Video Overview

#15 episode of “Helping B2B High Ticket Service Providers Grow – One Lesson at a Time”, with Andrew Miller.

As an ex-insolvency practitioner to coach and therapist, he focuses on the person, and helps them deal with all the stress that can arise in difficult times.

Andrew’s overall purpose is to bring joy back into business, and create a movement where everyone is talking about enjoyment as the key measure of success.

“The success of your business does not guarantee that you’re happy in your private life”, says Andrew.

Check out his website here.
Schedule a call with Andrew!

P.s. Did you know that he’s an author of six books and a public speaking champion?

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Speakers

Interview Transcript

[00:00:07.930] – Dancho – Hello, everybody. We’re in a good mood because we had a conversation just before we start this. But in order to bring you in the mood, welcome, everybody, to our episode on Helping B2B High Ticket Service Provider Grow – One Lesson at a Time. By now, you know that I’m really working hard to find you some really good special guests, because it’s the only way how I can actually bring some value to the group and share some insights because I’m not an expert in everything, that’s why I have good friends. And for today, I actually want to introduce you to Andrew Miller. Andrew, welcome.

[00:00:42.410] – Andrew – Thank you very much, Dancho. Great to be here, looking forward to it.

[00:00:46.040] – Dancho – Yeah. And the reason why I bring Andrew to the group is that he has some very interesting model he wants to share. But instead of me jumping into the conclusion, I mean, Andrew, if you could give us a short introduction on who you are, what you do. So when we’re going to talk about the depth, people will have at least an idea of who are you.

[00:01:05.190] – Andrew – Yeah, sure. So Andrew Miller, as you say, and my company is called Business Enjoyment. I got a personal mission, and actually that’s about changing the measure of success when it comes to business. So it’s something more than just money. And just to quickly flag up, I don’t have an issue with money. This is not one of those let’s keep everything away kind of things, but it’s just where our focus lies. And then the actual Business Enjoyment, the intent behind that business is to create a place where people can come to get everything they need on business development and personal development to make sure that they are successful, but enjoy the journey at the same time, which is one of the challenges we often get. It’s like we can get some really successful people, but actually what’s going on inside. A quick intro to how I got here, is that what you’re looking?

[00:01:59.330] – Dancho – I don’t have a structure in this kind of…

[00:02:02.150] – Andrew – It’s worth knowing because my background is relevant. So I used to work for KPMG, which is one of the large consulting firms. Many of your listings are probably familiar with. I was in a very specialist section. It was in the arena of insolvency. Now, the way Insolvency works is different around the world. But in short, company in the UK and commonwealth countries, company goes bust. The banks appoint a firm of accountants to come in and run that company with the intention of keeping it going and hopefully sell it and save all the jobs and maximize the return. So basically my job for 17 years was running businesses. And obviously with circumstances, but every industry can possibly imagine, built oil rigs from bingo halls, fashion designers, everything. And then as I got into sort of personal development, which as you go in through the leadership levels of big firms, you start leading teams and that sort of stuff. I got more interested in the personal development side, essentially moved well, actually, I realized I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing. That corporate career follows a thing.

[00:03:12.440] – Dancho – Now I’m connecting the dots why it’s “business enjoyment” model. It’s like, man, I did not enjoy that work.

[00:03:18.960] – Andrew – I don’t know, there were some fantastic bits, but it got to the point where I realized I don’t want to be there. And that got me interested in coaching. When I first stepped into the coaching space, my really specific niche was helping those people that were losing their business, had lost their business and help them deal with the emotional stress that that causes. Because it’s like losing a child, it’s like losing a loved one. It can have a massive impact, not on everybody, but it can have a massive impact on confidence and lead to depression and even suicide. So I’ve had all that experience in the business side. Now I’m getting really into deep sort of personal kind of issues and therapy type stuff and challenge those things. But then over time, through networking, through working with everything, you have a niche, but you work with all sorts of people, that’s the way it goes. And discovered that I would find people who are doing all right in their business. Some people are doing really well in their business, and they were getting stressed. They were being treated for depression and anxiety. And you go, hang on a sec. These guys here have just lost their business, they’ve got an excuse. You’re a multimillionaire. Why are you being treated for depression?

