s nice to spend more time with you as always,

Heather Pearce Campbell 3:41
I’m gonna have a hard time limiting my questions like part of me is like, hmm, do we talk about the rodeo stuff. I come from a long line of Western people in my family. And also totally enamored with all of your like adventure wilderness craziness. I just love that. And I know you recently did, like a summit or something around that topic, right survival and wilderness.

Brady Patterson 4:05
Earlier this year, I did the first outdoor adventure summit.

Heather Pearce Campbell 4:11
I love that. And it sounds like it went really well.

Brady Patterson 4:15
Yeah, it did amazing. It did seem like far exceeded my expectations. And it opened a lot of I’ve grown my business in the kind of marketing coaching consulting author space, right, like an experts base. And so my passion has always been the outdoors, you know, growing up and traveling the rodeo circuit and doing all these things, and having this survival training company. But that’s always been more like the passion side of it. And it wasn’t until this year, that I really was like, Okay, I’m gonna explore this new area, and we’re gonna talk a bit about relationships and the currency that is involved with them today. But that really opened the window for me or the door, I should say, to a whole new world and so it you know, yeah, it’s just super fun, super fun.

Heather Pearce Campbell 4:59
How, where did your love of wilderness? Where did that start your love of kind of this adventure, survival wilderness stuff? Where did that begin?

Brady Patterson 5:10
I don’t remember not ever having it. So for me, I think maybe it was growing up in a family that. I mean, I remember my dad, why don’t remember, I’ve been told that when I was a young child, you know, my dad would take me hiking, horseback riding, things like that, when I was very, very little. And so that’s always been there. I remember going on my first outdoor adventure, I guess, where I had a sheet of plastic, a sleeping bag, and a pot and a bucket full of food, you know, and that and spending a weekend camping in the woods. And that was my shelter. That was my, like everything. And so so it’s always been out for 10. You know, there’s been other times too, but that that was it’s just always been present in my life.

Heather Pearce Campbell 5:54
I love that. Well, it’s funny, because I remember back to a time in my life, probably around the same age, I would say, nine or 10, where I would have like, vivid daydreams about like, hmm, if I was, you know, lost in the woods or on my own, like, could I hack it? Could I survive? And I remember the same thing, like, I used to prepare this little fanny pack, right back in the day of fanny packs. I think they’re making a comeback. Awesome. I knew they were making a comeback. You just proved it. But I would fill mine with little survival tools, like I would wrap my I’d wrap little matches and saran wrap and put them inside these little plastic cups. You know, like all the things I was obsessed with it for a time and unfortunately, my dad usually when they did like, adventurous outings, you know, out of doors, he would just take the boys. So there were six of us in our family, right? And there were two boys and four girls. And I remember begging him like Dad, please can I go I wanted to go so badly on this one trip because it was the boys, my dad and then a family of our cousins of all boys. And he let me go. So I got to traipse along and we like hiked miles into the mountains. And we stayed in this little miner’s cabin. And the funny thing is, it was full of mice, right? So we got to sleep with the mice. And like, there were crazy noises. I mean, that’s not really roughing it because we were inside of this little cabin, but the cabin was really rough. But one night, my dad opened the door because there was all this crazy ruckus outside and there was a big bear right outside the door, like with his hand up trying to reach and pull down our, our food, whatever was stored up there, right anyways, but as a kid totally enamored with the topic that you know a ton about and live and teach people now. So when did you transition to teaching that?

