Badass Is The New Black (Season 6) Episode #29 - REBEL: Find Yourself by Not Following the Crowd with Graham Cochrane

mindset Aug 21, 2024

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Today we have Graham Cochrane on the show. He's a seven figure entrepreneur, TEDx and keynote speaker, bestselling author and host of The Graham Cochrane Show, top .5% ranked podcast globally where each week he helps people create more money, margin and meaning in their lives. With over 14 years of online coaching and content experience, 700,000 YouTube subscribers across his channels, and having built multiple seven figure businesses that require less than 5 hours of work per week to run, that's super impressive, Graham.

Graham is a leading voice and coach in the life giving business movement. His insights have been regularly featured in national media outlets like Forbes, CNBC, and Business Insider. I mean, that's quite impressive. Graham. You got a rap sheet there.

Thank you. That's the formal bio, for sure. I'm also a Star Wars nerd, a girl dad, and I have a girl bunny. I’m surrounded by feminine energy in my house, so that's more of what my day to day looks like.

Yeah. I love it. I love it. I feel so honored to have you on the podcast again. You were on my very first season of Badass is the New Black six years ago, and so it's such an honor to have you back. I know that's a long time, right? And I was thinking back to, like, when we met.

We met at the Kajabi conference. The first one that they had.

Yep.

Funny story how we met. We were at the conference, and everyone kind of collected their lanyards and their hero pins, and so everyone was putting their pins on, and Claire and I had, at that point in time, reached our million dollar pin. And so, of course, everyone is super impressed with everyone else and finding everyone that had those other million dollar pins, finding out, you know, what's your business? What did you do? How did you get there? And so I was kind of with this little group of people, and we were at the evening party, and we see you. We're all just kind of standing there, a few of us, and we see you across the room, and we like get eyes on Graham. And we were like, I don't remember who said it. I'll take credit for it, I think, you know, we were like, okay… What's his business? What does he teach on Kajabi? And Ryan instantly was, like, hairstylist. He teaches people how to do hair. And so we were like, okay, we have to go find out if this is, in fact, true. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can see Graham still has great hair. Well, we found out that you started Recording Revolution. So not hair, but music, which also tracks.

That also makes a lot of sense, being in music, you know, rocking on the guitar and all of that, just having great hair. So that was how we met. We just kind of approached you, and we're like, how'd you get your pin? Right?

It was very awkward how you guys approached me, because it was like a gang of people coming up and just cornering me, and I was having a drink by myself as an introvert totally does at these events, but I'm so glad you guys did, because we all became really good friends. And Ryan's been a great friend for a long time, and Rob Booker and just, it was a fun group of people to meet, and we've been able to stay connected over the years. I can't believe that's been that long ago. But that was an awesome event. And we were some of the few million dollar Kajabians back then. There's now many, many more, which is really cool. It's really exciting because more and more people are just changing their lives. Some doing what you teach, which is awesome.

Yeah, 100%. And like six years, that feels like a long time. And then also, when I think back to, you know, everything that you've accomplished in that timeframe, I mean, you didn't have your first book, your second… I think you were just starting your second business, and now that's a seven figure business. You launched your first book, which was a huge success. And now you are, and you've done this TEDx speaking and all of these things. You spoke on stage at Kajabi, and now you have your second book coming out. So it's like, think about all of that that you've accomplished in six years, which is really not that much time. I mean, it's impressive. You’ve just been, you've been at it, and I just appreciate everything that you've put out there. All of the guidance that I have received from you, all of your support. You endorsed my book when that came out, and that meant so much to me. And now, you know, we're here to talk about Rebel, your new book, which I'll put the plug in here now you can pre order the book.

I've already pre ordered mine. I can't wait for it to come. The link is in the show notes and below this video. So grab your copy, get all those bonuses. But the book is called Rebel: Find yourself by not following the crowd. So let's talk more about this book and how it came to be. What inspired you to write this?

Yeah. Well, thank you for pre-ordering the book. I'm excited. I love your book as well, and I'm so glad that you wrote one. And I love the title.

Yeah. Rebel is like the book I wasn't expecting to write in this season of my life. When I wrote my first book, I was like, it was fulfilling, like a personal dream of, I want to be an author that would be really cool. And I just figured I'd try to write a book.