[00:04:33.690] – Dancho – Yeah, that’s a good point there.

[00:04:37.110] – Andrew – And then you realize, oh, God, yeah, the success level of my business can have an influence on my mental health, but ultimately is not connected to my ultimate enjoyment. And that’s where the concept of business enjoyment came in, because business is just focused on making as much money as possible. You think of the Ft index, stock markets, all that kind of thing, how shares are traded, it’s turnover and profit. Whatever we talk about outside of it, that’s how it’s measured, that’s what we focus on, that’s what we drive and we make decisions which put money over above everything else. And that leaves us the consequence where suddenly we’re working with the wrong clients that we don’t enjoy working with, we’re working with a team that hack us off. We’re doing stuff that makes us money, but we don’t feel inspired. We don’t feel like we’ve really got that purpose. We’re not enjoying it, not as much as we could be.

[00:05:30.670] – Dancho – Yeah, now that you’re mentioning, Andrew, I mean that I’m also an entrepreneur, that we quit our job because we’re not enjoying and we’re like, you know what? I’m going to start my own business and I’m going to enjoy. And then you get up into the operational cycle of I need money, but now I have money. I’m going to invest, I’m going to make more money. And the original goal, when as an entrepreneur, you start a business, it’s really two stuff. It’s not like I’m going to work 50 hours per day now. It’s more like I want to enjoy and choose what I want to work. And then I want the freedom. I want to have more free days to spend time with my family, with my kids and stuff. And actually they both collapse because on the day to day activities, you’re getting again no longer enjoying, because now I need to do X-Y-Z. But instead of having one boss, you actually now have 20 clients and 20 different bosses, which is even more stressful. And on the other hand, instead of having more time, now you need to work from early morning till late afternoon because, well, it’s your business. If you’re not there, who is going to pick up the slack? So actually, I completely understand what you’re saying, but it’s really in the small businesses, it’s even more emphasized because I don’t have a marketing department or sales department or like corporation, they have a huge hierarchy, usually small businesses, especially in the consulting workers like me, maybe I have someone to help me or one or two people, and you still need to run all the operations. And that could take a huge toll on you as a business.

[00:07:01.990] – Andrew – And it’s always going to be mindful about the phrase “small business” because that can imply a certain thing. But you can have an entrepreneur with a huge empire with millions, millions turnover and loads of employees. But the pressure is still on the individual at the top. You might have a board of directors, but there’s still going to be someone at the top. But to talk to, the thing is, you see quite common that people do the corporate and then step into the entrepreneurial space and think, this is going to be different, I’m going to make it familiar. But what are the mindsets that are in the head and what the patterns that we’re familiar with? Normally we’re only aware of what we’ve come from, that corporate… We step into this space and so the only patterns we know how to run are the ones we’ve been running. So we end up with exactly the same problems that we’ve just tried to escape from. Then we throw into the situation where now it’s our own cells that are upfront, no longer we’re protected by that corporate environment where the system is dictated. So now our internal fears are starting coming to the surface. Now concerns about our worthiness or who should we work with or fears about losing everything, whatever it might be that’s tapping them into that influence from childhood and parenthood… And suddenly there’s nowhere to hide when you’re running your own business and that’s when it gets scary and lonely and our own fears can start having traps. Just to be clear, everybody that’s listening to this is going to be a successful person in some way of that definition. But look closely, because nine times out of ten, the thing that’s got you to where you are now is also the thing that holds you back from getting even further.

[00:08:53.950] – Dancho – To the next level.

[00:08:55.950] – Andrew – I’m a driven individual, I’ve got a work ethic that nobody can beat. You want me there in at seven in the morning, six in the morning, five in the morning, I’ll be there until midnight, whatever.

[00:09:08.710] – Dancho – Whatever it takes.

[00:09:08.710] – Andrew – What happens later on when things get stressful, when things, your body starts breaking down, when your mind starts breaking down, you fall through it. You keep going through it until you get to the point where you get burnout and break and snappage. And actually, what the thing is needed at that point is to pull back the absolute opposite of the grindstone keep going or else you’re in trouble. And that’s where you get this point where the thing that got to where you are is the thing that holds you back from moving forward, as an example.