Brady Patterson 7:58
Well, I run a business in the oil field for about 13 years. And for me, when you when you work in the oil patch in northern Canada, you can really only operate for a very short window of time in the winter, because it’s a lot of muskeg. And if you’re not familiar with the term, Musk Musk is basically like swamp. And, you know, you can park a dozer bulldozer and come back the next year. And it’s you know, just the top of the roof is still visible, like it’s sunk in the summer. So you can’t really travel. And so I ended up figuring out that I could do all of my I could run my business in a very short window of time, this four months basically window when everything’s frozen solid. And that gave me eight months to spend time with my wife to travel to explore other business opportunities. And I mean, a big part of it has always been like I would go out and do camping adventures and things like that. And it wasn’t until I started doing getting more into this coaching space, and working with people in marketing and things like that, that I was I was doing some work in so we said we just outdoor thing, why don’t we just why don’t we take some of my clients out, and you teach them some travel stuff. And then maybe we’ll do some things with with them from a consulting perspective around their business strategy. I was like, Huh, it wasn’t like an overnight thing, just to one day. It’s like we got one just two days one night. And that was the first foray into it with somebody said, well, we’ll figure this out and, and at the time, earmuffs, Heather, I had no insurance. I had no like nothing for that. I’m just going to do it. And it went so well that I was like, okay, and literally like right away. Somebody else asked me again, will you come and let’s do it. Let’s do a four day event where you come, you teach. We spent half a day working on your skills. We spent half a day working on their business. That way we can combine these things. And I got a lot smarter by that point. But, you know, it was like that’s really when I made the transition. I realized as I was attending different things. I was going to take instructions from different teachers and realize thing that like many times, they’re teaching me stuff that I already knew. And but there was always room for improvement. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I’m like the, you know, the world’s greatest expert, I just knew that there was things that I could learn from everybody, regardless of certain areas. And so as I was learning, I was just realizing, Hey, I know a lot of this stuff already. I’m already integrating it into the business, it just kind of makes sense. And then I just figured, well, if nobody else is good, like, it’s an opportunity for me to play. And it’s an offer. And, and if I’m, if I’m being really, if I unpack it even further, there’s also an opportunity to play and get paid to play. Right. It’s like, for me going out into the woods, like I just got back from a six day horseback riding adventure with pack horses. And we did that in the Northern Rockies, in the caribou range. And, you know, like, I’ve never done that before. But I guided the trip, like I led the trip. And it was, it was like, I’ve written horses before. I’ve I’ve never packed horses, but we learned how to do it. And, you know, we went up and down things that I didn’t know that horses could go up and down, and heal. But I’ve always had that kind of, I guess, for me, no matter where I go, I’ve always had this kind of adventurous spirit. You know, I’m like, I want to go and I want to go and play and explore. You know, my wife used to laugh, she’d come home, and I’d be like, laying in the grass and my face is half sideways. And I’m watching bugs, you know, just like if I have the opportunity to just like, if I’m if I have relaxed time, or if I need, you know, a 15 minute break from calls or something else, I’ll be laying in the sun on my side, watching things moving the grass or looking up at the trees above me or something. It’s just like, just just in my blood.

Heather Pearce Campbell 11:34
No, I love that well, and I love the ability to connect those pieces of yourself even in you know, whatever ways you can to show up and serve people. It makes it I think so much richer and experience probably for you and for them.

Brady Patterson 11:49
Absolutely. Yeah.

Heather Pearce Campbell 11:50
So this concept of relational capital, right, you and I were talking before we went live and I love, love, love this topic. And I know it’s something that you have just literally lived for your entire business career. Right. And you bring it to other people’s businesses, both for those that you work with right now at the JV and or the JV. Yeah, insider circle, JV, and in serving other people, right, teaching them how to do the same thing. So talk to us about how you got into that world. What was your foray into that?

Brady Patterson 12:28
Yeah, I think mine goes way back. I think growing growing up in the oil industry will farm we started off as farmers but getting into the oil and gas sector when I when I was a kid, I got to see how valuable relationships were in, in business. In fact, I think that or I’m pretty certain that relationships, Trump almost everything else when it comes to business, because people will buy people buy from those they like, know, and trust me, that’s an old adage, right axiom, but I really saw it in action. I was like, people could look in the oil and gas industry. They weren’t hiring people necessarily, because they could do the job better or faster, they were having the job because it was their brother, their cousin, their friend or colleague, like they knew the person, they didn’t care if it could be done better by somebody else. And that really kind of set the tone for me. And I remember over time, through the different businesses that I became part of or owned, or, or for rent to the ground, in one case, but we’ve all crashed and burned something is the relationship that was came before anything else. And as long as I focused on the relationship, everything else was fixable. Right. So there, you know, the business, it didn’t work out very well. You know, even though that didn’t work, because I had established and focused heavily on investing in the, in the relationship itself. When it went sideways, when things didn’t work, that person was willing to forgive me or those people were willing to, you know, to kind of let me recover and be able to make it up to them. And that’s I think that’s another part of it is like I always looked at relationships as something I can invest in, rather than rely upon, right? So it’s like I can put if I put something in if I give people my attention and give people my everything I guess in a way Ray give them all my focus and care for a period of time. We can we start to get to know each other and I pay attention to the details and I find out what they’re working on and what what lights them up inside. Then when it comes time that I and it’s not it sounds kind of like mechanical in a way when I say it this way. And now that now that’s coming in my mouth and like it sounds very mechanical. But it’s not a mechanical process because I do it because I genuinely care. Right? I genuinely want to know what’s what’s happening. How can I help? What can we do? And then when it comes time for me to ask for something if if I and sometimes I never do, but if it comes time for me to ask them I don’t feel uncomfortable asking right now. I’m always wanting to people’s like I always there were many times. I’m not a very pushy salesman, you know, like so for sales and stuff. I was never I wasn’t one of those guys, that was like banging down the door. Yeah, I was very much like very, very low key. And my energy around that is pretty low. I just want to be able to be like, here’s the thing, let’s do it. Right. And, and, and, and, and know, that doesn’t always work. And so I learned that if I spent more time focusing on the relationship with the person that I didn’t have to ask, I didn’t have to push, I could just be like, Hey, here’s the thing we’re doing, are you in? Are you out? And they would say, Yeah, that sounds good, or No, that doesn’t really work for me, right. And I didn’t take it personally. And over time, that became the foundation of everything else. And I started using the term really, it’s either relational currency or relational capital, right? That way, in I think relational capital is one of the undervalued assets in a business, right? One of the probably the most undervalued that people, you know, maybe you’re looking at like items in the office and you’re looking at your you know, if you’re, if you’re looking at your, your, your inventory, or things like that, and you value that really highly are the cash in the bank, or the cash flow, looking at all these different pieces. But if you forget about the relationships, it’s all over, like this literally, like that matters more than anything else. And the people that I think, oftentimes don’t think about the relationships are off, and this is not a slam against them. I think it’s just like those people are selling like, you know, tiny little items. It’s not about the relationship, it’s just about the numbers. And and that’s it, that is a viable business model as well. It just happens to be that if something goes wrong with your supplier, your supplier is probably not going to bend over backwards to help them, right. Whereas if something goes wrong, in my end, I can like, I’ll have friends that’ll go, Oh, you know, we have a mutual friend, who’s called me, like 10 or 11 o’clock at night, and said, Hey, I need something, something went wrong, and I need an email to go out tomorrow morning at 6am. Can you do that? And and I was like, Yeah, I mean, it involves me getting out of, you know, getting out of reading mode and out of bed, maybe in some cases. And in that case, and, and going and programming an email and spending two hours doing something I didn’t really want to do. But at the same time, my friend asked for us. And because he felt that we took the time to build that relationship, I was willing to do it. Whereas like, you know, there’s many times that that won’t exactly happen. other businesses?