It was just like a bucket list thing to do, but I wanted to get a traditional publishing deal, because I feel like everything I do is self published on YouTube and podcasting. And so that was sort of like a dream of mine to work with a publisher. And so when I worked with them and I got a book deal. My agent thought the strongest book would be the logical, like, start your online business. And that's where ‘How to Get Paid for What You Know’ came from. And so that's how the publisher viewed me as a business person. And that makes sense. That's what I teach. So I figured I'd do more books like that.

But then I spent a day with Jon Gordon. He's a great author and speaker. He wrote The Energy Bus and The Carpenter. You know, he's sold millions of copies of books, but I spent a day with him trying to learn how to speak like him. I was like, bro, tell me the business of speaking like, I imagine ten years from now, I want to be doing what you're doing. Like, big keynote stages, you know, personal development, motivational speaking. I just… that's a dream of mine down the road.

So I thought I was going to be getting speaking coaching, and the only thing he was interested in talking to me about was, he's like, what's the message of your next book? And I was like, this is like, nine months after the first book came out. I'm like, bro, I'm exhausted from the first book. Like, can I just happy clap myself that I put a book out in the world.

And he was like, well, what's the message of the next book? And so we noodled for, like, 2 hours on things I could write about, that I wanted to write about, and nothing really was firing me up. And he finally said, all right, well, tell me your life story. What's your life story?

So I started to talk about my desire to be a rock star. That was all I ever wanted to do was do music, and my guidance counselor was like, no, you gotta go to college. My parents were like, you gotta go to college. I'm like, I don't need a college degree to be a rock star. You just go be one, and it's not that hard. And so no one, like, bought into my dream, and I was pushing back against that. And then when I lost my job in the great recession, and everyone's like, are you applying for jobs? I'm like, no, I think I'm gonna start a blog about music recording. They're like, what are you doing?

And I was telling him my story, and he goes, he interrupts me, and he goes, bro, you don't do what people tell you to do, do you? He said, you're a rebel. And it was like a language I'd never used to describe myself. Not a word I usually would have associated myself with.

I don't know what comes up for you when you hear the word rebel, but usually people think negative things. But at the same time, the moment he said that word, I was like, bro, in one word, you helped me better understand myself. That has been the journey of my life, which is there is a predetermined path everyone says I got to go down. For me as a middle class American in high school, it was get good grades to go to college, get a good job so you'll have security and safety.

Well, that didn't work out. I lost two jobs during the Great Recession, was on food stamps for 18 months, had a wife and a baby and a mortgage, and that didn't work out. It's also not what I wanted to do. And so there's all these predetermined paths, even in business, even though the lane we're in, we're trying to help people build these online businesses. You're trying to help people sell while they sleep. Like, there's still predetermined paths. People say, you have to do this. You have to do this. And I've realized that I've always pushed back against that because I'm like, is that the only way? Couldn't there be another way? Maybe there's a way that's a better fit for me. My personality, my season of life. Like, I've got kids. Like, you know, there's different advice out there that doesn't really work if you have a family, or it's very hard to pull off if you have a family.

So I realized, wait a second, I need to write a book that helps, like, go back and reverse engineer my life a little bit. If I could figure out a way to, in a framework, teach how I've intuitively, like, navigated through life. When people say, this is the way, this is the way. I'm like, I don't think so. Not that I have it all figured out or that I'm that confident. I'm scared out of my mind every time I try something new, but I would be more scared of, like, sitting in a cubicle with, you know, an oversized shirt and a tie. I've done all that, and I hated that. So the book was really, like, born out of I think this message is for somebody because this has been my life. And 24 hours later, the framework came to me.

I pitched the book five days later to my publisher, and that was the big test because they knew me, and they signed me as a business author. They immediately signed it. They're like, when can you have the manuscript in? And I'm like, you guys know this is like a personal development book. Like, this isn't just business. This is your family. This is your finance. This is your health. This is like a lifebook. And they're like, let's do it. So that was last year. And I was like, oh, gosh, I got to write this thing. And so what's been wild, Krissy, is that, like, as I've written it and figured out what this book is going to be, and then as I started to share it with people on podcasts like this, it has been so wild to see how so many people in this day and age, let's talk about online business in particular, people are so looking for a different way of doing things because everyone's telling you, you got to do it this way, you got to do it this way.