[00:09:35.010] – Dancho – Nice. There was a quote, I think someone said that you cannot save the same problem with the same mindset that you had when you saw the problem. So you actually need to change something, so start looking from a different angle and then get to the next stage.

[00:09:46.930] – Andrew – That’s one of those quotes that’s attributed to Einstein. But like most quotes attributed to Einstein, we’re not totally sure whether we ever actually said it or it’s not, but nothing wrong with it, it’s fine.

[00:09:56.770] – Dancho – Someone said it, nobody believed him. And then he said, you know what? Einstein said it. And they’re like: Wow! Nice. Yeah, but Andrew, you got me thinking. I think this is a big problem on a large scale. It’s not like only a few people are stuck in this mindset that they are struggling as a business owners because I’m a management consultant as well, and I work with several associations and people are genuinely stressed over business. And somehow in the priority, we always say family comes first, then it’s the business and stuff. But that’s like on paper. And then if you’re saying, okay, I know what you’re saying, but let me see the actions. Somehow business always comes first. And it is about the money on one end because you need to eat at the end of the day. But, you know, you start getting money and you’re not saying, okay, let me slow down. But I’m like, I’m going to now take those money, I’m going to invest and I’m going to go even further and even further, even further instead of like, okay, now we are making some money. Let’s slow down a bit and then… People are actually, I don’t know, greedy. They want to climb faster or what’s the case here?

[00:11:09.110] – Andrew – I find that there are three key drivers in most successful people, and it can be a mixture of all of these. But I find that there’s one that tends to dominate as the others fall away, if that makes sense. So we’ll have all three of them at some point. But one will dominate. One is the fear of not having enough. One is the fear of not being enough. And one is the fear of not being accepted. Now, how these play out can have little twiggles and tweaks, but the fear of not having enough, very common in very rich people. They’ll have come from a background where their parent might have lost everything or they’d have come from very difficult upbringing or whatever it might be, where they didn’t have two coins together, whatever it might be. But always in the back of their mind of I need to keep earning, I need to keep earning. I never have enough, never have enough, never have enough. And there is no end, because there is no enough.

[00:12:15.150] – Dancho – Yeah, I mean, Jeff Bezos, they’re like a billionaires and they’re still accumulating more.

[00:12:20.140] – Andrew – Exactly. It becomes a habit and a pattern. And at no point do they stop to check, hang on a second. Like, exactly you say, how much do I actually need? What do I need it for? What’s the purpose? And you do see shift, so Bill Gates is a great example and everyone’s got their own opinion, I’ll use the specific element. It’s not a question on the man himself, but richest man in the world. But then shifted into turning that money into philanthropy. How do you get rid of malaria? Now, I know there’s all the conspiracy spirit, but that’s not what I’m talking about. The principles there is like actually I’m now taking all this stuff and for my intention I’m turning into a course of good sort of thing. So he’s shifted.

[00:13:07.390] – Dancho – Actually, you’ve had a really good point there. I had some weird memory, but at University we were learning about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, where you know, the hierarchy at the bottom is you need the primary drive for sex, food and security and then connectiveness and family and social. And the top was self-actualization, I think it was. And perhaps that’s what Bill Gates is like, there’s nothing else for me to achieve here. So now let me just try giving back.