Heather Pearce Campbell 17:13
No, that’s right. Well, and I’m think that, you know, the point is really important, because I do like there’s this interesting conversation that every once in a while I hear and I think you and I kind of live in similar worlds where the groups of people that we work with, and that we’re surrounded by are very similar, right? And the folks that I serve, I call them information entrepreneurs, their coaches, consultants, online experts, and educators, speakers and authors. And while they’re people definitely outside of those circles, as well, in my professional circles, that’s the bulk of who I’m serving, who I’m communicating with, etc. But you do get people who like, feel like networking or connecting is kind of the chore, like they want to be doing the business IE things, right. And I hear that, and I’m always like, Wow, this is so interesting, because like, the business systems don’t matter. Your intellectual property doesn’t matter. Like none of that stuff matters. One, if you don’t have clients, or you don’t have people collaborating with you to like, either send you referrals or get you introduced or put onto somebody’s stage or whatever, right? Like the rest of it just doesn’t even matter.

Brady Patterson 18:23
It’s so true. So networking, relationships, relationship asset, yes. supplier, right, your vendors relationship asset, or relational capital, clients, relationship, capital, joint venture partners, or affiliates or referral partners, like partners or relationship capital, like literally nothing else works without it’s so even for the people that are selling widgets, right? It’s like, if they don’t have those pieces, if they don’t have their relationships, the supplier doesn’t get them to their widgets, the bank doesn’t take their or screws up their payments, whatever, right. Like they still have to have some sort of relationship involved. And I think that it’s just Yes, it’s so needed for more people to focus on the relationship first, and that will help avoid so many issues. I just have seen it so many times. You know, it just boggles my mind that people spend, you know, and maybe it’s because I’m definitely extroverts, and I love people, and I’m not one of those people needs to hide away from folks. I know that some, some people just need more space away from others, and I just don’t, yeah, right. But I do have noticed that even with those people that are more introverted, that the depth of their relationships are often deeper, but again, if they run a business, they tend to neglect the business relationships and focus too much on the personal relationships when they could spend a little bit more time focusing in the business area so that they have all those things really, in that they’ve invested in that capital so that when things do go sideways, as they almost always do at some point Your business, that at least then you can you can react to them with a team.

Heather Pearce Campbell 20:04
That’s right. Well, and how much more rewarding is it to show up in your business and in the work that you do and have those relationships there, right it, to me it like totally changes the game. And I think, you know, the the point that you make about especially like, you know, you held up a paperclip for people that are not watching, like people that are focused on selling a thing, or a widget or whatever, you know, sales can be hard for some people. And yet, you know, it’s my belief that if we really believe in what we’re doing, like sales is service, and you’re right, like, you get to know the person and you get to know their needs, and whether or not the serve that the serves them. And it’s a, it’s like, you have the open space for it to be a clear yes or clear, no, and there’s no problems, right. And watching my sister who’s a really good, she’s excellent at sales, and she lives in, she works for Siemens and lives in the the women’s healthcare space, right. But again, it’s a lot of equipment and technology, heavy stuff, and you’re comparing to other things in the marketplace. And while she knows that stuff inside and out, her magic sauce, is that she knows when somebody’s wife is sick, and they’ve got twins, and she’s sending them a meal to their front porch, you know, or sending somebody a card because their husband is terminally like, She’s so on top of what’s happening and all of her connections lives, that like she’s blowing the top off as far as like making sales in an area that historically has been really, really challenging to make sales in women’s health is like the lowest on the totem pole in that company. And so it’s, you know, I want people to understand the importance of this point that you’re making about, like, doesn’t really matter what you’re selling, even if it is a widget, like the power of personal relationships really can transform a business.