And I'm just here to say that, like, the only way that you're going to be successful in your business or in your life is to press into your uniqueness. And that's ultimately what this book is about.

So powerful and so needed right now with the years of social media conditioning us and getting all these messages from now way more people than just your family that's telling you what you should do and, you know, do this and do that, and you'll be good at this, and I want to see you, you know, in this profession. But now, like, it's even louder and more amplified and just the voice inside our head from seeing other people doing these certain things, well, maybe I have to do it, do what they're doing and do it like them. So I think that this, this message is going to be so powerful for, for anyone that's listening, like you said, like, not just for your business, but your life and what's going on in your life and how you approach it and the direction you take and the path you go down affects your business, right?

So it's all tied together. So I'm super excited for the message of the book, to read it, to dive in more. I am a huge sucker for personal development. Like, any book that I order, it's either business or personal development. When everyone else is, like, reading the next, like, romance those like dirty romance novels are like hot right now. And I'm an audio girl, so, you know, whatever is in my ears is usually, you know, personal development because I just think that's so powerful to continue to be working on yourself.

Tell me more. Tell me more about, like, are you sharing what's the framework inside the book at all?

woman frustrated with your face in her hands

Yeah, absolutely. So it's like, the premise is simple. Like, if you're frustrated or disappointed with how life is going, it's largely because you're operating out of alignment with who you actually are. That's my premise.

There's a lot of things outside of our control that make life hard and challenging. We get that. But let's talk about things we can control. Most of the time we're frustrated because we're not being who we are. I mean, and Soren Kierkegaard has this haunting quote. He's a 19th century Danish philosopher, says that “the most common form of despair is not being who you are.” And like, I'm like, yes, and amen to that.

And so the idea is we're looking around, especially with the proliferation of social media, there's more people to compare yourself to. And what we're subconsciously doing is saying, well, I'm kind of like her, I'm kind of like him. I'm going through kind of a similar season that seems to be working for them, which, by the way, we don't know if it's working for them, it's just what they're sharing.

But let's assume it is working for them. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Doesn't mean it's going to work for you, doesn't mean their choices are going to work for you. And so the key in my worldview is to be satisfied with life, okay? To be successful, because I think we all want to be successful, to be satisfied in life, because success and satisfaction are not always the same thing. We know people who are incredibly successful, and they're unsatisfied. So you want both of those. And the key to be of service to people, which I think is ultimately why we're designed and why we're on this planet, is to serve people. We want all three of those. Fulfillment is a combination of all three. Success, satisfaction, service. The key to that, the white hot center of that is embracing your uniqueness.

And so people are like, okay, maybe that makes sense. I'm not sure. But the biggest question is, well, I don't know what my uniqueness is. I don't actually know who I am. Um, because we're too busy being other people or just, we got kids and we got a mortgage. Like, life is busy.

So what I'm trying to do in this book is give you a coaching session and a book. It's a short book. It's a fast read. There's five core steps in the five part framework. There's a core exercise for each part of the framework, so you can actually do the book. Even if you only do one of the exercises, you will better know yourself. But the key is to figure out who you are so you can show up fully as yourself. To me, that's what a rebel is, is someone who has the courage to show up fully, authentically, as themselves, with all their talents, you know, their personality, their joys, their opinions, all those beautiful things. Even when the world pushes back, because the moment you're different, they will push back. Right? The world says we celebrate diversity. No, we don't. We want everyone to be the same, have the same worldview, be the same, act the same. Keep your head down. We don't actually want people to be different. Even the people who love you get offended subconsciously that you're doing something different. They don't know why they're offended. So it just happens naturally. So it takes guts to be a rebel. It's not easy. And the people that do rebel, eventually people realize that they were smart.

You know, people didn't love what Martin Luther King, Jr. was doing in the sixties. People didn't love what Steve Jobs was doing in the eighties, nineties and two thousands with computers, people didn't love what Jesus was doing 2000 years ago. But then history shows, oh, they were geniuses. Oh, their movement was meaningful. So it's hard to rebel against the norm. So my book is trying to help you figure out who you are, because that's the only way you're going to be fulfilled. Like Krissy has to be Krissy; Graham has to be Graham. I don't have a formula for your life, but I can help you find your uniqueness in your life and exploit it.