[00:13:39.250] – Andrew – Because Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is one of those things I learned in my counseling training and it’s one of the things we all sort of aware of it. And then we go forget. We can vaguely remember at a push, we can hit the levels, remember what the levels are if someone were to ask us, but we don’t really think about it. But that was the model that when I got reintroduced to it, I went, oh yeah, it makes sense. Oh my God, it’s right. And it’s not necessarily in that sort of order, but these are the things that are actually underpinning the business enjoyment model for me. For me, you’ve got three key stages that need to be sort of ticked off. One, you got to feel safe and not just feel safe financially, but also being safe in terms of your mental health, in terms of your physical health, in terms of your support network. A note that feeling safe is different to being safe. That’s what I was touching on before. You can have all the money in the world but still not feel safe. This is not just practical stuff. There’s internal stuff that’s needed to shift over. Then what I call is find your tribe. This is the belonging section of Maslow. Find your tribe. So on one hand, again, on that business element, it’s understanding who your ideal client is and working with the right people and bringing the right team members, understand your values, and you all work together in this harmonious sort of situation. So it’s a joy to come into work, but to do that, you’ve got to drop that shield, that thing we’ve been hiding behind the armor. I’ve always got to be best is when we hear all the stuff about the vulnerability and being open and that sort of stuff, because ultimately there’s a fear of rejection that’s required us to put those barriers up, and we’ve got to let that go. And we’ve got to be prepared to be rejected in order to find the right thing, which for some people and I include myself in this incredibly scary that was my major driver. So we’re always looking to be accepted. And then esteem is what … talks, I call about inner confidence. And for me, it’s about taking external feedback but not taking it personally. So on one hand, we’re going to get all the testimonials, the good repeat business, the referrals, all that sort of stuff. Ten years, we’re doing good stuff, building the business in that way. But do we know we’re doing good stuff? What’s our sense of worth like is the imposter syndrome kicking in? And actually, we’re sort of dismissing ourselves at the same time so we can have all… So those three things, there are what I call hygiene factors in the sense that if you made it with a hygiene factor in the I think that’s Herzberg’s motivation model. There are certain things that we expect. You go to a restaurant, you expect the plates to be clean. You expect the knives and forks to be clean. You don’t go on to TripAdvisor and go, I went to a great restaurant yesterday. Cleanest plates I’ve ever seen. It’s not what you do, it’s just expected. But if it’s dirty, you notice it. And that’s where the things blow up. So with these three things, there’s a limit as to how good it can get. So you notice when it’s missing. You notice when you don’t have enough money. You notice when you’re not working with the right kind of people. You notice when you’re feeling valueless or unworthy or whatever it might be. But there’s a point where you can only get so much of that. You can only get so much money. You can only get so much. Then you step into the bit above that, and that’s the in Maslow, self-actualization, which no one really understands what it means.

[00:17:15.780] – Dancho – Few people got there.

[00:17:17.240] – Andrew – And it does it in a pyramid with layers. And the longest word is reserved, the tiny bit at the top.

[00:17:26.630] – Dancho – The whole point is people stuck, usually at the low levels in terms of either on security, either on food, they cannot put food on the table, and you cannot think about self-activation, where some of the lower layers are missing in your business or in your personal life, actually.

[00:17:46.070] – Andrew – And it’s interesting because this is why it’s not a layer pyramid. But for me, for self-actualization, I convert to purpose, sense of purpose. And it’s about the key element of purpose is that the primary beneficiary is somebody else. You’re doing it for a reason. It’s bigger for you, more important than you. However, you are allowed to benefit from the same time. But when you’re fully connected to that purpose, then you get into flow faster. You understand things better when you move into a joint a lot quicker. But what was interesting was that it’s not a case if you need to tick all those three boxes and then find purpose. Because going back to my working with people who’d lost everything, and then the first book I wrote, which was in that space, it was interesting how the people who had in business terms gone through the worst that you can go through, appreciate in life, you can go through a lot more worse. But in business terms, it’s the worst that lost everything, made them really think about what was important, what was important to them, what mattered. And those that jumped up again, got going and became inverted commerce, successful again with those that found out what was really important to them and discovered their sense of purpose. So even when they’d lost all the other things, it was the sense of purpose that brought them back in and drove them through the other three things.

[00:19:04.190] – Dancho – Got it. Well, I’m actually curious, Andrew, because I have now an idea of the model that you have, that, of course, it’s not just the physical, it’s the mental state. And how do you actually help people? I’m stressed, I come to you and like, man, I need help because I’m not going to admit it. I’m going to still say everything is fine, business is fine, although I’m struggling on every aspect. So I’m just curious, how open are people about telling that things are not good?

[00:19:40.050] – Andrew – Well, there are two elements there, because one of those is marketing, and one of those is how do you help people?

[00:19:48.450] – Dancho – One is how you’re attracting people to reach out to you. And the other one is, yeah, I understand that you’re seeing people, you need to start looking with a different mindset, that if you’re measuring the success just by numbers, in money, in value, then you’re growing perfectly. But if you’re measuring your success in enjoyment, well, you need different KPIs, different metrics, actually.