Brady Patterson 21:56
Yeah, absolutely. One more anecdote around that. The when I could, it’s been a couple years now. But a couple years ago, I had a friend who was going through a really rough time her partner passed away and you know, or was going through it was in hospice care. And I just sent food right at, it didn’t even occur to me that and I’ve never made her I don’t know, that I’ve ever actually made any direct money from from this person. She sent some referrals my way. But I don’t have I can’t actually track if I haven’t looked at to see if that’s actually the case. But I do know that that made such a huge difference to her that it made her now for a year and a bit, maybe even two years, kind of reclusive. And I didn’t see or hear from her except for Hey, thanks for the food. But after that time came back, she was like, Hey, you have to meet this person, this person, this person, can I help you with this? Can I like let’s do this, right? And I was like that that meant? And to me in a way I’d kind of forgotten about the whole food thing. At that point. You were a couple years later, you’re like you don’t really think about something you did two years before. It all suddenly came back. And I was like, Oh, yeah, I totally forgot about that. Yeah, absolutely. Please introduce me to these people. Right. And I think that this is just just take this comes back to one of my friends said this once they said, you know, we all know the axiom, it takes a village to raise a child, right. But it also takes a village to raise a business. Right? You can’t run in isolation. And so I think that’s really what the heart of that matter was for me.

Heather Pearce Campbell 23:28
I love it. So you I mean, you’re an expert at this, you bring it to the businesses that you serve, how do you teach it? How do you teach a concept like this, right? Because in my mind, like, I’m thinking, like, some people get this or they don’t like they’re either the kind of person that would already know this, or they’re not. But maybe that’s not the case. How do you how do you open the doors for people that haven’t looked at it quite like this?

Brady Patterson 23:52
Well, I think it depends on the industry that we’re into, because some people have this inherently involved. Like, if you go into the real answer, there should be a clear delineation, too, because like I work in the more affiliate joint venture space, right? Now, in digital marketing, that means something entirely different than it does in real estate. Right? Right. So you know, you can have a joint venture partnership, in real estate, that means it’s like a legal business between the two of you. It’s It’s, uh, you know, the terminology better than I would as a lawyer. But so having those pieces in place was very important. And being able to separate those from an affiliate perspective, is a handshake deal. It’s people like just agreeing to support

Heather Pearce Campbell 24:29
Colloboration.

Brady Patterson 24:30
Yeah, operation, I’ll promote you, you promote me, or we find some way, some kind of, we can do some sort of dance to find out what does work, right. So we can always support the people we want to support because maybe there’s a scale issue, maybe there’s a deliverability issue. There could be any number of things that aren’t equitable for both parties. And it’s like it’s a negotiation. But at the end of the day, when I start having these, these conversations, I still managed to usually find something. Right. I look for something. Maybe it’s You know, not, when I’m explaining a joint venture or an affiliate marketing partnership or affiliate partnership to somebody, I’m just going like explaining to them the assets that oftentimes I’m just explaining the assets that they have, and how we can let how they can leverage it to make extra money from what they’re already doing. And at the same time, leverage ours to support them. Right. And it’s just kind of connecting those dots. So every conversation is slightly different. Yeah. And that some people don’t have an email list, but they have a big social media following or some people have, you know, I’m going to take myself a Rolodex.

Heather Pearce Campbell 25:32
I love that you said that, because that’s a term I literally use, like every day when I connect, like put me in your Rolodex, like, oops, you know how I know. But I love the word Rolodex, people know exactly what you are talking about.