So that's the premise of the book, the promise of the book and the framework. It spells the word REBEL. And we could start with the first step.

Let's break down the framework of REBEL: Find Yourself By Not Following The Crowd

STEP 1: The R stands for ‘resolve to dream again’.

Like you have to put a stake in the ground and say, I'm actually going to get back to dreaming and get back to what are my wants and desires. And this is either really easy or really hard for you, depending on your upbringing or your personality.

Sometimes we've kicked dreaming to the curb because we figured, that's childish, that's foolish. You don't get what you dream. That was me because I dreamed of being a rock star. And then after four or five years of chasing it hard and not landing a record deal and having to, like, realize there's no money at the end of this rainbow, I gotta either keep pursuing it as a broke musician or get a job to take care of my new wife.

I had to create a narrative or a worldview that made sense of my reality, which was, I guess people don't get what they dream for. I guess you have to just put your head down and get a normal job. And I was stupid for thinking for 22 years I could do this, but now I'm going to be a responsible citizen. So some people think dreaming is stupid or foolish.

My premise is that dreams are giant clues. There just data on what you care about, what you like, how you're wired. So if you don't pay attention to your dreams, big or small, they can be little dreams like I want to learn Spanish. Like, that's interesting. It doesn't have to be this massive dream, but it's just data on yourself. If you're not willing to look at the data, how are you ever going to find yourself? How are you ever going to know if you're living in alignment with what matters to you if you don't even pay attention to what you want, because honestly, we're serving a lot of people. If you got kids or a spouse or you have a community or a business, like, a lot of times we put our needs at the wayside to serve other people, and we lose sight of who we are.

And I don't think that you'll be happy by becoming something you're not. I think you need to just remember who you were maybe when you were a kid. And we have to get back to some of that and find a way to at least get some data on ourselves, even if those dreams don't all come true. That's not the point, but we can better understand ourselves. So the first part of the framework is to do some dreaming exercises and get clear on those things.

Yeah, super helpful. So great. And I can relate to this when I became a mother, right. It's like a huge shift in your life and in your roles and responsibilities of losing myself and needing to remember like, I can still dream and I can still dream big and I can do this. And I have to go about it maybe a different way because I have different and more responsibilities, right.

Or even growing a business or, you know, having employees and all of that. Like, everything can affect, like, you're just saying there's lots of reasons why we do or don't dream. Fear that will never hit our dream, fear that we will hit our dream. And then what? Like, that's actually what most people don't think about but a lot of people have. But really, really important. And I love, and I'll let you go, keep going into the framework, but I just want to go back to the power of understanding who you are.

When we're working with people to get their business online and craft this website, right. And figure out what is your business about. It really starts with who you are. Right? Who you are, what you're about, how you want to show up and serve. And I find that it is really challenging for a lot of people. The people that it comes very quickly, like one of our steps in our program, it's either people are going to move through it quickly, or they're going to be there a long time.

And the people that are there a long time are the people that have not done this inner reflection and look into who they really are. The people that know who they are they're, like, flying through it. They're like, yep, this is it. This is what I stand for. This is my mission. This is my vision. This is who I'm serving. This is how I want to show up.

So, I know your book is going to be so powerful in helping people, business entrepreneurs that are listening to this move through and get clarity faster on all the things they want to do not just in their business, let alone everything else. So I love this. I'm a big dreamer. So it kind of comes easy to me and naturally to me. I never know how I'm going to get there, but I'm like, I dream big. So I've always had that with me. But I know it's challenging for a lot of people.

Yeah, I'm glad you're, you're unique in that. I think not everyone shares that. A lot of people are burned by dreams and primarily because they've had a dream die and it's so painful. There's something I talk about in the book called the identity crisis intersection, and this is something I think we've all had at some point.

And it's where you have a dream, and that could be a career dream or business dream. It could be a relationship dream. I want to get married or I want to have a kid or a financial dream. Whatever it is, we all have had them at some point. But then the dream dies. For whatever reason. The business fails, the economy shifts, the spouse walks out, the child dies. There's a lot of pain when the dream dies.