[00:20:13.060] – Andrew – Yeah. And if you think about the levels I talked about, the traditional one, which when I started off the measure of success is how much money you make, that only really taps into that bottom one and you’re missing out on all the others. And that’s the thing. Let me just quickly cover both of the areas in terms of marketing. Well, one thing I’ve noticed, and this would be interesting to see what your viewers, maybe they’ve got this covered. But I’ve noticed before I got into the business enjoyment sort of side of stuff, because obviously it shifted and moved to get to that point. But what I did discover that is when you start marketing to a problem, which is the standard model, you attract people who have a problem that makes sense. And if you’re attracting somebody who’s got a problem, by very nature, we are those sort of people who tolerate that, put up with stuff that don’t do things quickly. We wait until the last minute. So most people are turning up when the problem is really bad and then it’s hard to do something.

[00:21:16.180] – Dancho – That’s how we go to doctor as well. It’s hurting me, I can survive.

[00:21:23.410] – Andrew – My leg fell off, maybe I’ll go and see the doctor.

[00:21:25.040] – Dancho – Maybe it’ll grow back.

[00:21:26.950] – Andrew – So when you market to problems, you get people turning up with problems and usually that’s money. And as we mentioned before, so you got people turning up, they don’t have any money. So don’t market the problem, arguably, unless you get the right … I’m being … a little bit, but there is an element of that that needs to be thought about. So I do also market to solutions or positivity. So when I talk about my strap line, as you may have seen on my stuff, is I want you to enjoy your business so much it makes your bits tingle.

[00:22:02.750] – Dancho – Yeah.

[00:22:03.680] – Andrew – Now you can have all the things going right for you, you can have loads of money. You can have working the right kind of people, feel good about what you’re doing. And I call it a seven out of ten. You say, how’s life, how’s business? Yeah, about seven out of ten. And that’s okay. But there’s this eight, nine and ten above that that says you’re doing okay, and that’s fine. You can have more if you want. Let’s look higher. How about going for a ten out of ten, or even just a nine out of ten. And so start talking about something that it’s okay. This is not about a hole. This is not about a gap. This is about saying now is good, I can get even better.

[00:22:47.250] – Dancho – It’s not comparing to others, it’s actually you want to be a better version of yourself. And if you’re stuck at seven, why don’t you just assend to fill ten out of ten, or maybe like 15 out of ten, just normal.

[00:23:01.590] – Andrew – Let’s at least go for an eight. But again, we’ve been trained through life to think that seven out of ten is good.

[00:23:09.750] – Dancho – No, it could be worse. That’s usually …

[00:23:12.300] – Andrew – Exactly. Hey, I’m not a five, not a four. And it’s only when it drops down low. And then in terms of how do I help people, number of different ways, because everyone is different. But first off, if there is an issue with any situation, there’s three solutions. One, change the situation, to change the perception of the situation, three, change your reaction to the situation. So let me use a very simple concept. If someone is scared of spiders, spider runs on the floor, change the situation. Get somebody to remove the spider, change the perception of the situation. It can’t hurt you. It’s more scared of you than you are of it.

[00:23:53.540] – Dancho – You’re hopefully bigger.

[00:23:56.370] – Andrew – And that can work in some cases. And that’s where a lot of coaching sort of stuff comes in. But if you’ve got an absolute fear of spiders and phobia, none of that, that’s not going to help at all. So you need to do some deeper work. And it might be a bit of a therapy. It might be whatever it might be to go to the NLP, to go to the change model and change your reaction to the spider. I work at all those camps. So depending what people do come in, then we’ll work on that. And then obviously above that is let’s find out what your purpose is. This is more than just the Y. It’s not just Simon Sinek. What’s the why? It’s finding that thing that’s inside of us and connecting that deep thing within that one to that external mission that we want to achieve. So we know every day what we’re doing, why we’re doing and what we’re doing it for. And we get excited and exhilarated to know that we’re making a difference every day we get out of bed.

[00:24:57.100] – Dancho – Yeah. That’s the inner driving force, actually, that keeps you even when things are bad. If you have that inner motivation, you still keep going.

[00:25:06.260] – Andrew – The business enjoyment is not the same as happiness. Let’s clarify that happiness is one of those flicking things that, take some illegal substances and you’ll feel happy.

[00:25:17.310] – Dancho – Endorphin up and down, happiness up and down.