Brady Patterson 25:42
I remember them, you should have one. And so it was having those things in mind is like, how does this How did things connect? And it makes it just much more simple to, to do those kinds of partnerships. And of course, most, it’s easier in most cases, because the majority, the vast majority of people I speak to already know what a joint venture or affiliate relationship is. But there are occasions where I have to explain what’s you know, you promote me, I promote you, or I have you come to speak on a summit? Or have you spoken a podcast? Or have you come speak on stage or, or participate in a giveaway or some sort of promotional opportunity where you send out your lead magnet? Now the ones that are like, what’s a lead magnet? Yeah. Okay. Do you have an online business? Do you have any part of your business online? Yeah, I have a Google ad. Okay, tell me what this you know, like, so don’t those ones become? It’s really hard for me to find the pieces there. But I can direct them to places. Yeah, I can. And that oftentimes becomes the start of the relationship. It’s not about at that point when somebody says something like that it’s not about hey, can you promote me, my instant thought is how do I help this person? Like finding the level path? Yeah, where they can start having results where they can start leveraging the online thing? Because, like, there’s literally nothing better right now. I mean, it’s the most powerful way to reach people is getting online. And if you and building your email list, and like, I don’t know what exact status right now, the last time I checked, for example, like having an email list, email still outperforms social media, but like 43 times, or something like that, right? Very close, it’s not a lot of 43%. It’s 43 x, right. And, you know, and I gave a good example of this, when I ran my outdoor adventure summit, the majority of people, I have splits. So about a third of the people had decent, like solid email lists. And the rest of the people had had substantial followings on like Instagram, or Twitter, or Facebook, whatever, there’s social media influencers. And so I was like, Okay, I’m gonna, I want to test this right. even despite having a one third and two thirds having a two thirds advantage, and a significant amount of followers advantage, the email, I’ll put the emails put more than almost more than three quarters of the people into the events. And, and the other ones were me, and rightly so. And they were my social media, my friends, my community. And then there was a small, there was maybe two or 300 people that registered as a result of social media efforts, which is still nothing to shake your head at. I mean, it’s still two or 300 people that came in, that was amazing. But all have more than 4000 people register for the events, and only two or 300 different social media, every single other one came from emails. So and it because I built and it comes back to that relationship thing. It’s like I reached out, I was like, Hey, I’m doing this thing. And this is the interesting part. When I started that summit, I wasn’t thinking about how I could make a few bucks, I wasn’t thinking about how I’d survive, I’m fine. My business is primary, like what I do is primarily in good shape. In fact, we were we’ve grown in magnitudes, since since this whole, the world shift. And my whole thing was like I know people that have businesses that are there, more bricks and mortar style, they don’t have online components. They’re they’re basically they’re teaching survival skills, or they’re teaching outdoor skills. And I was like, I want to help my friends that are going to be in trouble right now. How do I help my friends? And in the that’s, that’s how that whole summit came together was how do I help other people. And in the end, it was wildly successful. It was not expecting the sheer turnout that it created. And it spun off into now it’s going to become a regular it’s now a regular thing. Right. So I this is the again, that comes back to the power of what happens when you start leveraging that relationship building putting the dollars into their relationship capital.

Heather Pearce Campbell 29:39
Yes. Well, first of all, congrats. I mean, congrats that that was such an awesome success. And your point is well made about like email still working. When you use the tool the right way, right. You focus on the relationship building and the relationship first. So for people that and I think I mean What I see is people staying too long in the path of like, Oh, I got to build this myself and I got to walk this road and like, figure it out myself. What do you like? What is it that causes people to do that? Right? all the hard work and the striving because I think that like across the board, people do too much of that versus looking for earlier opportunities for the collaboration, for the growth through, really through fun, right? For me, that’s how it feels.

Brady Patterson 30:30
Okay, this is a wild guess. I don’t think that nobody listening take this as like the gospel truth. The whole thing with what I feel is in the past, basically, World War One, and World War Two, broke a lot of people psychologically, and sorry for the downturn here. But this is relevant context. I think it broke people psychologically, and you had to up until and up until the Industrial Revolution and everything that came with it, you had to work hard to make a living, you had to do certain things. So there’s a 1000s of years of history behind that. And then we got to the wars, were all of a sudden now that was it came back to it again. And it really enforced it. And when people came back from that war, or from each each of these different wars that happens, and not just the world wars, but the other ones that came after, there was it got increasingly more difficult. And there was this, there’s been a drive towards this kind of lone wolf mentality. And you see it lots in movies, and especially in we’re all fanatics around movies, or most people these days are big fans of entertainments. And as entertainment rose, one of the big things that really came out of it was this whole hero thing, right? heroes do it by themselves. They, they, they struggle, they push, they do whatever, and then they get the big reward. So it sets this tone of like, I have to do that to get the big reward. But that’s not the truth. Right. But I think that’s where it came. I think that that’s where I feel it came from was like people thinking they’re trying to emulate that. And I think, because it was so predominant in in, especially the movie worlds, you know, books, movies, things like that. Any story, right? Yeah, that it didn’t matter. It affected both men and women, because a lot of times lots of the stories were about men, right? Yeah. But it also affects women, because they’re reading those same stories. And they’re like, Okay, well, regardless of whether a man or woman, they have to do it themselves, doing things on your own is hard, you know, you’re looking at, like, if we if we pull back, and we’re like, Look, let’s look at the explorers of the worlds. Most of them died young. It was a hard life if you visit, like, even now, if you go up and you visit some of the indigenous population here in Canada, you visit some of the First Nations, some of those folks that are still complete, they’re still off grid is still living in very. We’re looking for primitive situations, they don’t have power, they don’t have running water, they live in tents, they’re traveling, they’re, you know, whatever, then that’s not all of them. But there’s definitely a group of them. And they don’t live long lives typically. Yeah, they because it’s very hard. And unless they’re in a good community, and again, it comes back, it’s that community that pulls things together, and they share the load. But when you have to do it all by yourself, it’s exhausting. I mean, it’s like, you know, there’s, it’s like going to cry, it’s like going to if you’re a fitness person, and you get into like something like the CrossFit world or someplace like that worry, or individual sports, right fighting, things like that. Those gotten very few people that get into those individualized things have very long careers. It’s the team people that have long careers.