Or you never quite get the dream. That was my rock star dream. I never, I could never quite get there. So you realize the dream is dying. Then what do you do? Like, at that moment, you were at what I call the identity crisis intersection. It's an intersection, you have two choices. It's a fork in the road. And I call it an identity crisis intersection because when your dream dies, part of you dies with it.

Like, we aren't compartmentalized little things, that's why it hurts so much when a dream doesn't come true or it fails because that's part of us and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is, is what do you do at that point? It's such a tender point. And most people choose option a, which is to conform. They get right back in that sea of conformity, of like, well, i'm going to be like everybody else. That was embarrassing. Not going to dream again. Shouldn't have done that. I'm not going to get married again. I'm not going to start another business because that blew up in my face, whatever it is. For me, that was the rockstar dream die. So i'm going to, I floated for four years at jobs. I hated trying to be a good, happy person. Although I wasn't happy, it wasn't me.

And that's a path we all take. I took it. There's no shame in it. It's just the obvious choice to take. But there is another choice, and that is to dream again. Either that same dream a second time or a third time or a hundredth time, or it's to dream a new version of your dream or a new dream entirely. And that's kind of how I started in business.

Four years later, when I had to, because I lost a couple of jobs, I was like, well, I didn't get the Rockstar dream, but I could build a company around music and I could help other musicians. And ironically, my dream came about. I released, like, a new album every year. I had a built in audience, I made money. I got to help other people with their music. I got to tour digitally and a little bit in person. And I had way more stability in my life and way more fun. It was like a backdoor into my music dream I never would have thought was possible. But I gave up on it for four years. But when I let myself dream again, there were more possibilities and opportunities, and I'm dreaming again right now. I want to be an author, speaker. That would be fun. It's a new way to dream.

So I think everyone's gone through one of those identity crisis intersections, or maybe you're in one right now, and just if you are or have been, like, it's okay. If you've conformed, it's okay. You have a choice to still get out of the river. Everyone's floating one way; you can get out for a second, stand on the shore, and say, do I want to go where the river's going? Or do I want to pick a different path and it's going to start with dreaming again about something new. Or maybe the same thing you dreamt about when you were a kid.

Yeah. Oh, I love it. Can't wait to read that chapter.

Yeah, I know we're short on time. I'll fly through and sort of highlight the rest of the framework, so you start with that 30,000 foot view of dreaming.

STEP 2: The E in rebel is to ‘establish the outcomes you want in life’.

So we go from 30,000 foot view to, like, very on the ground. Like, what do you want to be true about your life on the day to day? So one of the questions I use is, like, a, just a journal prompt is, if you and I bump into each other three years from now, Krissy, and we haven't seen each other, but it's like another conference and it's like, oh my gosh, it's been three years since the podcast we did together. I'm like, Krissy, how the heck are you? And you're like, Graham, this has been the best three years of my life. What would you be telling me about? That's the question. It has been the best three years. What would have to be true for you to tell me it has been the best three years of your life?

Open ended question. Take your time. There's no category that specifically you have to go through. And three years is very specific because ten years is too far down the road to really even picture. My life is going to be so different in ten years. I don't even know who I was ten years ago. One year is just too short to really create a lot of momentum because we get excited, but then we just fall off the horse.

Three years is this magical window of time that's close enough to my season of life. I can almost picture the age of my kids. I've got a few things in the fire that are probably pumping out in the next two to three years, so I can kind of accurately predict the futureish. But it's also like, you know, we could do a lot of damage in 36 months.

Like, I can completely transform my marriage in 36 months, my business in 36 months, my health. Like it's a long enough time that your life could be completely different in the best sense of the word. So I love this question. To create vision specific outcomes. This would have happened three years from now if it's been the best three years of my life.

So we go from big picture dreams, they're just data points on what we care about, what we value down to this is what I really want to be true three years from now, and now you're getting a lot closer to what you value versus what Graham values or anybody else.

Yeah. Incredible. Incredible. All right, let's keep moving through the framework.

STEP 3: We move to the B.

Yep. After that, like now. So we get a vision.

The B is to ‘break the negative thoughts, habits and patterns that are holding you back’. So we do a whole exercise called my inner story audit. Like, there is an intuitive, still small voice in your head that wants to guide you, but you will not hear it if you have that loud default story, loud default narrative…. I'm not good enough. It'll never work. The economy's too bad, whatever, whatever.