[00:25:20.510] – Andrew – Exactly. You can easily do that, enjoyment is more longer term overarching thing. So you can have a bad day. Of course you can have a bad day. We’re allowed to be miserable. We’re allowed to be, but if overarching, we got this running mission, then we know where we’re going.

[00:25:37.370] – Dancho – Yeah, well, Andrew, I’m looking at the clock and I told you we’re not going to be able to cover absolutely everything. But I also wanted to ask you. Some people will have some follow up questions and thought that they wanted to run by you, where people can find you? I mean, what’s the best way to reach to you?

[00:25:54.780] – Andrew – Yeah, sure. So there’s a couple of ways. One, if they want to know a bit more about the model that we were talking about and go into that a bit more detail than if they jump onto my main website, which is businessenjoyment.com, there’s an opportunity for them to get a download of that book. More than just money in the introduction to the business enjoyment model, which will run through the different stages and give a bit more on how you can use it to solve problems as well. And it also spells out specifically what I really mean by when I say I want you to enjoy your business so much, it makes you a bit tingle because there is a reason behind those words. If somebody is particularly interested in finding their purpose very specifically and looking at that sort of area of they need to find something inside themselves to make all of their success mean something. I do run a program in that particular space. If they go to andrewmiller.coach, there’s an opportunity they can have a quick look and book a call with me and we can have a chat and see what they’re doing and what we can do to help.

[00:27:00.700] – Dancho – Yeah. Well, actually I’m going to put these links right under the video. So whoever is listening, they just have direct access to the link. Andrew, another thing that I usually do is that I’m the student, so I should take notes as you speak. It really helps me. And I just wanted to say instead of one golden nugget, I actually got five different that I wanted to summarize at the end of the podcast. But there are a few things that got me curious and I just wanted to write them down and I wanted to share with the rest because maybe someone missed some bits. So the first thing it got me curious that, yeah, I know how emotional it can be when you lose the business and how stressful it can be. I mean, this is not my first business, honestly, but I’ve never thought that the same stress could be within the owners of successful businesses. I’m like, you have a successful business, you’re happy, you have a failed business, you’re unhappy. And now what? I understand that you could be regardless where with the success of the business, it’s not in direct correlation in how happy or unhappy you are with yourself and with the business. So that actually gives me…

[00:28:10.900] – Andrew – I’m sorry to extend your podcast. But just really important point that those people who are successful but not happy, it’s really difficult for them to say that because of the social shame, you’ve got no excuse to be miserable. What right have you got to be unhappy and you can’t talk to anybody about it because it’s not acceptable. But it’s true, it absolutely is true.

[00:28:32.580] – Dancho – Yeah. And when you said it I was like you had a good point and that’s why I said it’s a really gold nugget here. The second thing that I really wrote down here is that people from corporate work take their mindset into the entrepreneurial world and they expect a different outcome and then they set up a business exactly as a corporation would do and they’re wondering why nothing changed from moving from the corporate. So you really need to change your mindset when you’re switching from corporate to entrepreneurship. The third thing I wrote here is that the three fears that you’ve mentioned, the fear of having enough, the fear of being enough and the fear of being accepted, I should print them somewhere here on the desk. So it’s like inspirational thought like okay, wait, wait. I’m getting myself trapped in one of those three fears. Don’t do it. The next thing was that the feel safe, the tribe and inner confidence which was part of your business enjoyment model. Actually, I’m just going to download the book and have a look at it in more details because I was not aware that you’re also familiar with the Muslow and how he structured and it’s actually just an upgrade of Muslow. So I really have to look at that copy and the last thing was actually how people react. I mean whether they change the situation, whether they change the perception or whether they change the reaction. And I mean it’s obvious but when you put it as a framework, I’m looking at actually those are the only three options that how you can react. And I mean those are not one, but actually five lessons from this podcast. Andrew, I really wanted to thank you for coming as a guest on the show and for everybody out there now you know Andrew. If you think that you actually need help in this area, if you’re really not sure whether you’re enjoying your business, maybe you should reach out to Andrew and just get in touch and from there you’ll see whether and how you can actually get more information on that. Andrew, thank you again for the participation and for everybody else, peace out.

[00:30:36.970] – Andrew – Thanks very much, it was great to be on.