Heather Pearce Campbell 33:35
I love that well, and your point about even in the process of collaboration, because let’s be clear, there’s ways that collaboration can go wrong, right? Yes. And what I find, I mean, I can share from my limited experience, though, is when people are putting the deal, first, the money first, like all these other things ahead of relationship, I mean, the phrase that I use when I’m coaching people, even on the front end about business partnerships, or joint ventures or any kind of collaboration really is like, you have to prepare for the divorce. Because it’s coming in some way or another, it’s coming like either the project is going to go well and it’s going to wrap up or it’s going to lead to the next thing or it’s going to fall apart. And you need to know like how to handle it if things do fall apart, right. But people don’t like to think about that. We don’t like to go into a marriage or even a business collaboration, thinking about how things might fall apart. So the emphasis on really putting the relationship first, how do you teach people that like what is what do you say around so that people have their focus on the right place, rather than getting into collaboration, thinking like, Oh, I’m going to make a million bucks and this is gonna be awesome.

Brady Patterson 34:47
That’s an interesting question. I don’t really teach people directly about that. And maybe that’s something I can actually add to this. I think indirectly probably do. Because I talk, I talk a lot I would the big story I tell people usually when it comes to this is like, the relationship matters first, because when something goes wrong, the only way to fix it is by having a good relationship in the first place. Yeah, and, and that goes back to the very first webinar that I ever booked. And this is a story I tell to clients stuff. The first time I ever booked a webinar, I cost my clients roughly $100,000 up front, not including the back end, not including the back end sales, because I booked a webinar two hours earlier than it actually was. So in ads, and that wasn’t running webinars, I wasn’t doing sales like that for my clients at the time. And now I do that, right, I would get on the webinars, I’ll train that’s one of my, I eliminated that problem by when I work with the clients, I learned their systems. So if I screw up, or if I make a mistake, I can take over and do it at the moment, right. But at the time, it gets a little webinar in the system for 11 am. But in my client’s calendar, I put it at 1 pm. And so at 11 am 750 people got on a webinar, and his conversions were very high. And there was nobody there. 45 minutes later, we were able to get him on the webinar. Of course, by that point, we were down to about 20 people, right? So it’s it really, you know, I described like, if it wasn’t for the fact that the relationship mattered First, I would no longer have been with that client like he would have fired me. Right? So so it’s like, you know, we focused on that. And I never made that mistake again, right? It allowed me mistakes allow us to alter, adjust and correct for future progression, right. And if we can’t, for not allowed to make mistakes ever, we’re never going to make any progress. And the business is going to be stale. And so that was my big thing, right? When I tell people, I tell them that story. And I’m like, you got to be willing to make mistakes because mistakes are going to happen. So I do like to tell them that but I don’t teach them like little specific tactics, because I don’t think there is a tactic on that. Yeah, you know, it’s just like, the biggest thing is to own your mistake, and do what you can to do everything you can in your power to fix it, you can’t fix it, make it up in some other fashion, just do anything you can to do it. And that that partner that when I promoted, or the one that promoted us and put those 750 people in the webinar, it took another year and a half of me sucking up in a way, you know, hanging out having conversations and focusing on that relationship to where they’ve they promoted us again. And now they’re one of our best partners, right with the current business. And so it’s like, having a clear plan. And knowing that, like, what was it? Somebody told me once, plan for the worst expects the best? And that that’s what that’s the philosophy I live by?

Heather Pearce Campbell 37:55
Yeah, well, it’s true. And whether you teach it or not the fact that you say it right, that the relationship does need to come first, I think I just can’t emphasize that enough. Because like, from the perspective, people show up to my door all the time saying I want a bulletproof contract. And I’ll say, there is no such thing, right? Like you’re at the wrong place, there, there is no such thing. I mean, I can make a good contract, and we will get you really protected. But the end of the day, if it falls apart, it falls apart. And it really gets down to the people involved in whether or not you’re prioritizing a client relationship or business relationship with your independent contractor or your employee or whatever, right. And the importance of that is that in business, we have so many opportunities for things to go wrong, because there are so many moving parts, not because we’re terrible people, right? Not because people are jerks, although some are. But that’s usually not the reason things go wrong, right? things go wrong, just because business moves, and sometimes it moves quickly, and things can fall apart. And so I just really love that that really end of the day, whatever the scenario is, if you’re putting relationships first, first of all, you’re way more likely to get through it with fewer bruises and bumps and scrapes for both parties, right. But to be able to turn it into something that actually continues to serve you both.