So we have to like identify, attack and reframe and basically undo a bunch of bad programming and old code. So we do that in the B.

STEP 4: The second E, the fourth step is to ‘engage in rebellious new thoughts’.

This is where you start to have new beliefs, think new thoughts, new feelings, new actions. We do a lot of like how to prime your day, protect your day. Something I teach called goal funnels. Like how do you take those specific visions that you got for three years and like, turn them into daily steps? So very practical. Like the action takers are going to like that chapter.

STEP 5: Then finally the L is to ‘let go’.

Specifically, you let go of other people's opinions and even your own opinion of yourself, aka the outcomes you set back in step two.

So we set outcomes to go in a direction, but at the end of the day, we have to really hold them loosely because I have no control over the future. I really don't know what's going to happen. So I don't actually want to be married to an outcome. I want to know where I want to go, but I want to literally let go of those outcomes so I can iterate and evolve and be flexible.

Because again, high school Graham didn't know that YouTube was a thing because it didn't exist. So I would never have said I want to be on YouTube and I want to have an online business. That wasn't a thing, but I had a big picture of who I was and what I wanted out of life. And then as I kept that open, I could evolve and pivot and go, oh, this could be a thing, this could work. I'm really good at this. People like this about me. I could do this better. And you have to hold it so loosely. Jon Gordon, who not only endorsed the book, but wrote the forward for the book, has this great line. He says “if you love the process, you'll love what the process produces.” And he really tries to get you to focus on moving in the direction you want to move, but let go of the end, the outcome, because we don't want to focus on that.

So it's really a letting go after all the hard inner work you do. This is the hardest part of the framework for me, is the part I'm still in process on because I'm such an outcome person. I'm a high futuristic on the Strength Finders and I'm a three on the Enneagram. I want to achieve, but it's the part that's going to set you free. And in this part of the chapter, we, uh, we help you establish family values, personal values, so you can, like, cling to the four to five things. You're like, this is true about me. So when other people say like, that's weird what you're doing, you're like, that might be true that you say that, but this is what I value, so this is why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Yeah, 100%. If you're watching on YouTube in the comments, share which part of the framework you are most excited to dive into if you're watching on YouTube. When you said let go, I just, like, took this big sigh of relief. I was like, just almost like, oh, yes, we have to remember to let go. And I love you talking about the dream state and how it kind of shifted but gave you a new way to reach that dream. Sometimes we have these dreams and we think it has to be a certain way, but let go of that blueprint and exactly how you pictured it, because it could actually be happening, but it's just happening a little bit differently.

And if you stop to really look and let go of that specific blueprint that you had drawn out, you might realize and recognize that, oh, my gosh, what I had actually dreamed is coming true. It's just not exactly how I pictured it.

So good, so powerful. Okay, I cannot wait. I'm going to be stalking my mailbox. Amazon is telling me, like, when it's coming. So I will be looking for it and I will be reading through that.

Graham, it's been a pleasure to have you here. Any final thoughts or words that you want to leave with the audience before they use the link below to go grab Rebel: Find yourself by not following the crowd.

Yeah, I would just say think about who you need to become a rebel for. Ultimately, this isn't about you just living your best life, although I think it will help you live your best life. But imagine what would be possible for your family, for your community, for your clients, for whomever. If the real you like, the full real you came out to play, not the version of you that your parents want you to be or you feel like you need to be on social media, but if the full you came out to play, imagine who would benefit from it. So I’d love to just leave you with that thought.

Think about who you need to become a rebel for. Not only to, like, serve them and bless them, but maybe, just maybe, inspire them to become a rebel and find themselves as well.

Yeah. And I think you'll be pleasantly surprised on how freeing it actually is, even how scary it might feel in the beginning. But I know once you go through Graham's framework it's going to be freeing and liberating and empowering for you to do that next thing.

So we believe in you. Go get your hands on this book. Graham, it's been a pleasure to have you here. I will leave all of the links below this video and in the show notes so you can go connect with Graham as well. After you grab his book Rebel, you can find him on Instagram. He's got a YouTube channel. He has a podcast. I will leave all of the links there so that you can go check out Graham and tune in in the way that you like to best.

So Graham, again, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for coming here and I hope this isn't the last conversation and we chat more.

I'm sure we will. Thanks Krissy, appreciate you.