Brady Patterson 39:17
And I think it trickles into one other place in that, like I’m one of those I might be contrary to a lot of people I don’t believe in separating personal and business life. Because I think that we have one life I don’t think that we have multiples. And so for me, it’s the same attitude that I have towards investing in relationships. I also take I put that into practice in my personal relationship, right I’ve been married for coming up on 13 years now. And we’ve had to thank you we’ve we’ve had to face a lot of diversity. You know, we lost a baby. We in which which destroy eliquis like what’s our entire focus of our life, our life was built around becoming parents. So and in our experience, not only did we lose a baby and she almost died, so we thought we packed everything and we move to Mexico. For a while, just like recharged. And but then we found out we can’t even have kids as a result of the medical procedure that was involved in like, so it was just like all these different things. And then, you know, you fall sometimes partners fall in and out of love in relationships, right? Like for a while, it’s like, I’m so focused on the business, I’m not giving her enough attention, or she’s focused. My wife’s also a business owner, she’s focused on her business. So she’s not giving me attention. And we’re like, on these ups and downs. But we always come back to making sure we have a practice of investing in their relationship, even if it means that even if it’s not something we really want to do at that time. And as a result, we’ve made it through all those things, right, we made it through not being able to have kids losing a baby, and not, you know, then it might wife entering early menopause, you know, all kinds of things like, all these struggles that you wouldn’t normally think about affecting business, but they do our personal lives affect business so heavily when we’re having a bad day, I had to call my client, it was not that long ago, like three months ago, I had to call a client and tell them, I’m sorry, I have not been performing well. I have not been performing well. And here’s why. And I told him what was going on with my wife and her entering early menopause and the struggles that we’re facing the hormonal swings, and yada, yada all this stuff, right? And it’s all legit. It doesn’t it’s the thing about this is, I don’t want people to look at these as excuses, right? They’re not excuses for why I didn’t do the things. But there are the reason behind what happened. And that I think is being honest about what’s going on is more important than anything else. You know that that makes such a difference? Because if I’m honest about it, then I don’t have to think about what did I tell them? You know, did this happen? Did that have that you know, and it’s like, there’s no story to put together. It’s like, here’s what happened. And it’s transparent. And here’s how I’m in the end. Part of that is, here’s what happened, here’s how I’ll fix it. Right? Here’s the plan, I have to move forward. And I think that oftentimes, it’s just like, there’s a loop that doesn’t get completed there where people are like, they have this problem. They’re scared to tell somebody, something’s wrong. And they get around to telling them something’s wrong, both parties are upset, and then just loops again. And it doesn’t, or it doesn’t finish the loop, which is the finishing of the loop is here’s how I can fix it. Right? or asking the question, How can I fix it?

Heather Pearce Campbell 42:20
Well, and the other thing, I think that’s really important about that story. And first of all, I’m sorry to hear about losing a baby. And like, that’s some of the toughest stuff that people have to face together. And that’s really, really hard. But the point that you make, I think, is really, really important that if we don’t, if we’re not our full selves, and really honest, like, and I’ve never been apologetic about, like the fact that I’m a mom, and I’m a mom first in my work. And if it bothers you, you’re probably not the client for me, right? Especially when family stuff ends up getting in the way. And I’m really forthcoming about that. And I know what you’re saying about it’s not an excuse, but in in showing them that side of your real human life, like you give them a chance to meet you. Like, you know, in your humanity, not in this persona of like this perfect, you know, the person that shows up perfectly always in business, because it’s just not realistic. And I think we just get so much more out of ourselves out of other people. And we get to show up more fully when we can do that, even though it sometimes feels a little bit like we’re selling ourselves short, you know, like, Oh, well, this is the reason why I can’t be. And it’s no, it’s actually, I think it’s it’s the flip side, you are being a more well rounded and a fuller person, a fuller version of yourself when you can do that, and give people the opportunity to meet you there. I think that’s a really beautiful example. Well, before we go talk to me, I’d love to know first of all, where you like to connect with folks, for people who are listening are like, I want to know more about Brady, I want to find out about his survival skills or whatever. I want to learn more about how to create powerful collaborations in my business. Where do you like to connect?

Brady Patterson 44:12
Probably, for me, easiest ways social media. If the adventure ate, I kind of intermingle everything right, I don’t have separations. So for me, Instagram is kind of my favorite channel. So at Brady Patterson says all one word, and, you know, shows that I’ve been on the platform a little while I have my actual name. But that’s probably the number one place to find me. It’s where I engage the most with with my with my own community, when it comes to clients and things like that. We run these events that I think are absolutely fantastic. Every, every two months, we run an event called to collaborate. And for me if you’re in business and you’re you have an expert-based business, the collaborate event is just dynamite. It’s like you know, with with networking, there’s it’s hidden Miss for a lot of people. And the reason is hit or miss is because you don’t most people don’t have a framework for to actually communicate right how to get on how to get into a meeting. And, you know, I used to have this strategy where I would walk into a meeting, I would make it somebody taught me, I would walk into a networking meeting, and I would make a circle and I would make sure I talked to one person before I got around the whole room, then I would reverse my direction and do that. And I would stand in the middle of the room at the end. And after, after somebody come and talk to me and I had talked to three people I would leave, I’m not a natural networker, and, and then. So then this is a totally different ballgame. Because here we’re breaking people out into specific opportunities where they’re able to talk to people about what they’re doing with their business, and how they can leverage partnerships online. So we’re actually plugging all this together and saying, like, Look, if you want to invest in relationships, and build affiliate partnerships, related joint ventures, get in the same space of people that want to do that, right. And so we run these events every other month, I think you can probably I can give you the link and it can go in the show notes. Yep, that’s probably going to be the best thing for to send people to, and it’ll give you a flavor of that world and why it’s important, and how the your audience can can leverage partnerships better than doing it on their own.

Heather Pearce Campbell 46:11
Yeah, well, and I think for people who haven’t ventured into this world yet, like the idea of having a framework and having some support and exploring the process is really key so that they don’t feel like they’re just, you know, wandering around making a big circle around the root. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think that it gives people a lot of comfort to like, plug into a system that’s tried and true. And so if you’re listening, make sure that you check out that link for the upcoming event, collaborate, I’ll share it on my show notes along with anything else that Brady you want to share there, including your social media handles, go to the show notes at legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast. So Brady, what do you want to leave us with today? What final thoughts or ideas or action Do you want to leave people with today?

Brady Patterson 47:01
You know, it’s said a lot, but do something uncomfortable for yourself regularly. Right?

Heather Pearce Campbell 47:06
Like an ice bath. know anything but an ice bath?

Brady Patterson 47:11
Yeah. But it’s because it’s not about the action, the activity that you’re actually doing. It’s about the result that you create, as you’re going through the process and the discipline that it takes to do it. Most of us today are pretty undisciplined in a lot of ways. That’s not everybody, obviously. But there’s a lot of folks out there who are very disciplined, and they’re like, at the whim of their life, and it just kind of happens to them, rather than it being an effect. And so, like, I started my Swim Club, because I had a phobia of cold water. Yeah, I was really scared of cold water. And so that became the foundation of like, I’m gonna go do this once a week. And I want to hang out with cool people. And it became like an entrepreneur’s hangout every Saturday morning at 8am. We’re jumping to this ice-cold river, sometimes we’re breaking the ice off the water. Like, it’s, you know, it’s been a lot of fun. And it’s evolved in the past three years, you know, it’s it’s gone up and down. It’s been men, women, entrepreneurs, employees, like the whole gamut of folks. But the common thread amongst that has been like the consistency of just doing something that makes me uncomfortable. Yeah. And when you can do that, having a joint venture conversation, the first time is going to be uncomfortable, right? Having a bit of partnership conversation, or having a like any new hire any new thing, any novel task is going to cause you a bit of uncomfortable and i i think it’s one of the most effective ways you can grow your business. So highly recommend that that’s that would be my if I ended with anything, you’d be like, just get uncomfortable.

Heather Pearce Campbell 48:37
No, I love that. It’s a really powerful point that you make. I mean, it’s so interesting, the human experiences that we absolutely need things like what you just described for us to actually live our purpose and become the best version of ourselves and all the things all the good stuff is on the other side of discomfort. But we naturally crave homeostasis, right? What we want is to be comfortable. So it’s, I think it’s really important to pay attention to that and to shift it anytime we get the chance. Brady, I’m such a fan. Thank you for coming on today and sharing all of the wonderful parts of yourself and your history. I’m so excited for people to get to connect with you. I hope I get to have you back.

Brady Patterson 49:18
Absolutely. I’m looking forward to it. I barely unpacked some of the stuff. We got open loops to close next time.

Heather Pearce Campbell 49:24
Totally tip of the iceberg. Thank you, Brady.

GGGB Outro 49:32
Thank you for joining us today on the Guts, Grit and Great Business podcast. We hope that we’ve added a little fuel to your tank, some coffee to your cup and pep in your step to keep you moving forward in your own great adventures. four key takeaways links to any resources mentioned in today’s show and more see the show notes which can be found at legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and if you enjoyed today’s conversation, please give us some stars and a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast so others will find us to keep up the great work you are doing in the world and we’ll see you next week.